Search results

Little is known about the variations in service co-creation on social media, despite the resource integrating capabilities and co-creator roles afforded by these platforms. The gap is even more troubling in the nonprofit sector, where leveraging public interaction on social media is prevalent and vital to charitable and philanthropic endeavors. Arguably, such interaction is embedded in resource integrating activities leading to nonprofit service co-creation. This paper reports the forms, dimensions or service co-creation measures enabled by social media use in the nonprofits' sector.

The authors conducted a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. First, the authors interviewed 19 social media managers in education, health and social service nonprofit organizations to identify the varieties in service co-creation realized. Second, the authors surveyed 73 nonprofit organizations on social media and gathered 267 useable responses, which were used to analyze and validate the identified forms of service co-creation.

The authors found that nonprofit organizations realize up to seven forms of service co-creation using social media. These include co-ideating to tweak service ideas, co-diagnosing social needs and problems, co-assessing service events, co-transforming services to targeted communities, co-advocating for community and service reach, co-resourcing in service delivery, and co-experiencing through a pool of diverse service experiences.

This study develops a reliable and valid multidimensional measure for nonprofit service co-creation enabled by social media platforms. Theoretically, this study offers a nonprofit service co-creation model to drive nuanced explanatory research and service co-creation perspectives in other contexts and engagement platforms. Managerially, this research illustrates the variations in service co-creation, which inform the strategic value of social media to nonprofits and will assist nonprofit practitioners in planning and evaluating their service co-creation outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to expand understandings of how logistics can reduce food waste in food supply chains (FSCs).

Using a research framework that associates causes of food waste with logistics solutions, a multiple-case study was conducted in three Swedish FSCs of meat, fruit and vegetables, and ambient products, respectively, and involving industrial producers, wholesalers, and retailers. Data were collected during 19 semistructured interviews and four site visits, and logistics solutions were analysed according to logistics activities, actors involved and their stages in the FSC, and coordination mechanisms.

A joint analysis of nine logistics solutions revealed that to efficiently reduce food waste in FSCs, solutions have been implemented at three stages of FSCs, as well as that those solutions differ in their integration of six logistics activities and four coordination mechanisms. The findings moreover indicate that the solutions are interlinked, thereby implying that coordination is necessary both within solutions as well as among them.

The chief limitation is that the potential of the identified logistics solutions is not quantified.

The paper makes recommendations for reducing food waste in FSCs by developing new solutions and modifying existing ones.

The paper suggests ways to reduce significant environmental impacts of food waste.

By building upon previous research explaining causes of food waste, this paper focusses on logistics solutions for reducing such waste.

The purpose of this study is to produce families of exact soliton solutions (2+1)-dimensional Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, that describes shallow water waves, using an ansätze approach.

This article aims to introduce a recently developed ansätze for creating soliton and travelling wave solutions to nonlinear nonintegrable partial differential equations, especially those with physical significance.

A recently developed ansätze solution was used to successfully construct soliton solutions to the (2 + 1)-dimensional KdV equation. This straightforward method is an alternative to the Painleve test analysis, yielding similar results. The strategy demonstrated the existence of a single soliton solution, also known as a localized wave or bright soliton, as well as singular solutions or kink solitons.

The ansätze solution used to construct soliton solutions to the (2 + 1)-dimensional KdV equation is novel. New soliton solutions were also obtained.

States that the market for computer systems that manage digital content is currently in turmoil but that the overall direction of both library policy and supplier strategy seems clear – the digital library will play a key role in organizing content and supporting and facilitating access to it. Suggests that digital libraries will become diffuse asset management systems capable of high levels of integration with other learning, management and recreation systems, and that digital libraries will tend increasingly to adopt an ever wider range of platforms and content technologies created for wider commercial and economic purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the factors which facilitate effective teaching through massive open online courses (MOOCs).

A descriptive meta-analysis was conducted to first examine the literature covering the characteristics of teaching in MOOCs, the profile of participants, the instructional design of course materials and/or the course assessment methods – and then to summarise the factors which are conducive to the teaching effectiveness of MOOCs. A random sample of MOOCs was then reviewed to sort out the extent to which the factors can be identified in these courses.

The factors leading to effective teaching of MOOCs revolve around six areas according to the stages of course delivery, namely, preparation, attraction, participation, interaction, consolidation and post-course support. They address the application of technology to achieve educational purposes, while coping with the potentials and constraints of the MOOC environment. In practice, however, existing MOOCs show varying degrees of the implementation of the factors.

As this is an exploratory study summarising and categorising the factors, further work should be done, in particular on the proper adoption of these factors in teaching, their effectiveness and ways of assessing such effectiveness.

The factors identified will help institutions and academics who plan to offer MOOCs to be aware of how teaching can be best delivered to promote effective student learning.

This research aims to identify critical brand touchpoints that generate value for customers and brands and examine their effects on two relational outcomes: relationship quality and word of mouth (WOM).

Three studies combining qualitative and quantitative research provide evidence distinguishing four different stages of customer experience in the telecom industry and develop a research model of staged customer experience; structural equation modeling analyses are used to validate the proposed model and test for the examined effects.

Customer experience in the telecom industry consists of four related but distinct stages (i.e. pre-touch, in-touch, post-touch and service failure) and these stages have direct and indirect effects on WOM. Furthermore, the effects of customer experience stages on WOM are partially mediated by relationship quality.

The research model introduced here will allow academics and practitioners to focus their efforts on important touchpoints that influence relationship quality and WOM. Future research should examine the proposed model of staged customer experience in different applications and industries.

A common myth among marketers is that firms should design a painless experience if they want a superior market position. While avoiding a drain on financial resources, the prime objective should be to provide a holistic customer experience that is valuable to customers and the brand alike. Marketers should disregard touchpoints and stages that do not provide noticeable value.

This research answers the call for a more appropriate model to elucidate the factors that link customer experience with relational outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to present a fresh approach to stimulate individual creativity. It introduces a mathematical representation for creative ideas, six creativity operators and methods of matrix-algebra to evaluate, improve and stimulate creative ideas. Creativity begins with ideas to resolve a problem or tackle an opportunity. By definition, a creative idea must be simultaneously novel and useful. To inject analytic rigor into these concepts of creative ideas, the author introduces a feature-attribute matrix-construct to represent ideas, creativity operators that use ideas as operands and methods of matrix algebra. It is demonstrated that it is now possible to analytically and quantitatively evaluate the intensity of the variables that make an idea more, equal or less, creative than another. The six creativity operators are illustrated with detailed multi-disciplinary real-world examples. The mathematics and working principles of each creativity operator are discussed.

The unit of analysis is ideas, not theory. Ideas are man-made artifacts. They are represented by an original feature-attribute matrix construct. Using matrix algebra, idea matrices can be manipulated to improve their creative intensity, which are now quantitatively measurable. Unlike atoms and cute rabbits, creative ideas, do not occur in nature. Only people can conceive and develop creative ideas for embodiment in physical, non-physical forms, or in a mix of both. For example, as widgets, abstract theorems, business processes, symphonies, organization structures, and so on. The feature-attribute matrix construct is used to represent novelty and usefulness. The multiplicative product of these two matrices forms the creativity matrix. Six creativity operators and matrix algebra are introduced to stimulate and measure creative ideas. Creativity operators use idea matrices as operands. Uses of the six operators are demonstrated using multi-disciplinary real-world examples. Metrics for novelty, usefulness and creativity are in ratio scales, grounded on the Weber–Fechner Law. This law is about persons’ ability to discern differences in the intensity of stimuli.

Ideas are represented using feature-attribute matrices. This construct is used to represent novel, useful and creative ideas with more clarity and precision than before. Using matrices, it is shown how to unambiguously and clearly represent creative ideas endowed with novelty and usefulness. It is shown that using matrix algebra, on idea matrices, makes it possible to analyze multi-disciplinary, real-world cases of creative ideas, with clarity and discriminatory power, to uncover insights about novelty and usefulness. Idea-matrices and the methods of matrix algebra have strong explanatory and predictive power. Using of matrix algebra and eigenvalue analyses, of idea-matrices, it is demonstrated how to quantitatively rank ideas, features and attributes of creative ideas. Matrix methods operationalize and quantitatively measure creativity, novelty and usefulness. The specific elementary variables that characterize creativity, novelty and usefulness factors, can now be quantitatively ranked. Creativity, novelty and usefulness factors are not considered as monolithic, irreducible factors, vague “lumpy” qualitative factors, but as explicit sets of elementary, specific and measurable variables in ratio scales. This significantly improves the acuity and discriminatory power in the analyses of creative ideas. The feature-attribute matrix approach and its matrix operators are conceptually consistent and complementary with key extant theories engineering design and creativity.

First to define and specify ideas as feature-attribute matrices. It is demonstrated that creative ideas, novel ideas and useful ideas can be analytically and unambiguously specified and measured for creativity. It is significant that verbose qualitative narratives will no longer be the exclusive means to specify creative ideas. Rather, qualitative narratives will be used to complement the matrix specifications of creative ideas. First to specify six creativity operators enabling matrix algebra to operate on idea-matrices as operands to generate new ideas. This capability informs and guides a person’s intuition. The myth and dependency, on non-repeatable or non-reproducible serendipity, flashes of “eureka” moments or divine inspiration, can now be vacated. Though their existence cannot be ruled out. First to specify matrix algebra and eigen-value methods of quantitative analyses of feature-attribute matrices to rank the importance of elementary variables that characterize factors of novelty, usefulness and creativity. Use of verbose qualitative narratives of novelty, usefulness and creativity as monolithic “lumpy” factors can now be vacated. Such lumpy narratives risk being ambiguous, imprecise, unreliable and non-reproducible, Analytic and quantitative methods are more reliable and consistent. First to define and specify a method of “attacking the negatives” to systematically pinpoint the improvements of an idea’s novelty, usefulness and creativity. This procedure informs and methodically guides the improvements of deficient ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to study the stability analysis and optical solitary wave solutions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which are derived from a multicomponent plasma with nonextensive distribution.

Based on the ansatz and sub-equation theories, the authors use a direct method to find stability analysis and optical solitary wave solutions of the (2 + 1)-dimensional equation.

By considering the ansatz method, the authors successfully construct the bright and dark soliton solutions of the equation. The sub-equation method is also extended to find its complexitons solutions. Moreover, the explicit power series solution is also derived with its convergence analysis. Finally, the influences of each parameter on these solutions are discussed via graphical analysis.

The dynamics of these solutions are analyzed to enrich the diversity of the dynamics of high-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation type nonlinear wave fields.

This paper aims to study the Gramian solutions and solitonic interactions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional Broer–Kaup–Kupershmidt (BKK) system, which models the nonlinear and dispersive long gravity waves traveling along two horizontal directions in the shallow water of uniform depth.

Pfaffian technique is used to construct the Gramian solutions of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system. Asymptotic analysis is applied on the two-soliton solutions to study the interaction properties.

N-soliton solutions in the Gramian with a real function ζ(y) of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system are constructed and proved, where N is a positive integer and y is the scaled space variable. Conditions of elastic and inelastic interactions between the two solitons are revealed asymptotically. For the three and four solitons, elastic, inelastic interactions and soliton resonances are discussed graphically. Effect of the wave numbers, initial phases and ζ(y) on the solitonic interactions is also studied.

Shallow water waves are studied for the applications in environmental engineering and hydraulic engineering. This paper studies the shallow water waves through the Gramian solutions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system and provides some phenomena that have not been studied.