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The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of PRINCE2 (PRoject IN Controlled Environments 2) standard on customer satisfaction jointly with vendor relationship management capability in the information technology outsourcing (ITO) context. This paper further tries to explore the above underlying mechanism by studying the mediating effect of deliverable quality.

This paper develops a mediated moderation model to explain the underlying influence processes of PRINCE2 standard, vendor relationship management capability and deliverable quality on ITO customer satisfaction. By conducting a pair-wise survey of 260 project managers in seven Iranian firms, the model and hypotheses are empirically tested with the partial least squares method.

Our results suggest that firms benefit more in terms of IT costs reduction when they have a higher level of complementary investment in an external standard, especially through an interplay effect of the external standard and internal relational aspect. Firms can make business processes more amenable to outsourcing and facilitate monitoring of vendor performance and effective coordination with vendors. More interestingly, we find that this interactive effect is fully mediated by deliverable quality, which, in turn, directly increases ITO customer satisfaction.

This study adds some new knowledge and provides new views to study ITO customer satisfaction by addressing the importance of PRINCE2 standard. This study further enhances our understanding in terms of the underlying pathway through which the PRINCE2 standard jointly affects customer satisfaction with vendor relationship management capability and deliverable quality. With the effort of explicitly explaining the complex mechanisms, this study helps ITO managers proactively escort outsourcing activities and projects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanisms through which interactivity and fairness perception impart influence on solvers’ continuance intention in crowdsourcing contest settings.

On basis of self-determination theory and social exchange theory, this study focuses on the mediating roles of motivation and platform trust to explain the underlying influence processes of interactivity and fairness perception on continuance intention. A sample of 306 solvers was obtained from an online crowdsourcing platform through two separated surveys. The hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares method and bias-corrected bootstrapping method.

The empirical results indicate that motivation and platform trust together fully mediate the effect of interactivity on continuance intention, and the effect of fairness perception on continuance intention is also fully mediated by motivation and platform trust. While motivation is found to have a stronger mediating effect than platform trust does.

This study contributes to the crowdsourcing research by figuring out the pathway through which interactivity and fairness perception influence solvers’ continuance intention.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanisms through which integration capability and learning capability influence IT outsourcing performance from vendor’s perspective.

This paper develops a moderated mediation model to explain the underlying influence processes of integration capability and learning capability on vendor’s performance. A sample of 237 vendor firms was obtained from China through two separated surveys. The hypotheses were tested with the partial least squares method and bias-corrected bootstrapping method.

The empirical results indicate that external integration capability (EIC) mediates the effect of internal integration capability (IIC) on vendor outsourcing performance, and the relationship between EIC and vendor performance is positively moderated by learning capability, while learning capability has a negative moderating effect on the link between IIC and vendor performance. Further, the conditional indirect effect is suggested. The indirect effect of IIC on vendor performance through EIC becomes non-significant when learning capability is low.

This study highlights the counterintuitive notion that learning capability may not always have uniformly positive effects and figure out the mechanism through which integration capability and learning capability can effectively improve IT outsourcing performance.

Gamification has been widely implemented to improve user engagement in the online health community (OHC). While its effect on the physicians' engagement has recently been documented, whether and how gamification influences the patients' engagement in the OHC remains an untapped research area. The purpose of this study is to fill this dearth by encompassing the gamification strategy of Haodf.com, which awards the “Annual Physician” badges to the physicians, to analyze how this gamification approach motivates patients’ engagement in the OHC.

Real-world data are leveraged from the OHC. The Tobit model is employed for modeling the gamification-patient's engagement nexus in an OHC. Robust findings are obtained by incorporating different measures of a dependent variable, a set of control variables about the physician's characteristics and hospital's features, and alternative estimation techniques.

The results reveal that a patient's engagement in the OHC in the form of appointments and review-posting behavior is enhanced by the gamification strategy. Besides, the positive influence of gamification on the patient's engagement is further strengthened by the physician's professional capital. It is basically obtained that the gamification is an efficacious tool to accelerate not only the physicians' engagement but also of the patients in the OHC platform.

The study provides both theoretical and empirical discussion to enrich the understanding on how OHCs enhance patients' engagement by developing gamification techniques. The findings guide the practitioners of OHC to better understand the implications of their gamification design to optimize user engagement.

Online health communities (OHCs) have been recognized as emerging platforms on the Internet used for health purposes. Despite its emergence, developing a successful OHC is still a challenge. Prior studies identified that value co-creation behavior (VCB) of members is an essential factor for sustaining OHCs; however, little is known about how members’ behavior drives to co-create value? Therefore, this study aims to discover the inclusive mechanism for members’ VCB in OHCs.

The authors develop the study model and hypothesis based on the service-dominant logic of value co-creation theory and social support (SS) literature. The survey data of 608 active OHCs users in China were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results revealed that SS positively affects members’ VCBs. Ethical aspects; Trust and ethical interaction (EI) partially mediate their relationships. In addition, community members’ current health status (CHS) negatively moderates the relationships between SS and VCB. From the findings, it becomes evident that only SS is not enough; developing an ethical environment in OHCs, i.e. trust and ethically rich interactions among members, significantly helps OHCs to promote co-creation. Also, the negative moderation of CHS findings provides novel insights when cramming health conditions.

Exploring the complex mechanism of co-creation in OHC, the authors illustrate the potential of service-dominant logic to create new theoretical insight for healthcare and provide the framework of co-creation with ethics for the first time. This will extend the application of ethics in healthcare services and offer a robust platform from which the understanding of drivers of members’ VCB can be advanced in the OHC context.

Given the progressive rise of online health communities (OHC) that have predominantly changed health delivery services, healthcare organizations still face tremendous challenges of low patient participation and lack of high-quality contribution to OHC. Prior scholars indicated that inducing patient value co-creation behavior (VCB) is substantially beneficial for the sustainable growth of OHCs. However, what drives patients' behavior to co-create value is still unknown. To fill this important gap, this study used the service-dominant logic of value co-creation theory and face (mianzi in Chinese) literature to discover how patient co-creation attitude (CA) affects patient VCB. Also, this study aimed to explore the joint mechanism of how face gain (FG) and face loss (FL) impact patients' VCB in OHCs.

The survey data of 322 patients actively using OHC in China were analyzed via partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results revealed that patient CA positively influences VCB, that is participation behavior (PB) and citizenship behavior (CB). Face gain (FG) strengthens the impact of CA and patient PB and CB, whereas face loss (FL) weakens the impact of CA and patient PB and CB. Furthermore, the fsQCA findings signify the robustness of the study model.

This study explores the multifaceted mechanism of patient value co-creation in OHC and discloses the crucial role of face for the first time. Further, the novel findings of this study provide a robust framework for advancing the understanding of important drivers of patient VCBs that significantly helps healthcare service providers and OHC managers to sustain OHCs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of a physician’s prosocial behavior on a patient's choices in the online health community (OHC) context. Moreover, the authors explore how such effects differ across different online word-of-mouth (WOM) and professional titles.

Guided by the motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) framework, this paper develops hypotheses and an econometric model. Then this paper used spline regression to test hypotheses on 6,204 physicians at The Good Doctor (www.Haodf.com), which is one of the largest Chinese OHCs. The authors conducted the propensity score matching and difference-in-difference method (PSM-DID) to address the concern about the bias caused by possible endogeneity concerns.

The authors’ results show that a physician’s prosocial behavior improves a patient's choice only when the strength of a physician’s prosocial behavior is below the tipping point. In addition, the influence of a physician’s prosocial behavior is heterogeneous for physicians with different online WOM and professional titles. For physicians with higher online WOM, the effect of a physician's prosocial behaviors on a patient's choice is positive, while for physicians with lower online WOM, a physician’s prosocial behavior has no impact on a patient’s choice. For physicians with higher professional titles, the quantity of a physician’s prosocial behavior has a positive impact on a patient’s choice, while for physicians with lower professional titles the quality of a physician’s prosocial behavior has a positive impact on a patient’s choice.

This study contributes new knowledge and provides new perspectives to study a patient's choice by addressing the importance of physician's prosocial behavior. With the effort of explicitly explaining the complex mechanisms, this study encourages physicians' engagement in a physician’s prosocial behavior and gives some implications on how to perform the behaviors strategically.

Interest in reverse logistics (RL) as a critical component of supply chain management (SCM) is gaining more traction with both practitioners and academics. Because of RL’s growing strategic importance, it is imperative to conduct a timely and comprehensive literature review and to identify associated opportunities for future research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the researchers conduct an extensive bibliometric analysis of published academic articles on RL for the period of 1992-2015. Specifically, the CiteSpace software is utilized to conduct document co-citation analysis and burst detection analysis on 912 selected RL articles and their 22,642 references.

This research identifies the most influential RL research publications/citations in each of the five periods and their research contribution. Using co-citation analysis, the authors are able to identify and illustrate major research themes, knowledge groups, and future research opportunities in the RL field.

In contrast to existing literature review studies in the logistics field, the study uses impact factor as a key article selection criterion. The influential articles identified in this process well represent the core literature and RL body of knowledge and have important implications for future research.

Prior research demonstrated that China's Outward FDI (OFDI) is aimed at sustaining long-term economic growth by promoting industrialization and technological upgrading in the country. However, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy remains scarce. This study intends to fill this gap by exploiting endogenous changes in industrial productivity stemming from OFDI to examine if China's new strategy to spur OFDI is economically beneficial for the industries involved.

The authors employed the two-step system-GMM and pooled mean group approaches on a panel dataset of 18 Chinese industries over the 2004–2017 period. The industrial sectors are further classified into the state dominated and non-state dominated ones to evaluate whether the productivity growth impact of OFDI varies by the level of ownership structure. Besides, the dataset is further decomposed into the ex ante and ex-post BRI era to test if this initiative has altered the underlying relationship.

The results provide robust evidence that China's OFDI through reverse spillover effects promotes productivity growth in the domestic industries, and such productivity gains are greater for the non-state dominated industries, and the OFDI in the BRI era. The findings suggest that OFDI can act as a catch-up strategy to release excess capacity and acquire technology and smart business practices.

This study is the first attempt to highlight the reverse productivity spillovers associated with OFDI at the industrial level. The study's findings guide the government officials and the practitioners of foreign investment to better understand the implications of their investment projects in terms of technology improvements and to optimize market opportunities.

The impact of image is widely investigated in various research fields. However, its effect in online health communities is rarely studied. In this research, the authors develop a theoretical model to assess the impact of physicians' image on patients' choices in online health communities.

The authors developed a web crawler based on R language program to collect more than 40,000 physicians' images and other related information from their homepages in Haodf.com–a leading online health community in China. The features of physicians' images are computed by Face++ Application Programming Interface (API) through the following variables: beauty, smile and skin status.

The empirical results derive the following findings: (1) physician's beauty or physical attractiveness has no significant effect on patients’ choice; (2) Smile has a positive effect on patients’ choices; (3) Physician's skin status also positively affects patients' choices; (4) Physician's professional capital strengthens the effect of beauty, smile and skin status on patients' choices; (5) Beauty and skin status are the substitutes for each other, and smile and skin status are the substitutes for each other too.

Also, this study provides implications for both physicians and online health community platform managers.

This study provides new evidence in understanding the impact of physician's online image and contributes to the literature on signaling theory, impression management theory and patients' choices.