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Computer vision and deep learning (DL) methods have been investigated for personal protective equipment (PPE) monitoring and detection for construction workers’ safety. However, it is still challenging to implement automated safety monitoring methods in near real time or in a time-efficient manner in real construction practices. Therefore, this study developed a novel solution to enhance the time efficiency to achieve near-real-time safety glove detection and meanwhile preserve data privacy.

The developed method comprises two primary components: (1) transfer learning methods to detect safety gloves and (2) edge computing to improve time efficiency and data privacy. To compare the developed edge computing-based method with the currently widely used cloud computing-based methods, a comprehensive comparative analysis was conducted from both the implementation and theory perspectives, providing insights into the developed approach’s performance.

Three DL models achieved mean average precision (mAP) scores ranging from 74.92% to 84.31% for safety glove detection. The other two methods by combining object detection and classification achieved mAP as 89.91% for hand detection and 100% for glove classification. From both implementation and theory perspectives, the edge computing-based method detected gloves faster than the cloud computing-based method. The edge computing-based method achieved a detection latency of 36%–68% shorter than the cloud computing-based method in the implementation perspective. The findings highlight edge computing’s potential for near-real-time detection with improved data privacy.

This study implemented and evaluated DL-based safety monitoring methods on different computing infrastructures to investigate their time efficiency. This study contributes to existing knowledge by demonstrating how edge computing can be used with DL models (without sacrificing their performance) to improve PPE-glove monitoring in a time-efficient manner as well as maintain data privacy.

With the rise of the gig economy, management positions are increasingly staffed with flexible labor, so-called interim managers. They plunge into organizations for a limited period, operating in a liminal position as partly insider, partly outsider. Although several contributions to their client organizations are acknowledged, it is unknown how the interim manager’s knowledge from previous assignments is made useful in the new context under these particular working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the interim manager’s knowledge is transferred to the client organization while operating from a liminal position.

This paper presents an interview-based multiple case study of six interim assignments where knowledge transfer is considered a social and context-dependent process.

The findings unveil the multifaceted nature of the liminal position, which consists of task orientation, time limitation, political detachment and cultural distance. These facets contribute to knowledge transfer in terms of new shared understandings and joint interests, which in turn might create new practices that augment continuous knowledge-sharing patterns.

The results contribute to the research on flexible work arrangements by shedding light on how the liminal position, predominantly depicted as an obstacle for the individual, might facilitate knowledge transfer. Through the process of knowledge generation, it is shown how a short-term engagement might enable the organization to increase its knowledge over time.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) with a massive and unexpected challenge that has caused many to adjust their operational standards. Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift to remote work and away from traditional office spaces. Thus, this study aims to explore the implications of this shift within the context of customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process.

Our study surveys 218 small-to-medium size business-to-business firms in the USA on a variety of questions revolving around their NPD processes, customer collaboration and the shift to remote work. The authors use structural equation modeling in the AMOS program to analyze the data.

The findings indicate that both customer participation breadth and customer participation depth positively impact new product performance. Furthermore, these relationships are found to be contingent upon whether firms rely on remote work during the collaboration process. The results show that accessing a broader variety of explicit customer insights (i.e., breadth) has become easier in the increasingly remote collaboration environment. However, as face-to-face customer participation in NPD has decreased, the prospect of gaining deep, tacit customer knowledge relevant to product development (i.e., depth) has become more challenging.

This study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm and the customer participation literature, and it also has implications for managers adjusting to the shift to remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide additional evidence that customer participation is an effective strategy for SMEs (Morgan et al., 2018), but remote work has both positive and negative implications regarding the type of external knowledge that is acquired during customer participation in NPD.

In recent decades, emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) have predominantly adopted a big step internationalization strategy to expand their business overseas. This study aims to examine the effect of big step internationalization on the speed of subsequent foreign direct investment (FDI) expansion for EMNEs. The authors also investigate the potential boundary conditions.

The authors use the random effects generalized least squares (GLS) regression following a hierarchical approach to analyze the panel data set conducted by a sample of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2001 to 2012.

The findings indicate that implementing big step internationalization in the initial stages accelerates the speed of subsequent FDI expansion. Notably, the authors find that this effect is more pronounced for firms that opt for acquisitions as the entry mode in their first big step internationalization and possess a board of directors with strong political connections to their home country’s government. In contrast, the board of director’s international experience negatively moderates this effect.

This study provides insights into our scholarly and practical understanding of EMNEs’ big step internationalization and subsequent FDI expansion speed, which offers important implications for firms’ decision-makers and policymakers.

This study extends the internationalization theory, broadens the international business literature on the consequences of big step internationalization and deepens the theoretical and practical understanding of foreign expansion strategies in EMNEs.

While previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of digital business strategies on operational efficiency, financial performance and value creation, little is known about how such strategies influence innovation performance. To address the gap, this paper aims to investigate the impact of a firm’s digital business strategy on its innovation performance.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view, this study examines the mechanism through which a digital business strategy affects innovation performance. Data were collected from 215 firms in China and analyzed using multiple regression and structural equation modeling.

The empirical analysis reveals that a firm’s digital business strategy has positive impacts on both product and process innovation performance. These impacts are partially mediated by knowledge-based dynamic capability. Additionally, a firm’s digital business strategy interacts positively with its entrepreneurial orientation in facilitating knowledge-based dynamic capability. Moreover, market turbulence enhances the strength of this interaction effect. Therefore, entrepreneurial-oriented firms operating in turbulent markets can benefit more from digital business strategies to enhance their knowledge-based dynamic capabilities and consequently improve their innovation performance.

This study contributes to the understanding of how a firm’s digital business strategy interacts with entrepreneurial orientation in turbulent markets to shape knowledge-based dynamic capability, which in turn enhances the firm’s innovation performance.

In an increasingly interconnected world, transportation infrastructure has emerged as a critical determinant of economic growth and global competitiveness. High-speed rail (HSR), characterized by its exceptional speed and efficiency, has garnered widespread attention as a transformative mode of transportation that transcends borders and fosters economic development. The Kuala Lumpur – Singapore (KL-SG) HSR project stands as a prominent exemplar of this paradigm, symbolizing the potential of HSR to serve as a catalyst for national economic advancement.

This paper is prepared to provide an insight into the benefits and advantages of HSR based on proven case studies and references from global HSRs, including China, Spain, France and Japan.

The findings that have been obtained focus on enhanced connectivity and accessibility, attracting foreign direct investment, revitalizing regional economies, urban development and city regeneration, boosting tourism and cultural exchange, human capital development, regional integration and environmental and sustainability benefits.

The KL-SG HSR, linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, epitomizes the potential for HSR to be a transformative agent in the realm of economic development. This project encapsulates the aspirations of two dynamic Southeast Asian economies, united in their pursuit of sustainable growth, enhanced connectivity and global competitiveness. By scrutinizing the KL-SG High-Speed Rail through the lens of economic benchmarking, a deeper understanding emerges of how such projects can drive progress in areas such as cross-border trade, tourism, urban development and technological innovation.

Drawing on organizational design theory and organizational learning theory, this paper aims to examine component technology (CT) and the interaction between CT and experiential learning (EL) effects on the degree of integration (DI) of cross-border technological acquisitions.

Using a sample of 267 firms consisting of 229 acquirer firms who started cross-border technological acquisitions from developed economies and 38 acquirer firms who initiated cross-border technological acquisitions from emerging economies over the period of 1993–2016, this study adopts a value chain framework to measure the acquirers’ acquisition integration degree for the investigation of the effects of CT and the interaction between CT and EL.

First, this paper finds CT in cross-border technological acquisitions exerting a positive influence on the acquirer firm’s likelihood of the DI implementation, in line with the organizational design theory. Second, in view of organizational learning theory, this study finds EL and the combined effect of CT and EL to have an inverse influence on the DI.

The results imply that the moderating role of EL significantly optimizes decision choices for an acquirer firm for integration implementation strategies in the form of DI, such as full integration (structural integration), partial integration and no integration (structural separation), which appears to be crucial for cross-border technological acquisitions.

This study contributed to international business strategies by shedding light on the importance of the DI for an acquirer firm that undertakes a cross-border technological acquisition with a CT target firm. This study explains why structural integration might be necessary in cross-border technological acquisitions regardless of the costs of disruption it imposes, as well as the contexts in which it becomes less important or unnecessary. The study disclosed that the increase in the likelihood of DI because of CT depends on the EL of the acquisition company in the host country environment and fluctuates with the prior acquisition knowledge and EL of the host country. Combining two cross-border technological acquisition’s literature streams, such as CT and EL, this study enlightens the importance of organizational learning theory and theory of organization design strategic direction making on acquisition integration implementation strategies.

This study aims to analyse the differences between professional interaction mediated by video conferencing and direct professional interaction. The research identifies diverging interests of office workers for the purpose of addressing work ethical and business ethical issues of professional collaboration, competition, and power in future hybrid work models.

Based on 28 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, and through the theoretical lens of phenomenology, the study develops explanatory hypotheses conceptualising four basic intentions of professional interaction and their corresponding preferences for video conferences and working on site.

The four intentions developed on the basis of the interviews are: the need for physical proximity; the challenge of collective creativity; the will to influence; and control of communication. This conceptual framework qualifies a moral ambivalence of professional interaction. The authors identify a connectivity paradox of professional interaction where the personal dimension remains unarticulated for the purpose of maintaining professionality. This tacit human connectivity is intertwined with latent power relations. This plasticity of both connectivity and power in direct interaction can be diminished by transferring the interaction to video conferencing.

The application of phenomenology to a collection of qualitative interviews has enabled the identification of underlying intention structures and the system in which they affect each other. This research identifies conflicts of interests between workers relative to their different self-perceived abilities to persevere in competitive professional interaction. It is therefore able to address consequences of future hybrid work models at an existential and societal level.

The aim of this research was to investigate fans’ responses toward a sponsor that has had a long-standing sponsorship deal with a club and decided also to sponsor the club’s rival.

A long-term sponsorship deal between a retsina wine company and a popular football club and a newly established deal between the company and the main rival club were selected as the research setting. Data were collected from a total sample of 302 participants, fans of the two teams, using an online survey and PLS-SEM was employed to test the relationships of the proposed structural model.

The results provided evidence for the importance of the inclusion of perceptions of fit for both teams to the model as it impacted the responses in the joint sponsorship. Team identification emerged significant for improving fans perceptions of fit between the sponsor and their favorite club but also led fans of the long-term sponsored club to feel betrayed from the sponsor. The sense of betrayal impacted the level of fit, the rejection of sponsorship but did not emerge significant for driving negative responses toward the sponsor’s brand. The same held for the rejection of the joint sponsorship.

This is the very first study that incorporated the effects of the perceptions of fit of two rival clubs to test the effect of sponsorship for a sponsor brand of a deal that includes a longtime sponsored football club and its rival as a newly sponsored one. It is also one of the first attempts that explores relationships between perceptions of fit, sense of betrayal and rejection of a joint sport sponsorship in a rivalry context, highlighting the importance of preventing fans' betrayal.

Cooperative agreements between universities and firms (U–F) have gained prominence. However, the literature on organisational culture and the formation of cooperation agreements is scarce. This study aims to analyse, from the perspective of the managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and those in charge in universities, the perceptions of the influence of organisational culture on this type of U–F cooperation.

To this end, multiple case studies were adopted, involving cooperation agreements between a Portuguese and eight SMEs incubated in UBImedical. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather information, aiming to understand the meaning, importance and possible obstacles caused by organisational culture in this U–F cooperation agreement.

Content analysis of the results obtained leads to the conclusion that cultural compatibility is a crucial factor for successful U–F cooperation. The exchange of knowledge, mutual trust and flexibility between those involved are identified as key determinants to build shared norms that allow a more productive, assertive union.

The study represents an important tool to support SME managers and those in charge of universities, as the evidence obtained can help them to define policies and actions with regard to the U–F cooperation process. More precisely, these SME and university managers could give more attention to culture in future cooperation agreements.

This study advances understanding of the role of organisational culture in a cooperation agreement since this was a gap identified in the literature on the topic. It also contributes to the existing body of work on U–F cooperation, demonstrating that organisational culture is considered important by partners in these agreements and should be adjusted towards compatible alignment of each party’s expectations.