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The proposed DHHFLOWLAD is used to design a recommendation system, which aims to provide the most appropriate treatment to the patient under a double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic environment.

Based on the ordered weighted distance measure and logarithmic aggregation, we first propose a double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic ordered weighted logarithmic averaging distance (DHHFLOWLAD) measure in this paper.

A case study is presented to illustrate the practicability and efficiency of the proposed approach. The results show that the recommendation system can prioritize TCM treatment plans effectively. Moreover, it can cope with pattern recognition problems efficiently under uncertain information environments.

An expert system is proposed to combat COVID-19 that is an emerging infectious disease causing disruptions globally. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been proved to relieve symptoms, improve the cure rate, and reduce the death rate in clinical cases of COVID-19.

This paper examines how the institutional distance between immigrants' country of residence and country of origin, as well as the regulative and normative aspects of institutions in immigrants' country of residence, social context variables and individual psycho-behavioural factors, condition immigrants' entrepreneurial motivation (i.e. mainly by necessity, by a combination of necessity and opportunity, or mainly by opportunity), which is in contrast to the previous literature on immigrant entrepreneurship that mainly focuses on micro-level factors.

By using hierarchical linear regression models to test our hypotheses, the authors analyse 468 first-generation immigrant entrepreneurs settled in 31 European countries using data from the European Working Conditions Survey (6th EWCS; Eurofound, 2015 database) combined with other datasets to derive the macro-level variables (i.e. the Doing Business Project; Hofstede et al., 2010).

The authors find that distance in the normative aspects of institutions harms entrepreneurial opportunity motivation. At the same time, however, opportunity motivation is likely to benefit from both the normative aspects of institutions that reduce locals' opportunity motivation and the distance in the regulative aspects of institutions.

This article analyses immigrant entrepreneurship in Europe, which has been under-examined in the extant literature, and takes into account the micro-, meso- and macro-level factors affecting the entrepreneurial motivation of immigrants in Europe. This analysis responds to the need already highlighted by previous research to include not only micro-level factors but also meso- and macro-level factors in the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurship (Aliaga-Isla and Rialp, 2013).

During the past several decades, national distance (ND) increasingly became a vital cornerstone in international business (IB) research, as both explicit and implicit distance are parts of the essential reasons for IB activities. However, there are various and chaotic methods to measure ND in the last literature; therefore, this paper aims to suggest legitimate uses of ND in the IB field and the best ND dimensions for various situations.

This paper used a historical overview of the theoretical background and conceptual development of ND based on the past four decades worth of studies in leading 17-IB journals using Google Scholar. The authors also focus on multiform ND measurement methods and details through qualitative and quantitative analysis based on previous studies’ data collection.

This research summarized the common measurement methods and elements of different ND and proposed solutions based on a multifaceted analysis.

The micro analysis examines each type of ND in terms of the proportion of variables, issues, measurement methods, representative proxies beyond previous studies. This research also tried to provide clarity and suggest solutions to these problems through our macro& micro-analysis.

While earlier acquisition research often focused on either the acquirer or the target side of analysis, recent work has increasingly emphasized the need to understand the dyadic interrelationship between the target and the acquirer. This review aims at synthesizing research progress in the area of target–acquirer interrelationships and understanding what questions remain unanswered. The author organizes this review into three dimensions of target–acquirer interrelationship: (a) their relative attributes (what both parties are relative to each other), (b) their connections (what both parties have with each other), and (c) their interactions (what both parties do to each other). Based on the review, the author then identifies critical research gaps and opportunities for developing a more comprehensive understanding of the interrelationship between the target and the acquirer in acquisitions.

Top-management-teams (TMTs) and chief executive officers (CEOs) dealing with internationalization are naturally predisposed to deal with space, so they will consult “spatial knowledge.” The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual description of spatial knowledge used by TMTs/CEOs and to describe how the use of spatial knowledge can be triggered and the resulting biases that arise from it. The description of spatial knowledge is also discussed in relation to core international business (IB) theories/models.

This is a conceptual study.

TMTs/CEOs use spatial knowledge for internationalization decisions. This spatial knowledge is “declarative” because it involves knowledge of places and associated characteristics or attributes, “configurational” because it involves knowledge of various types of relative positions and proximities between places and “procedural” because it involves knowledge of how to structure transactions, operate or organize interdependencies between locations. Additionally, TMTs/CEOs individually have spatial knowledge that is uniquely distorted. Then, finally, when TMTs/CEOs consult spatial knowledge to identify international opportunities or solutions, their search process may entail distance and directional biases as a result of their spatial knowledge.

This is the first paper to introduce the notion of “spatial knowledge” to the research on TMT/CEO experiences and internationalization and IB research in general.

The purpose of this paper is to present a mixed method study of social capital development and use, based on an intervention which provided women from refugee backgrounds with social capital development skills and tools.

In total, 111 Afghan, Burmese and Sudanese women living in Melbourne, Australia, received peer-support training and a free unlimited fixed-dial mobile phone for one year.

Interview and call log data suggest that the training sessions and mobile phones played important roles in bonding social capital development, resulting in a complex support network among participants. To a lesser extent, there was also evidence of bridging social capital creation. By providing linkages to government institutions through an interpreter service, the mobile phones gave participants easy access to linking social capital, in their heritage language.

The program supplements existing community resources with mobile phone technology to create social capital rich networks within these disadvantaged communities, and the authors describe the community characteristics that make participants amenable to such an intervention.

This paper aims to investigate the internationalization motives behind location choice among emerging country business groups (EBGs) and the way in which institutional factors affect Türkiye’s foreign direct investment (FDI).

This study develops a multi-perspective framework that integrates the ownership, location and internalization (OLI) paradigm (Dunning and Lundan, 2008) and the linkage, leverage and learning (LLL) model (Mathews, 2006) with neo-institutional theory to explain the internationalization of EBGs. It adopts a multiple-case study research method relying on 14 semi-structured interviews with top executives to explore the internationalization strategy of a set of Turkish BGs.

This study supports the combination of the OLI paradigm, the LLL model and neo-institutional theory to explain EBGs’ internationalizing behaviors. Turkish BGs have adopted both asset exploitation and asset augmentation internationalization strategies. The institutional legitimacy mechanism moderates the internationalization motives of Turkish BGs, and their host country location choice and normative pressures are more salient than their regulative and cognitive pressures.

This study is based on a sample of EBGs from Türkiye, and this restriction limits the generalizability/applicability of the findings to BGs globally.

Few studies have considered EBGs and their internationalization strategies in the international business field. This paper puts forward an integrated framework for analyzing internationalization and legitimacy in the institutional context of EBGs. This study highlights that BGs bridge institutional voids. Focusing on Turkish BGs helps to answer Granovetter’s Coasian question and contributes to the understanding of emerging countries’ economic development.

After discussing the basis of business value and competitive advantage in today’s economy, this article explores the nature of small business and the increasing interdependence of business practice. An examination of the potential business value of Internet technologies is followed by an analysis of some of the factors that account for the lack of successful small business deployments to date. Drawing upon the lessons learned from the deployment of the SME Gateway in South Africa, we highlight a number of pilot projects illustrating the importance of context in assessing critical success factors. We proceed to explore the role of business services providers and conclude by suggesting a road map for turning the promises of the Internet into reality for small and medium size enterprises.

Drawing on the dual process theory and the cultural dimension of power distance, the current research investigates the impact of a specific service clue—the linguistic style of address forms (salutation) in hotel manager letters to guests—on customer satisfaction in a hotel context in Ecuador.

Following an experimental design research approach, this research conducted a series of two studies to examine how customers' cultural values (high vs low power distance), linguistic style of address forms (formal vs casual) and service valence (service success vs service failure) together influenced customer satisfaction. Specifically, Study 1 examined the service success condition, and Study 2 investigated the service failure condition.

The research results show that, in the service success condition, customers follow their distinct cultural orientations (high vs low power distance) when responding to the different linguistic styles (formal vs casual). On the other hand, in the service failure situation, as customers desire for expressions of respect that can be reflected in a formal address form, the level of satisfaction is lower when the casual address form is used in guest communications, regardless of customers' cultural orientations in power distance.

This research adds to existing cross-cultural service research, particularly in terms of service valence, and provides practical implications for enhancing service providers' cultural awareness and sociolinguistic competence to effectively communicate with customers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

There is an established link between national cultural differences and documented variations in technological innovations across countries. To move beyond a narrow emphasis on national cultures, scholars have suggested using within‐country diversity to compensate for known limitations in national culture measures. Given that ethno‐linguistic diversity is a known source of cultural variation, this paper specifically aims to explore the relationship between culture, ethno‐linguistic diversity and national innovativeness.

The researchers used publicly available data on patents and trademarks in a multivariate regression context to study the effects of national culture and within‐country diversity on national levels of innovativeness.

The research found that culture and ethno‐linguistic diversity are independently positively associated with national innovation. More importantly, cultural and intra‐cultural variation measures when taken together account for significantly greater variance in levels of national innovation than does national culture when measured separately.

While this study points to the importance of ethno‐linguistic diversity in explaining national levels of innovativeness, there are other measures of within‐country diversity to be explored.

If national culture were the sole factor in innovativeness, then companies would be limited by their host cultural legacies; since within‐country diversity is also associated with innovation, it provides entrepreneurs, government policy makers and executives with important options for increasing innovativeness.

While previous studies pointed to the potential link between ethno‐linguistic diversity and innovation, prior research has generally not taken this variable into account.