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Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

For commerical organizations to engage in strategic collaboration with universities is nothing new – especially in the more developed parts of the world – but the focus on desired outcomes has become more intense.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existing literature and evaluate the theories, characteristics, context and methods of alliance termination research published from 1992 to 2019. This study also aims to identify the gaps in the literature and recognize directions for future research focusing on alliance termination research.

The main research methods followed in this study are bibliometric review, citation analysis, co-citation analysis and cluster analysis.

The main findings of this study are the most cited articles, most productive journals and most productive countries. The results show that a total of 100 research articles were published between 1992 and 2019. The maximum number of publications were observed during 2011–2019. The article “Knowledge, bargaining power, and the instability of international joint ventures” (Inkpen and Beamish, 1997) was the most cited article and the “Academy of Management Review” was the most prominent journal, with 847 citations. The USA, France, the UK, Singapore and Canada are the most productive countries. The study also includes the analysis of the network of co-citation of references and co-occurrence of keywords in the context of alliance termination research.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study seems to be the first to perform bibliometric review and analysis in the area of alliance termination research. Therefore, it can help academicians and practitioners to identify the research trends and gaps in the alliance termination literature on which future research can be performed. Overall, this research paper leads to a better understanding of the alliance termination research and offers new insights into strategic management studies.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of biomorphism (i.e. indirect experience of nature) in servicescape designs and validates its impact on consumer responses. Using the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, this study explores the relationship between biomorphic servicescape designs and the servicescape preference. Further, it explains how biomorphic designs can help users to get better connected with the servicescapes by introducing the mediating role of attention restoration and place identity (emotional and cognitive), as explained by attention restoration theory.

Two empirical studies were carried out to test the hypothesised relationships: an exploratory pre-experimental design with one-shot treatment using 200 images as stimuli and 3,680 responses; and a 3 × 2 factorial design with three-dimensional images with about 654 responses for three service contexts chosen a priori: fashion retail, restaurant and hospital lobby.

This study conceptualises the role of biomorphism – elements that mimic natural forms – in servicescape designs and establishes that, akin to natural elements, the indirect experience of nature in servicescapes also has a positive influence on attention restoration, perceived place identity and servicescape preference of the consumers. This implies that the effects similar to that of a biophilic servicescape can be achieved through servicescape elements that mimic natural forms.

Extending the idea of biophilia, this research adopts the concept of biomorphism from architecture and environmental psychology domains and introduces biomorphic servicescape designs, which could be more practical at times compared to biophilic servicescapes. It establishes the influences of biomorphic servicescape designs on consumer preferences. Grounded in the S-O-R model, it further explains this relationship through mediating effects of attention restoration and place identity. Being new to marketing and management domains, this research may trigger a series of research studies on biomorphic service environment designs, with desirable implications for services marketing and services operations functions.

The study aims to determine the cybercrime awareness among secondary school students with reference to their gender and school management type.

For the purpose, a sample of 100 students from secondary schools situated in Lucknow city, state of Uttar Pradesh, India was selected. To obtain initial data from the respondents and to determine the cybercrime awareness categories a five-point Likert type cybercrime awareness rating scale exclusively constructed to fulfil the purpose of this study was used to determine the cybercrime awareness in five categories viz; excellent, high, above average, average, below average and low cybercrime awareness. Further, “t” test was used to analyse the difference between the means of groups.

Results revealed that gender (male and female) and type of school management (government and self-finance) are not significant predictors of cybercrime awareness among secondary school students.

This study is limited to the government and self-finance English medium schools of Lucknow city, state of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Policymakers, various societies involved in investigating cyber behavior/child computer interaction/safer communities, etc. should consider that school management is not a predictor of cybercrime along with gender and can look for other possible visible and latent factors affecting cybercrime awareness among students while formulating a policy or designing a course/prevention program for secondary school students.

School administration should consider the existing gender and school management roles of the present scenario to make effective policies for the students and providing them effective cybercrime prevention programs and activities. Also, parents can adequately understand the role of school management type and gender of their belongings to understand their cybercrime awareness and take necessary measures accordingly.

The paper is focused on the cybercrime awareness of secondary school students and how their gender and school management type affects their cybercrime awareness. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is first of its kind which investigates the role of school management in cybercrime awareness of the students. As the education sector is depending more and more on the cyber world, this paper is of the great significance for the safety of education sector, organizations and communities involved in making the policies and designing the curriculum to avoid students being a victim of cybercrime and to make education sector a safer community.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive explanation of the linkage between premium segments and product innovation. While previous literature confirms that product innovation triggers premium segment emergence, and vice versa, there is no satisfactory explanation regarding the underlying mechanisms that drive the mutual shaping of premium segments and product innovation. This paper attempts to address this gap in literature.

This study employs a cognitive model of technology trajectories and empirically examines the Japanese rice cooker market using a mixed-methods approach. The methods used consist of content analyses of newspaper articles and press releases and case analyses of manufacturers' new product development.

Content analyses show the emergence of a premium segment within the Japanese rice cooker market as well as a simultaneous change in technology trajectories. Case analyses subsequently reveal the mechanisms that link the premium segment emergence and technology trajectory changes. The analyses also explore this linkage in detail; market actors' technological frames and interpretation processes mediate the mutual shaping of the premium segment and product innovations.

This study presents quantitative evidence indicating the emergence of a premium segment and changes in technology trajectories. It provides a qualitative explanation for the linkage between these two phenomena, which may serve as a viable foundation for future research in premium strategy.

The Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a category of intrusion that devours various services and resources of the organization by the dispersal of unusable traffic, so that reliable users are not capable of getting benefit from the services. In general, the DoS attackers preserve their independence by collaborating several victim machines and following authentic network traffic, which makes it more complex to detect the attack. Thus, these issues and demerits faced by existing DoS attack recognition schemes in cloud are specified as a major challenge to inventing a new attack recognition method.

This paper aims to detect DoS attack detection scheme, termed as sine cosine anti coronavirus optimization (SCACVO)-driven deep maxout network (DMN). The recorded log file is considered in this method for the attack detection process. Significant features are chosen based on Pearson correlation in the feature selection phase. The over sampling scheme is applied in the data augmentation phase, and then the attack detection is done using DMN. The DMN is trained by the SCACVO algorithm, which is formed by combining sine cosine optimization and anti-corona virus optimization techniques.

The SCACVO-based DMN offers maximum testing accuracy, true positive rate and true negative rate of 0.9412, 0.9541 and 0.9178, respectively.

The DoS attack detection using the proposed model is accurate and improves the effectiveness of the detection.

This paper aims to study the relations between lean operations, lean principles in finance functions and the roles of finance functions.

The paper uses structural equation modeling to analyze data from 408 different firms in the Danish production and services sectors. A dyadic approach is applied, as a sub-sample of 107 chief operating officers in the responding firms is used to investigate the construct validity, reliability and average deviation index of the instrument measuring the roles of finance functions.

The paper finds that lean-operation firms emphasize four different yet interdependent roles of finance functions. The paper also finds that lean operation leads to firms’ finance functions adopting lean principles.

This paper characterizes lean-operation firms as contextually ambidextrous to predict relations between lean operation and roles of finance functions. The paper expands prior case study findings on the roles of finance functions in lean-operation firms, and the findings of the paper underline that finance functions continue to play an important role in these firms.

Decision-makers in lean-operation firms should not be hesitant with respect to integrating finance function workers into the lean operation. Furthermore, decision-makers should understand that a balanced emphasis of the roles of finance functions is necessary to avoid overemphasizing exploitation at the expense of exploration, or vice versa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to provide large-scale evidence of the roles of finance functions in lean-operation firms and to show that lean principles diffuse to finance functions. Furthermore, the paper introduces a new instrument for measuring finance function roles, based on the competing values framework.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt the multi-objective optimization technique for identifying a set of optimum abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) parameters to achieve maximum material removal rate (MRR) and minimum surface roughness.

Data of a few experiments as per the Taguchi’s orthogonal array are considered for achieving maximum MRR and minimum surface roughness (Ra) of the Inconel718. Analysis of variance is performed to understand the statistical significance of AWJM input process parameters.

Empirical relations are developed for MRR and Ra in terms of the AWJM process parameters and demonstrated their adequacy through comparison of test results.

The signal-to-noise ratio transformation should be applied to take in to account the scatter in the repetition of tests in each test run. But, many researchers have adopted this transformation on a single output response of each test run, which has no added advantage other than additional computational task. This paper explains the impact of insignificant process parameter in selection of optimal process parameters. This paper demands drawbacks and complexity in existing theories prior to use new algorithms.

Taguchi approach is quite simple and easy to handle optimization problems, which has no practical implications (if it handles properly). There is no necessity to hunt for new algorithms for obtaining solution for multi-objective optimization AWJM process.

This paper deals with a case study, which demonstrates the simplicity of the Taguchi approach in solving multi-objective optimization problems with a few number of experiments.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether Indian firms follow the pecking order theory under situations of deficiency as well as surplus.

The study examines Indian firms included in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 500 index, covering a time span of ten years (2003-2012). An extended model of pecking order theory is tested for deficit and surplus firms separately. The authors use ordinary least square regressions to test the results.

The findings indicate that the pecking order theory is an excellent descriptor for deficit firms, but a poor one for surplus firms. Deficit firms frequently issue debt to fill up deficiency requirements but keep their debt ratios in limit. In marked contrast, surplus firms have low debt to equity ratios and only occasionally redeem debt. They tend to retain funds for future expansion and other operational needs.

The study is limited to firms included in the BSE 500 index, but could be extended to others. Future research work could also focus on debt sub-components.

The present study is useful for firms that are considering capital structure decisions and supports finding that deficit and surplus firms behave differently.

This is the first study separately testing the pecking order between deficit and surplus firms in an emerging market.

This study aims to identify why restaurant firms go public (IPO) despite high financing costs and which factors make firms stay public for the long term after an IPO. Also, this study aimed to link and compare restaurant firms’ pre- and post-IPO accounting information and how IPO proceeds were used.

This study used random-effects regression analysis with a number of dependent variables for a sample of 1,347 unbalanced panel data. In addition, logistic regression analyses were used to identify why restaurant firms were delisted within short periods after going public.

First, rebalancing financial structures was the most important reason for IPOs, whereas financing future growth was only a minor motivation. Second, post-IPO performance significantly differed between restaurant firms based on their pre-IPO financial conditions, as well as how they used IPO proceeds. Third, restaurant firms with low profitability, inefficient non-operating expenses and difficulties in generating revenue increased their financial burdens, which ultimately caused restaurant firms to be delisted within a short period after an IPO. Furthermore, the reasons for merging included cash shortages, large short-term liabilities and increased major operating expenses, together with increases in capital expenditures.

This study is unique, in that it explains the relationships between motivations for going public and post-IPO performances by directly linking the usages of IPO proceeds with firms’ operational performances. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effects of IPOs on restaurant firms’ operational, non-operational, investment and financial activities on firms’ performances.