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Looks at the specific software needed for distribution companies in particular as opposed to that needed for manufacturing companies in general. Details the software needs of distribution companies and introduces and explains object‐oriented computing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between countries’ values of individualism/collectivism and organizations’ top management team (TMT) pay structures. Individualistic countries are expected to prefer more hierarchical TMT pay structures and collectivist countries are expected to prefer more egalitarian TMT pay structures. The manuscript also investigates the international implications of the relation between TMT pay structures and organizational performance. Specifically, it is proposed that a country’s level of individualism/collectivism will mediate the relation between TMT pay structure hierarchy and organizational performance.

A pooled sample of data from 56 organizations in 12 countries was used to investigate the research questions. Individualism/collectivism was measured using country specific individualism/collectivism scores and top management pay structures were operationalized using Gini coefficients. Organizational performance was evaluated using return on assets.

Support was found both for a preference for more hierarchical TMT pay structures in individualistic countries, and that a country’s level of individualism/collectivism mediates the relationship between an organization’s top management’s pay structure and company performance.

Findings demonstrate that organizations use pay structures consistent with their environments. Results suggest cultural dimensions can contribute to understanding cross-national TMT pay structures and that national culture plays a significant role in the relationship between TMT pay structure and company performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a high‐throughput approach to optimize printing of pigment‐based formulations.

A total of 40 formulations were robotically prepared by varying the concentrations of diethyleneglycol, glycerol and surfynol. In addition, a variety of inkjet printer (process) variables (voltage, pulse width and frequency) was varied. The combined influence of these two sets of variables on printing performance were determined, analysed and optimised using the Statistical Software Package (MODDE 8), which uses multiple linear regression and partial least square analysis.

The components diethyleneglycol and surfynol were observed to predominantly control viscosity and surface tension of all formulations, which voltage and pulse width were found to be the main factors controlling the spread of the droplet on the substrate.

Optimisation of pigment‐based formulations has typically involved the one‐by‐one systematic variation of components in a stepwise manner. The work reported here allowed the generation of a robust model allowing the properties of any new formulation to be accurately predicted. Importantly, the experimental tools and methods developed can be applied quite generally to the preparation of any new formulation for inkjet printing application.

Experimental design and high‐throughput technology allow new formulations to be accurately predicted for diverse inkjet applications.

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a model of the antecedents and outcomes of one aspect of customer mind-set (CMS) – external CMS (ECMS) — among front-line employees. The goal of this paper is to help managers address customer-level orientation by further investigating the external dimension of CMS (referred to as ECMS).

Data were gathered from a sample of front-line employees of a variety of firms located in a mid-sized southeastern US city.

The results indicate that greater amounts of job autonomy and job satisfaction are positively associated with front-line employee ECMS, while the employee’s global role ambiguity, customer-specific ambiguity and role conflict are negatively associated with ECMS. In turn, front-line employee ECMS is associated with increased work motivation and sales performance.

The data are cross-sectional in nature; so, strictly causal relations cannot be inferred from these results. Also, the sample primarily consists of younger females with less work experience and who are employed at smaller organizations. Therefore, future research should further test these relations in different samples to increase the robustness of the results.

This research utilizes a rich description of the front-line employee’s job attitudes and work characteristics to build a model describing their association with the extent to which the ideas of market orientation have taken hold at the operational level and their relationship with the employee’s motivation and subsequent performance. It shows that both internal and external characteristics are associated with front-line employee ECMS, which itself is very strongly related to desirable job outcomes.

The firm’s financial performance is most directly affected by how well it serves its external customers. However, there has been no research on the role and the consequences of employee ECMS. There are only a few studies (less than five) that have empirically explored the CMS. Therefore, the many potential benefits from a deeper understanding of a market orientation culture and behaviors at the level of the front-line employee remain unclear, particularly in regards to its ECMS dimension.

In today's increasingly competitive marketplace, the customer is demanding higher standards of quality. This is particularly the case in the food manufacturing industry, reflecting the public's concern over food safety. This concern has been manifested in recent years by the implementation of increasingly strict regulations governing not only hygiene standards within processing plants but also labelling and overall presentation standards of finished products.

This study aims to identify the structural relationships among the drivers of lovemarks (mystery, sensuality, intimacy, trust, reputation and performance), lovemarks (brand love and brand respect) and loyalty of a name-brand coffee shop.

To this end, a self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted, and after eliminating the outliers, a total of 401 data were analyzed using the SPSS and AMOS statistical packages.

The results of the current study indicate that both customers’ brand love and respect are positively related to their brand loyalty and sensuality, intimacy, trust among drivers of lovemarks directly affecting their brand loyalty, suggesting that the theory of lovemarks is useful to understand the process of generating brand loyalty. Moreover, it was revealed that reputation and performance are significant antecedents of brand respect, while mystery, sensuality and intimacy are important to explain brand love.

The present research informed that effectively dealing with two constituents of lovemarks (brand love and brand respect) are of utmost importance in building patrons’ brand loyalty. In addition, patrons’ cognitive and emotional experiences should be improved to boost the level of loyalty for a name-brand coffee shop.

This study made a contribution to the literature by conceptually and empirically evaluating lovemarks’ dimensions simultaneously in the name-brand coffee shop environment. In addition, this research was the first attempt to explicate loyalty formation for a name-brand coffee shop by using the lovemarks theory.

The Asian financial turmoil has resulted in widespread corporate difficulties and collapses in the Asia‐Pacific region. There is an urgent need of corporate recovery and insolvency administration in the area. This paper aims at reviewing and analysing the insolvency law and practices in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Foreign investors should possess the above knowledge in order to better protect themselves with their investments in the PRC. It is also envisaged that with improvement in corporate recovery procedures and reforms in insolvency administration, the PRC can pursue its economic performance further in the twenty‐first century with its accession to the World Trade Organisation.

As speed and complexity of electronic systems increase, the interconnect density has become the critical limitation to the performance of electrical systems. The performance of computing and switching systems can be increased by optimizing the interconnect density and throughput. At the board to board level, electrical interconnects at high speeds require a bulky and expensive backplane. At the chip to chip area, the allocation of interconnects limits the performance of the chips. Electrical lossy lines limit the maximum interconnect distance due to reflections, risetime degradation, increased delay, attenuation and cross talk . Optical interconnects present the possibility of solving the interconnect problems by potentially achieving a high bandwidth and high volume density of channels. At high data rates (greater than 1 Gb/s) several channels may operate with negligible mutual interference.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the typology of Chinese indigenous exporters by incorporating proactive‐reactive and long‐ and short‐term export motivations as inputs. This study also seeks to find out whether, when driven with a different strength of four export motives, firms differ significantly in terms of commitment, learning, competence and performance.

This paper employs cluster analysis to explore the typology of Chinese exporters and conducts ANOVA to compare subsequent differences in organizational characteristics, competence and performance. Case studies are then used to validate and exemplify the typology.

Findings suggest that Chinese exporters fall into four segments: the prospector, the strategist, the hesitator and the experimentalist. Each shows a unique set of organizational characteristics and different performances. The prospector is most competitive and the best performer, followed by the strategist.

The study uses limited export motives and profiling variables to understand this in a static way. Other motives and profiling variables are welcomed, and future study can address this in a dynamic way.

The findings suggest an evolutionary path for exporters and implies how to strengthen proactive and long‐term motives in order to achieve superior performance.

This paper for the first time looks at firms that are already involved in exporting, how differently they are motivated and how their initial internationalization motivations lead to sharp differences in export performance.

The purpose of this paper is to extend Zablah et al.’s (2012) findings regarding the proper way to treat customer orientation (CO) to the study of CO among B-B salespeople in one of the most important emerging economies, India.

The authors of this study hired a professional market research firm based in Chennai, a large metropolitan city in Southern India, to manage data collection. The authors used a competing models approach to test the relationship between constructs.

CO among frontline employees operating in one of the largest emerging economies is best treated as a psychological construct that is both directly and indirectly related to performance via its ability to reduce stress and improve engagement. This finding strengthens the view of CO as a universal human work value and, more broadly, that such values operating across different cultural setting do exist. In addition, external customer mindset appears to offer a superior means to measure CO than does the widely used CO component of the SOCO scale. This conclusion is based not only upon the fact that it conceptually corresponds with the psychological nature of CO, but also that in this initial examination it exhibits a greater ability to explain employee job performance.

Managers who are able to screen and hire employees with greater CO work values should experience improved performance outcomes and also less customer ambiguity and greater satisfaction among their frontline employees. Since CO proscribes the proper way to deal with customers, greater levels of CO beliefs would counteract customer ambiguity among frontline employees operating in any environment. Accordingly, when filling frontline positions, managers should actively seek out employees who earnestly embrace the role of taking care of customers. Managers are advised to not only emphasize on salespeople whose foremost role is to take care of their customers but also to find ways to familiarize them with their products and to provide them with information regarding customer characteristics such as their background, the relationship history (especially past service and product failures), and unique preferences.