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This study aims to determine how cognitive diversity at the workplace influences team creativity. In this regard, the authors examined knowledge sharing and team-focused inclusion through which team members’ cognitive diversity was expected to elevate their positive work outcomes.

A quantitative method is used to accumulate the data. The authors surveyed workers and their respective managers at a single China-based food company. The supervisors rated the outcome variables (creativity and team effectiveness) regarding their employees, whereas employees were asked to rate the cognitive diversity, inclusion and knowledge sharing within the workgroup. The final valid sample size (n = 391) consisted of 137 workgroups with an adequate response rate (62.3%).

Cognitive diversity is related to team effectiveness but not creativity. The research found that cognitive diversity can increase creativity only through enhanced inclusion and knowledge sharing. Inclusion, likewise, explained the impact of cognitive diversity on effectiveness.

The originality of the current research lies in its contemporary exploration of inclusion and cognitive diversity and their pathways to team creativity and effectiveness. The social capital theory was applied to explain the proposed relationships.

Managerial “awareness” of supply chain management (SCM) principles is a key antecedent of SCM adoption. However, supply chain awareness (SCA) provides fertile ground for further development. The authors combine extant research with the attention-based view of the firm to further develop SCA and theorize about its effect in an understudied context.

The authors combine SCA with supply chain orientation, of which awareness is central. The authors combine qualitative and archival data for a 10-year period to test SCA in nonprofits. SCA was measured unobtrusively to avoid respondent bias; then, the authors explore how SCA relates to revenue generation from services provided.

SCA correlates positively with revenue generation. Drawing on a contingency perspective, the authors test two moderators relevant to nonprofits. The positive effect of SCA on revenue is stronger for nonprofits collocated in cities with corporate headquarters but weaker for those with larger boards.

The study further advances the notion of awareness for studying SCM phenomena and provides evidence of its relevance in the unexamined context of human services nonprofit organizations (NPOs). This work has implications for how attention to SCM principles shapes organizational outcomes, the factors that moderate these relationships and the importance of unobtrusively measuring awareness in SCM research. The authors used WayBack Machine to harvest websites. However, the quality and depth of text obtained prior to 2008 were lower than those of later years. Additionally, archival data for NPOs are limited.

Findings inform about the fit between nonprofit resources, type of board and fit with how to fund operations. This research provides an alternative way for policy makers to assess NPO capacity by focusing on the fundamental SCM concepts.

The authors contribute to the dialogue about NPOs developing financial independence through revenue generation from services sold to end customers.

NPOs are seldom studied in SCM. This is an attempt to study NPOs by combining qualitative and quantitative data.

Drawing upon the stimulus-organism-response model, this study aims to explore the impact of soft aspects of service quality on revisit intention through the mechanism of perceived empathy.

For the examination of the hypothesized relationships, the study adopts structural equation modelling to analyse the data of 562 respondents (i.e. 281 family members and 281 inpatients).

The empirical results suggest that service quality increased family member empathy perception, which, in turn, improved inpatients’ revisit intentions.

Past studies have focused on the roles of overall service quality. The authors have extended the literature by examining the specific but important aspect of service quality and its effects on emotional response. Importantly, the study explains that the affective reactions of a patient’s family, fastened with perceived empathy, have a central role in influencing the patients’ subsequent reactions. Moreover, the prior studies collected the data either from hospital employees or patients. However, in the present study, the authors used a unique sample (family members as well as patients) to have a deeper understanding. Thus, the study enhances the literature on the stimuli-response (i.e. service quality – revisit intentions) relationship in the context of service marketing in general and health care in specific. Important academic and managerial contributions and recommendations for future research are discussed.

This study aims to explore the relationships between gender, gender identity and Word of Mouth (WOM). There are three objectives of this study. The first was to observe the impact of gender identity on WOM. The second was to examine the mediation role of self-brand connection (SBC) bridging the relationship between gender identity and WOM. The final one was to test the moderating role of gender.

The conceptual model was tested by analyzing data collected via Mturk from Americans participants who use Airbnb. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the psychometric property. To test hypotheses, the structural equation model was assessed. Further, Hayes’ PROCESS was adopted to examine the mediation role of SBC. The moderation role of gender was examined by the chi-square difference test.

The research outcomes elucidated that feminine gender identity exerted a noteworthy influence on WOM communication, whereas masculine gender identity appeared to bear no significant impact on WOM. It was determined that SBC operates as a potent mediator bridging the relationship between gender identity and WOM. Gender did not demonstrate a significant moderating effect on any part of the WOM communication pathway in the context of this study.

The conclusions drawn from this research underscore that practitioners in the field of brand management should not overlook the crucial role of consumers' gender identity. It is imperative to cultivate robust, positive relationships with consumers as a strategic measure to engender favorable WOM communication.

This investigation distinguishes itself as one of the relatively scarce studies interrogating the relationship between gender identity, gender and WOM, specifically through the mediating lens of SBC. Consequently, the discoveries made herein have the potential to furnish unprecedented insights into comprehending consumer behavior in the hospitality industry with respect to WOM communication, particularly as it pertains to the dimension of gender identity.

Consumers are assumed to engage in external information search only after exhausting their internal information sources. Guided by the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, and the elaboration likelihood model, the current study investigates this phenomenon.

To test the relationships between internal information accessibility/diagnosticity and the importance of external search, and the moderating role of involvement in these relationships, 308 responses were collected on Amazon MTurk. Then, structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.

The analyses showed that while accessibility and diagnosticity of internal information have an impact on external information search, involvement with the product class has a consequential moderating effect on these relationships. In particular, in the low-involvement group, only the diagnosticity of internal information had a negative effect on external information search. On the contrary, in the high-involvement group, only accessibility of internal information had a negative effect.

These findings highlight the possibility of drawing erroneous conclusions resulting from not incorporating involvement, in conjunction with information accessibility and diagnosticity, in the study of the consumer external information search behavior.

The findings also imply that if practitioners aim to prime consumers to engage in external information search, they need to take into account that the effects of internal information's accessibility and diagnosticity on consumers' external search behavior may be different depending on their levels of involvement.

This study's results showed that without considering the moderating effect of involvement, spurious conclusions may be made about the relationships between accessibility and diagnosticity of internal and external information importance. This finding may explain the discrepancy between the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, thus enriching the literature.

The purpose is to assess the usefulness of creative vouchers, a specific kind of technology and innovation vouchers (small grants usually given to SMEs to acquire external knowledge) where the knowledge suppliers are creative firms such as design agencies.

A multiple case analysis of four EU-funded pilot voucher schemes was carried out through project reports and semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders.

The authors show that creative vouchers are effective policy instruments despite the limited amount of money involved because they trigger new innovation trajectories often in a serendipitous way. The authors also show that the quality of projects and satisfaction of the beneficiaries increase when both proposals and suppliers are screened.

The authors’ conclusions are based on four pilot projects in a specific region of the world (Western Europe). Though two of them were extended to a much bigger scale, their generalizability may be limited. Moreover, the limited number of cases does not permit an analytical evaluation of all the voucher schemes mechanisms.

The findings of this paper can be very useful to policymakers designing voucher schemes and to the companies involved, whether they are providers or beneficiaries. In particular, the voucher allocation mechanisms may have a strong impact on the success of the program.

The innovation spurred by the collaboration with creative firms is generally neither energy-intensive nor capital intensive, but brain intensive, and this is the best way to leverage on the talent of local creative and make companies create value based on immaterial resources.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of creative vouchers after Bakhsi et al., 2015, and the only one involving several schemes in different countries. It shows the innovation potential of such a little known policy instrument for SMEs. Moreover, it provides insight on how to design a voucher scheme in order to improve its effectiveness.

The present study aims to propose a framework elucidating the attributes of mobile augmented reality (AR) shopping apps (i.e., spatial presence, perceived personalization and perceived intrusiveness) and how they translate to downstream consumer-related outcomes (i.e., immersion, psychological ownership and stickiness to the retailer).

By conducting a questionnaire-based survey, 308 responses were collected, and the data were submitted to partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) analyses.

A few important findings were generated from the present study. First, attributes of mobile augmented reality shopping apps (i.e., spatial presence, perceived personalization and perceived intrusiveness) influence stickiness to the retailer through immersion and consumer empowerment in serial. Second, immersion positively influences psychological ownership. Third, the optimum stimulation level moderates the relationship between spatial presence and immersion. Lastly, a post-hoc exploratory finding yielded by the multigroup analysis uncovered the moderating effect of gender.

This study offers a novel contribution to the smart retail literature by investigating the role of mobile AR shopping apps in predicting consumers' stickiness to the retailer. A holistic framework elucidating the serial mediating effect of immersion and consumer empowerment, and the moderating roles of optimum stimulation level and gender were validated.

Lean is a continuous improvement methodology that has succeeded in eliminating waste in a variety of industries. Yet, there is a need for more research on Lean implementation in several under-studied contexts, including crisis situations such as those created by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This research investigates how Lean programs were impacted by COVID-19, while previous research has primarily explored how Lean was used to solve problems created by the pandemic.

A mixed-method research approach was used to analyze employee feedback on how COVID-19 impacted the Lean programs using data from various levels of four energy-based utilities in the United States. First, an online questionnaire collected qualitative and quantitative data from a broad sample of participants. Then, a follow-up semi-structured interview allowed the elaboration of perceptions related to the research question using a smaller sample of participants.

Out of the 194 responses from the four companies, only 41% of the respondents at least somewhat agreed that COVID-19 impacted the Lean program at their company; of the remaining 59%, 35% indicated they were neutral, while 24% disagreed. The themes from the qualitative portion indicated that, while employees believed their companies had successfully found a new way to do Lean within the constraints of not always being in person, the collaboration and engagement were more challenging to sustain, and COVID-19 also otherwise made it more difficult to implement Lean. Meanwhile, some believed there was no impact on the Lean program.

The COVID-19 and Lean peer-reviewed literature published from 2020 to September 2023 focused primarily on using Lean to address problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic vs studying the pandemic's impact on Lean programs. This research partially fills this literature gap in understanding the impact COVID-19 had on Lean initiatives.

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of innovativeness (INN), proactiveness, (PRC) and risk-taking (RIT) on the export performance of apparel small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the role of differentiation and low-cost leadership (LCL) strategies as mediating effects between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions and the performance of exporting firms. INN, RIT and PRC are considered EO dimensions.

A cross-sectional survey was carried out by providing a questionnaire to the owners, directors and senior managers of the apparel SMEs – the primary data of 550 treated by structural equation modeling (SEM) technique for final data analysis.

The study has revealed the positive dimensional effect of EO on export performance. For the mediation effects of differentiation and LCL, differentiation strategy (DS) positively mediates between INN, PRC and export performance. However, no mediation has been found between RIT and export performance. On the other hand, LCL has found positive effects between INN, RIT and export performance. However, the mediation effect was absent between PRC and export performance.

Limitations/implications- This study has been conducted on only Muslim owners, senior export managers and directors of apparel SMEs in Bangladesh. It has examined the two main competitive strategies as a mediator between EO dimensions and export performance. The findings of this study are based on one country data analysis.

EO, differentiation and low-cost leadership (LCL) strategy are resources and capabilities of an organization to create a competitive advantage to enhance performance. The factors of this research are helpful for SME practitioners.

The direct and indirect effects (differentiation and LCL strategy) of EO dimensions on export performance in an emerging country, i.e. the South-Asia region, is a pioneer study. Therefore, current research has theoretical and managerial implications for the international business and strategic management literature.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of financial accountants and both internal and external auditors regarding the impact of corporate governance (CG) and information technology (IT) on the detection and prevention of fraud within organizations.

Primary data were collected from 250 financial accountants, internal auditors and external auditors through questionnaires. The non-probability snowball sampling technique was used for data collection, with the sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and paired sample t-test applied for analysis.

The results indicate that robust CG practices and IT techniques significantly aid in detecting and reducing fraudulent activities by minimizing opportunities, rationalizations, pressures and capabilities of potential employees to commit fraud. Internal controls also play a significant role in reducing instances of fraud. Notably, ethical officers and ethical training were not perceived as significantly effective in preventing and detecting fraud, leading to a perception that fraudulent practices are prevalent and increasing the risk of future fraudulent activities.

This study recommends the adoption of strong CG practices to identify potential fraud within an organization. Moreover, IT techniques should be tailored to specific needs for effective utilization. Furthermore, the government should increase awareness regarding data provision by departments, organizations and other related personnel. Future research could use secondary data from various regions to expand the literature in this field.

This research uniquely combines three significant factors: CG, IT and forensic accounting in fraud detection and prevention. It contributes to the enhancement of literature about fraud and its preventive and detective measures. The results of this study set the seed for future research, government policymaking and enhanced organizational practices.