Search results

The use of social media and information exchange increased during Covid-19 pandemic because people are isolated and working from home. The use of social media enhances information exchange in a global society, therefore customers are uncertain and not in a better position to take decisions before the situation goes worst everywhere in the world. The current study helps to understand how social media facilitate social and global engagement and information exchange which ultimately leads to the development of the customer psychology of stockpiling. This study aims to develop a research framework which helps to understand the customer psychology of stockpiling during a global pandemic.

This study opted for a social constructionist approach because it can help to understand both individual and social subjective realities with respect to stockpiling behaviour due to the fear and risk of Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, the researcher collected data from 40 customers of UK retail stores who actively use social media. The data were collected during telephonic interviews and thematic analysis was used for data analysis.

Results highlighted that institutional communication and social public interpretation of uncertainties and risk enhanced misinformation and sensationalism through social media platforms; therefore, stockpiling behaviour increased during Covid-19 pandemic. The fear of items being out of stock, illness, misinformation, family fear and going out were some of the possible causes that led to the development of panic stockpiling behaviour. The global uncertainty proof, as well as a public social consensus for staying at home and protecting the future also increased customers’ intention to buy in bulk for their future. Although social media played an important role in transferring relevant and timely information, it also increased uncertainty and social proof which may have led to stockpiling of retail products.

The results of this study are beneficial for understanding how Covid-19 creates and enhances uncertainties and risks at both global and national level which developed into customer panic stockpiling behaviour, even when there is no promotional scheme or decrease in prices. This study helps marketers understand the psychology of customer stockpiling during a global pandemic. This study also helps to understand the role of social media, which promotes social interpretations of uncertainties and risk which ultimately enhance panic stockpiling among customers.

Limited research is available which provides an understanding of how social media can play a role in socially generated uncertainties and risks, which enhance misinformation and sensationalism, as well as the development of stockpiling behaviour. This study provided a stockpiling behaviour model based on the theory of uncertainty and social proof. The results of this study are unique as there is limited literature available which connects social media, uncertainties and risk, Covid-19 pandemic and stockpiling behaviour among educated people.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how signals of uncertainty in the media affect retail investor decisions and initial public offering (IPO) underpricing through theoretical and empirical methods.

The authors construct a theoretical model of the influence of media signals on IPO pricing, which describes the micro process in which uncertain signals in media influence retail investors’ decisions and IPO underpricing. Besides, the authors take 516 small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) listed in A-share from July 2009 to December 2012 as samples for empirical tests and establish an in-depth learning model for text analysis with Java programming to measure Chinese media tone. Finally, the results of the model analysis are verified by empirical results.

The results show that authoritative media with high credibility can reduce the uncertainty of information sources attract more investors’ attention and improve the valuation and demand of retail investors. The higher the media credibility is the higher the IPO underpricing rate is. The uncertain tone of the media will increase the decision-making cost of investors reduce the valuation expectation and demand of the secondary market and lead to a lower IPO underpricing rate.

The authors study the influence of the uncertainty of media source and media content on the degree of IPO underpricing of SMEs. This is a useful supplement to the Chinese media tone research system that is still in the exploration stage. The research has reference value for government regulation and investor decision-making.

Studies media convergence in Canada, arguing it has always been a possibility as change is not a consequence of new technologies but a shift from efforts to prevent cross‐media combinations, to initiatives that promote this aim. Sums up that media reconvergence and the information highway are at the top of the communications policy agenda, but how it will involve is unclear.

This study aims to empirically examine the underlying cultures of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities contributing toward employee: compensation and benefits (CB); diversity and labor rights (DLR); and training, safety and health (TSH), with a view of supporting both business corporations and policymakers in effectively designing and implementing employee-related CSR strategies in the global market.

The proposed empirical model, namely, pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression, is tested against a novel proprietary data set of 8,940 corporations from 48 countries across nine different regions. The prototypical models of cultural configurations are benchmarked against Hofstede’s country cultural scores on six dimensions to categorize the lists of countries in which the three specific employee-related CSR activities would appear to be culturally appropriate, as well as difficult to implement.

The study offers the cultural configuration models to identify the potential nature and range of cultural values that seem to support CSR activities contributing toward employee: CB – high power distance, high individualism, low masculinity, low uncertainty avoidance, medium long-term orientation and either relatively medium or low indulgence; DLR – medium power distance, medium individualism, low masculinity, high uncertainty avoidance, either relatively medium or low long-term orientation and medium indulgence; TSH – medium power distance, medium individualism, low masculinity, high uncertainty avoidance, medium long-term orientation and medium indulgence. The study further categorizes countries (cultural areas) in which these three specific employee-related CSR activities would appear to be culturally appropriate, as well as difficult to implement.

The findings provide both the motivation and a starting point for further academic inquiries. First, future research should further explore how specific industry and firm size have an impact on firms’ employee-related CSR activities. Second, the dynamic relationship of national culture and employee-related CSR activities over time should also be examined. Finally, appropriate management techniques or interventions to overcome the cultural constraints that prevent business corporations from promoting employee physical and mental fineness should also be fruitful area for further investigation.

The study offers meaningful strategic implications of employee-related CSR activities for business corporations and policymakers. Specifically, the cultural configuration models, together with the practical framework, should serve as a benchmark for evaluating a likelihood of successful implementation on a particular employee-related CSR activity in a given context and for customizing business corporations’ CSR strategies and activities to fit within a cultural environment of the host country in which they operate. For policymakers dealing with employee rights and labor standards, the findings can be applied to assess foreign investor’s preferences regarding employee-related CSR engagement and activities.

This is the first study to develop the cultural configuration models that provide business corporations culturally meaningful insights into how to effectively design and implement their employee-related CSR strategies in the global market. The study also offers a practical framework – a set of countries in the global marketplace where employee-related CSR activities are likely to be implemented successfully, or encounter challenges and difficulties.

The relationship between culture and management development in the South East Asian state of Brunei is examined. The natures of cultural and organisational values in Brunei are found to be similar to those of other countries in the region. Brunei′s cultural orientations are shown to cause problems in the introduction of change, especially towards more collaborative behaviour. Modifications to values and attitudes, through training and development, and possibly also the redesign of organisations, are seen as remedies.

This study aims to investigate how the public formed their need for information in the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. Exploring the formation of information needs can reveal why the public's information needs differ and provide insights on targeted information service during health crises at an essential level.

The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 46 participants and analyzed using the grounded theory approach. Concepts, sub-categories and categories were developed, and a model was built to examine how the public formed the need for information about the pandemic.

The authors found that participants were stimulated by information asymmetry, severity of the pandemic and regulations to control the pandemic, which triggered their perceptions of information credibility, threat and social approval. After the participants perceived that there was a threat, it activated their basic needs and they actively formed the need for information based on cognitive activities. Moreover, information delivered by different senders resulted in a passive need for information. Participants' individual traits also influenced their perceptions after being stimulated.

Long-term follow-up research is needed to help researchers identify more detailed perspectives and do comparative studies. Besides, this study conducted interviews through WeChat voice calls and telephone calls, and might be limited compared with face-to-face interviews.

The findings of this study provide theoretical contributions to the information needs research and practical implications for information services and public health management.

There is little systematic research on how the public formed information needs in the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The purpose of this paper is to explore different drivers and volume flexibility strategies employed in manufacturing firms. It also examines contingent factors, which determine volume flexibility requirement in manufacturing firms.

Using a multi-case study approach, the study examines and analyses drivers, strategies and contingent factors that affect volume flexibility in four Indian manufacturing plants belonging to automobiles, auto ancillary, fashion apparel and electrical industry.

The empirical analysis suggests various drivers of volume flexibility and different strategies employed by firms to enhance flexibility. The study also illustrates various contingent factors that determine the need of volume flexibility in firms.

The sample of the study is majorly confined to the northern region of India. Methodologically, the analysis is solely based on the qualitative data.

The study suggests practitioners to consider a range of contingent factors, while evaluating the need of volume flexibility in manufacturing plants. Rather than relying on a single strategy, a mix of strategies should be used to develop volume flexibility in firms.

The identification of a range of strategies employed by volume flexible firms as well as contingent factors that need to be evaluated before employing volume flexibility are the major contributions of this study.

At the start of a new product development project, a manager usually has three things: time, money and uncertainty. His problem is to reduce or eliminate the uncertainty by spending the time and money in the most economic way possible. A manager is guided in this task by his company's management policies. But suppose that some of these policies are no longer adequate under today's time pressure and with today's cost spirals. How can management policy makers study the impact of their policies on the performance of their product development organization? This article describes a tool for examining project management which might be an answer.

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework of the transformation of the bank's scope driven by fintechs.

The conceptual foundations for a comprehensive transformation of the bank governance through financial technologies (fintechs) are underexplored. In order to develop such foundations, the authors adopt transaction cost economics (TCE), the concepts of external enablers and a modular organizational design, as well as a systematic literature review.

The results point to three scenarios of the banks' scope, depending on the adopted technological mechanisms and related effects that change the characteristics of organizational activities, justifying new bank boundaries. The most advanced application of fintechs results in a modularized network scenario leading to the emergence of financial ecosystems.

The proposed micro-perspective of decisional rules in an individual organization is unique in the current literature that predominantly focuses on the banking sector at large. The identified scenarios are valuable for solid theoretical and empirical grounding and can be further exploited in decision simulations and empirical studies.

The proposed theoretical framework points to the rationales and consequences of adopted technologies for the boundaries of a bank organization.

This paper provides three contributions to the literature on technology-driven transformations of organizations with a focus on banks. First, the authors elaborate a theoretical framework for establishing the bank's boundaries in response to the expansion of financial technologies. Second, the authors add to the knowledge accumulation in the area of organizational transformations based on the ICT adoption, in particular, to the literature on the modular organizational design. Third, the authors contribute to the decision-maker practice by proposing the alternative options of banks' scope transformed through fintechs.

Following a negative attitude of consumers toward genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the spaces left by the labeling legislation on GMOs of different countries, some retailers and processors introduced their own non-GMO standards, with the intention of avoiding the presence of GMOs in their products. This paper aims to understand how the implementation of these new retailer-driven standards affects governance structures along the supply chain and the determinants of such change focusing on transaction cost approach (TCA) vs resource-based view (RBV).

The non-GMO introduction is investigated as a case study in the poultry industry of France and Italy. The case relies on data primarily collected from interviews with the main actors at five stages of the supply chain from the retailer up to animal feed and crop production.

Findings indicate that the introduction of non-GMO products had different impacts on the transactions along the supply chain, generally leading to more integrated relationships. Theoretical relevance depends on the observed transaction and the type of governance structure considered. Interestingly, only RBV explains the shift toward hierarchical governance when this is observed.

This paper contributes to the empirical literature highlighting the upstream effects caused by the adoption of new standards. On the theoretical side, building on Conner and Prahalad’s (1996) seminal work and leveraging on the concepts of opportunism, “potential” superior knowledge and strategic importance of an activity, this research suggests a comparative framework for identifying governance structures and their determinants under TCA and RBV.