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Marketing concepts and definitions have remained relatively unchanged until recently. Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) has forced marketing managers to reevaluate how, when and to what extent they interact with their customers. This paper is focused on the role of specific marketing concepts and how eCRM has enhanced or altered each concept. Every topic discussed is illustrated with current business examples. Several examples from the business trade press are used to illustrate the success an organization can achieve when using eCRM to enhance marketing skills.

Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) has become the latest paradigm in the world of customer relationship management. Recent business surveys suggest that up to 50 per cent of such implementations do not yield measurable returns on investment. A secondary analysis of 13 case studies suggests that many of these limited success implementations can be attributed to usability and resistance factors. The objective of this paper is to review the general usability and resistance principles in order to build an integrative framework for analyzing eCRM case studies. The conclusions suggest that if organizations want to get the most from their eCRM implementations they need to revisit the general principles of usability and resistance and apply them thoroughly and consistently.

Drawing on sensemaking and emotion regulation research, the purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize core contributor withdrawal (CCW) in the context of online peer-production communities (OPPCs). To explain the underlying mechanisms that make core contributors withdraw from these communities, the authors propose a process theory of contributor withdrawal called the core contributor withdrawal theory (CCWT).

To support CCWT, a typology of unmet expectations of online communities is presented, which uncovers the cognitive and emotional processing involved. To illustrate the efficacy of CCWT, a case study of the English version of Wikipedia is provided as a representative OPPC.

CCWT identifies sensemaking and emotion regulation concerning contributors’ unmet expectations as causes of CCW from OPPCs, which first lead to declined expectations, burnout and psychological withdrawal and thereby to behavioral withdrawal.

CCWT clearly identifies how and why important participation transitions, such as from core contributor to less active contributor or non-contributor, take place. By adopting process theories, CCWT provides a nuanced explanation of the cognitive and affective events that take place before core contributors withdraw from OPPCs.

CCWT highlights the challenge of online communities shifting from recruiting new contributors to preventing loss of existing contributors in the maturity stage. Additionally, by identifying the underlying cognitive and affective processes that core contributors experience in response to unexpected events, communities can develop safeguards to prevent or correct cognitions and emotions that lead to withdrawal.

CCWT provides a theoretical framework that accounts for the negative cognitions and affects that lead to core contributors’ withdrawal from online communities. It furthers the understanding of what motivates contributing to and what leads to withdrawal from OPPC.

There is a recent call for and emergence of leadership research that purposefully centers students’ social identities and lived experiences in order to gain more nuanced understandings of college student leadership development and elevate marginalized voices in the leadership narrative. In this qualitative study, the researchers focused on the leadership approaches of Latina college student leaders at Hispanic Serving Institutions and the influences that shape their approaches to leadership. The findings reveal participants’ unique forms of capital as well as sources of on-campus support that shape and influence their leadership beliefs and styles, including a focus on community, a commitment to making a positive impact, and non-hierarchical approaches to leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most influential determinants of healthcare employees’ problem-solving capabilities and attitudes towards kaizen initiatives, and clarify how these determinants are related to social outcomes.

Drawing on the input-process-outcome framework, applied to kaizen initiatives, the determinants of the input and process factors are embodied in hypotheses concerning the direct effects of input and process factors on social outcomes and the indirect effects of input factors on social outcomes resulting from process factors. The hypotheses are tested through multiple regressions using data from 105 kaizen initiatives drawn from two hospitals.

Of the 14 determinants investigated, goal clarity, team autonomy, management support, goal difficulty and affective commitment to change (ACC) are the most influential determinants of kaizen capabilities and/or employees’ attitude. Goal clarity, goal difficulty, team autonomy and management support are also found to influence social outcomes directly and/or indirectly through ACC, internal processes and/or an action orientation.

The results support healthcare practitioners to understand how to establish “focused kaizen” actions to leverage specific determinants that positively influence social outcomes.

This study provides an original contribution to the literature concerning effective kaizen initiatives in healthcare operations by empirically testing a comprehensive model of the relationship between kaizen initiative determinants and social outcomes. Unlike previous studies, which are mostly anecdotal or focused on one or few determinants, this research adopts a holistic view, and investigates a pluralist set of determinants on social outcomes through a systematic and quantitative approach.

Purpose – The numbers of health care transparency initiatives are increasing. Despite the growing availability of quality data, there seems to be a shortage of evidence about the effects and effectiveness of such initiatives. The aim of this systematic review is to document the effects of transparency, defined as the public release of quality performance data, on hospital care outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – Through a review of the literature, we chose 46 keywords to use in our searches and focused on empirical studies published in English between 2010 and 2015. The use of combinations of these keywords in searches of four databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library) generated 13,849 publications. The removal of duplicates and exclusion of studies that were not empirical or not relevant to transparency and quality resulted in 39 studies to be reviewed.

Findings – Our review of the literature confirmed the growth of health care transparency efforts, led by the United States, and found mixed results regarding the effects of transparency on hospital care outcomes. For example, mortality, the most frequently researched performance measure (n = 15), exhibited this mixed pattern by having studies showing a reduction (n = 4), increase (n = 1), mixed findings (n = 4), and no significant relationship (n = 6) as a result of public release. We also found a limited number of articles related to unintended consequences of public reporting. When compared with earlier systematic reviews, there seems to be a trend in the reduction of unintended consequences. Therefore, we recommend exploration of this potential trend in future studies empirically.

Practical Implications – The research findings summarized in this systematic review can be used to understand the results of existing transparency efforts and to develop future transparency initiatives that may better enhance hospital quality performance.

Originality/value – This is the latest and most comprehensive systematic review summarizing the effects of transparency of quality metrics on hospital care outcomes.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This chapter defines what road safety advertising campaigns are and the objectives that they typically seek to achieve. The argument put forward in this chapter is that when theoretically informed in their design and sensitive to the array of potential personal, social, and cultural influences which may be at play, road safety advertising can contribute to both reinforcing and transforming contemporary traffic safety culture. This chapter offers guidance to researchers and practitioners in the field regarding relevant theory which may be applied to inform message design and evaluation.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.