Search results

This paper aims to examine the effect of social disruption on the use of technologies for digitizing business-to-business (B2B) processes. The aim is to assess how digitalization technologies (DT) may impact corporate performance (CP) in B2B settings.

The methodology is based on a questionnaire survey in Norway, and a deductive research design. A total of 216 usable questionnaires out of 356 were returned, generating a response rate of 60.6%.

This study shows that there is an effect of social disruption on DT (such as digital communication tools, social media and customer relationship management systems) in B2B settings that may impact CP.

This study indicates that the use of technologies to digitize B2B processes may enhance CP when social disruption occurs.

This study offers insights to companies that need help in adapting their business processes to the changing social and technological environment. This study also highlights the importance of digitalization for business survival in the marketplace and society.

This study sheds light on the effect of social disruption on DT and provides opportunities for managing CP.

This study aims to understand the progressive marketization of health data collection and use, through a study of its historical development in France, from the 1930s to the present day.

The authors collected a set of legal, institutional, political and media data. These came from the INA (National Audiovisual Institute), the French national newspaper websites and the websites legifrance.gouv.fr and vie-publique.fr. The authors then conducted a thematic content analysis.

The study results highlight the changes in the health-care system related to the increased use of data in France over three major periods. The first period – 1930s to 1980s – is marked by the creation of the French social security system to collect large sets of data to better manager people’s health care. The second period – 1980s to 2000s – is characterized by the adoption and assimilation of tools to manage patient data through several national and European regulations. The last period – 2000s to the present – saw the introduction of measures in favor of the digitalization of health care, and consequently of data, in parallel with the advancement of digital technologies in general. The institutional dynamics in healthcare have evolved with the nature of the actors and their practices, in connection with new perceptions about health data.

This research sheds light on the historical transformation of health data collection and use in France, revealing the involvement of diverse stakeholders, the discourses driving data development and the need for regulation. It exposes the dual nature of health data collection and use, initially sanctioned by the state and public entities but later exploited for private interests.

The PICCH research project contributes to opening a dialogue between cultural heritage archives and users. Hence, the users are identified and their information needs, the search strategies they apply and the search challenges they experience are uncovered.

A combination of questionnaires and interviews is used for collection of data. Questionnaire data were collected from users of three different audiovisual archives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two user groups: (1) scholars searching information for research projects and (2) archivists who perform their own scholarly work and search information on behalf of others.

The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background. Hence, scholars and archivists constitute the target group for in-depth interviews. The interviews reveal that their information needs are multi-faceted and match the information need typology by Ingwersen. The scholars mainly apply collection-specific search strategies but have in common primarily doing keyword searching, which they typically plan in advance. The archivists do less planning owing to their knowledge of the collections. All interviewees demonstrate domain knowledge, archival intelligence and artefactual literacy in their use and mastering of the archives. The search challenges they experience can be characterised as search system complexity challenges, material challenges and metadata challenges.

The paper provides a rare insight into the complexity of the search situation of cultural heritage archives, and the users’ multi-facetted information needs and hence contributes to the dialogue between the archives and the users.

Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including implications for dissemination and learning.

A collaborative case study design is used, where longitudinal accounts of the developments in relational contracting over more than 25 years in four Nordic countries were developed by scholars based in each country. The descriptions are underpinned by literature sources from research, practice and policy.

The countries share similar problem perceptions that have triggered the de-institutionalization of traditional contracting practices. Models and policies developed elsewhere are important sources of knowledge and legitimacy. Most countries have seen pendulum movements, where dissemination of relational contracting is followed by backlashes when projects fail to meet projected outcomes. Before long, however, relational contracting tends to re-emerge under new labels and in slightly new forms. Such a proliferation of concepts presents further obstacles to learning. Successful institutionalization is found to rely on realistic goals in combination with broad competence development at the organizational and industry levels.

In seeking inspiration from other countries, policymakers should go beyond contract models to also consider strategies to manage industry-level learning.

The paper provides a unique longitudinal cross-country perspective on the field of relational contracting. As such, it contributes to the small stream of literature on long-term institutional change in the construction sector.

The purpose of the study was to benchmark meta-analytical conceptualizations of business-to-business (B2B) seller skills against empirical evidence in services firms.

The study is based on a deductive approach and questionnaire survey focusing on a range of services firms from different industries and corporate sizes. A total of 389 questionnaires out of 732 were returned, generating a response rate of 53.1%.

The study aims to provide empirical evidence and structures relating to B2B sellers' capabilities in a seven-dimensional conceptualization, all of which can be used in services firms to improve their seller efficiency. Each seller skill dimension performs a different function in the sales services process.

The authors conclude that the verified meta-analytical conceptualizations of B2B seller skills seem valid and reliable in services firms. Nevertheless, further research needs to be carried out, based on other company characteristics as well as industries.

It reduces the risk perceived by customers in B2B services settings through cultivating the sellers' capabilities, based on the seven-dimensional evidence of seller skills to enhance sales performance.

The study contributes to existing theory and previous studies by offering a foundation on which to structure sales performance indicators in services firms. Specifically, it contributes to structuring B2B seller skills across a selection of principal dimensions in B2B services settings.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize a commutative ring R with identity which is not an integral domain such that ZT(R), the total zero-divisor graph of R is connected and to determine the diameter and radius of ZT(R) whenever ZT(R) is connected. Also, the purpose is to generalize some of the known results proved by Duric et al. on the total zero-divisor graph of R.

We use the methods from commutative ring theory on primary decomposition and strong primary decomposition of ideals in commutative rings. The structure of ideals, the primary ideals, the prime ideals, the set of zero-divisors of the finite direct product of commutative rings is used in this paper. The notion of maximal Nagata prime of the zero-ideal of a commutative ring is also used in our discussion.

For a commutative ring R with identity, ZT(R) is the intersection of the zero-divisor graph of R and the total graph of R induced by the set of all non-zero zero-divisors of R. The zero-divisor graph of R and the total graph of R induced by the set of all non-zero zero-divisors of R are well studied. Hence, we determine necessary and sufficient condition so that ZT(R) agrees with the zero-divisor graph of R (respectively, agrees with the total graph induced by the set of non-zero zero-divisors of R). If Z(R) is an ideal of R, then it is noted that ZT(R) agrees with the zero-divisor graph of R. Hence, we focus on rings R such that Z(R) is not an ideal of R. We are able to characterize R such that ZT(R) is connected under the assumptions that the zero ideal of R admits a strong primary decomposition and Z(R) is not an ideal of R. With the above assumptions, we are able to determine the domination number of ZT(R).

Duric et al. characterized Artinian rings R such that ZT(R) is connected. In this paper, we extend their result to rings R such that the zero ideal of R admits a strong primary decomposition and Z(R) is not an ideal of R. As an Artinian ring is isomorphic to the direct product of a finite number of Artinian local rings, we try to characterize R such that ZT(R) is connected under the assumption that R is ta finite direct product of rings R1, R2, … Rn with Z(Ri) is an ideal of Ri for each i between 1 to n. Their result on domination number of ZT(R) is also generalized in this paper. We provide several examples to illustrate our results proved.

The implication of this paper is that the existing result of Duric et al. is applicable to large class of commutative rings thereby yielding more examples. Moreover, the results proved in this paper make us to understand the structure of commutative rings better. It also helps us to learn the interplay between the ring-theoretic properties and the graph-theoretic properties of the graph associated with it.

The results proved in this paper are original and they provide more insight into the structure of total zero-divisor graph of a commutative ring. This paper provides several examples. Not much work done in the area of total zero-divisor graph of a commutative ring. This paper is a contribution to the area of graphs and rings and may inspire other researchers to study the total zero-divisor graph in further detail.

Since there are limited role models and career templates for entrepreneurship education (EE) graduates in the labour market, their careers are largely based on personal preferences, aspirations and values. Few studies have investigated how EE impacts graduates’ career aspirations. The present study addressed this gap by exploring how entrepreneurial identity (EI) manifestations act as career identities for EE graduates.

Five graduates from two EE programmes in Norway were purposefully selected based on their career histories. They were interviewed using a life story approach, and the narratives were analysed to explore how their EIs were developed and how the EIs acted as career identities.

The study findings revealed three EI manifestations that directed the participants’ careers: change agent, career seeker and maverick specialist. Additionally, the findings showed how EI is developed through EE: by connecting previous aspirations to realistic career alternatives, by being a place where individuals can experiment with provisional selves and by gaining social acceptance and affirmations for a claimed identity. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated how EI manifestations act as career identities that give direction to graduates’ careers.

This study has important implications regarding the broader impact of EE on graduates’ careers. Furthermore, by exploring EE graduates’ narratives, this study provides a richer and more nuanced view of how aspirations and career preferences are developed than previous studies.

Developments regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in transportation systems, one of the important stakeholders of tourism, are remarkable. However, no review thus far has provided a comprehensive overview of research on AI in transportation systems.

To fill this gap, this study uses the VOSviewer software to present a bibliometric review of the current scientific literature in the field of AI-related tourism research. The theme of AI in transportation systems was explored in the Web of Science database.

The original search yielded 642 documents, which were then filtered by parameters. For publications related to AI in transportation systems, the most cited documents, leading authors, productive countries, co-occurrence analysis of keywords and bibliographic matching of documents were examined. This report shows that there has been a recent increase in research on AI in transport systems. However, there is only one study on tourism. The country that contributed the most is China with 298 studies. The most used keyword in the documents was intelligent transportation system.

The bibliometric analysis of the existing work provided a valuable and seminal reference for researchers and practitioners in AI-related in transportation system.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.