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This study aims to examine buying center members’ information control (IC) in complex organizational buying contexts to uncover the effect of IC on overall procurement performance (PP) and the effects of expert power (EP), legitimate power (LP) and referent power as antecedents to IC.

The study uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in AMOS version 21 to assess the hypotheses using a cross-sectional survey of 294 Sri Lankan buying center members active in complex organizational buying.

Results show that IC has positive effects on overall PP and that both EP and LP are significant antecedents to IC.

The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that sharing all information in complex organizational buying is a sure-fire way to gain success. Instead, a measured, deliberate approach is more productive and this is more likely necessary and fruitful if the buying center member has EP or LP.

Procurement managers, supply chain managers and other managers with responsibility for implementing complex organizational buying outcomes should seek to enhance IC in buying center members to promote positive procurement outcomes, but this may stifle suppliers’ attempts to influence the process. Buying center members with EP and LP are more likely to face pressure to exert IC.

This study is the first to examine IC, its antecedents and consequences in complex organizational buying scenarios. EP and LP appear to underpin IC which, itself, has significant effects on PP.

This study aims to fabricate and investigate the tribological performance of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)-based composite materials reinforced with 0.5, 1 and 2 weight percentage of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) while keeping the weight percentage of vitamin C constant at 2% for each composite.

In this paper, the composites were fabricated using hot pressing, and the dispersion of GNP/vitamin C/UHMWPE hybrid composite was investigated by X-ray diffraction. Experimental trials were performed according to ASTM F732 on a reciprocating sliding tribometer (pin-on-disc) at human body temperature of 37 ± 1 °C, for a load of 52 N, to assess the role of these fillers on the tribological properties of UHMWPE against Ti6Al4V counter body material under dry and lubricating (human serum) environment.

In this study, it has been observed that friction and wear behavior of the developed composites improve with increase in weight percentage of GNP, and human serum adheres to the surface of the composite pins upon sliding, resulting in the formation of a film, which results in better wear resistance of the composite pins under human serum lubrication than dry sliding. Scanning electron microscope was used to investigate the worn surface morphological examination of the composite materials. Specific wear rate of 0.76 × 10⁻⁷ mm³/Nm was attained for 2 Wt.% GNP-filled composite under human serum lubrication.

The results indicate the compatibility of the composite material used in this study and suggested the in vitro implant application.

The presented work includes novel study of synergistic effect of GNP (which acts as a solid lubricant) and vitamin C (added as an antioxidant) on the tribological performance of UHMWPE under dry and human serum lubrication.

This study aims to assess the following question: “which information processing approach, formalization or centralization, responds to procurement complexity and how does this affect procurement performance in knowledge-intensive procurements?”

This study draws on a survey of 294 Project Managers with recent experience of knowledge-intensive procurement. It uses AMOS version 21 to perform confirmatory factor analysis and structural modeling to assess the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that procurement complexity directly encourages formalization and that formalization has significant, positive effects on procurement performance. Centralization, on the other hand, appears not to respond to procurement complexity and has negligible effects on procurement performance.

Drawing on information processing theory, this study highlights the importance of two information management approaches in knowledge-intensive procurement, and that such procurement situations share similarities with new product development and other innovation-rich, team-based activities. Knowledge-intensive procurement situations, therefore, require different information management practices than other types of procurement.

The findings suggest that procurement complexity directly encourages formalization and that formalization has significant, positive effects on procurement performance. Centralization, on the other hand, appears not to respond to procurement complexity and has negligible effects on procurement performance.

The study is the first to examine information management approaches (formalization and centralization) in knowledge-intensive procurement as responses to project complexity, and as contributors to procurement performance.

This paper aims to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) audit tool for auditing text-based evidence and determine its efficiency and effectiveness.

A manual audit checklist and an AI audit tool are developed with fuzzy front-end (FFE) from Innovation Management System Standard (IMSS) as the audit scope, First, a manual audit of five organisations is conducted to determine their compliance scores. The transcripts of the audit are recorded which are used by the AI audit tool to assign compliance scores for the same organisations. The effectiveness and efficiency of the AI audit tool are determined by comparing their results with the manual audit.

This paper demonstrates the development of the FFE AI audit tool which led to 92% improved efficiency while being 95% effective compared to a human auditor.

The publication of new financial and non-financial standards (such as ISO56002: IMSS) have implications for internal auditing (IA). The scope of IA must expand to include new standards while remaining efficient. Emerging technologies, such as AI help achieve this. Even though the use of AI in financial auditing is widely studied, it has not received similar attention in non-financial auditing. This paper develops a non-financial AI audit tool to audit an essential component of the IMSS, the FFE of innovation and determine its efficiency and effectiveness.

The study develops an FFE AI audit tool for the first time. The methodology used has practical and academic implications for the use of AI in non-financial auditing.

Contact centers (CCs) are one of the main touch points of customers in an organization. They form one of the inputs to customer relationship management (CRM) to enable an organization to efficiently resolve customer queries. CCs have an important impact on customer satisfaction and are a strategic asset for CRM systems. The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature on CCs and identify their shortcomings to be addressed in the current digital age.

The current literature on CCs can be classified into the analytical and the managerial aspects of CCs. In the former, data mining, text mining, and voice recognition techniques are discussed, and in the latter, staff training, CC performance, and outsourced CCs are discussed.

With the growth of information and communication technologies, the information that CCs must handle both in terms of type and volume, has changed. To deal with such changes, CCs need to evolve in terms of their operation and public relations. The authors present a state-of-the-art review of the challenges in identifying the gaps in order to have the next generation of CCs. Lack of an interactive CC and lack of data integrity for CCs are highlighted as important issues that need to be dealt with properly by CCs.

As far as the authors know, this is the first paper that reviews CCs’ literature by providing the comprehensive survey, critical evaluation, and future research.

This study aims to reach a perception of the advance of research on deviant organisational behaviours.

This research has been done through the text mining method. By reviewing, the papers were selected 360 papers between 1984 and 2020. Based on the Davis–Boldin index, 11 optimal clusters were gained. Then the roots were ranked in any group, using the Simple Additive Weighting technique. Data were analysed by RapidMiner and MATLAB software.

According to the results obtained, clusters are included leadership styles, job attitudes, spirituality in the workplace, work psychology, personality characteristics, classification and management of deviant workplace behaviours, service and customer orientation, deviation in sales, psychological contracts, group dynamics and inappropriate supervision.

This study provides a landscape and roadmap for future investigation on deviant organisational behaviours.

E-commerce.

The case study is specific to the marketing demographics of online Indian shoppers and therefore, the inter-relationship between certain customer requirements and design elements and the relative importance of items in the latter may not follow the same pattern elsewhere.

At a time when e-commerce is booming in India and when online retailers are posting multifold year-on-year growth, it becomes increasingly important to identify the factors pertaining to online stores which can influence the buying behavior of consumers. This case aims to explore such factors relevant to businesses as well as consumers so as to enable the next generation of leaders in online retail business to gain maximally. It deals with critical design characteristics of online retail stores in India which can prove crucial to their success. These characteristics are manifestations of various customer requirements. Two surveys are conducted to establish a hierarchy of design elements and quantify the inter-relationships between customer requirements and design characteristics. This is followed by leads as to which factors may or may not have contributed toward the declining sales volume of an e-commerce start-up, namely, E-Bazaar.

The learning objectives of the case include: the study of design characteristics with respect to their relative importance; the analysis of the degree of relationships between the design characteristics and customer requirements; and the interpretation of real-life signs in taking strategic business decisions in the field of e-commerce. The case aims to prepare a new breed of leaders in the e-commerce sector with a good level of relevant business acumen to help them make informed strategic choices.

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This paper aims to find out if it is possible to consider live virtual tours, in the connotation assumed during the COVID-19 outbreak, as experiential tourism products. The paper focuses on Holbrook's “four Es” (“experience”, “entertainment”, “exhibitionism” and “evangelising”) to study the experience of live virtual tours.

This article develops an exploratory analysis and presents a content analysis of 1052 reviews of 108 live virtual tours posted on TripAdvisor and Viator.

The findings show that live virtual tours are perceived as experiences, all “four Es” are covered and two more sub-categories emerge.

The analysis is limited to the perception of tourists that are confident with the technology, to a small sample and a period of travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Live virtual tours create a new segment, which “travels from home”. This does not preclude tourists from deciding to physically visit the places seen virtually.

Research on the analysis of the reviews of live virtual tours has not yet been carried out.

This study examines the influence of contextual factors (e.g. age and ownership type) on HRM formality (including the underlying functions of recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal and compensation) in SMEs.

Data were collected through a quantitative survey of 300 owners/managers of services, manufacturing and trade SMEs in Pakistan.

Firm age, association with a larger parent entity, existence of a strategic business plan and the presence of a human resource information system (HRIS) are positively related with higher HRM formality. Firm size, family ownership and exporting characteristics had no association with formality.

This study suggests a highly influential role for contextual factors in shaping HRM practices in Pakistani SMEs. Since the lack of a strategic approach towards human resource development is directly linked to the inferior performance of SMEs in Pakistan, this study provides an understanding of the contextual institutional setting that shapes the nature of HRM practices. The findings inform both SME owners/managers and policy makers.

Institutional influences on HRM systems have attracted attention but organisational factors are less often studied. Studies mostly relate to Western contexts and lack perspectives from SMEs. The findings of this empirical investigation highlight the importance of context specific research given the different nature of institutional settings.