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The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the marketing history of medical marijuana cigarettes in the past three decades of Austria-Hungary.

This paper constructs an analytical narrative based on information scattered in historical periodicals.

Towards the end of Habsburg rule, two Ljubljana-based pharmacists, the Trnkóczy brothers, managed to establish themselves as monopolistic suppliers of pre-rolled medical marijuana cigarettes for the entire Austrian part of the dual monarchy. Garnering the support of the regional Carniolan Government, Julius von Trnkóczy successfully argued his wares were not affected by the prohibition passed against imported French medicinal cigarettes. This happened despite medical opposition, suggesting that Trnkóczys could only operate this business because of their elevated social status. In the past decade of the 19th century, Ubald von Trnkóczy took advantage of newly loosened regulation to obtain an official permit by the royal-imperial government in Vienna. This was followed, in late 1909, by an advertising campaign covering mass media throughout the empire. This was enabled, amongst others, by a cutting down on medicinal claims. Their declining price is further indication that the cigarettes were mass marketed, especially as their core ingredient, cannabis, underwent price inflation.

Because of its later illegality, the research subject was for a long time considered embarrassing, leading to an absence of retrievable documents. Missing archival sources are thus a major limitation, but one which can be overcome by the concurrent reading of historical periodicals – ranging from mass-market newspapers to specialist journals and legal texts. This paper has implications for 21st-century challenges in the marketing of newly legalized medical marijuana.

This paper discusses the marketing history of cannabis, a drug rarely discussed in historical literature outside its medical and regulatory context, and reconstructs previously forgotten case histories.

This paper reviews existing research to understand when, how and with what results robotic process automation (RPA) is implemented by organizations.

The authors have identified 84 sources across eight databases and have analyzed them through the lens of a context–intervention–mechanism–outcomes framework (CIMO). The CIMO analysis maps the contextual drivers, intervention approaches and value related outcomes associated with RPA implementation.

The result of the analysis is the identification of four mechanisms explaining the approach organizations take to implement RPA: digitizing business processes, performing knowledge work together with humans, replacing outsourcing with RPA robots and developing a new business model. Therefore, in this paper, in order to reduce RPA literature fragmentation, the authors take into account the digital transformation (DT) perspective, by considering RPA as one example of digital technology.

This study sensitize organizational adopters to the different mechanisms they can deploy to conduct RPA implementations to achieve different desired outcomes in response to different drivers. Moreover, having a clear picture of the key enablers and associated barriers to the realization of these alternative paths serve as a useful map to guide the implementation process.

The findings contribute to DT research by conceptualizing these mechanisms through which organizations deploy automation tools—such as RPA.

Research of currently limited literature sees Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as an important tool at the tactical level. However, the literature has not considered its potential contribution to creating competitive advantages. This paper aims to link RPA and Resource-based view (RBV) literature, proposing a conceptual framework boosting RPA research as part of an organizational AI strategy.

This study applied a Systematic Literature Review (SRL), combining bibliometrics and content analysis. This study also built a new framework based on the updated RBV model that was transformed based on the RPA literature review results.

By bridging the two bodies of literature on RBV and RPA, this study manages to show the strategic side of the technology. Therefore, this study brought to light the most updated fundamental concepts of complementarity and scale-free fungible resources from RBV theory and AI technologies, applied to the domains of RPA, information systems and information technology (IS/IT) through the development of a new theoretical lens. Also, this study was able to elaborate on a new conceptual framework for AI strategy formulation to help organizations on their journey to AI utilization.

The authors did not find any research that has shown the strategic side of RPA, nor any that has used a theoretical lens based on the RBV theory to show this side. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study seems to be the first to make the case for RPA's strategic potential.