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The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of the drivers of participation in online business forums (OBFs). Specifically, it examines how reciprocity and three distinct types of needs (functional, psychological and hedonic) shape the participation behaviour of members in OBFs.

This study employs a multilevel analysis, integrating Social Exchange Theory and Uses and Gratification Theory to develop and validate a research framework. Data were collected via online questionnaires (N = 596) from 48 business forums on LinkedIn. The data analysis was carried out using PLS-SEM in stages. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out to assess the measurement model, including validating the reliability and validity of the measurement items. The direct hypotheses were tested, followed by a post ad-hoc analysis to test the mediation and moderation hypotheses.

This study shows the impact of three need factors – functional, psychological and hedonic – and reciprocity on community members' participation behaviour in OBFs. The findings indicate that fulfiling functional, psychological and hedonic needs are key determinants driving active participation. The study further highlights the coexistence of two types of reciprocity: direct and indirect. However, the data analysis results show that only indirect reciprocity motivates participation in OBFs. Furthermore, the study reveals that indirect reciprocity not only precedes participation but also acts as a pivotal factor interacting with the interrelationship between the need factors and participation levels in OBFs.

This research advances theoretical understanding of participation in OBFs by offering novel insights into its complex, multi-faceted nature. Unlike some previous simplistic models, this study employs innovative multilevel analysis, uniquely demonstrating the synergistic impact of need factors and reciprocity on participation. It offers a nuanced perspective previously unexplored by addressing reciprocity’s paradoxical role and uncovering interconnections between various factors. This approach provides groundbreaking insights into OBF dynamics, advancing theoretical understanding while offering actionable strategies for enhancing member engagement and community development.

This study aims to investigate the impact of Internet use on household financial market participation and portfolio choice.

Based on the Chinese General Social Survey 2017 (CGSS2017), this study empirically explores whether Internet use affects household financial market participation in China with an Endogenous Switching Probit model.

The results show that households using the Internet are more likely to invest in financial markets. Further research shows that households with high Internet use are significantly more likely to participate in financial markets than households with low Internet use. From the perspective of household portfolio choice, Internet use has a certain role in increasing the probability of portfolio diversification. However, among households that have invested in financial markets, those with a high-frequency use of the Internet do not show an impact on portfolio diversification.

This study complements existing research about the impact of Internet use or not on household financial market decisions and portfolio choice, expands the knowledge on the household financial market choice from the respective of the degree of Internet use.

The purpose of the study is to determine the local antecedents of subsidiary participation in global services and, subsequently, the impact on local performance.

The study is based on a survey with the local subsidiaries of 14 manufacturers engaged in global services as part of their servitisation strategy.

Findings show support for considering the local ability for global services as an antecedent for local subsidiary participation in global services and the local service performance as an outcome. In addition, the results reject our hypotheses related to the specific roles of local opportunity and motivation for global services.

This study provides novel insights on the global service operations of manufacturers by highlighting the perspective of subsidiaries engaged in the local service delivery and development of global services. This perspective sets the conditions of the global-local collaboration in the context of global service strategy with local service delivery.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between global value chain (GVC) participation and poverty levels. Additionally, it investigates the impact of education levels, specifically analyzing literacy rates and tertiary education rates, on the correlation between GVC participation and poverty in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.

Fixed effect and random effect models will be employed to quantify the relationships between the dependent and independent variables. The Hausman test is applied to determine the appropriate estimator between fixed and random effects. Also, in the model, time-fixed effect or two-way fixed effect has been used to control for unobserved heterogeneity both across entities and over time in panel data analysis.

The findings demonstrate that engagement in GVCs presents a promising avenue for stimulating development, advancing income per capita growth and facilitating job creation. Notably, the results illuminate that the poverty-alleviating impacts of GVC participation are most conspicuous in nations boasting elevated levels of educational attainment among their populace.

This research aims to promote a better understanding of the connection between GVC participation and the level of poverty, with GVC participation decomposed into forward participation and backward participation.

Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to the income and productivity of small-scale producers, evidence of cooperatives' social and economic empowerment of female smallholders remains limited. We apply Sen's capability approach to female entrepreneurs' socioeconomic empowerment to examine whether women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative from rural western Uganda benefits their social and economic position within their household. First, we study the relationship between women's cooperative participation and their household coffee sales and savings. Second, we investigate the link between women's cooperative participation and their intra-household decision-making and whether the inclusion of the husband in his wife's cooperative strengthens or lowers women's decision-making power.

We carry out a case study of a hybrid coffee and microfinance cooperative that promotes social innovation through the integration and empowerment of female smallholders in rural Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey of 411 married female cooperative members from 26 randomly selected self-help groups of Bukonzo Joint Cooperative and 196 female non-members from the identical area, employing propensity score matching, this paper investigates the benefits of women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda. We present and discuss the results of our case study within an extensive literature on the role of institutions in collective action for women's empowerment.

Our findings provide new empirical evidence on female smallholders' participation in mixed cooperatives. Our results indicate that women's participation in microfinance-producer cooperatives appears to be a conditional blessing: even though membership is linked to increased women's intra-household decision-making and raised household savings and income from coffee sales, a wife with a husband in the same cooperative self-help group is associated with diminished women's household decision-making power.

The focus of this study is on female coffee smallholders in an agricultural cooperative in rural western Uganda. In particular, we focus on a case study of one major coffee cooperative. Our cross-sectional survey does not allow us to infer causal interpretations. Also, the survey does not include variables that allow us to measure other dimensions of women's empowerment beyond decision-making over household expenditures and women's financial performance related to savings and income from coffee cultivation.

Our empirical results indicate that female smallholders' cooperative membership is associated with higher incomes and coffee sales. However, husband co-participation in their wives' cooperative group diminishes wives' decision-making, which suggests that including husbands and other family members in the same cooperative group may not be perceived as an attractive route to empowerment for female smallholders. For these reasons, an intervention that encourages the cooperation of both spouses and that is sensitive to context-specific gender inequalities, may be more successful at stimulating social change toward household gender equality than interventions that focus on women's autonomous spheres only.

While the literature thus far has focused on microfinance's potential for women's empowerment, evidence on agricultural cooperatives' affecting women's social and economic position is limited. First, our findings provide novel empirical evidence on the empowering effects of women's participation in a self-help group-based coffee cooperative in rural Uganda. Second, our data allows us to explore the role of husbands' participation in their wives' cooperative and SGH. We embed our hypotheses and empirical results in a rich discussion of female entrepreneurship, microfinance and cooperative literature.

This study presents the impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU)-induced Trade Supply Chain Vulnerability (TSCV) on the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in India by leveraging the World Bank Enterprise Survey data for 2014 and 2022. Applying econometric techniques, it examines firm size’ influence on productivity and trade participation, providing insights for enhancing SME resilience and trade participation amid uncertainty.

The econometric techniques focus on export participation, along with variables such as total exports, firm size, productivity, and capital intensity. It addresses crucial factors such as the direct import of intermediate goods and foreign ownership. Utilizing the Cobb-Douglas production function, the study estimates Total Factor Productivity, mitigating endogeneity and multicollinearity through a two-stage process. Besides, the study uses a case study of North Indian SMEs engaged in manufacturing activities and their adoption of mitigation strategies to combat unprecedented EPU.

Results reveal that EPU-induced TSCV reduces exports, impacting employment and firm size. Increased productivity, driven by technological adoption, correlates with improved export performance. The study highlights the negative impact of TSCV on trade participation, particularly for smaller Indian firms. Moreover, SMEs implement cost-based, supplier-based, and inventory-based strategies more than technology-based and risk-based strategies.

Policy recommendations include promoting increased imports and inward foreign direct investment to enhance small firms’ trade integration during economic uncertainty. Tailored support for smaller firms, considering their limited capacity, is crucial. Encouraging small firms to engage in international trade and adopting diverse SC mitigation strategies associated with policy uncertainty are vital considerations.

This study explores the impact of EPU-induced TSCV on Indian SMEs’ trade dynamics, offering nuanced insights for policymakers to enhance SME resilience amid uncertainty. The econometric analysis unveils patterns in export behavior, productivity, and factors influencing trade participation during economic uncertainty.

This study aims to delve into the mechanisms through which managers can enhance employee participation effectively.

This study adopts the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework to identify the interrelationships among various drivers. Different levels of Continuous Improvement (CI) maturity were also considered to assess the effectiveness of these drivers on employee participation. An in-depth case study was conducted, involving the selection of four business units from a multinational manufacturer in Germany to represent varying levels of CI maturity.

This study uncovered intermediary variables that mediate the impact of drivers on the high-level MOA variables. It also revealed how the effectiveness of these drivers varies across different levels of CI maturity.

While different facets of CI have been scrutinized, the importance of employee participation stands out as pivotal for achieving enduring and meaningful progress. Despite this recognition, many business organizations continue to grasp with the challenge of motivating their employees to actively engage in CI initiatives. This study extends the applicability of the MOA framework and enriches the CI literature by offering deeper insights into the behavioural perspectives of employees. In practical terms, the findings of this study provide valuable guidance to decision-makers and HR department on staff training and development, enabling them to formulate more effective strategies aimed at fostering and augmenting employee participation in CI endeavours.

This paper aims to explore the factors influencing customers' attitudes and behaviours, specifically in terms of affective satisfaction, participation behaviour, and word-of-mouth, within the restaurant industry, with a focus on both tangible and intangible elements. Additionally, the study seeks to identify the dual mediating role of customer affective satisfaction in this relationship.

In this exploratory study, SEM-VB was utilized to examine data from 312 valid respondents who completed a face-to-face questionnaire using a quantitative methodology. The respondents were targeted at restaurants that serve comparable food and beverages for a similar socioeconomic class.

The findings reveal that perceived value, physical appearance, and standardization significantly contribute to customer affective satisfaction, which, in turn, positively influences their participation behaviour and word-of-mouth.

Practically, restaurant managers can enhance customer experiences and boost positive word-of-mouth by fostering affective satisfaction and encouraging interactive customer participation.

The novel concept of “affective satisfaction” contributes to restaurant management literature by identifying its tangible and intangible drivers and uncovering its outcomes in participation behaviour and word of mouth. By combining numerous factors and investigating the mediating function of affective satisfaction and based on the theory of Expectancy-Disconfirmation, this study adds to the theoretical understanding of what drives the affective satisfaction and word-of-mouth of casual dining restaurants’ customers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) with a massive and unexpected challenge that has caused many to adjust their operational standards. Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift to remote work and away from traditional office spaces. Thus, this study aims to explore the implications of this shift within the context of customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process.

Our study surveys 218 small-to-medium size business-to-business firms in the USA on a variety of questions revolving around their NPD processes, customer collaboration and the shift to remote work. The authors use structural equation modeling in the AMOS program to analyze the data.

The findings indicate that both customer participation breadth and customer participation depth positively impact new product performance. Furthermore, these relationships are found to be contingent upon whether firms rely on remote work during the collaboration process. The results show that accessing a broader variety of explicit customer insights (i.e., breadth) has become easier in the increasingly remote collaboration environment. However, as face-to-face customer participation in NPD has decreased, the prospect of gaining deep, tacit customer knowledge relevant to product development (i.e., depth) has become more challenging.

This study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm and the customer participation literature, and it also has implications for managers adjusting to the shift to remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide additional evidence that customer participation is an effective strategy for SMEs (Morgan et al., 2018), but remote work has both positive and negative implications regarding the type of external knowledge that is acquired during customer participation in NPD.

Online medical teams (OMTs) have emerged as an innovative healthcare service mode that relies on the collaboration of doctors to produce comprehensive medical recommendations. This study delves into the relationship between knowledge collaboration and team performance in OMTs and examines the complex effects of participation patterns.

The analysis uses a dataset that consists of 2,180 OMTs involving 8,689 doctors. Ordinary least squares regression with robust standard error is adopted for data analysis.

Our findings demonstrate a positive influence of knowledge collaboration on OMT performance. Leader participation weakens the relationship between knowledge collaboration and team performance, whereas multidisciplinary participation strengthens it. Passive participation and chief doctor participation have no significant effect on the association between knowledge collaboration and OMT performance.

This study provides valuable insights into how knowledge collaboration shapes OMTs' performance and reveals how the participation of different types of members affects outcomes. Our findings offer important practical implications for the optimization of online health platforms and for enhancing the effectiveness of collaborative healthcare delivery.