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Some researchers claim that trust can directly affect knowledge sharing but others consider that it is a mediator between some independent variables and knowledge sharing. So the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether trust is a mediator for knowledge sharing in the construction industry.

Personal construct theory is employed to test the mediation role of trust in architectural design teams. A questionnaire survey of architects is conducted in Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao, People's Republic of China. The mediator model is tested using structural equation modeling.

The paper shows that the mediation role of trust between two personal construct based factors, i.e. social interaction (SI) and attitude on work (AttonW) and willingness to share knowledge is supported.

As the paper focusses on architects working in the early-design stage of a project, the findings may not be applicable to other stages. In future, other project actors should also be considered so as to investigate the issues in construction management in a more comprehensive way.

The results suggest that team managers should improve the SIs between team members and provide guidance to team members about the correct attitude on work so that the level of interpersonal trust can be enhanced, thereby knowledge sharing is encouraged.

The personal construct theory developed in clinical psychology is applied to study the mediation role of trust for knowledge sharing in the construction industry. The interdisciplinary research offers a theoretical framework to reveal the cognitive process of knowledge sharing.

Co‐constructed Inquiry has been built in partnership with specialist nurse practitioners, university‐based researchers (with a clinical background in stroke and dementia care) and people living with long‐term conditions. Co‐constructed Inquiry introduces the language of drama and theatre into the theory building and reporting process and consists of three stages: Building the set; Performing the production; and Bringing down the curtain. People with long‐term conditions represent subjective experience through the production of a life story script, a personal theory and, eventually, a collective theory. The personal theory is usually presented as a diagram, or a series of diagrams. Co‐constructed Inquiry sheds new light on participative methods of inquiry and in the development of co‐constructed grounded theory.

The purpose of this paper is to construct and validate an e‐lifestyle scale.

Through a two‐step approach of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the generated two EFA solutions reveal the adequacy of the generated seven components underlying the 1,135 responses. By using the other 793 respondents sampling from the same population, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) examines and supports the fitness of the overall structure.

The empirical results show that the 39 items of the e‐lifestyle scale were grouped into seven distinct components. These components represented seven principal factors that significantly influence and shape individual e‐lifestyles.

This investigation merely represents a starting point in e‐lifestyle research. To enhance the validity and generalization of the scale proposed in this study, further cross‐cultural validation is necessary.

Beyond constructing and validating an e‐lifestyle instrument, this study could provide marketers with insights about how to integrate e‐lifestyles into marketing strategies.

This research contributes to advance current knowledge on what factors influence e‐lifestyle and relative influences of main factors shaping e‐lifestyle, and pave a way for marketers to execute more elaborate marketing research with the proposed e‐lifestyle scale.

This paper aims to propose some suggestions for libraries and other digital reading service institutions to improve the utilization rate of e-books, based on the theoretical and empirical analysis of the perception behaviour characteristics of e-book selection under the allocation of limited cognitive resources.

From the perspective of key perception points, this paper studies the key perception points of selecting e-books through the experimental method and explores the influence of subject factors (users’ characteristics, users’ needs) on users’ e-book perception behaviour.

College students have selective attention in the process of selecting e-books. They will choose some important contents of e-books, such as title, book introduction, author, catalogue, reader comments, others’ recommendations, read leaderboard, to perceive and there is an obvious difference in perception intensity. Different personal traits and reading needs have a great influence on users’ perception points. Libraries and other digital reading service institutions should provide promotion information based on key perception points of e-books, develop personalized e-book service and promotion and optimize the expression of key perception points of e-books.

This paper presents a valuable study attempting to introduce cognitive resource theory into the field of digital reading service, which proves that users also have limited cognitive resource allocation in the process of selecting digital books.

The purpose of this paper is to understand advertising practitioners’ theories on how to communicate effectively with men and women via advertising. Further, comparisons are made between practitioners’ theories and academic research.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 39 US advertising practitioners.

Many professionals believed women preferred other-oriented messages, while men preferred self-oriented messages. They believed women were comprehensive processors, while men were less engaged with advertising messages. They believe men preferred slapstick humor and factual messages, while women preferred emotional appeals.

Comparisons between practitioners’ perspectives and the academic research reveal that practitioners’ theories often correspond to academic theories and empirical data. Relationships with the selectivity hypothesis are explored in depth. Suggestions are made to extend existing theory to test practitioners’ theories.

This study helps to bridge the academician-practitioner gap, which helps academics understand practitioners, communicate with them and develop shared knowledge.

This study fills a research gap in understanding practitioners’ theories of how to communicate with men and women. A key contribution of the research is a comparison of practitioner theories with academic research to note points of agreement and disagreement, bridge the gap and offer suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to test social exchange in the presence of perception about organizational support theory.

Data have been collected through a questionnaire survey at a primary level and were analyzed primarily by smartPLS.

Results show that all relationships among study variables are highly responsive to the perception about organizational support. Nonmonetary rewards create reciprocity of employee performance (EP), but their magnitudes get affected where practioners need to pay specific attention on employee perception about organizational discretionary arrangements.

The sample size for this study was taken only 10 percent from the top ten banking organizations and these organizations were selected from three big cities only including two provincial capitals. Purposive/judgmental sampling technique is being used for the data collection purpose. As moving out from these cities earning opportunities, langue and behaviors are different; so, the results cannot be generalized to the entire country and other industries.

All managers who are intended and assigned for the increase in overall firms’ performances can achieve their targets and goals by focusing on decision-making participation (DMP) through job satisfaction. Further to this, in order to increase the strength of exchange relationship where firms can introduce DMP to increase employees’ performance, perception about organizational support (if it is to be focused) to its workers well-being can yield and induce employees to perform more.

This study ensures researchers not to forget to check the impact of perceived organizational support during a discussion on social exchange and more specifically nonmonetary part of the exchange. This study suggests the way to increase employee outcomes is by focusing on the employee perception about the organizational care about them and involving them in DMP which does not involve any monetary benefits and ultimately managers and organizations can concentrate on these points to have the overall increase in EP, while keeping themselves in limited or available budgets/resources.

Over the past decade, quality managers and scholars have focused increased attention on supplier quality as a key resource for organisations. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study into how organisations rank supplier selection attributes and the extent to which use is made of decision support systems (expert systems in particular) in supplier quality management. Overall, quality was ranked the most important attribute. Paradoxically, decision‐support/knowledge‐based systems are not being utilized in solving the multi‐criteria decision problem inherent in supplier quality management. It is speculated that the lack of robust strategy for combining both human and artificial intelligence in supplier quality integration means that many organisations are making themselves vulnerable as out‐sourcing and strategic partnerships become important determinants of competitive advantage. Consequently, this paper assesses the scope for expert systems, a branch of artificial intelligence that is capable of helping organisations to co‐ordinate and harness potentially diverse sources of input resources in supplier quality management.

The present study aims to use the qualitative approach of soft laddering to gather insight into both risk perception and subsequent marketing strategies of medical tourism. Medical tourism has recently started to spark interest of marketing researchers and has been a frequently discussed topic by both journalists and physicians. Nevertheless, there are only few marketing studies offering in-depth research on the phenomenon of medical tourism. In the present article, we will concentrate on the central notion of risk inherent to any medical procedure and a fortiori to surgery in the so-called Third World countries. Because medical tourism is a product to be sold to costumers, the perceived risk needs to be dealt with on the marketing level.

In the present study, the qualitative approach of soft laddering was used with 23 participants from France and 22 participants from Quebec to gather insight into both risk perception and subsequent marketing strategies of medical tourism.

The results show significant differences in consumer behavior between the two nationalities involved. We will see how these differences are related to underlying values as well as different reasons and constraints to purchase.

The results could help developed countries’ government to implement health policy.

Qualitative research does not often use soft laddering, which was used in this paper. Moreover, this qualitative approach has some advantages as the number of chains, as well as the frequencies of selection and the diversity of elements quoted by consumers (kinds of risks, values and consequences of the choices made).

This paper aims to review and discuss customer satisfaction and its application to the hospitality and tourism industries. This paper defines the concept and analyzes its importance to services in general and to hospitality/tourism services in particular. This paper is a revision and update of an article previously published by Pizam and Ellis (1999) on customer satisfaction measurements.

The most recent research on customer satisfaction measurements and scales is summarized and presented in the paper.

Following a discussion on the dimensions and attributes of satisfaction, the main methods of measuring satisfaction are listed, and cross-cultural issues that affect satisfaction are reviewed. Finally, the paper concludes with a comprehensive review of the current online tools and techniques available for measuring customer satisfaction.

This summary gives a good overview to researchers who require a comprehensive review of the available research measurements and scales for customer satisfaction.

For the past decade, a considerable amount of research has been conducted in customer satisfaction. Finding the appropriate measurements and scales for customer satisfaction can be time-consuming and confusing. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the best-known measurements and scales in customer satisfaction research. The paper also provides innovative online tools and techniques available for research.