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The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers’ health perception and demonstrate its relevance in product and process design in early stages of new product development.

A dried mango was used as a case study involving three countries: Indonesia, China and the Netherlands. Data were collected from nine focus groups (n=53 participants) and were content-analysed to acquire in-depth insights.

Four themes of health perception emerged, namely, nutrition, naturalness, taste and well-being, which were all expressed on different levels of abstractness. Participants’ health perception of dried mango varied, it is related to the product category it is compared with, e.g. candy or fresh fruit, and the eating context, e.g. position in the diet either as a snack or a meal. In extension participants mentioned product and process characteristics. Application of the insights into product and process design was performed through iterative interactions between consumer scientists and food technologists. The development of two product concepts was elaborated to transform the insights into technical product and process specifications for a natural dried mango product.

This transformation suggests that iterative interactions are necessary to achieve relevant product and process characteristics in the simultaneous design of the technical product and process specifications based on consumer perceptions.

This paper aims to explore consumer perception of “brand voice” authenticity, brand authenticity and brand attitude when the source of text is disclosed as either artificial intelligence (AI)-generated or human-written.

A 3 × 3 experimental design using Adidas marketing texts disclosed as either “AI” or “human”, or not disclosed was applied to data gathered online from 624 English-speaking students.

Text disclosed as AI-generated is not perceived as less authentic than that disclosed as human-written. No negative effect on brand voice authenticity and brand attitude results if an AI-source is disclosed.

Findings offer brand managers the potential for cost and time savings but emphasise the strong effect of AI technology on perceived brand authenticity and brand attitude.

Results show that brands can afford to be transparent in disclosing the use of AI to support brand voice as communicated in product description or specification or in chatbot text.

Technology uncertainty poses significant challenges to manufacturers, as rapid changes in product and/or process standards and specifications can disrupt the smooth flow of materials in extended supply chains. Practitioners and researchers alike who take a relational perspective widely regard supplier involvement as a potentially effective strategy to cope with technology uncertainty, as focal manufacturers can tap into their upstream supply networks for complementary resources and capabilities. However, the literature lacks a nuanced understanding of the supplier involvement processes. Specifically, the role of resource dependence for supplier involvement has yet to be systematically understood. To fill this gap, this study aims to combine the relational perspective with the resource-dependence perspective to explore how buyer dependence, supplier dependence and buyer–supplier interdependence influence buyers’ decision-making on tapping into upstream supply networks for coping with technology uncertainty.

To test the hypotheses, a survey is conducted among Dutch firms with more than 50 employees in the discrete manufacturing industries (ISIC 28-35), resulting in a sample of 125 manufacturers.

First, there is a significantly positive relationship between technology uncertainty and supplier involvement, giving support to the expectation that buyers are indeed involving their key suppliers in the product/process design and improvement, as a response to technology uncertainty. Second, buyer dependence and interdependence are found to be positively moderating the relationship between technology uncertainty and supplier involvement. In contrast, supplier dependence has a negative moderating effect on the baseline relationship.

The authors contribute to a relational view on buyer–supplier relationships by showing that the validity of this view, in the context of technology uncertainty, is contingent on the resource dependence between buyers and suppliers, and the authors contribute to the supply chain management literature more generally by combining a relational perspective with a resource-dependence perspective.

The findings provide several nuanced insights into the effect of resource dependence (buyer dependence, supplier dependence and interdependence) on supplier involvement for coping with technology uncertainty.

This study contributes to the supply chain management research by going beyond the benefits of supplier involvement and highlights the circumstances under which supplier involvement is likely to occur.

The purpose of this paper is to develop further understanding of the interdependence between product and organization subsystems in the context of major projects by empirically elaborating the volume-variety matrix.

Projects are perceived as systems that include a product subsystem (the project outcome) and an organization subsystem (the temporary multi-firm organizational network that produces the project outcome). This study addresses product-organization interdependence by analyzing product and organization subsystem components in terms of their uniqueness and reuse across multiple projects. The empirical analysis focuses on four global renewable fuels refinery projects implemented by Neste from 2003 to 2011. The refineries are based on the same proprietary technology but are unique at the project level.

The findings indicate interesting interdependencies between product and organization subsystems when analyzed at the component level: the findings suggest both diagonal and off-diagonal positions in the volume-variety matrix. An example of an off-diagonal position is a reused organization subsystem component associated with a unique product subsystem component, meaning that choosing the same organization in a future project can be used for acquiring an improved and, thereby, unique product subsystem component.

The study elaborates upon the volume-variety matrix in the context of major projects. The findings related to off-diagonal positions in the matrix provide new knowledge on combinations at the component level where a reused organization can be associated with a unique product, and vice versa. This has direct implications for management of projects.

This paper aims to examine how different contextual contingency factors and organizational goals influence construction clients’ decision-making when procuring contractors in the housing sector. More specifically, it investigates how clients’ choice of procurement strategies and organizational control systems is contingent upon various contextual factors and organizational goals.

It is based on an explorative interview study of clients and contractors in the Swedish housing sector underpinned by a review of organizational control literature.

The client's knowledge and resources, as well as project complexity and uncertainty, are the most important contextual contingency factors, while property management and sustainable development are the most important organizational goals that housing clients consider when designing procurement strategies.

The paper contributes to the understanding of how construction clients choose procurement strategies, by providing new insights into effects of the mentioned contextual contingency factors and organizational goals on clients’ choice of control systems through their procurement strategies.

Property owners who continuously procure housing projects with sustainability requirements and high degrees of complexity and uncertainty should develop knowledge and resources related to their client role, to enable the design and implementation of appropriate procurement strategies.

Novel aspects of the paper are the demonstration of the value of a holistic approach, considering both contextual contingency factors and organizational goals, when selecting control systems and explicit discussion of how the client's knowledge and resources influence possibilities to implement different control systems.