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The purpose of this study is to understand the strategic roles of service customer equity (SCE) and innovation protection on firm performance (FP).

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed model. The authors tested the model using managerial data from two countries: USA and India.

The findings of this study indicated positive direct impacts of service innovation (SI) on FP and positive indirect impacts via SCE in both samples. SI and SCE impacts on FP were both stronger in the US samples. However, the effect of SI on SCE is stronger in India than in the USA. This study also identified moderating impacts of service innovation protection (SIP) on the relationship between SI and FP in the Indian sample and between SI and SCE in the US sample.

Although there is scholarly research in SI and its impact on FP, there are no studies the authors identified that discuss the moderating effect of SIP. The authors studied the moderating effect of SIP because (1) it is crucial for industries to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace, (2) it protects industries investment in research and development and (3) it also protects industries intellectual property, such as trademark, copyrights and patents. There are two key contributions of this study: (a) investigating the effect of SCE between SI and FP and (b) investigating the moderating effect of SIP using managerial data from two countries (USA vs India).

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the drivers of digital disruption and its consequences from a managerial viewpoint. Understanding the drivers and consequences of digital disruption can help business managers modify and align their organizational structures and strategies with digital disruptors to promote survival in the marketplace.

This study used survey data from US managers. Of 1,000 managers, 272 provided responses eligible for use in the analysis. The study used EQS 6.2 software to analyze the data.

Eight hypothesized relationships were tested in this study. The results of this study indicate that convergence of intelligence, convergence of technology, support from C-level executives, organizational cultures of innovation and managerial skills act as drivers of digital disruption. The results also show that digital disruption improves both user experience and firms’ digital disruptive performance.

This study builds upon the disruptive innovation theory. This study demonstrates that both technology- and organization-induced drivers serve as predictors of digital disruption. Digital disruption affects user experience and firms’ digital disruptive performance. In addition, user experience influences firms’ digital disruptive performance. Overall, this study improves our understanding of the role of technology- and organization-induced drivers of businesses’ responses to digital disruption and provides contributions to theory and practice.

Existing literature reveals a general lack of research on business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce showcasing how managers’ affect plays a role in enhancing their attitude toward the businesses they work with. The purpose of this study is to fill that void by ascertaining whether managers’ corporate website knowledge, corporate website expertise and affect toward a corporate site influence their attitude toward the corporate website. It also investigates whether managers’ attitude guides corporate website usage intention in the context of two culturally diverse countries.

Data were collected from managers from the USA and Kuwait using an online survey method. Structural equation modeling using EQS 6.2 software was used for analysis.

The results indicate that corporate Web knowledge influences Web expertise and affect in the US sample; in the Kuwaiti sample, Web knowledge influences Web expertise but does not influence affect. The findings in both studies reveal that managers’ knowledge about the Web has a positive effect on their attitude toward a business website. For Kuwaiti managers, Web expertise has a positive influence on affect. However, Web expertise does not influence managers’ affect in the US sample. The results further suggest that affect influences a manager’s attitude toward corporate websites in the US and Kuwaiti samples.

Self-efficacy and affect infusion theories serve as the foundation for this study. This research adds to these two theories in three ways. First, it examines the combined influence of affect and attitude on B2B managers’ intent to use a corporate website. Second, it proposes a single model that examines the combined relationships among managers’ knowledge and managers’ Web expertise that elicit managerial affect toward corporate websites. Third, the proposed model was tested using samples from two diverse countries (developed, the USA, and developing, Kuwait).

Powered by artificial intelligence, voice assistants (VAs), such as Alexa, Siri and Cortona, are at early-stage adoption rates in service contexts. Customers express hesitance in using the technology. Furthermore, the effect of a relevant variable (VA empathy) as a determinant of VAs is not widely researched. This study aims to extend the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and social response theory (SRT) to propose and test a conceptual model of the role of customer perceptions of VA empathy and risk on VA adoption and usage intensity.

In this study, data were collected from 387 VA users in the USA using a survey administered through Amazon MTurk. Data cleaning retained a final n = 318 for structural equation modeling analysis.

Findings show that perceived VA empathy enhances customers’ attitude toward VA and drives adoption, thereby increasing VA usage intensity. Perceived risk is a moderator; users with high perceptions of VA empathy have greater VA adoption rates when they have high (vs low) risk perceptions of using VA.

This research is one of the first known studies to provide empirical evidence of the role of customer perceptions of VA empathy and risk on VA adoption in service delivery. It goes beyond VA adoption research to provide empirical evidence of the impact of VA adoption on actual usage intensity. By extending the UTAUT and SRT, this research adds to the theoretical foundation for research on VA adoption, offering practical insights for firms regarding empathetic VA design to enhance customer service delivery.

Strategy and organizational culture are indispensable for success within a business. Both behavioral scientists and practitioners have shown keen interest in understanding the association between culture and strategy; however, no strong consensus has been formed about this relationship. This paper aims to shed light on this relationship by answering the following questions: Is organizational culture separable from its strategies? Is there an association between organizational culture and strategy?

Using a sample of 496 service managers, this study empirically examines the relationship between culture and strategy. Due to the nature of the data, cross-tabulation research method was used for analysis and to check the association between organizational culture and strategy.

Results indicate that successful firms with a bureaucratic and innovative culture may demonstrate any of the four examined strategies (command, rational, transactive and generative). The results also suggest that successful firms with a supportive culture will likely use a transactive or generative strategy. Overall, the results found that all four strategies are associated with each of the three corporate cultures, except for the supportive culture-command strategy and supportive culture-rational strategy dyads.

There are diverse views about the organizational culture-strategy relationship; however, no strong consensus has been formed about this relationship. Using managerial data collected from service industry, this study examines the relationship between three organizational cultures, namely, bureaucratic, supportive and innovative, and four different types of strategies, namely, specially command, rational, transactive and generative.

To reconceptualize the organizational environment in a comprehensive manner, it is important to specify not just the velocity but also other aspects of turbulent environments. Concurrently, the purpose of this paper is to also propose that organizational adaptability and, particularly, the speed of adaptations are critical to moderate the impact of turbulence in the environment on organizational performance.

This paper uses a conceptual methodology to fully specify turbulent environments and commensurate managerial response appropriate for such environments. Based on a perspective borrowed from the field of fluid dynamics used to specify the phenomenon of turbulence, the authors develop a conceptual model with research propositions. Four dimensions that describe turbulence in fluid flow when applied metaphorically offer a comprehensive view of the organizational environment.

An extreme, unanticipated, sudden onslaught resulting in a prolonged disrupted environment such as during the recent coronavirus crisis is best characterized as having caused turbulent environmental conditions. Management theories have addressed disruptions as high-velocity environments in the context of rapid changes in information technology. With a broadened conceptualization of the organizational environment to better capture extreme disruptions, the authors provide a comprehensive model appropriate for turbulent environmental conditions and offer research directions for scholarly pursuit.

This paper provides a new perspective from the physical sciences to better conceptualize organizational environments during extreme disruptions such as in turbulent environmental conditions.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a scale to determine the consumer’s level of decision-making self-efficacy for a high-involved service purchase, specifically the purchase of medical insurance. One question to ask is how service providers can help consumers purchase the services that best meet their needs? Before interventions can occur, it is necessary to benchmark consumers’ perceptions of their own decision-making control and abilities.

A scale that measures consumers’ service decision-making self-efficacy was developed using the principles established for scale development validation. A four-study approach was used to reach the research objective.

The research consisted of four studies designed to: generate items to measure consumer service decision-making self-efficacy (CSDMSE); purify the scale and assess its dimensionality (second-order structure); establish the reliability and validity of the scale; and establish norms to provide details on its usefulness for aiding consumers with service purchases. The scale was found to be a higher-order construct, comprising three lower-order constructs.

Research suggests that consumer self-efficacy may affect their decision-making. The greater the consumer’s self-efficacy for decision-making tasks, the more efficient the decision-making process strategies are expected to be. This is the purpose for which the CSDMSE scale measure was created: to understand how, where and when service professionals can assist consumers with making appropriate service-related decisions and purchases.

The purpose of this paper is to provide managers with insights to help survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. Given the environment at the time of this paper, this paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis like COVID-19.

The authors offer a conceptual framework, grounded in the attribution theory and situation crisis communication theory (SCCT), for managers to use when determining which crisis response strategy is most appropriate to use during a crisis. Propositions based on this framework are provided. This paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the framework proposed for organizational crisis response strategy and recovery, several insights for managers across a variety of industries emerge. Consideration of the best strategic approach to a crisis is essential, and time is critical. This framework provides a starting point for creating a proper response strategy when a crisis arises that is not within the organization’s crisis management planning. Managerial implications for several industries, such as restaurant, hotel, airline, education, retail, medical and other professional services, and theoretical implications to further the advancement of understanding are provided.

The findings of this paper demonstrate that organizations that apply an accommodative strategy during unintentional crises will survive, while during intentional crises, they will thrive in the marketplace. Similarly, organizations that apply an offensive strategy during unintentional crises will thrive, while during intentional crises, they will survive in the marketplace.

This paper provides a framework highlighting strategies that best protect an organization during both internally and externally caused crises. The response strategy and crisis framework are based on the attribution theory and SCCT. Building on this framework, six propositions are postulated. In keeping with this strategy and crisis framework, this study provides several crisis response insights for managers across a variety of industries. These suggestions act as a guide for managers when assessing how to respond in the early days of a crisis and what to do to recover from it.

This paper provides a crisis-strategy matrix, grounded in the attribution theory and SCCT, to provide decision-making guidance to help managers survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. The authors provide multiple industry insights related to the “how to” and the “what to” in the recovery from and survival through internally and externally caused crises.

This paper aims to propose an approach to examining the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business, which presents a unique opportunity to study a hitherto-unavailable business scenario.

A conceptual framework is suggested to study the ability of a service firm to make adaptations to pandemic conditions based on the nature of its services: namely, the act of production and the type of recipient and the predisposed ability of the customer to accept the service firm’s adaptations to social distancing restrictions. Under this framework, it is demonstrated that service adaptations made due to COVID-19 business restrictions and the customers’ acceptance of them determine whether these changes are likely to become permanent.

A classification scheme is developed to determine four classes of service firms’ adaptations to their normal course of business made under pandemic conditions and suggestions given on how to project which adaptations may persist beyond the pandemic and why.

A conceptual framework grounded on Lovelock classification to present projections needs to be empirically tested.

Managerial insights based on the study and suggestions for research on what business practices are most likely to be permanently changed in a post-pandemic world for services are offered.

Using two of Lovelock’s dimensions pertaining to the nature of production and delivery of the service, four categories are proposed based on two characteristics: service adaptability and customer acceptance. The Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM2) model is extended to predict service adaptations, which are most likely to become permanent in a post-pandemic world.

As social media have become very popular and an integral part of the world economy in recent years, identifying factors that influence consumers’ attitudes toward social media sites has become a major goal of many researchers in academia and industry. This paper aims to identify factors that predict consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward usage of Instagram, a relatively new social media tool. In addition, it examines the role of an important dimension of culture – individualism vs collectivism –to determine cultural influences on the adoption of social media in the USA (i.e. an individualistic culture) and Kuwait (i.e. a collectivist culture).

Data were collected from a convenience sample of undergraduate business and MBA students from Kuwait and the USA. To validate the measures for the constructs depicted in the conceptual model, the authors conducted an exploratory factor analysis using all items. They then conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to further evaluate the adequacy and validity of the measurement model. They also tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Out of the nine hypotheses that were tested for significance, the SEM results indicated that seven hypotheses were significant. The results indicated a non-significant result between perceived critical mass is not a predictor of perceived usefulness and social influence to attitude.

The current study has some limitations that need to be recognized and can be used as guidelines for future research. First, college students represent only a portion of online users and may impact the external validity of our study. Hence, a more diverse sample with a broader range of ages, incomes, education levels, cultures and national origins would be advisable. Second, this study featured a dynamically continuous innovation (Instagram) rather than a discontinuous innovation. Third, other factors can be carried out to see other variables other than those described in this study to predict consumer’s attitude and intention to use the social media.

Cultural characteristics such as individualism/collectivism would seem to be potentially useful when segmenting countries. The results of the current study indicate that the modified model is applicable to a cross-national group of social media users. This study demonstrates the impact of cultural characteristics on various technology adoption. Hence, managers must be aware that countries can be grouped according to the type of cultural effect within each. Each social media category, clusters can be formed consisting of countries that are expected to have similar usage patterns based on technological capability and social norms. By understanding the factors that influence each cluster of countries, firms can design customized social media programs.

This research provides valuable information to better understand the consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward the emerging social media landscape. Indeed, the popularity of social media has greatly changed the way in which people communicate in today’s world. In particular, Instagram has gradually become a major communication media for both social and business purposes. This research shed light into the factors that influence intentions to adopt social media across different cultures. It empirically examines the role of culture – individualism vs collectivism – by using two samples (i.e. Kuwait and the USA) to determine cultural influences on the adoption of social media in different cultures.

Using data drawn from Kuwait and US samples, this current study draws upon the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989). The results of the analysis indicate that the modified model is applicable to a cross-national group of social media users. Moreover, this study demonstrates the impact of cultural characteristics on various technology adoption constructs in the model.