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With the prevailing use of online communication platforms, this study revisits the definitions of trust in an online context. By exploring organizational online communications from a practitioners' perspective, a conceptual framework that illustrates the nature of trust and its relationship with dialogic communication between organizations and organizations' stakeholders in the digital era is proposed.

A total of 27 in-depth interviews were conducted with public relations and marketing practitioners involved in coordinating organizational online communications in Hong Kong.

From the practitioners' perspective, stakeholders' online trust toward an organization, which is a hybridity of initial and rapidly evolving trust, begins with stakeholders swift and initial judgment of the organization according to category-based cues (including knowledge-based attributes of the organization, institutional cues, and particular attributes of online dialogic communication) available on online platforms and further develops over time. Practitioners regard the integration of online and offline communication platforms to be the most effective way to build trust in organization–stakeholder relationships in the digital era, while dialectical tensions can hinder trust formed in online communication.

Along with the proposed conceptual framework, this study advances the discussion of online trust in public relations practices from the practitioners' perspective. A qualitative approach provides rich descriptions that may help to enrich theories in public relations and communication management regarding the interplay of trust and dialogic communication in organizational practices in the digital era.

This paper aims to survey available data sources and put China’s shadow banking system in perspective. Although bank loans still account for the majority of credit provided to China’s real economy, other channels of credit extension are growing rapidly. The fast expansion of shadow banking has spurred wide concerns regarding credit quality and financial stability.

This paper explores various data sources, provides an overview of shadow banking activities in China, discusses their close ties with banks and summarizes regulatory issues. Extensive descriptive data are included to provide a comprehensive picture of the nature of shadow banking activities in China. In particular, institutions and products are discussed in great details.

While China’s shadow banking system is by no means simple, it does not (yet) involve the extensive use of financial derivatives. Rather, shadow banking credit is often directly extended to the real economy. In addition, shadow banks are typically interconnected with commercial banks in various ways. The expanding scale and constantly evolving structure of the shadow banking system has posed challenges for financial regulators.

This paper attempts to quantify the scale and scope of China’s shadow banking activities and provides a consistent framework as the basis for cross-country comparison of shadow banking systems. This is one of the first scholarly research products that discusses the origin, nature and risks of China’s shadow banking system in a regulatory context.

This study aims to examine the blockchain landscape in supply chain management by drawing insights from academic and industry literature. It identifies the key drivers, categorizes the products involved and highlights the business values achieved by early adopters of blockchain technology within the supply chain domain. Additionally, it explores fingerprinting techniques to establish a robust connection between physical products and the blockchain ledger.

The authors combined the interpretive sensemaking systematic literature review to offer insights into how organizations interpreted their business challenges and adopted blockchain technology in their specific supply chain context; content analysis (using Leximancer automated text mining software) for concept mapping visualization, facilitating the identification of key themes, trends and relationships, and qualitative thematic analysis (NVivo) for data organization, coding and enhancing the depth and efficiency of analysis.

The findings highlight the transformative potential of blockchain technology and offer valuable insights into its implementation in optimizing supply chain operations. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of product provenance information to consumers, with blockchain technology offering certainty and increasing customer loyalty toward brands that prioritize transparency.

This research has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, there is a possibility that some relevant investigations may have been missed or omitted, which could impact the findings. In addition, the limited availability of literature on blockchain adoption in supply chains may restrict the scope of the conclusions. The evolving nature of blockchain adoption in supply chains also poses a limitation. As the technology is in its infancy, the authors expect that a rapidly emerging body of literature will provide more extensive evidence-based general conclusions in the future. Another limitation is the lack of information contrasting academic and industry research, which could have provided more balanced insights into the technology’s advancement. The authors attributed this limitation to the narrow collaborations between academia and industry in the field of blockchain for supply chain management.

Practitioners recognize the potential of blockchain in addressing industry-specific challenges, such as ensuring transparency and data provenance. Understanding the benefits achieved by early adopters can serve as a starting point for companies considering blockchain adoption. Blockchain technology can verify product origin, enable truthful certifications and comply with established standards, reinforcing trust among stakeholders and customers. Thus, implementing blockchain solutions can enhance brand reputation and consumer confidence by ensuring product authenticity and quality. Based on the results, companies can align their strategies and initiatives with their needs and expectations.

In essence, the integration of blockchain technology within supply chain provenance initiatives not only influences economic aspects but also brings substantial social impacts by reinforcing consumer trust, encouraging sustainable and ethical practices, combating product counterfeiting, empowering stakeholders and contributing to a more responsible, transparent and progressive socioeconomic environment.

This study consolidates current knowledge on blockchain’s capacity and identifies the specific drivers and business values associated with early blockchain adoption in supply chain provenance. Furthermore, it underscores the critical role of product fingerprinting techniques in supporting blockchain for supply chain provenance, facilitating more robust and efficient supply chain operations.

As mobile payment systems have been in constant demand and are increasing in recent years, the various stakeholders involved in the process need to be identified. The study mainly includes ease of use, perceived usefulness, facilitating conditions, social influences, adoption readiness and intention to use financial technology (FinTech) in India. This paper aims to discuss FinTech and its dynamic changes in the banking sector. This study tests the mediation influence of perceived trust on adoption readiness and intention to use FinTech in India. The proposed impact of mediation of perceived trust was significant but small on adoption readiness and intention to use FinTech.

A questionnaire survey was administered to mobile payment users, and 349 responses were collected. Structural equations are analyzed to determine the proposed variables’ direct effects on adopting them. Additionally, to examine indirect effects, the mediation test is used.

The analysis results support the proposed model and thus help explain the impact of adoption readiness, trust and intention to use digital payment. The study’s significant findings will enable mobile payment institutions to understand the variables related to the growing use of technology in customers’ contexts. The study reveals the significance of ease of use, perceived usefulness and facilitating the service condition, which means that vendors prefer to use compatible devices that are easy to use with other devices. The analysis also explores the critical influence of perceived usefulness on customer behavior, enabling software designers to encourage accessible processes and device advantages for customers.

Mobile payment systems offered by financial institutions until currently become a variety of mobile payment services due to rapidly evolving information technology. This work is a groundbreaking attempt to apply technology acceptance in recent years to the emerging framework of mobile banking systems. This study examines the adoption of mobile payment technologies by proposing an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) to capture the issues associated with adoption in India through banking users. Now customers are aware that cyberattacks on banking networks and data breaches quickly through media and social networks. Also, they know that the industry has done little to avoid or mitigate these attacks.

This study examines the adoption of mobile payment technologies by proposing an extended TAM to capture the issues associated with adoption in India through banking users.

This paper shares experiences from action research carried out by the author in an SME business setting where collaboration is becoming a strategic necessity. Many industry participants are interested in entering a collaboration, but are concerned about issues of trust, particularly where a new collaboration must be rapidly established to pursue a market opportunity and there is little time for the partners to learn about each other. The paper draws on a number of contributions from the literature that trust building can be described as a process; that there are a number of dimensions to inter‐organizational trust; and that there are levels of trust that may be assigned. On the basis that “trust is a risky business” it is suggested that a particular view of risk assessment and risk management can be used as an initiating alternative to a focus on trust. It is observed that there is an interaction between trust and management actions that is related to the level of perceived risk, and a real world example is given. It is suggested that the risk management approach presented can be useful in the joint design of a collaboration by the participants, and that following such a process can, of itself build trust.

This study aims to shed light on the evolving nature of banks in the digital era and the implications for bank marketing and management. The research addresses the need for a comprehensive typology of banks that integrates fintech and explores how traditional and app-only banks strategically position their brands. The key argument is that understanding the changing landscape of banking and the impact of technological advancements is crucial for banks to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by fintech and digital transformation.

This study examines literature and practices to develop a typology of banks, describing their characteristics, strengths, weaknesses and providing examples. It also proposes new research agendas for scholars and practitioners in the field.

This paper introduces a typology of banks based on their adoption of fintech and digital technologies. Three distinct types of banks are identified: Traditional banks adopting FinTech (TBAF), Traditionally Driven Neo Banks (TDNBs) and Digitally Driven Neo Banks (DDNBs). TBAF are traditional banks that have embraced fintech solutions to enhance their operations and customer experiences. TDNBs represent a hybrid model, combining the trusted brand and infrastructure of traditional banks with the digital capabilities and agility of neo banks. DDNBs are purely digital banks that operate exclusively online, offering innovative and user-friendly banking services.

This study is a pioneering work that classified banks based on their utilization of fintech and digital technologies. The study provides a typology of banks based on fintech adoption, offering valuable insights for bank managers, policymakers and researchers. The research also outlines a research agenda, suggesting future investigations to further enhance understanding of the evolving banking landscape and its implications.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

This paper aims to explain how small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) create information technology (IT) business value through blended IT outsourcing (ITO). The explanatory framework it proposes enables SMEs to replicate IT capability outcomes (i.e. enhance their economic, strategic and technological competences, namely, ITO success) by endorsing an ITO strategy catalyzed by IT vendor integration.

This study uses covariance-based structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. Data are collected from 251 knowledge-intensive business SMEs located in Science and Technology Parks in Spain.

The results demonstrate empirically that SMEs can replicate IT capability benefits (i.e. enhance their non-IT competences) through blended ITO in which IT, conceptualized as a transversal supporting activity, is outsourced to an IT vendor while the value creation process remains with the buyer. The integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) of an IT-proficient vendor catalyzes ITO success. More specifically, the results show that, although process integration is not directly related to competence enhancement, fosters information sharing, which directly facilitates ITO success. The results also show that IT vendor proficiency accounts for ex ante trust.

Managers should think of transformational ITO as a strategy to enhance firm competences. For blended ITO strategies to succeed, managers must have a comprehensive understanding of the business they run, as it is important to create conditions that foster inter-firm information sharing. To achieve these conditions, managers should take special care in selecting boundary spanners, who are the pivotal links in competence enhancement.

While most research focuses on ongoing trust (i.e. trust develops as ITO evolves), this study focuses on initial (i.e. ex ante) trust and analyzes IT vendor proficiency (expert, experienced and reputed) to examine trust as an antecedent of ITO. This study also draws on previous conceptualizations of vendor integration to develop and analyze a two-step integration model to explain how IT vendor integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) catalyzes enhancement of the buyer’s non-IT competences. This study focuses on SMEs, which are often neglected in ITO studies.

This paper aims to provide empirically derived insights into trust and its predictors within a cyber-physical system context of a household service.

The methodology comprises an innovative mixed methods design encompassing a videographic animated film portraying a potential “slice of life” household service-system scenario that was subsequently incorporated into a quantitative survey. A total of 400 responses were then used to examine trust dimensions and their hypothesised predictors.

Findings suggest trust is two-dimensional, with “online networking competency”, “perceptions of risk”, “propensity to trust technology in general” and “concerns about security” being significant predictors. Surprisingly, “concerns about privacy” do not have a significant effect.

The contribution of this research is twofold. Firstly, from a theoretical perspective, the paper offers empirical insights into trust and its predictors within a cyber-physical system context of a household service. Secondly, and from a pragmatic perspective, the model derived from this study may aid practitioners in developing trust strategies and trust management systems within such contexts.