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Careless responders are respondents who lack the motivation to answer survey questions accurately. Empirical findings can be significantly distorted when some respondents devote insufficient effort to the survey task, and researchers therefore attempt to identify such respondents. Many measures of careless responding have been suggested in the literature, but researchers frequently struggle with the selection and appropriate use of the available methods. This chapter offers a classification of existing measures of careless responding along two dimensions and presents a conceptual discussion of their relative strengths and weaknesses. An empirical study demonstrates how the various measures can be used to identify careless responders and how these measures are related to each other.

This study investigates paradox-responding strategies and enabling mechanisms in humanitarian temporary supply networks (TSNs). Given the high stakes involved in life-saving supply networks, understanding how diverse, often under-resourced, organisations jointly tackle paradoxical tensions under time pressure is crucial.

A qualitative single case study approach is adopted and a TSN deployed to meet shelter needs following the 2015 Nepal earthquake is selected as the case. The authors use diverse secondary data sources to establish how the TSN responded to paradoxical tensions.

Results show that paradox-responding in humanitarian TSNs is ongoing, dynamic and a collective effort. Most strategies entail tackling the paradoxical tensions at the same time, using the same TSN structure, but there are differences in the treatment of the paradoxical elements. Additionally, the authors find that the execution of the responding strategies is enabled by the appropriate types of network-level mechanisms which can vary in novelty, complexity, depth and reach.

This study provides rich explanations of paradox-responding and develops insights into collective action within TSNs. However, further research is needed to extend and refine insights given the single-case setting design.

This study develops a framework of paradox-responding strategies and a corresponding mix of enabling mechanisms that can guide decision-makers in the humanitarian sector when deploying TSNs.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates paradox-responding strategies in humanitarian TSNs in particular and enabling mechanisms in general.

The study presents a conceptual model of a firm's supply chain agility (FSCA) as a formative construct formed by sensing and responding capabilities. Both construct validity and predictive validity of the model are tested by investigating nuanced effects of FSCA on business performance. The study aims to empirically validate the sensing-responding theoretical framework of Overby et al. (2006) and extend the emergent stream on sensing-responding frameworks for supply chain agility.

Survey research is employed. Data are analysed using partial least squares technique and mediation tests by Hayes PROCESS macro.

FSCA is established as a revised construct formed by the distinct capabilities of sensing and responding. The efficacy of utilizing FSCA as a formative 2nd order construct was established. In addition, FSCA is shown to affect business performance through mediations of cost efficiency and customer effectiveness, establishing its predictive validity.

This study contributes significantly to the literature on supply chain agility in terms of both theory and practice for cultivating supply chain agility. Drawing on resource-based view and resource-advantage theories, as reformulation of supply chain agility as a formative construct of sensing and responding capabilities, this research opens up new lines of inquiry on agility.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of management control systems (MCS) in strategically responding to institutional pressures for sustainability (IPS). Drawing on institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and strategic responses to institutional pressures framework (Oliver, 1991), the study argues that organisations strategically respond to IPS using MCS.

Data were collected by interviewing sustainability managers of a large-scale multinational apparel manufacturing organisation with its headquarters in Sri Lanka.

The study finds that organisations actively respond to IPS using acquiescence, compromise, avoidance, defiance, and manipulation strategies. The results not only reveal that formal MCS play a critical role in complying with IPS, but also in more active responses, including compromise, avoidance, defiance, and manipulation. The findings highlight that organisations use MCS as a medium to respond strategically to IPS, and in turn, the use of MCS has important implications for organisational change and improvement.

The study has implications for Western organisations, finding that suppliers committed to sustainability in Asia strategically respond to IPS as a means of strengthening outsourcing contracts, instead of blindly accepting. Findings indicate that organisational changes and success seem to be a function of strategically responding to IPS rather than operating an organisation by neglecting sustainability challenges. The organisational ability to use MCS in strategically responding to IPS has the potential for long-term value creation.

This study provides novel insights into the MCS, strategy and sustainability literatures by exploring different uses of MCS tools in strategically responding to IPS. More specifically, it shows how the use of MCS tools varies in supporting strategic responses, and with respective IPS. In doing so, it enhances our understanding of the importance of the use of MCS in dynamics of institutional change and practical variances in strategically responding to IPS.

Due to their very different contexts, the responses made by property hosts to online reviews can differ from those posted by hotel managers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the responding behavior of hosts on peer-to-peer property rental platforms.

This study applied a comprehensive framework based on the theory of planned behavior. Empirical models are constructed based on 89,967 guest reviews with their associated responses to reveal the responding pattern of property hosts.

Unlike hotel managers, property hosts are more likely to reply to positive than to negative reviews; moreover, when they do choose to respond to negative reviews, they are likely to do so negatively, in a “tit-for-tat” way. This study also finds that one reason for the difference of responding patterns between property hosts and hotel managers is the hosts’ lack of experience of consumer relationship management and service recovery.

This study provides a good start point for future theoretical development regarding effective responding strategy on peer-to-peer property rental platforms, as well as some useful implications for practitioners.

This study is an early attempt to analyze the impact of the particularity of emerging platforms on the responding behavior of service providers based on a comprehensive conceptual framework and empirical model thus provides a good starting point for the further investigation of effective response strategies on these emerging platforms.

Purpose – The broader research question being addressed is whether head library administrators (HLAs) have the competitive nature required to respond appropriately to strategic and competitive pressures in the library service environment. In addressing this broader research question, this study seeks to determine how HLAs perceive themselves and their peers’ competitive behavior with regard to personal hobbies, sports and games, their personal career performance, and their library's performance.

Design/methodology/approach – A census of the 103 HLAs from North Carolina's two-year and four-year academic libraries (including both public and private institutions) and the 77 public library systems in the state was conducted using a mixed methods design survey instrument to obtain information regarding their perceptions about both their own and their peers’ competitive behaviors.

Findings – The survey response rate was 49% and included a sample that reflected an equal distribution of HLAs by library types and the demographics of the study population. An analysis of survey responses indicate that while HLAs do perceive themselves and their peers to be competitive in behavior for their own personal career and their library's performance, they are not competitive in nonwork activities such as personal hobbies or sports and games. The high levels of reported competitiveness in the respondent's and library's performance variables may indicate HLAs are highly motivated in performing competitive behaviors when it benefits their own careers. The extreme lack of reported competitive behavior in the strategy related variable (sports and games) may indicate HLAs are less motivated or ill-prepared in the strategic response skills required to respond appropriately to strategic and competitive pressures in the library service environment. Respondents projected their own perceptions of competitive behavior unto their peers, which indicates HLA perceptions of their peers in competitive behaviors (possibly other areas) needs to be examined in greater detail to assess the validity of these perceptions.

Research limitations/implications – Data analysis was unable to determine any significant statistical relationships between HLA competitive behavior responses and the variables examined. Further research is needed to identify environmental, psychological, or professional variables that may explain the degrees, motivations, and differences in reported competitive behaviors.

Practical implications – Based on the study findings, libraries may not have head administrators who can effectively respond to strategic challenges facing their libraries. Many libraries may have HLAs who are: not as motivated to respond to strategic needs as career performance needs; have a false set of perceptions of their competitiveness or competitive abilities; have a false set of perceptions of their peers’ competitiveness or competitive abilities; and providing a false sense of security to their libraries that believe the HLA that leads them will enable their libraries to effectively respond to the service environment challenges. In combination, these findings indicate that the library's ability to effectively compete/strategically respond may be dependent on inconsistent and potentially unreliable competitive abilities and personal career motivations. This could make developing strategic responses and sustainability more difficult for libraries in the future.

Originality/value – The study is the first of its kind to examine whether HLAs have the competitive nature required to respond appropriately to strategic and competitive pressures in the library service environment. Having a complete and effective understanding of how head library administrator's competitive behaviors work and impact their library's strategic response development is essential in preparing and supporting existing and future head library administrators in leading their libraries in strategic responses. As the library's head administrator is the primary driver of strategy and strategic/competitive responses for their library, the competitive behaviors and their motivations becomes a critical component of the library's success in effectively responding to strategic challenges and being sustainable for meeting future generation's information needs. It is hoped that by exploring head library administrator's competitive behavior in this study, the researcher has laid the initial framework for understanding how a library's leader will competitively respond or be capable of responding to today's library service environment challenges that have become very competitive in nature and require library organizations to continually develop and perform activities that generate increasingly effective strategic performance and value.

This paper aims to highlight how a group of novice principals in Connecticut and New York used relational, dispositional and situational factors to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The study aims to support new principals and educational leaders.

Using Mutch's (2015) dispositional, relational and situational framework to guide the inquiry, this paper uses qualitative methods and interviewing in particular to explore the questions of interest. Six novice principals were each interviewed over the 2020–2021 school year, each interview lasting approximately forty-five minutes. Data were analyzed thematically using both deductive coding techniques and cross comparative analysis.

Findings show that novice principals tended to rely on dispositional factors to respond to the crisis. Additionally, novice principals reported limited responses to the situational factors of the crisis due to restricted access and guidance from the district leadership.

Due to the small sample size and methodological approach, it may be inappropriate to generalize the findings across all novice principals in all settings. Further research in additional settings and larger samples are encouraged to support the proposed findings.

This paper has several implications for districts and leadership preparation programs. Among these is the need for leadership preparation programs to adjust their curricula to train new principals properly.

This work fills a gap in the research regarding how new principals respond to a crisis. It also provides insights into practice and possible means to enhance the growing population of new principals entering the educational leadership workforce.

People are living in a world where they maintain connectivity through sending and receiving messages and calls. Yet, almost daily, people choose not to respond to certain messages or calls, which can make the sender anxious, and adversely affect their communication. The aim of this study was to investigate the receivers' reasons for not responding.

The authors used theories related to information avoidance, power, interpersonal deception and emotions and conducted interviews of smartphone users.

The study found that the receiver’s physical and psychological state, the time of the day and the content of the message impacted non-response. The findings suggest that the non-response behavior is moderated by the power relationship between the sender and the receiver. The receiver’s state of mind will determine the likelihood of non-response, while the sender’s state of mind will determine how the sender deals with non-response.

The study contributes to research in mobile information behavior, and the wider fields of information science, sociology and communication.

The process of interviewing itself helped raise awareness about these issues with the people who were interviewed.

The findings shed light on the current communicative practices and ways to overcome the disconnectedness and stress suffered by people regularly using smartphones.

The study provides recommendations for healthy communication between the sender and the receiver using their smartphones.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how hotels respond to online reviews on a third-party Web site (such as TripAdvisor) based on the hotel’s star rating.

Content analysis was used to compare responses to online hotel reviews at five different levels of hotel based on a star-rating system ranging from one star to five stars.

Most hotel managers’ response rates were low, and they paid the most attention to positive comments. Managers at four- and five-star hotels more often responded to negative online reviews. Guest service manager was the most common job title of managers who responded to guests’ reviews.

This paper is limited to an analysis of ten hotels, two for each of the five-star ratings. More hotel cases with long-term data collection involving the use of the star-rating system may provide more insights on this discussion.

The exploratory study sought to identify strategies for managing online reviews in the lodging industry. Hotel managers should respond to negative online reviews with appreciation, apology and an explanation of what went wrong. Moreover, hotels may need a designated person to observe and respond to guest comments on their Web sites and third-party Web sites. A designated person is also needed to monitor online comments and communicate with guests to better manage the hotel’s online reputation.

As an exploratory research project, this paper expands the understanding of hotel managers’ responses to their guests’ online reviews in an attempt to identify best practices for the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of inconsistent responding in web surveys. Consistency of responses to personal information questions and scale items were compared, and the influence of perceived social support, social appearance anxiety, academic self-efficacy and social networking habits on inconsistent responding was examined.

A gaming application on Facebook was used to collect data. A repeated-measures design was conducted with 806 respondents in two online survey administrations. After inconsistent responses provided by the same nicknames were identified, consistent and inconsistent respondents were compared with regard to their responding patterns and research variables.

Findings revealed that 45.7 percent of participants misreported their personal information such as age, educational status and gender. Participants were relatively consistent in their responses to attitude scales. Perceived social support led to inconsistent responding whereas social appearance anxiety and academic self-efficacy was not influential in response patterns. A binary logistic regression revealed that perceived family support, number of Facebook friends and Facebook use duration successfully distinguished inconsistent respondents from consistent respondents.

The sample frame has several limitations insofar as the study only addressed a unique gaming application on Facebook. Thus, unique interactive characteristics of the current context may have altered the nature of responding.

Practitioners should not rely on the personal information provided by online survey respondents to conduct parametric tests, whereas responses to online attitude scales seemed relatively consistent.

The principal contribution of the paper is that findings have provided insights into the current status of response patterns in online survey administrations. In addition, the paper highlights the importance of individual variables which influence the consistency of responses.