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Digital innovation requires organizations to reconfigure their information technology infrastructure (ITI) to cultivate creativity and implement fast experimentation. This research inquiries into ITI generativity, an emerging concept demoting a critical ITI capability for organizational digital innovation. More specifically, it conceptualizes ITI generativity across two dimensions—namely, systems and applications infrastructure (SAI) generativity and data analytics infrastructure (DAI) generativity—and examines their respective social and technical antecedents and their impact on digital innovation.

This research formulates a theoretical model to investigate the social and technical antecedents along with innovation outcomes of ITI generativity. To test this model and its associated hypotheses, a survey was administered to IT professionals possessing knowledge of their organization's IT architecture and digital innovation performance. The dataset, comprising responses from 140 organizations, was analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

Results reveal that both dimensions of ITI generativity contribute to digital innovation performance, with the effect of DAI generativity being more pronounced. In addition, SAI and DAI generativities are driven by social and technical factors within an organization. More specifically, SAI generativity is positively associated with the usage of a digital application services platform and IT human resources, whereas DAI generativity is positively linked to the usage of a data analytics services platform, data analytics services usability and data analytics human resources.

This research contributes to the literature on digital innovation by introducing ITI generativity as a crucial ITI capability and deciphering its role in digital innovation. It also offers useful insights and guidance for practitioners on how to build ITIs to achieve better digital innovation performance.

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, both educators and students adapted to course delivery modes no longer centered on in-person interactions. Resiliency and self-regulation are key to success in online contexts, but the rapid transition to remote learning left many students without the necessary support to develop these skills. Much of the existing literature on self-regulation and resiliency focuses on cognitive processes and strategies such as goal orientation, time management, and mindset. However, the added stress and trauma of learning in the context of a global pandemic highlighted the many other factors relevant to students’ development of these skills. Drawing from the literature, the authors explore evidence-informed teaching practices to foster self-regulation and resiliency, highlight the power and privilege of being able to be resilient, advocate for the development of pedagogies of kindness, and emphasize the “how” of implementing techniques to best support students. The authors provide evidence-informed suggestions with the goal of assisting instructors and students during times of high stress, while acknowledging their limitations in addressing structural inequalities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the authors argue that evidence-informed techniques and compassionate pedagogies adopted during a period of upheaval remain applicable to future in-person and online pedagogies.

Business organizations are evermore expected to behave conscientiously, but a lack of clarity remains regarding this strategy for business-to-business (B2B) brands. This paper aims to develop and validate a B2B brand conscientiousness model that identifies what factors are driving this approach.

The research model is validated through a three-stage study that collects insights from high-level executives, mid-level managers and employees in B2B firms. Whereas the first two exploratory stages follow a qualitative approach to identify what factors motivate B2B firms to be conscientious and develop a model, the third stage empirically tests the proposed model through structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that brand conscientiousness is viewed as an important strategy by B2B stakeholders. Whereas perceived risk discourages, external and internal stakeholder expectations and a firm’s financial commitment to a cause encourage, brands to pursue a conscientious approach. Furthermore, a B2B conscientious strategy must be perceived as authentic. Long-term commitment to the cause, strategic alignment of brand values with the cause and a congruent delivery of the brand’s promise are the drivers of this perceived authenticity.

This paper contributes to the emerging knowledge on B2B conscientious brands by confirming the importance of this approach in a B2B context, identifying the factors that B2B stakeholders – executives, managers and employees – believe are driving it and highlighting the importance and identifying the factors that drive its perceived authenticity.

Football is a popular sport among young people across Africa, incited by the heavy presence of European football that has become central to youth cultures, everyday social routines, forms of consumption and opportunities for establishing social status. A growing body of evidence suggests increasing trends in harmful gambling behaviours in African youth, while the proliferation of football betting particularly remains a critical potential risk for negative mental health outcomes among young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter draws on original empirical data from a web-based cross-sectional survey to examine the prevalence estimates and associations of socio-demographic and behavioural factors with football betting among young adults attending university in Ghana. It draws on a multivariable logistic regression model to assess the associations with football betting. Our findings point not only to the growing salience of football betting among male demographics, but also the role of peer culture, alcohol and media as predominant sources of participants' initiation of football betting. Moreover, participants indicated the motive ‘to make money’ as their single major motivation, which raises the prospect that football betting is used as a means to mitigate the adverse effects of unemployment. Overall, the study points to a need for harm prevention strategies that align more closely with public health approaches focused on students, their families, their communities and their universities/schools.

We theorize the critical role of angel investors' affective experiences and first impressions in the context of entrepreneurial finance. We develop a model and propositions to illustrate why angel investors make the decision to continue screening, thus explaining why certain investment proposals make it, while others do not.

Drawing on affective events theory and the literature on affective experiences, we theorize how the perceptions of pitches that trigger positive or/and negative physiological arousal, short-lived emotions, and associated thoughts are different, thus allowing us to build new theory of how these different experiences can influence the outcome of the evaluation process in the initial screening stage.

Our model suggests that the initial evaluation unfolds in five stages: perception of an entrepreneurial pitch, physiological arousal, emotions, first impression, and a decision to continue screening. When different manifestations of physiological arousal and subsequent emotions set the tone of first impressions, they can be either a positive, negative, or mixed experience. While positive and mixed first impression can lead to selection, negative first impression can lead to rejection.

We illustrate what is of value for angel investors when they look for new investments, and why certain entrepreneurial pitches lead to the decision to continue screening, while others do not. We propose that what angel investors feel is particularly important in situations where they are not yet making the ultimate decision to invest money but are involved in decisions about whether to continue to spend time to investigate the investment proposal.

This research empirically investigates how service employees' ratings of technology readiness (TRI), negative attitudes towards robots (NARS), Big Five personality traits (BFI) and emotional demands (ED) affect their willingness to work with service robots (WTW).

One set of data is collected from 410 service employees expected to work with service robots in Study 1. Another set of field data is collected from 102 employees working with service robots in Study 2. Hierarchical regression is used to test hypotheses about the impact of technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality traits on WTW. Additionally, the interactions of emotional demands in the workplace are analysed.

TRI-optimism and TRI-insecurity significantly affect WTW in Study 2 but are nonsignificant in Study 1. The impacts of NARS-emotions in interaction with robots and NARS-interaction with robots situations on WTW are significant in Study 1 but nonsignificant in Study 2. Moreover, BFI-neuroticism negatively affected WTW in Study 1, while these effects were nonsignificant in Study 2. Finally, emotional demands significantly interact with three of eleven dimensions of IVs in Study 1, but all interactions are nonsignificant in Study 2.

This research provides a guiding framework for service companies to screen employees expected to cowork with service robots, to enhance newly hired employees' WTW and to improve existing employees' WTW.

Integrating the characteristics of service employees, service robots and jobs into a theoretical framework, this research is the first to empirically examine the effects of service employees' several critical characteristics (technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality) on WTW and the moderation of job characteristics (emotional demands).