Search results

Manufacturers seek to innovate and improve processes using new digital technologies. However, knowledge about these new technologies often resides outside a firm's boundaries. The authors draw on the concept of absorptive capacity and the literature on open innovation to explore the role of external search in the digitization of manufacturing.

The authors developed and distributed a survey to manufacturing firms in Switzerland, for which 151 complete responses were received from senior managers. The authors used multiple linear regressions to study the relations among the breadth and depth of external search, firms' adoption of digital technologies and operational performance outcomes.

External search depth was found to relate positively to higher adoption of computing technologies and shop floor connectivity technologies. No significant correlation was found between external search breadth and firms' adoption of digital technologies. Regarding performance outcomes, there is some evidence that increased adoption of digital technologies relates positively to higher volume flexibility, but not to increased production cost competitiveness.

Manufacturing firms that aim to digitize their processes can benefit from inbound open process innovation, but its utility varies for different clusters of digital technologies. Generally, the findings suggest that firms should build strong ties with a few external knowledge partners rather than surface relations with many.

This study contributes to the growing literature on the digitization of manufacturing with an analysis of the relation between firms' external search and their adoption of digital technologies. It adds early empirical insights to the literature on open process innovation.

The objective of this study is to analyse how changes in relevance criteria are related to changes in problem stages during the task performance process. Relevance is understood as a task‐ and process‐oriented user construct. The assessment of relevance is based on both retrieved bibliographical information and the documents acquired and read on the basis of this information. The participants of the study were eleven students who attended a course for one term for preparing a research proposal for the master’s thesis. The students were asked to make an IR search at the beginning, middle and end of the course. Data for describing their understanding of the work task, search goals and tactics as well as relevance assessments were collected during the search sessions. Pre‐ and post‐search interviews were conducted during each session. The students were asked to think aloud during the search session. The transaction logs were captured and the thinking aloud was recorded. Research and search diaries were also collected. The findings support to a certain extent the overall hypotheses that a person’s problem stage during task performance is related to his or her use of relevance criteria in assessing retrieved references and documents. There is a connection between an individual’s changing understanding of his or her task and how the relevance of references and full texts is judged. The more structured the task in the process, the more able the person is to distinguish between relevant and other sources. The relevance criteria of documents changed more than the criteria of references during the process. Moreover, it seems that understanding of topicality varies depending on the phase of the process.

This study considers online searching by health information consumers as a learning process. We focus on search sequences, query reformulation, and conceptual changes.

A qualitative user study (30 participants; three health information seeking tasks) investigated mobile searching behavior. Recorded screen activity, questionnaires, and in-depth personal interview data were collected and analyzed.

(1) Search platform sequences of health information consumers in search as a learning process were exacted and their features were highlighted. (2) Query sequence and reformulation pattern of health information consumers were exacted and discussed. (3) The types and degree of conceptual changes of health consumers were reflected by their query reformulation behavior and differ from different health information search tasks. (4) Characteristics of health consumers' search as learning process were revealed.

(1) A novel perspective of consumer health information studies was proposed by exacting search platform sequence, query sequence and linking them with conceptual changes during the search as learning process. (2) Conceptual changes in the searching as a learning process are regarded as a measure of search outcome in this study, in which terms extracted from queries were used to reflect conceptual changes in consumers' mind. (3) Our findings provide evidences that types of health information seeking tasks do have significant influences on the search as a learning process.

The findings of this study can lead to the fit-to-needs of the search platforms, provide advice for information architecture of search list of search platforms, and guide the design of knowledge graph of health information systems.

Potential relationships between information-seeking behavior and conceptual changes in search as a learning process relative to health information were revealed.

The paper reports experimental results concerning user interaction with document organization, user‐librarian negotiation and the librarian's search processes in public libraries. The focus of the investigations is on the cognitive aspects of information retrieval. After defining the formal framework of the information retrieval (IR) process a theoretical section discusses the cognitive viewpoint on which the research is based, followed by an outline of applicable findings and theories within the fields of cognitive science and cognitive psychology. The experimental design involving tape‐recording and analysis of verbal protocols is briefly described and considered. The main part of the paper concentrates on the results of investigations and considers certain implications. It is shown how the user's knowledge structures cope with the structures of the system. User needs seem often to be presented as a label which may create ambiguity problems. Functions of open and closed questions are investigated and certain behaviouristic factors discussed. Matching the knowledge structure of the user and the librarian is considered a kind of learning process. Librarians prefer search activity before consideration of the presented problem. Without a user present the librarian's IR process is determined by three search attitudes involving motives and expectations as to search routines and possibilities. Conceptual knowledge, previous search and working domain play important roles. The attitudes have consequences for the objectives concerning use of routines and for the use of search concepts.

This study uses an eye-tracking device to examine the effects of dissenting opinion on information search style and decision quality, using insights from dual-process theory. When evaluating strategic outcomes, managers not exposed to a dissenting opinion employ directed information search using System 1 (heuristic, automatic cognitive processing), leading to low-quality decisions. Providing a dissenting opinion causes managers to use System 2 (sequential information search characterized by deliberate, slow, and effortful cognitive processing), leading to higher-quality decisions. This study provides useful insights into the cognitive processes underlying managers' judgments, and the factors that influence their decisions. We conclude by discussing the critical role of dissent in business practices, and explain how dissent affects people's System 2 cognitive processes.

Searching for a job is an important process that influences short- and long-term career outcomes as well as well-being and psychological health. As such, job search research has grown tremendously over the last two decades. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of prior research, discuss important trends in current research, and suggest areas for future research. The authors conceptualize the job search as an unfolding process (i.e., a process through which job seekers navigate through stages to achieve their goal of finding and accepting a job) in which job seekers engage in self-regulation behaviors. The authors contrast research that has taken a between-person, static approach with research that has taken a within-person, dynamic approach and highlight the importance of combining between- and within-person designs in order to have a more holistic understanding of the job search process. Finally, authors provide some recommendations for future research. Much remains to be learned about what influences job search self-regulation, and how job self-regulation influences job search and employment outcomes depending on individual, contextual, and environmental factors.

This paper aims to demonstrate how consumer clickstream data from a leading hotel search engine can be used to validate two hidden information processing stages – first eliminate alternatives, then choose – proposed by the revered information processing theory of consumer choice.

This study models the two hidden information processing stages as hidden states in a hidden Markov model, estimated on consumer search behavior, product attributes and diversity of alternatives in the consideration set.

First, the stage of information processing can be statistically characterized in terms of consumer search covariates, including trip characteristics, use of search tools and the diversity of the consideration set, operationalized in terms of: number of brands, dispersion of price and dispersion of quality. Second, users are more sensitive to price and quality in the first rather than the second stage, which is closer to purchase.

The results suggest practical implications for how search engine managers can target consumers with appropriate marketing-mix actions, based on which information processing stage consumers might be in.

Most previous studies on validating the information processing theory of consumer choice have used laboratory experiments, subjects and information display boards comprising hypothetical product alternatives and attributes. Only a few studies use observational data. In contrast, this study uniquely uses point-of-purchase clickstream data on actual visitors at a leading hotel search engine and tests the theory based on real products, attributes and diversity of the consideration set.

More enterprises adopt open innovation by breaking technological or organizational boundaries to seek internal and external knowledge when they face a fiercely competitive environment, complex market demands, and increasingly rapid technological change. In this context, a knowledge search strategy is regarded as an effective means of obtaining inside and outside resources and an important way to break the innovation bottleneck. Moreover, information technology (IT) is deemed an important asset for sourcing knowledge, whereas absorptive capacity is seen as an indispensable ability for utilizing novel knowledge. Thus, this paper aims to test the role of knowledge search in open innovation and examine the mediating effect of absorptive capacity and the moderating effect of IT capability.

Using a sample of 1,088 Chinese firms’ data collected by the World Bank in 2012, this paper employs logistic regression to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that local and boundary-spanning search strategies positively influence both product and process innovation, and absorptive capacity has a mediating role in the relationships between knowledge search and product and process innovation. Moreover, IT capability has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between local search and innovation performance; however, IT capability strengthens the relationship between boundary-spanning search and process innovation while weakens that between boundary-spanning search and product innovation.

This study explores the impact of different knowledge search behaviors on different types of innovation and probes the role of absorptive capacity and IT capability in mediating and moderating the above relationships. By drawing on knowledge-based theory and cognitive-developmental theory, this paper provides a novel perspective to explain the mechanism between knowledge search and innovation performance.

There is a huge amount of information and data stored in publicly available online databases that consist of large text files accessed by Boolean search techniques. It is widely held that less use is made of these databases than could or should be the case, and that one reason for this is that potential users find it difficult to identify which databases to search, to use the various command languages of the hosts and to construct the Boolean search statements required. This reasoning has stimulated a considerable amount of exploration and development work on the construction of search interfaces, to aid the inexperienced user to gain effective access to these databases. The aim of our paper is to review aspects of the design of such interfaces: to indicate the requirements that must be met if maximum aid is to be offered to the inexperienced searcher; to spell out the knowledge that must be incorporated in an interface if such aid is to be given; to describe some of the solutions that have been implemented in experimental and operational interfaces; and to discuss some of the problems encountered. The paper closes with an extensive bibliography of references relevant to online search aids, going well beyond the items explicitly mentioned in the text. An index to software appears after the bibliography at the end of the paper.