Search results

A rising trend has been observed to minimize extraneous cognitive load when reading by enhancing secondary knowledge through technology. For the readers to comprehend information more efficiently in their cognitive architecture, instructional procedures, which are secondary knowledge, should be aligned with the modern technology environment. With continual, rapid technological advances in modern society, people have changed their news reading habits after using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

This research employed a quantitative survey to compare the changes in the news reading habits of the undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students in the Library and Information Management program of a university in Hong Kong after using mobile devices to read electronic news. A total of 102 responses were collected, which comprised 51 UGs and 51 PGs, respectively (the student population for the program was around 100 UGs and 100 PGs).

Survey results showed that mobile devices had changed the respondents’ habit of reading news to read more content on phones, with a variation on news categories. Such changes included the duration and location of news discussion among the respondents that shorter periods were used to read and that more people read while traveling and in restaurants. Notably, reading the news helped respondents in their learning. Most respondents preferred to read electronic news by using mobile devices. The convenience of reading and discussing news may also cause a potential threat that intensifies disputes, arguments or even bullying on controversial issues.

This study confirmed that the usage of the mobile devices changed the respondents’ habit of reading news. This user group constitutes the future generation of information specialists in various disciplines. This study fills the research gap of finding students’ reading habits when using mobile devices, especially in East Asia. Educators are encouraged to recommend relevant news content to students to improve their general knowledge base and arouse their interest in reading and discussing related news topics.

The purpose of this study is to examine a Midwest university in North America over a one‐year period on current smoking policies and programs, student support for implementing additional smoking policies, and to produce a follow‐up report on supporting policies that were approved by administration.

The researchers used a convenience sample from a four‐year public university located in the Midwestern USA. A four‐year public university is a publicly funded institution of higher learning awarding baccalaureate, Master's and doctoral degrees. Data were collected from administrators (n=6) and on Assessment Day of all freshmen (n=1,743) and juniors (n=643) at the university. Data were collected through document mining, a survey instrument, interviewing, and observation. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize frequency data for this study.

The data produced some interesting findings. First, the study provided college administrators with a model to follow in moving forward in developing policies for their students, faculty and staff. Second, the study offered support for implementing practical policies which may save the universities money, while protecting students, faculty, and staff from harmful environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Finally, the study addresses the need of the university to implement and enforce policies on campus that will embrace tobacco control.

The implications of this study are that other universities may utilize the steps involved in this study to move forward in developing policies for their employees, universities may utilize this information by stressing that students are less likely to begin smoking if the university or campus offers smoke‐free resident halls and apartments, and fire safety is increased by banning smoking in resident halls and apartments.

Embraces more comprehensively than previously the situation, treatment and future research regarding smoking among college students in the USA.

This paper focuses on the influence of social, cultural and religious factors on investors' attention. In particular, the authors examined if the attention-grabbing mechanism works on Sundays, that is, if the Italians' Sunday activities and habits lead to a lower attention to second-hand financial news, compared to Saturdays.

The authors analyzed the market reaction to equivalent stale events published on the Saturday and Sunday editions of an Italian financial newspaper and conducted a standard event study on abnormal returns and abnormal volumes for Saturday and Sunday columns and a multivariate analysis on abnormal returns for columns reporting positive recommendations. As a robustness check, the authors performed a sentiment analysis of the columns and included this variable in the regression analysis, but sentiment proved to be not significant in the final model.

The study’s results confirmed that the attention-grabbing mechanism directed buying decisions, while had no influence on selling decisions. Furthermore, event study and multivariate analysis showed a significant lower market reaction to Sunday columns, supporting the study hypothesis of a Sunday investors' inattention which can be traced to cultural and/or religious factors since Sunday in Italy is a day devoted to family, entertainment and religious rituals.

The lower investors' attention on Sundays and the related influence of social, cultural and religious factors have implications for the timing of both corporate communications and financial advertising.

The authors’ paper provides an original contribution, on the empirical ground, to the attention-grabbing theory and to the growing theoretical literature in microeconomics that models attention.

This study aims to investigate the influence of perceived risk, including financial, functional, aesthetic, sanitary, psychological and social risks, on the intention to purchase second-hand clothing (SHC) between SHC consumers and non-SHC consumers based on perceived risk theory.

A total of 290 responses were collected, with 110 from SHC consumers and 180 from non-SHC consumers. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to validate the hypotheses. Additionally, a permutation test and multigroup analysis (MGA) were performed.

The findings indicate that different types of risk have varying effects on both SHC and non-SHC consumers’ intention to purchase SHC. In particular, financial, aesthetic and social risks are found to be significant predictors of purchase intention for SHC consumers. By contrast, sanitary and psychological risks are significant predictors of purchase intention for non-SHC consumers. Furthermore, the MGA results indicate a significant difference between SHC consumers and non-SHC consumers in the relationship between financial risk, social risk and purchase intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of different types of risk on the intention to purchase SHC in both SHC and non-SHC consumers. The findings will provide practitioners with practical insights for developing more effective strategies to target these two distinct consumer groups.

The case is written on the basis of published sources only.

Doodlage, a start-up incorporated in 2012 by Kriti Tula, Paras Arora and Vaibhav Kapoor, used discarded waste to create sustainable fashion products. It had a first-mover advantage in recycled fashion goods in the first 10 years of its existence. The company contributed to sustainable fashion by providing an alternative to fast fashion production, creating enormous clothing waste and environmental degradation. In the first quarter of 2022, it saved and reused 15,000 m of fabric waste. From 2018 to 2021, the company grew 150% annually, targeting the right customers and regions to expand its business. It ensured that postproduction industrial waste and postconsumption garments were used to produce clothes. It also confirmed that the waste generated in its fabric screening process was used to create stationery items and other valuable accessories.

However, the sustainable fashion model that gave the company a competitive advantage became obsolete in 2022 due to increasing competition in the industry as various players using unique ideas entered the market. The company is encountering operational and logistical challenges that are affecting its performance. The demand for its products was also subdued due to high prices of upcycled and recycled clothes and less consumer spending post-COVID pandemic. The competitors of Doodlage offered multiple products produced using environmentally friendly farming and manufacturing techniques, attracting sustainable purchasers. What should be the new portfolio of products for the company to explore future growth opportunities? Considering their vast price, can consumers be encouraged to buy upcycled clothes? How should the company ride the winds of change in the industry?

The instructor should initiate the class discussion by asking questions such as how frequently do you shop for clothes? Do you care about the fabric of your apparel? After you discard your clothes, do you think about where these goods finally end up? Data on the amount of total waste generated in the fashion industry should be communicated to students to connect it with the importance of the concept of circular economy. Post this, the instructor should introduce the business model of Doodlage to bring the discussion into the context of the fashion industry before going ahead to discuss the company’s dilemma.

This study aims to explore the relationship between non-market strategies and organizational resilience, using a Chinese private enterprise as an example.

This study collected data through semi-structured interviews and analyzed them through grounded theory, using a three-step approach of open coding, axial coding and selective coding to analyze and construct a model of the mechanism of the impact of non-market strategies on organizational resilience.

The following conclusions were drawn from this study. (1) Stakeholders, internal and external environment and entrepreneurship are important motivations that influence private firms to implement non-market strategies to enhance organizational resilience, with entrepreneurship being the key driver. (2) Non-market strategies contain three dimensions, and different non-market behaviors have different mechanisms of action on the organizational resilience of firms. (3) Non-market strategies and organizational resilience form an interactive spiral relationship. This mutually reinforcing effect promotes firm growth and sustainable corporate development. The research results enrich the theoretical connotation of non-market strategies, construct a model of the mechanism of influence of non-market strategies on organizational resilience, and describe three explanatory paths for the relationship between the two–incentive mechanism, functional mechanism and transformation mechanism.

This study's single case is unique and based on the Chinese context. In addition, this study adopts a rooted qualitative research approach and although the coding and model construction strictly follow the steps of grounded theory research, a degree of subjectivity is inevitable. On this basis, future research can adopt quantitative analysis methods to test and improve the model.

This paper explores the important role of non-market strategies in the Chinese context under the impact of traditional market mechanisms, based on the perspective of Chinese private enterprises, and provides new insights and revelations for private enterprises to achieve sustainable development.

This study innovatively explores the formation mechanism of organizational resilience from the perspective of non-market strategies, adding a new perspective to the literature. Additionally, it examines the mechanisms between long-term non-market strategy and organizational resilience, particularly their relationship in times of crisis, utilizing a rooted approach that goes beyond static analysis.

Behavioral finance literature has long claimed that internet stock message boards can move markets. In this chapter, the authors study more than 2,000 internet board messages posted across finance message boards in India (Chittorgarh, etc.) for 110 companies that went for initial public offering (IPO) in the last one year. This study has multi-fold objectives. First, the authors try to identify the factors which lead to a discussion on an IPO stock in the message board. Second, the authors identify the factors which differentiate a widely discussed stock from the less discussed one. Next, the authors apply advanced machine learning technique to identify the topics which are discussed in the message board through automatic topic modeling. The methodology used includes a logistic regression model for identifying firm characteristics which leads to a probability of getting stakeholders’ attention and hence more discussion. The authors also use advanced topic modeling techniques to identify topics of discussion on the message boards through machine learning. The authors find that larger sized firms, younger firms, firms with low leverage, and non-manufacturing firms get discussed more and the topics of discussion relate to their financial statements, trading strategies, stock behavior, and performance.

This paper aims to reveal how different types of events and top management teams' (TMTs’) cognitive frames affect the generation of breakthrough innovations.

Drawing on the event system theory and upper echelon theory, this study chose a Chinese manufacturing enterprise as the case firm and conducted an exploratory single-case study to unpack how breakthrough innovation generates over time.

By conducting the in-depth case analysis, the study revealed that firms do not produce breakthrough innovation in the catch-up stage and parallel-running stage but achieve it in the leading stage. It also indicated that when facing proactive events in the catch-up stage, TMTs often adopt a contracted lens, being manifested as consistency orientation, less elastic organizational identity and narrower competitive boundaries. In addition, they tend to adopt a contracted lens when facing reactive and proactive events in the parallel-running stage. In the face of reactive and proactive events in the leading stage, they are more inclined to adopt an expanded lens, being manifested as a coexistence orientation, more elastic organizational identity and wider competitive boundaries.

First, by untangling how TMT's cognitive frame functions in breakthrough innovations, this paper provides a micro-foundation for producing breakthrough innovations and deepens the understanding of upper echelon theory by considering the cognitive dimension of TMTs. Second, by teasing out several typical events experienced by the firm, this paper is the first attempt to reveal how events affect the generation of breakthrough innovation. Third, the work extends the application of the event system theory in technological innovation. It also provides insightful implications for promoting breakthrough innovations by considering the role of proactive and reactive events a firm experiences and TMT's perceptions.

According to the perspective of evolutionary economic theory, the marketplace continuously evolves over time, following the changing needs of both customers and firms. In accordance with the theory, the second-hand apparel market has been rapidly expanding by meeting consumers’ diverse preferences and promoting sustainability since 2014. To understand what changes in consumers’ consumption behaviors regarding used apparel have driven this growth, the purpose of this study is to examine how the second-hand apparel market product types, distribution channels and consumers’ motives have changed over the past five years.

This study collected big data from Google through Textom software by extracting all Web-exposed text in 2014, and again in 2019, that contained the keyword “second-hand apparel,” and used the Node XL program to visualize the network patterns of these words through the semantic network analysis.

The results indicate that the second-hand apparel market has evolved with various changes over the past five years in terms of consumer motives, product types and distribution channels.

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the changing demands of consumers toward used apparel over the past five years, providing insights for retailers as well as future research in this subject area.