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The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method to enhance the spread of messages in social networks by “Spreading Groups.” These sub-structures of highly connected accounts intentionally echo messages between the members of the subgroup at the early stages of a spread. This echoing further boosts the spread to regions substantially larger than the initial region. These spreading accounts can be actual humans or social bots.

The paper reveals an interesting anomaly in information cascades in Twitter and proposes the spreading group model that explains this anomaly. The model was tested using an agent-based simulation, real Twitter data and questionnaires.

The messages of few anonymous Twitter accounts spread on average more than well-known global financial media groups, such as The Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg. The spreading groups (also sometimes called BotNets) model provides an effective mechanism that can explain these findings.

Spreading groups are only one possible mechanism that can explain the effectiveness of spread of tweets from lesser known accounts. The implication of this work is in showing how spreading groups can be used as a mechanism to spread messages in social networks. The construction of spreading groups is rather technical and does not require using opinion leaders. Similar to the case of “Fake News,” we expect the topic of spreading groups and their aim to manipulate information to receive growing attention in public discussion.

While harnessing opinion leaders to spread messages is costly, constructing spreading groups is more technical and replicable. Spreading groups are an efficient method to amplify the spread of message in social networks.

With the blossoming of fake news, one might tend to assess the reliability of news by the number of users involved in its spread. This heuristic might be easily fooled by spreading groups. Furthermore, spreading groups consisting of a blend of human and computerized bots might be hard to detect. They can be used to manipulate financial markets or political campaigns.

The paper demonstrates an anomaly in Twitter that was not studied before. It proposes a novel approach to spreading messages in social networks. The methods presented in the paper are valuable for anyone interested in spreading messages or an agenda such as political actors or other agenda enthusiasts. While social bots have been widely studied, their synchronization to increase the spread is novel.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of product release on word of mouth (WOM) behavior within and across rival online brand communities for technology products and evaluate competing predictions made by social identity theory and the group problem solving perspective of rumors.

In Study 1, 72,749 messages posted by 5,777 users over a 13-month period on two rival online brand forums were content analyzed using linguistic inquiry and word count, a linguistic content analysis program. In Study 2, two experiments were conducted to verify the theoretical explanation offered.

Marked differences were found as WOM transitioned from pre-release rumor to post-release facts. Prior to release, brand loyalists show an increased willingness to spread positive WOM about rival brands’ products. However, this willingness dissipated upon product release. This is in noted contrast to predictions made for experience goods.

This study examines the uncertainty generated by a rival brand’s upcoming new product within a brand community. While centered on a technologically oriented consumer group, this study addresses a longstanding theoretical conundrum and provides interesting areas for future research.

Surprisingly, it is the most active and ostensibly loyal brand supporters who spread pre-release rumors about rival brands. Managers should not assume that “loyalists” will not seriously discuss the potential offerings of rival brands. Product rumors thus present rival marketers with a unique “move it or lose it” opportunity to spread positive buzz among rival brand loyalists. However, this window of opportunity closes rapidly upon product release.

This is the first paper to examine the nature of new product rumors at this scale, including both pre- and post-release WOM.

The last great financial crisis which arose in the middle of 2007 in the USA produced contagion effects over others economies. The purpose of this paper is focused on analyzing the evolution of a set of economic variables of 17 European countries since 1991 until 2013. Sovereign bond spreads are also considered to compare the incidence of the financial crisis over the economies considering macroeconomics fundamentals and fixed bonds.

Self-organizing maps (SOMs) are used to achieve the purpose of the research. With this methodology, it is possible to analyze the evolution of the macroeconomic fundamentals of each country, obtaining particular and general conclusions according to the position of each country in the SOM. Moreover, the countries are compared between them and with its respective sovereign bond spreads level for each year of analysis.

The impact of the crisis is different between the countries was analyzed. Belonging to the European Monetary Union is an interesting characteristic of some of the most affect economies.

This research presents wide implications for the economies to control the most vulnerable economic variables in front of financial crisis to prevent the contagion effect. The inclusion of more economic variables and countries could enhance the study.

This research analyzes the relationship between macroeconomic variables and sovereign bond spreads using an infrequent methodology. The results obtained are valuable because they highlight how the present crisis has differently affected the European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible common factors in 15 Acute Hospital Trusts in the UK that achieved excellent scores at all their sites in four years of national Patient Environment audits.

A desk‐based study tested for external factors, organisational commonalities or particular contractual arrangements which the sample might have in common. A second piece of work was then undertaken; an ethnographic study that examined the behaviours exhibited by 22 managers in six of the trusts. The second phase of research will be described in a separate paper.

The research found that no external, organisational or contractual commonalities could be identified as shared by the trusts that formed the Research Group. This led the researchers to ask further questions as to the management/leadership of the FM Managers who had achieved consistantly high standards of Patient Environment over the four year period.

The research reveals that the trusts which achieved high standards of Patient Environment had no shared advantage in terms of external, organisational or contract characteristics. Thus, it should be possible for all trusts to achieve consistently high standards.

This is believed to be the only study looking at influences and characteristics that are outside the FM Managers' control and impact on the FMs' ability to deliver consistantly high standards.

Gender differences in leadership and issues around differential progression of male and female leaders are receiving more attention in the fields of human resource and leadership development. However, little is known about how interventions designed to support female leaders are being experienced within real-world contexts of global organizations. There is limited research and discussion on how such interventions are experienced at a more systemic level. This study aims to contribute at this very level.

This study reports on a predominantly coaching-based development program that was designed to further the careers of female leaders within a complex multi-national organization. The study was conducted in a large, global health-care corporation employing 100,000 people based in over 120 countries. The qualitative research design for this study was exploratory, involving a reflexive process at each of the two stages.

The findings from this qualitative research take the debate on “the gendered organization” further by including the voices of female leaders. They demonstrate that whilst theoretically the concept of the “ideal worker” may inhibit progression, this is not necessarily a barrier to career advancement. Coaching, both individual and group, is shown to have a powerful effect on promoting reflection, self-confidence and focus.

There are two research limitations. While confidentiality was promised, the responses of some interviewees were nevertheless still guarded. Other limitations relate to the extent to which this study can be generalized to other contexts, as it was conducted inside a single global corporation.

The study addresses the complex and urgent topic of differential progression and makes a broader contribution by offering a systemic perspective on gender and development in global organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to claim that it is useful to assess the web connectivity of research groups, describe hyperlink‐based techniques to achieve this and present brief details of European life sciences research groups as a case study.

A commercial search engine was harnessed to deliver hyperlink data via its automatic query submission interface. A special purpose link analysis tool, LexiURL, then summarised and graphed the link data in appropriate ways.

Webometrics can provide a wide range of descriptive information about the international connectivity of research groups.

Only one field was analysed, data was taken from only one search engine, and the results were not validated.

Web connectivity seems to be particularly important for attracting overseas job applicants and to promote research achievements and capabilities, and hence we contend that it can be useful for national and international governments to use webometrics to ensure that the web is being used effectively by research groups.

This is the first paper to make a case for the value of using a range of webometric techniques to evaluate the web presences of research groups within a field, and possibly the first “applied” webometrics study produced for an external contract.

A growing literature has recognized the importance of mental simulation (e.g., imagining alternatives to reality) in sparking creativity. In this chapter, we examine how counterfactual thinking, or imagining alternatives to past outcomes, affects group creativity. We explore these effects by articulating a model that considers the influence of counterfactual thinking on both the cognitive and social processes known to impact group creative performance. With this framework, we aim to stimulate research on group creativity from a counterfactual perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between net working capital and firm value for a sample of 2,483 firms across 16 Asian countries. In addition, this study also examines the impact of degree of financial development and law enforceability on net working capital-firm value relationship.

The study is based on secondary financial data of 2,483 Asian firms obtained from Bloomberg database, pertaining to a period of five years. This study employs the fixed effects approach to arrive at results.

Results of the study confirm a strong negative relationship between net working capital and firm value. In addition, the author also found that the negative relationship between net working capital and firm value to be strong for countries that have a high degree of financial development and law enforceability.

Unlike prior studies, this study examines the relationship between net working capital and firm value. In addition, this study also tests the impact of degree of financial development and law enforceability on this relationship. To the best knowledge, no such study has been conducted in the Asian context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of using a metric to measure user acceptability of a system prior to its implementation.

Empirical research is carried within PISO^®, an existing process improvement method that harnesses the expertise of system users in redesigning systems. A metric called “warm glow” is trialled, designed to test the level of user acceptance to system change.

The paper finds that the “warm glow” metric was applied to a number of system redesigns applying the PISO method, to check user opinion of the existing system against the proposed system. It was found that use of the “warm glow” metric does give a measured approach to gauging acceptability. Two possible influences were considered during the study. The first was the Halo effect which suggests an optimal stage in the redesign at which to rate processes in terms of user opinion. Results in this case appeared consistent irrespective of time. The second was the Hawthorn effect which suggests that simply by being “singled out” to redesign the system, user opinions will be positively biased. Findings in this respect were inconclusive. The need is noted for further research into possible effects.

It is likely that such a technique could by used more widely than within the PISO method.

The paper provides a means of testing user acceptance to systems via rating of system processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore uncertainty-coping strategic actions in the internationalisation strategy of entrepreneurial ventures, encompassing born globals/international new ventures, enduring established internationalisers, old born globals, born-again globals and micro-multinationals.

The authors developed a qualitative exploratory study applying a grounded theory approach to ten entrepreneurial firms to investigate the strategies they adopted to cope with Knightian uncertainty in international markets.

The global niche strategy emerged as a successful path to deal with uncertainty in smaller firms’ internationalisation. The authors uncover the components of this strategy, namely the creation of markets, the focus on global clients and the control of technology.

The contribution of this paper consists in exploring how entrepreneurial firms cope with uncertainty through a global niche strategy and in outlining its main components. The authors develop a model of smaller entrepreneurial firms’ international strategising under this perspective. The research thus links together international marketing and strategy with (international) entrepreneurship studies.