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This paper aims to describe the results of a usability test performed at Western Washington University to determine whether users were as successful performing common catalog‐related tasks in WorldCat Local as they are in the library's current catalog, Innovative Interfaces' WebPAC.

A usability team developed a test based on tasks commonly performed in the library catalog. They then tested 24 participants of varying levels of experience and asked each to perform 20 common catalog tasks in either the WebPAC interface currently in use or the WorldCat Local interface. The WorldCat Local interface was a test version which reflected Western Washington University's library holdings, in addition to the Orbis Cascade Alliance consortial holdings and all WorldCat holdings.

While the results found that there were tasks in which participants were more successful in WorldCat Local than in the WebPAC, they also identified common tasks in which users were far less successful in WorldCat Local than in the WebPAC.

WorldCat Local is one example of a new generation of discovery interfaces that is being considered by a number of academic institutions. This paper provides some insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the product.

Browsing is a common consumer behavior, but it has not been researched extensively. The aim of this paper is to fill some of the gaps in the research.

Drawing on literature from different areas, consumers' browsing experiences, browsing patterns, and factors influencing browsing activities are empirically examined. A combination of interviews and shopping trips with informants to examine the issues are used.

The results show that browsing serves both functional and recreational purposes. Consumers vary by the degree to which they browse functionally or recreationally. Browsing behaviors are influenced by both consumer characteristics and the retail environment. Browsing is a powerful consumer information acquisition activity and has both desired and undesired consequences for consumer purchases. Consumers use various strategies to cope with the undesired consequences.

Exploration of browsing patterns and factors influencing these patterns suggests important managerial implications for enhancing desirable browsing and reducing unnecessary browsing.

The conceptualization and findings of this research contribute to two areas of research: consumer information search and consumer shopping behaviors in retail environments. An examination of the role of browsing offers an empirical extension to the information acquisition framework.

This paper aims to contribute a qualitative analysis of practitioners' accounts to illuminate alternative approaches to social enterprise that tend to be neglected by predominant academic representations.

By analysing qualitative interviews, the paper examines the ways social entrepreneurs in Germany coproduce and reproduce the prevailing theoretical notions of social enterprise. The main themes of the interviews are elaborated upon to accentuate certain critical aspects that until now have not been the focus of attention in research. Alternative perspectives of the empirical data are developed which indicate patterns that are currently excluded from narrative practices of academia.

There are several insightful perspectives represented in the interview data: the (conspicuous) absence of managerialism as a dominant motivational feature; the complexity of the local political and social realm in which social entrepreneurs think and act in spontaneous, often “non‐rational” ways; and personal and biographical accounts of social entrepreneurs as an important self‐defining feature. The findings demonstrate the explanatory power of qualitative empirical accounts as a starting point to veer away from reductionist drawing‐board concepts of social enterprise.

These articulations of social entrepreneurs' own realities are important as they are sometimes at odds ideologically with managerial approaches to social enterprise which emphasize cost‐efficiency reasoning and financial independence.

Both consumer and corporate credit ratings agencies played a major role in the US subprime mortgage crisis. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion deployed a formalized scoring system to assess individuals in mortgage origination, mortgage pools then were assessed for securitization by Moody's, S&P, and Fitch relying on expert judgment aided by formal models. What can we learn about the limits of formalization from the crisis? We discuss five problems responsible for the rating failures – reactivity, endogeneity, learning, correlated outcomes, and conflict of interest – and compare the way consumer and corporate rating agencies tackled these difficulties. We conclude with some policy lessons.

This paper aims to use the institutional perspective to jointly explore the underlying motives that drive Chinese private small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to invest in the developed economy of Germany and the role China’s institutional environment is playing in this context.

Given the lack of recent in-depth studies, the authors use multiple case study method to present rich insights from elite interviews with executives belonging to seven Chinese SMEs and industry experts, as well as the study of firm documents, social media and the latest governmental policies.

The results indicate not only market-, resource- and strategic asset-seeking motives, but contrary to the literature, also efficiency-seeking goals. Further driving factors are the integration in global value chains and high degrees of entrepreneurial orientation. The second major finding is that China’s institutional environment induces widely divergent effects. Its ministries established new outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) support measures that are beneficial for some SMEs’ post-entry operations. However, some firms are not aware of any support measures or suffer from discrimination that hinders innovation and from which they try to escape by investing abroad.

This paper considers different levels of analysis (firm, entrepreneur, institutional environment) to investigate Chinese SMEs’ motives in Europe’s largest market. By examining why and how these firms use OFDI to a developed economy, the authors address an essential question for China’s economy that is of primary political and academic concern (“How can China get that improved innovation that often seeds entrepreneurial growth?”). In addition, the study contributes to the growing discussion of institutional escapism in emerging markets by revealing five institutional hardships Chinese SMEs are facing and how this relates to their internationalization.

Supplementing an earlier review paper on the internationalization of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (ICS) that covers the period 1991–2012, the purpose of this paper is to examine how research on this topic has thematically expanded in recent years. Specifically, the authors aim to examine the literature between 2013 and 2020, highlight advancements and synthesize potential avenues for future research.

Based on the systematic literature review method (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009; Kraus et al., 2020), the authors considered more than 5,700 peer-reviewed journal articles, of which 107 were included in the narrative synthesis.

Research on the ICS has become more widespread and mature in the period since 2013. First, there are more papers investigating firm-level characteristics and sources of internal capabilities. Second, the state of knowledge regarding social networks and institutional contexts in the internationalization process has increased. Consequently, new knowledge exists regarding push and pull patterns and the role China’s institutional environment is playing. Third, growing interest can be noted in studying entrepreneurship in the context of Chinese SMEs’ global expansion. Additionally, the paper exposes promising areas for future research and suggests more than 20 potential research questions.

This review in the growing debate on the ICS is the first of its kind that consciously drives the work of a previous review study forward. This enables tracking the progress of research (“mapping of the field”) and identifying important avenues for future research that can further advance the debate. The comprehensive review also discovered one relatively new variable – the role of Chinese returnee entrepreneurs – which shows the significant influence on SME internationalization and attracts growing scholarly attention.

Nested within institutional theory and the political economy perspective, this study aims to examine Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI)-supporting organizations and fostering mechanisms for its SMEs in Europe’s largest economy, Germany.

The authors conduct a multiple-case study to present rich insights from elite interviews with representatives of Chinese and German governmental organizations, intermediary parties and specialized OFDI consultants. In addition, the authors analyze secondary data such as presentations, websites, brochures, social media and recent Chinese OFDI policies for SMEs. The findings are triangulated by interviewing business owners and senior executives of seven Chinese SMEs that have invested in Germany.

Cooperating with Germany’s federal government, China’s ministries implemented an effective OFDI support network in Germany, which connects and benefits both economies. This includes Chinese governmental organizations, privately-held national champions, German–Chinese business associations and linked intermediary parties. These organizations support SMEs through four main mechanisms: networking and information, mutually beneficial knowledge transfer between innovation partners, lobbying for potential cooperation and an objective picture of Chinese OFDI and facilitating investment services.

This study advances OFDI theory and contributes to the growing discussion on the internationalization of Chinese SMEs by shedding light on China’s OFDI support organizations and mechanisms in the German market. The study also offers practical contributions. Understanding better how governments can spur internationalization is vital, as it determines the effectiveness of policymaking and fosters international mutual understanding, cultural exchange and firm growth and innovation (Ahlstrom, 2010), and hence ultimately contributes positively to society. Moreover, knowing the specific OFDI support organizations and measures China is currently adopting can serve as a helpful orientation for Chinese entrepreneurs who plan to invest in Germany.

Personality profiling in today’s business world has become an essential organisational development practice targeted at identifying a set of employees' traits, which differentiate an employee from one another. Given the assumption that personality traits form an essential indicator of developing the potential of an individual workforce, possible to establish how employees function in a certain job role and their suitability for the particular tasks in an organisation. This study aims to explore the relationship between personality traits, assessment centres (ACs) quality and management development in Nigeria telecommunication organisation among its managers.

The study employed multi-stage sampling techniques and further stratified the hierarchy of the management and finally used a simple random sampling strategy on each stratum. A combination of 482 managers in Nigerian telecommunication organisations participated in this study. The study investigated 12 hypotheses and 1 mediating postulation. Multiple scales were adapted to measure dimensions of endogenous and exogenous variables along the path of mediating variables of the study. The study employed a cross-sectional survey approach to administering the research instrument across all the departments among the managers of the organisations. A structural equation model of assessment was used to analyse the data collected from managers of the telecoms organisations.

The outcome of the study was significant, 10 of the postulated hypotheses were found to be significant while 3 were not significant. The study revealed that a combination of openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion personality have no significant relationship with the AC. Also, employees who are high in neuroticism like being emotionally unstable did not find a significant relationship with the AC. In a similar situation, the combined effect of all the big-five personalities was not significant in management development among the managers of the telecommunication industry. The AC is discovered to mediate between personality traits and management development. Individually, the big-five model finds a significant relationship with AC and management development, respectively.

The study is restricted to managers of the Nigerian telecoms industry alone and not all the entire workforce. It adopted cross-sectional analysis to make an inference on all the managers of the organisations. The implication is that the period of the view of a particular point in a sequence of the event may not be representative. Another implication is that the results from the cross-sectional design are for the relationship, and they do not indicate causation.

In practice, this study has shown that personality profiling is important to managing organisational behaviour to highlight a set of traits of employees suitable for peculiar roles. This study implies that personality elements constitute a vital signal of the potential development of the workforce. It helps to illuminate an individual functioning style in a certain task situation, therefore determining both professional and managerial suitability in performing a given role.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the startup models adopted by entrepreneurs in launching platform enterprises, and the effectiveness of business incubators across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Data reflecting origin, models, services, ownership and other variables were collected on over 600 platforms and 196 incubators, and were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Market portfolio of the platform startups is dominated by independent models, as incubators and accelerators were found to be inadequate in platform establishment within the region in terms of the services rendered to incubatees. The results also indicate that private ownership still dominates the startup ecosystem with a scant presence of public participation and almost a complete absence of public-private partnerships.

This exploratory study is constrained by a limited access to information on the platform ecosystem within the SSA region, curbing the scope of empirical work; but serves as a foundation for further investigations within the domain.

The paper highlights the imperative for African Governments to make conscious efforts in driving enabling policies that will help bridge the gaps identified in facilitating the development of the region’s emergent platform economy.

The paper empirically elucidates the limited availability of critical resources necessary in supporting the successful development and growth of platform startups; and helps explain why the platform ecosystem within the region, though very active in the last decade, has not been laden with landmark and scaled innovations.