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The current research explores the structural elaboration of municipal American police organizations, specifically, the structural complexity of police organizations and its relationship to time. The purpose of this paper is to describe and test essential elements of the structural elaboration hypothesis.

The authors explore the structural elaboration hypothesis utilizing a sample of 219 large police departments across the USA. Data are drawn from multiple waves of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and are analyzed using tobit and OLS regression techniques.

While there is some evidence that police departments are becoming more elaborate, little evidence for the structural elaboration hypothesis as a function of time is found.

This project is the first to specifically explore the structural elaboration hypothesis across multiple time points. Additionally, results highlight structural trends across a panel of large American police organizations and provide potential explanations for changes. Suggestions for large-scale policing data collection are also provided.

Specialized police gang units are a rapidly emerging form of concentrated social control. Prior research, however, into the creation of specialized gang units suffers from a number of theoretical and methodological shortcomings. These shortcomings make it difficult to understand which of several potential explanations can best account for the establishment of specialized police gang units. Three perspectives are examined that have been hypothesized by policymakers and academics to explain the creation of gang units: contingency theory, social threat theory, and resource dependency theory. Using data obtained from police departments and communities around the country, the explanatory power of measures derived from these three theories is explored, while controlling for several environmental and organizational influences.

Despite the growing popularity of ride-sharing in China, our understanding regarding users' trust and behavioral intention toward this new type of hailing service is still limited. This study aims to examine the joint influences of institution-based, process-based and characteristic-based antecedents on customers' trust and continuance intention toward ride-sharing. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate if the relative influences of institution-based and process-based antecedents on trust are contingent upon customers' prior experience.

Drawing upon trust-building literature and the elaboration-likelihood model, we developed a research model and conducted an online survey to users of Didi, the largest ride-sharing platform in China. We used the structural equation modeling technique to analyze the collected data and examine the proposed research model.

Ther major research findings of the study suggest that structural assurance, government support, platform reputation and disposition to trust exhibit significant and different degrees of influences on customers' trust beliefs and continuance intention toward ride-sharing. A multi-group analysis further suggests that customers with less use experience focus more on government support and platform reputation, while customers with more use experience are more likely influenced by structural assurance.

The study contributes to the extant literature by identifying the joint influences of institutional-based, process-based and characteristic-based antecedents on users' continuance intention of ride-sharing service and uncovers the mediation mechanism of trust and perceived risk. Moreover, the study refines the boundary condition of the proposed research model by revealing the moderating effect of use experience.

This research aims to comprehensively investigate when and how cognitive conflict benefits team innovation in cross-functional project teams (CFPTs), by exploring the moderating role of knowledge leadership and dual mediation mechanisms of elaboration of task-related information/knowledge and affective conflict.

All hypotheses have been empirically tested by using structural equation model to analyze the quantitative data from a questionnaire survey covering 73 CFPTs in China.

Results indicate that knowledge leadership positively moderates the relationship between cognitive conflict and CFPT innovation. This moderating effect is directly or indirectly revealed by the dual mediating roles of task-related information/knowledge elaboration and affective conflict, which are two processes manifesting whether cognitive conflict can or cannot be incorporated into team innovation.

Despite the external validity of results limited by convenient sampling method, the findings offer implications for promoting CFPT innovation. This can be achieved by developing competent knowledge leadership into team sensegiver, dissent reconciler and facilitator to accentuate benefits of cognitive conflict in information/knowledge elaboration and attenuate the likelihood of escalating to affective conflict.

This study advances the understanding of why cognitive conflict has an equivocal effect on team innovation in the context of CFPT by originally revealing how leaders’ role in information/knowledge management acts as a contingency and suggesting the dual mediating mechanisms that reflect the contingent impact. Project-based teams or organizations, characterized by cognitive clashes, can enhance innovation performance by shaping the meaningfulness of information/knowledge activities triggered by cognitive conflict.

The effectiveness of a message and its attributes have become important for digital media. This study aims to investigate how different elements of a website including both argument-oriented and emotional stimuli based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) can affect the issue involvement and change the attitude of the website visitors of a healthcare service provider.

The Ministry of Health and Education (MOHME) website was selected to explore how its content and design can persuade visitors. An online survey was conducted on 355 adults engaging in health protection behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis showed that one design element, i.e. website navigation and one social cue, i.e. social connectedness, have positive impact on issue involvement, while social presence and website satisfaction have a negative effect on issue involvement because of the random fluctuation suppressor effect. In addition, prior knowledge significantly influenced the issue's involvement. Further, website satisfaction has impacted attitudes directly. There was no significant relationship between argument quality and issue involvement.

Previous works have studied health-related behaviors in offline contexts; however, the scholars have not focused on the individuals' persuasion using ELM regarding the healthcare services provided in online communities. The results of the current study have theoretical and practical implications for scholars, website designers and policymakers.

This paper seeks to detail an exploratory examination of a multidimensional, creativity‐based theoretical model of opportunity recognition originally proposed by Hills et al. and later refined by Lumpkin et al., but never empirically tested. The paper also aims to examine the relationship between individual dimensions of the model and creativity.

Analyses were conducted using AMOS software on a sample of 145 entrepreneurs. One structural equation model (SEM) and three confirmatory factor analysis models were tested.

The five‐dimensional model – consisting of preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, and elaboration – was determined to be the best fitting model. The SEM model also indicated that incubation and elaboration were significantly related to creativity. Overall, a multidimensional, creativity‐based approach to modeling opportunity recognition is supported by this study.

Cross‐sectional data do not allow for testing of the process aspect of the model; however, they do provide evidence that the model can stand up to empirical tests of the five elements of the model. Future research should examine opportunity using multiple dimensions and a creativity perspective. Additional research is needed to examine the process aspects of opportunity recognition.

Fostering opportunity recognition processes that are iterative and involve multiple stages is likely to promote more creative entrepreneurial outcomes.

This study provides one of the few examples of a multidimensional perspective on opportunity recognition as well as an empirical examination of a creativity‐based theoretical model of opportunity recognition.

This study aims to investigate the mechanism of the misinformation spread based on the elaboration likelihood model and the effects of four factors – emotion, topic, authority and richness – on the depth, breadth and structural virality of misinformation spread.

The authors collected 2,514 misinformation microblogs and 142,006 reposts from Weibo, used deep learning methods to identify the emotions and topics of misinformation and extracted the structural characteristics of the spreading network using the network analysis method.

Results show that misinformation has a smaller spread size and breadth than true news but has a similar spread depth and structural virality. The differential influence of emotions on the structural characteristics of misinformation propagation was found: sadness can promote the breadth of misinformation spread, anger can promote depth and disgust can promote depth and structural virality. In addition, the international topic, the number of followers, images and videos can significantly and positively influence the misinformation's spread size, depth, breadth and structural virality.

The influencing factors of the structural characteristics of misinformation propagation are clarified, which is helpful for the detection and management of misinformation.

Bridging indistinct relationships and online loyalty has become an important strategy for online interest-based communities' operators and firms. The objective of this study is to draw on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to advance our understanding of the influences on the development of relationship quality and the consequent impact on members' loyalty to online communities.

To test the hypotheses the authors identified and selected four interest-based online communities in Taiwan. The online survey yielded 331 completed questionnaires from members of interest-based online communities and the authors analysed the results using the structural equation modelling approach.

The findings show that argument quality and source credibility positively affect members' perceived relationship quality, which has a positive and significant effect on behavioural loyalty, and personal relevance and user expertise positively moderate the relationship between argument quality and relationship quality and negatively moderate the relationship between source credibility and relationship quality.

While this study has produced meaningful insights for investigating the informational processing influences on relationship quality and subsequent behavioural loyalty through the ELM perspective, the samples may not allow researchers to draw more general conclusions across different types of community contexts. The data were collected only from interest-based communities. Examining this model across different types of online communities, such as transaction-, relationship-, or fantasy-based ones, would help establish the generalisability of these results beyond the current context.

The present study can help managers of online communities recognise the differential effects of these information processes across a user population and customise optimal strategies that best fit the unique characteristics of their community members. For making argument quality more convincing, Toulmin's (1958) model of argumentation could serve as an appropriate mechanism. Moreover it is crucial to provide various indicators of source credibility for information content.

The paper addresses a gap in the research by using ELM to better understand the influences on the development of relationship quality and the impact on members' loyalty. Understanding these dynamics is critical since it: enriches the relationship marketing and information management literature by addressing the role of information content in the management and success of online communities; helps online community managers customise optimal strategies for their members, thereby fostering members' loyalty and their platform's competitive advantage; and illuminates two influential processes that can achieve the desired attitude change in the context of online communities.

The purpose of this paper is to explain and develop a classification of cognitive structures (or typologies of thought), previously designated as spoke, chain and network thinking by Kinchin et al.

The paper shows how concept mapping can be used to reveal these conceptual typologies and endeavours to place the concept‐mapping method in the broader context of learning styles and learning theory.

The findings suggest that spoke structures are indicative of a naïve epistemology, or of “learning‐readiness”; chain structures are indicators of “goal‐orientation” and networks are indicators of expertise. Furthermore, change that comprises simple elaboration of existing spokes or chains is likely to be the result of surface learning styles and the emergence of networks indicative of deep learning. The utility of these different cognitive approaches is discussed.

The work is limited by the general lack of empirical testing, but the approach is presented as an important source of hypotheses for future research.

The practical implications of the research are considerable. First, concept mapping provides a framework for documenting and assessing understanding at “novice” and “expert” levels. Second, where definitive criteria can be developed from the learning styles literature, cognitive change in the course of learning can be evaluated to distinguish between deep versus surface or holist versus serialist approaches, for example.

The papers original and comprises a synthetic approach to the study of learning style and learning theory through the use of the concept‐mapping method. It has both practical and theoretical value because it suggests a new approach and is an important source of testable hypotheses.