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The circular economy (CE) requires that ‘used’ materials continue to be in circulation after their initial use has finished. Materials are typically sourced in the building industry as new materials in bulk that carry guarantees of safety, quality and delivery. The distributed and diverse origins of used materials mean that they do not normally carry these guarantees. Furthermore, existing potential procurement systems for reused materials such as eBay allow users to present their auctions in a loosely structured form that can make it difficult to manage and procure multiple items to satisfy the quantities, condition and type required by the contractor. Therefore, this chapter proposes an information system to support the agile procurement of used materials at a scale that is appropriate for construction projects to support the CE. It describes the development of a tool called ‘JunkUp’ that would allow multiple auctions of similar items from diverse sellers to be managed as a single item. Based on this system, in future work, it should be possible to use this tool to test strategies to address the risk to safety, quality and delivery of reused materials in construction. This should ultimately lead to the opportunity to increase material reuse (and reduce waste) in the building and construction sector and support an agile CE for the building industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies and competitive advantages of Emirate Airlines that have led to exceptional performance while the overall airline industry globally has faced multibillion‐dollar losses in 2009.

The authors' professional experience, extensive literature review, and personal communications with selected personnel of Emirate Airlines on the subject provided the foundation for this research.

As the global business environment becomes increasingly competitive, the airline industry has also had to respond to the current business scenario, while facing devastating falling demands, shattered consumer confidence, and collapsing yields. However, in 2009, Emirate Airlines reported phenomenal growth and astounding profits while their rivals faced agonizing losses. This paper explores and examines the competitive advantage of Emirate Airlines. The major finding is that the formulation and implementation of appropriate strategies has led to the exceptional performance, profitability, and success of Emirate Airlines.

The competitive strategies – such as operational strategies, generic strategies, intensive strategies, and diversification strategies – can be helpful for firms to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals. Also, the ability to leverage, innovate, and pioneer new ideas, as well as a visionary management team, are essential for exceptional performance of an organization.

The paper provides a model for strategically managing the performance of an aspiring firm, even though the entire industry is facing distressing circumstances.

Based on the person-environment (P-E) fit theory, this study aims to explore the effect of customer mistreatment on the reduced service performance of hospitality employees mediated by person-job (P-J) fit perceptions and moderated by job crafting.

The authors tested this study’s hypotheses with a nine-day diary study involving 83 service employees located in Lanzhou, China; a total of 548 daily surveys were completed. The authors used multilevel structural equation modeling to analyze the data.

Employees who experienced daily customer mistreatment suffered diminished P-J fit perceptions, leading to lower levels of service performance the next day. In addition, job crafting significantly buffered the impact of customer mistreatment on P-J fit perceptions and the indirect impact of customer mistreatment on service performance through P-J fit perceptions.

Given the damaging effect that customer mistreatment has on service performance, where employees’ P-J fit perceptions are impaired, hotel managers should implement service competence improvement training programs and managerial preventions to reduce the possibility of customer mistreatment behavior. The moderating role of job crafting behavior suggests that managers should offer supportive practices (i.e. job autonomy) to encourage job crafting behaviors among employees.

This study reveals that individuals’ P-J fit perceptions can explain the damaging impacts of customer mistreatment on service performance, a finding that contributes valuable information to the literature on customer mistreatment and P-E fit. Second, this study also tests the impact of individuals’ job crafting behaviors in terms of mitigating the negative effect of customer mistreatment. Finally, this study’s findings broaden the scope of predictors of P-J fit perceptions by revealing that customer mistreatment can pose a threat to hospitality employees’ P-J fit perceptions.

Adopting a multi-level research approach, this study aims to investigate the impact of employee engagement on team performance. It further explores the mediating effects of employee commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour on the employee engagement–team performance relationship.

The study follows a quantitative method. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire survey using snowball and convenience sampling. Descriptive statistics and bi-variate correlation analyses were conducted using SmartPLS 2 and SPSS 20 software, and subsequently, a structural equation model was developed.

The study suggests that better employee engagement could improve team performance in organizational contexts. Organizational commitment and citizenship behaviour played a mediating role in the employee engagement–team performance relationship. Further research on the meditating effects of demographic factors is suggested to advance knowledge in the employee engagement domain.

Based on premises of the social exchange theory and the employee stewardship theory, the study integrates multi-level variables to impact of individual employee engagement on organizational team performance. The findings of the study contribute to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the impact of individual-level variables on team-level performance. It reiterates the need for multi-level modelling of organizational behavioural research.

The study used a multi-theoretical approach to investigate team performance in organizational contexts, i.e. individual employee engagement, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. This integrated model using predictors from multiple levels demonstrates that team performance could be enhanced from interactions of different factors of individual behaviour.

The rapid shift in the emerging pedagogies of customer behavior has changed the business preferences in the hotel sector. This study prioritizes the hotel's main task to develop customer re-patronage intention. Keeping in line with these factors, this study investigates the impact of customer empowerment on re-patronage intentions through customer value co-creation in the hotel sector of Pakistan. Furthermore, the study examines the moderating impact of sensation-seeking on customers.

A total of 350 potential customers participated in the online survey using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Partial least square structural equation modeling was employed using Smart PLS-3 to test the projected hypotheses.

This study reveals that empowered customers improve their behavior and involvement in value co-creation, which, in turn, increases the prospects of re-patronage intention. Moreover, sensation-seeking moderates between consumer empowerment and customer value co-creation.

Customer-dominant logic and sense-making theory present interesting insights where customer empowerment and value co-creation have a positively significant impact on customer re-patronage intention. Findings also elaborate on a significant mediating role of customer value co-creation activities, which is an interesting call for hotel managers to add thought-sharing ecosystems. The suggested factors add long-lasting results in terms of revenues, performance and global GDP.

It provides guidance for the hotel managers through novel factors that activate the customer to augment an intention to re-patron. Moreover, it provides a direction to add sensation-seeking strategies that strengthen the effects on customer empowerment and value co-creation.

This study has its uniqueness in introducing an environment in hotels where customers are empowered to further actively participate in value co-creation initiatives, along with sensation-seeking acting as a stimulus among them. These factors have greatly impacted the hotel's objectives (i.e. re-patronage intention).