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Award systems play the central role in public procurement, since they determine what is considered by the contracting authority as ‘the most economically advantageous tender.’ Many award systems that are used in practice have serious shortcomings, which are caused by the use of relative scores. In this article, the consequences of those shortcomings are demonstrated, using examples from real procurement procedures and case law. The examples are analyzed with methods from econometrics, social choice theory and game theory.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate empirically a research model that depicts the relationships between the identified key value proposition attributes of mobile value‐added services and the core factors of brand equity.

Survey data collected from 497 mobile value‐added service consumers were examined using structural equation modeling to validate the research model.

The results indicate that the mobile service attributes of personalization, identifiability, and perceived enjoyment have significant positive influences on the key brand equity factors, including brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand awareness, and brand associations. Additionally, the results confirm the significance of all four of the brand equity factors in interpreting consumer purchase intention in the context of mobile value‐added service consumption.

The research results provide insights into how mobile value‐added services may be better designed and delivered to enhance brand equity and, in turn, profits.

While the market potential of mobile value‐added services and the importance of brand equity have both been widely recognized, the development and empirical validation of a model that specifically depicts the determinants of mobile value‐added service consumption from a brand‐equity perspective has not yet been undertaken. Consequently, this study investigates the relationships among key m‐commerce attributes, core brand‐equity components, and consumer behaviors. The research results have extended the application and advanced the understanding of previous mobile‐commerce and brand‐equity theories in the context of mobile value‐added service consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different forms of interpersonal conflicts and employees’ psychological empowerment may affect knowledge sharing intentions directly or indirectly via interpersonal trust in the workplace.

Survey data collected from 249 employees of 37 of the top 500 corporations in the manufacturing industry in Taiwan were used for the data analysis. The research model was analyzed using the component-based structural equation modeling technique, namely, the partial least squares (PLS) approach.

The results indicate that both relationship and task conflicts have significant indirect effects on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions via psychological empowerment and trust. Additionally, psychological empowerment significantly influences employees’ knowledge sharing intentions both directly and indirectly via trust.

The primary theoretical implication is an advancement in the understanding of the critical antecedents of and their different effects on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions from the perspectives of conflict management and individual psychological empowerment. Future research may concentrate on investigating the bidirectional interactions among trust, relationship conflicts and task conflicts in different knowledge-sharing contexts.

This study provides practical insights into conflict resolution intended to facilitate psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust that encourage knowledge sharing in the workplace.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first knowledge sharing study that empirically examines how task and relationship conflicts affect employees’ knowledge sharing intentions differently via the mediation of their perceived psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust in one another in the workplace.

An alarming number of spreadsheet faults have been reported in the literature, indicating that effective and easy-to-apply spreadsheet testing techniques are not available for “non-technical,” end-user programmers. The purpose of this paper is to alleviate the problem by introducing a metamorphic testing (MT) technique for spreadsheets.

The paper discussed four common challenges encountered by end-user programmers when testing a spreadsheet. The MT technique was then discussed and how it could be used to solve the common challenges was explained. An experiment involving several “real-world” spreadsheets was performed to determine the viability and effectiveness of MT.

The experiment confirmed that MT is highly effective in spreadsheet fault detection, and yet MT is a general technique that can be easily used by end-user programmers to test a large variety of spreadsheet applications.

The paper provides a detailed discussion of some common challenges of spreadsheet testing encountered by end-user programmers. To the best of the authors knowledge, the paper is the first that includes an empirical study of how effective MT is in spreadsheet fault detection from an end-user programmer's perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of oil price shocks on the US Consumer Price Index over the monthly period from 1876:01 to 2014:04.

The author uses the Bai and Perron (2003) structural break test to split the data sample into sub-periods delimited by the computed break dates. Afterwards, the author uses the quantile treatment effects over the full sample and then, by including sub-periods dummies to accommodate the selected structural breaks that drive the relationship between inflation and oil price growth.

The findings include a decreased transmission effect of oil price changes on inflation in recent years; a varied elasticity of inflation to the growth rate of oil prices across the distribution; and, finally, evidence of asymmetry in the relationship between the growth rate of oil prices and inflation, with a higher transmission mechanism for decreasing rather than increasing oil prices.

Policymakers should remain alert to monitoring potential inflation increases and should take precautionary measures to anchor inflation expectations, because inflation reacts differently to positive and negative oil price shocks. Moreover, authorities should consider the asymmetric reaction of inflation to oil price shocks to adopt an appropriate monetary policy strategy to achieve the price stability target.

The paper used a quantile regression model with structural breaks, which has not yet been used in the literature.

This study examines the role of user psychological empowerment (PE) as a specific type of PE in the context of using health information systems (HIS) and incorporates the contribution of autonomous motivation and knowledge sharing intention (KSI) to the resolution of the key dynamics of interpersonal knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) in healthcare organizations.

For the data analysis, survey data were collected from 350 employees at three large teaching hospitals in Taiwan. In this study, the partial least squares technique was used with SmartPLS 3.3 software to validate the research model.

User PE had significant positive effects on autonomous motivation, KSI and KSB. Additionally, autonomous motivation positively affected KSB directly and indirectly via KSI.

Insights into motivation (e.g. user PE and autonomous motivation) play a key role in driving KSI and lead to effective KSB, which aids managers in tailoring their efforts to foster knowledge dissemination and enhance organizational performance.

While finding ways to encourage employees to share knowledge with one another in an organization is an important task, there exists a lack of understanding as to how this task can be accomplished in the context of healthcare organizations. This study is the first to specifically address this issue from a perspective integrating PE and self-determination theory while also incorporating the HIS context with population-specific measures (healthcare organizations) to expand the application of empowerment theory to the information system domain.

The purpose of this paper is to present an adaptive neuro‐sliding mode control scheme for uncertain nonlinear systems with Lyapunov approach.

The paper focuses on neural network (NN) adaptive control for nonlinear systems in the presence of parametric uncertainties. The plant model structure is represented by a NNs system. The essential idea of the online parametric estimation of the plant model is based on a comparison of the measured state with the estimated one. The proposed adaptive neural controller takes advantages of both the sliding mode control and proportional integral (PI) control. The chattering phenomenon is attenuated and robust performances are ensured. Based on Lyapunov stability theorem, the proposed adaptive neural control system can guarantee the stability of the whole closed‐loop system and obtain good‐tracking performances. Adaptive laws are proposed to adjust the free parameters of the neural models.

Simulation results show that the adaptive neuro‐sliding mode control approach works satisfactorily for nonlinear systems in the presence of parametric uncertainties.

The proposed adaptive neuro‐sliding mode control approach is a mixture of classical neural controller with a supervisory controller. The PI controller is used to attenuate the chattering phenomena. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, it is rigorously proved that the stability of the whole closed‐loop system is ensured and the tracking performance is achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of theory building in public procurement by reviewing and classifying manuscripts published in the Journal of Public Procurement (JoPP) from 2001 to 2016.

The articles are divided into four important periods: discovery, agenda setting, embracing and expansion and consolidation. The articles are classified according to a hierarchical level of theory building composed of six levels: rapporteurs, reporters, testers, qualifiers, builders and expanders.

Key findings indicate that public procurement, in light of JoPP publications from 2001 to 2016, is at the tester level. There is also increase in the classification of articles with high level of theoretical contribution over time.