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Fashion retailers are increasingly attempting to categorise fashion clothing according to their perceptions of consumer motivations. However, much of the research in this area centres around economic and demographic considerations, disregarding the social and psychological significance of fashion clothing as a means of forming group identity and differentiation. Knowledge of the form and frequency of these group dynamics involved in fashion clothing purchasing will, potentially, have important implications for retailers and marketers alike. The paper considers prevalent theories on the development of social identification, the role of fashion in facilitating these formations (through the semiotic conveyance and interpretation of information), and the mediating role of culture and lifestyle determinants. The relationship of these theoretical underpinnings to the social interactions of the apparel consumer is explored through the construction of an incipient conceptual framework, underlying the cyclical but capricious nature of clothing choice. Implications for future research are identified.

Corporate responsibility perceptions from stakeholders are becoming more difficult to manage. This is in part because of large amount of social media being projected to stakeholders on a daily basis. In light of this, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate responsibility framing from the social media perspective firm’s performance as defined by abnormal-return (defined as the difference between a single stock or portfolios return and the expected return) and idiosyncratic-risk (defined as the risk of a particular investment because of firm-specific characteristics).

Hypotheses are developed through agenda-setting theory and stakeholder and shareholder viewpoints. The research model is tested using sentiment analysis from a collection of social media from several industries.

The results provide support that three corporate responsibility social media categories (economic, social and environmental-framing) will have different impacts (delayed, immediate) on abnormal-return and idiosyncratic-risk. This study finds differences between immediate (one-day lag) and delayed (three-day lag) associations on abnormal-return and idiosyncratic-risk.

This study also suggests differences between the amount and sentiment of corporate responsibility social media framing on abnormal-return and idiosyncratic-risk. Finally, results identify interaction effects between different corporate responsibility social media categories.

Despite the extensive adoption of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology across many industry supply chains, the extent of adoption in healthcare is far behind the earlier expectation. The purpose of this study is to better understand the current RFID adoption in healthcare by looking beyond the existing body of work using both the task-technology fit (TTF) framework and network externalities theories.

A survey is employed in this study, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique is used to test the hypotheses of the proposed model.

The findings are twofold. First, both TTF and network externalities exert a positive impact on the RFID adoption in the healthcare sector; and second, no synergistic effect can be found between these two for further increasing the adoption. This is different from what the extant research found on other technology adoptions across various supply chains.

This paper provides contributions to both researchers and practitioners. For researchers, this study enriches the body of knowledge of RFID adoption by being the first to apply the network externalities and TTF theories to predict the adoption of RFID in healthcare. For healthcare practitioners, to make the RFID adoption easier and more effective, any initial applications of RFID tools should be centered on those for which there is a more natural application. Further, for those who propose an RFID adoption should start with a product that has a sizable adoption community; this may help persuade senior management to make the adoption decision.

The purpose of this study is to examine how supply chain strategy affects a firm's sustainability performance and how the strength of that relationship is influenced by managerial authentic leadership (AL) and its associated impact on interorganizational citizenship behavior (ICB).

Building on the intersection of three theories: organizational ambidexterity, AL and ICB, a mediated moderation model is developed and tested using structural equation modeling based on the responses from a cross-sectional survey administered by the authors.

The results reveal that an ambidextrous supply chain strategy is positively related to firm sustainability performance and this relationship is strengthened by AL. Furthermore, this study finds that this moderating relationship is partially mediated by ICB.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first to empirically test the effect of supply chain ambidexterity on sustainability performance by explicitly considering how leadership characteristics can both directly and indirectly affect the efficacy of this relationship. The findings complement existing literature by providing novel insights into the ability of firm supply chain strategy to affect sustainability performance.

Although foreign ownership has been widely studied to show its impact on firm performance, the findings are mixed and the underlying rational to explain the impact is not entirely clear. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a direct relationship between foreign ownership and performance or if this relationship is indirect and affected by mediating and moderating variables such as international diversification and competitive environment.

Financial data, survey data and other financial measures for known indices are used in the research, and SPSS and SEM (Stata 15) analyses are used to test empirically derived hypotheses.

Results from this study indicate that the relationship between foreign ownership and firm performance is mediated by international diversification, such that higher levels of both foreign corporate and foreign institutional ownership lead to higher levels of international diversification, which then lead to higher levels of firm performance. Results from this study also indicate that the competitive environment moderates the relationship between a firm’s level of international diversification and performance, such that the effect of international diversification on performance is greater as the environment becomes more competitive.

This study provides empirical evidence for managers to seriously consider the impact of foreign ownership on decisions involving international diversification, along with competitive environment, when formulating and implementing organizational strategies.

This study extends prior research examining the effects of foreign ownership on firm performance by uniquely showing how international diversification mediates the relationship between foreign ownership and firm performance and how the competitive environment moderates the relationship between international diversification and firm performance.

This paper aims to study the drug launch strategies and their effects on new drug performance in an intensely competitive emerging pharmaceutical market such as the one in China.

Data on market share, sales, related firm size and annual profit were obtained for the period, 2004-2008. Profile deviation and cluster analysis approaches were applied in this study.

There is a significant effect of an optimal launch strategy on new drug performance given the respective resource availability and the market environment situations.

The study suggests that multi-national corporations may prove resilient in the emerging economies through both innovative and cost-driven offerings in different therapeutic categories.

This research is unique in studying the drug launch strategies across both foreign firms and local firms in a competitive emerging pharmaceutical market.

This research note investigates the relationship between the constructs of professional skepticism and client advocacy as they relate to accountants’ roles as auditors and tax professionals. Although Pinsker, Pennington, and Schafer (2009) implicitly treat advocacy and professional skepticism as opposing constructs, the purpose of this research note is to explicitly examine whether an accounting professional can be both a professional skeptic and a client advocate. Two hundred and six experienced accounting professionals with a mixture of accounting and tax backgrounds responded to a client advocacy scale (Pinsker et al., 2009) and a professional skepticism scale (Hurtt, 2010). Results indicate that while tax professionals have higher levels of client advocacy than auditors, both groups have similar levels of professional skepticism. Moreover, no correlation emerges between participants’ responses to the advocacy and the full professional skepticism scale or five of its six sub-scales. These results provide evidence that client advocacy is a separate and distinct construct from professional skepticism. These findings have implications for behavioral accounting researchers by demonstrating that these two constructs are not related; thus, it is important to separately measure client advocacy and professional skepticism when they are relevant to a research question.