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This paper aims to develop and validate a scale measurement of trust in long-term relations, specifically in the maintenance phase, between buyers and sellers. Relying on a cognitive conception, existing scales do not measure the affective trust occurring in the maintenance stage of the relationship.

Three surveys were conducted with purchasing managers of enterprises in various business-to-business (B2B) sectors to build a bi-dimensional measurement scale of affective trust as a sentiment of security and affective attachment. For measurement scale development, established construction procedures were followed, including qualitative and quantitative surveys. The process can be summarized as: domain specification, generation of questionnaire items, empirical survey and iterative process of scale purification based on reliability assessment and validity checks.

The results indicate satisfactory psychometric properties of the new Affective Trust Scale (ATS). Furthermore, they demonstrate the scale’s measurement invariance across business sectors. The research confirms the importance of affective aspects of trust and supports the reliability and validity of the measure. Nomological validity assessment of the scale shows that sentiment of security-based trust impacts investment in business relationships.

The ATS developed and tested in the B2B French context needs to be evaluated taking into account several limitations. First, the specific context was a sample of buyers in France experiencing lasting relationships, suggesting that an extension of the study to other countries would be desirable. Also, the ATS needs to be further validated and confirmed in other contexts, for instance, within buyer–supplier relationship intensity.

The ATS can help firms to identify key parameters in buyer–seller relationships. It is important for the seller to collect information to determine the stage of the relationship before spending money on targeting customers, as they may not be ready to broaden the scope of their contract. The ATS can be very useful for companies to assess the state of the relationship and the strength of the bond in a timely manner and, therefore, anticipate the relational orientation. Segmentation based on relational phases requires tailoring to each form of trust strategies and hence the accurate identification of the relationship phase could help to better categorize and subcategorize customers with respect to the sentiment of security and affective attachment degrees. Furthermore, an understanding of the two dimensions is useful for key account managers to adjust relationship management toward specific actions (e.g. sentiment of security and/or affective attachment). The ATS could be very useful to guide managers in taking the right decision, by focusing both on sentiment of security and affective attachment dimensions of affective trust.

Affective trust is important to B2B managers, who frequently struggle to build and maintain close relationships with customers and suppliers. This paper adds insights into the complex but important construct of trust. The scale could be used for empirical studies of affective trust in B2B relationships. It may also help marketing managers develop better relationships with partners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the mandatory adoption of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) on firm’s stock liquidity.

Using a random-effects model, this study examines the impact of the mandatory adoption of XBRL (ADOPXBRL) on firm’s stock liquidity of 980 companies pertaining to 13 countries for a period from 2000 to 2016.

This paper finds that the mandatory ADOPXBRL affects negatively and significatively Amihud’s (2002) illiquidity ratio. Therefore, mandatory XBRL adoption enhances the firm’s stock liquidity. In addition, this paper finds that the impact of the mandatory ADOPXBRL on firm’s stock liquidity is more pronounced in civil law countries than in common law countries.

This paper contributes to the literature on the advantage of XBRL especially for the civil law countries by examining the impact of the mandatory ADOPXBRL on firm’s stock liquidity.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of customer knowledge-enabled innovation (CKEI) and suggests a scale for its eventual measurement. The process of the scale development is presented in detail following the Churchill (1979) paradigm. CKEI is defined as the capacity of the organization to introduce new products and services on the basis of effective management of customer knowledge. It reflects the degree to which the company is endowed with the expertise of managing properly customer knowledge in order to enhance innovation.

The CKEI raw scale is mainly composed of 57 items. In an effort to purify the scale measurement, test and validate its psychometric specificities, two surveys were administrated among two independent samples. Respondents were new product managers or marketing managers. One manager per firm was interviewed. The convenience sampling method was applied.

The CKEI scale has been intended to be uni-dimensional. It encompasses three main facets: the integrative capacity of the firm, the structural capacity and the internal management capacity. The developed scale is valid and highly reliable (composite reliability=0.90; variance extracted=0.5). After exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, a pool of ten items was retained for the eventual measurement of the CKEI scale.

CKEI has been tested in a Tunisian context; continued refinement of the proposed CKEI scale is, undoubtedly, possible and even desired, based on further research in other business environments. Such refinements and modifications could necessitate the inclusion of new items, or the deletion of original ones. In some cases, the hypothesized factor structure may need modifications. To keep abreast with the ever-changing business environment, the paper strongly urged to incorporate these relevant aspects in the scale into the future research, so that a valid measure of CKEI can be ensured on an ongoing basis.

The scale is offered to provide managers with a practical tool for the evaluation of their forces and weaknesses in managing customer knowledge in organizations. It is considered as a barometer allowing them to adjust and to modify continually their innovation strategies focusing on the intellectual capital management.

CKEI is a new concept that is introduced in this research as a knowledge-based capability which helps companies to sustain competitive advantage. The relevance of the CKEI is that it is considered as a dynamic capability integrating both innovation and customer knowledge management theories.