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This study aims to investigate the drivers of halal-certified firms in Taiwan, a Muslim minority country, to provide halal products or services.

This study used a quantitative method by spreading offline and online surveys toward halal-certified firms in Taiwan. Data were obtained from 41 responses and were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling.

This study discovers that firms in Taiwan practice halal business as they possess halal perceived value and innovation orientation. In addition, the interplays of the antecedents, the internal and external drivers, also play an excellent role in shaping the firms’ practices on halal business.

Despite the implications, this study was built under several limitations that are potentially addressed by future research. The limitations lay in the low response rate, indistinctive analysis based on the firms’ market orientations (domestic or international) and the exclusion of other relevant variables to the conceptual model.

Practically, this study clarifies that firms in a Muslim minority country can be encouraged to engage in halal business in several ways. Those with a good understanding of halal usefulness are oriented to innovation, exposed to external pressures about halal business and equipped with specific internal settings that can translate the halal business phenomenon as an opportunity, not a threat.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to unveil the drivers of halal business practices of firms in a Muslim minority country.

Model Maker (MM) is a commercial rapid prototyping (RP) system using tiny jets to deposit thermoplastic materials onto a platform to build physical models and the associated support structures. Also, a cutter is employed to plane off the deposited surface in order to maintain smaller layer thickness and hence, model accuracy. The model’s accuracy is mainly affected by the profile layer thickness. The interior filling does not affect the model accuracy or layer thickness very much, but it significantly affects the building time. Hence, a new interior fast filling of MM using a spraying nozzle is proposed in this paper. The detail design, construction, and evaluation of the new proposed fast interior‐spraying process are presented. The results show that the building time using spaying nozzle is only 15 per cent of the time used by the original process.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response (SOR) model and relationship marketing theory, the paper aims to examine whether servicescape influences trust, service credibility and affective commitment amongst older adults, and their effects on the intention to recover in a rehabilitation setting.

The study takes a quantitative approach, applying confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model to examine the responses. A total of 400 data were collected using questionnaires distributed to older adults in Malaysia. Respondents were selected based on two criteria: they should be over 65 years, and they should have been visiting the rehabilitation centres in the last 12 months.

The results suggest that trust and affective commitment play significant roles in increasing the intention of older adults to recover. Contradicting previous research findings, service credibility does not have any significant impact on the intention to recover as hypothesised. The direct effect of service credibility on trust and affective commitment enhances the premise further that the relationship between service credibility and intention to recover is primarily indirect. Even though we expect servicescape to be a significant driver in forming the behaviour of older adults, its impact on intention to recover, trust and affective commitment remain non-significant, with the exception of service credibility.

Past studies have focused on the roles of servicescape and service credibility separately. We have extended the literature by examining the combined effects of both servicescape and service credibility. The findings, therefore, contribute to a deeper understanding of the literature on the intention–behaviour relationship in the context of healthcare, as well as in service marketing.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of hotels’ brand attributes on consumers’ (patrons’ and guests’) by fostering brand credibility and brand attachment towards the propensity of word-of-mouth. The study uses the signaling theory to assess the relationships among the constructs.

The study adopts partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach to validate the research model and the research hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, 474 travellers in Malaysia were recruited.

The empirical results reveal that hotel attributes have direct influence on brand credibility and brand attachment. Similarly, brand credibility has direct influence on brand attachment, while brand attachment also has direct influence on word-of-mouth. Consumers’ brand credibility partially mediates the relationship between hotel attributes and brand attachment. Likewise, consumer’s brand attachment also partially mediates the relationship between hotel attributes and word-of-mouth. Last but not least, brand credibility and brand attachment sequentially mediate the relationship between hotel attributes and word-of-mouth. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed together with its limitation and future research direction.

First, in terms of measures, brand attachment construct is operationalised as a formative second-order construct, with three reflective variables (brand passion, self-brand connection and brand affection) as the first-order constructs. In addition, brand credibility is also operationalised as a formative second-order construct, with three reflective variables (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness) as the first-order constructs. On the other hand, hotel attributes construct is operationalised formatively as a higher-order abstraction of three categories of hotel facilities, which were also operationalised formatively (essential, culture compliant and in-room facilities). Second, this paper offers new insight into how brand credibility and brand attachment influence the relationship between hotel attributes and word-of-mouth. In a sustainability era, dissemination of complete and correct information is vital, to ensure consumers’ acceptance (e.g. likelihood to recommend to others). Thus, it is suggested that hotel managers to pay close attention to the role of brand credibility and brand attachment in tourists’ hotel choice, to secure sustainable brand.

Cyber technology is an extremely complicated field and the internet is being increasingly used as a place to commit crimes using personal computers, as well as network‐based computers. Although cyber investigation is still in the early stages of its development, the burgeoning use of the internet has increased the necessity for digital investigations. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of the latest in digital comparison for cyber‐crime investigation with the studies of IP‐address and time in computer systems.

The approach to improving a cyber‐crime investigation is proposed in three stages: independent verification of digital clues, corresponding information from different sources, and preparation of a valid argument.

If the police and other authorities do not stay on top of this problem, they may lose the battle to control this cyber‐crime explosion. The paper discusses how Taiwanese police investigate cyber‐crime and the experience is able to propagate when analyzing IP‐address and time with crime‐case. It is believed that this proposed approach creates a comprehensive guide that provides support and assistance to crime investigators.

IP‐address and time, both indicated in this paper, are the key ingredients to identify the suspect in the beginning of investigation works. As the study shows: there is no guarantee that there always will be the “right” evidence to prove everything; investigators should try their utmost to avoid making mistakes; criminal investigators must find additional clues and proof to validate their suspicions.

This paper illustrates an approach to the investigation of cyber‐crime in the case of studying IP‐address and time. It is believed that the research can efficiently assist law enforcement officials in dealing with ever‐increasing cyber‐crime by using effective digital evidence.

This paper aims to raise some important questions for cross‐cultural research on occupational stress and well‐being and sets the stage for the five papers in the special issue.

This paper reviews some previous literature on cross‐cultural understanding of occupational stress and well‐being, why such research is difficult to undertake, and summarizes the five original manuscripts that comprise this special issue.

Manuscripts in this special issue represent authors from several countries and report data collected from over a dozen countries. Some contributions attempt to replicate previous North American and European research findings in other countries while others undertake comparative studies of two or more countries.

It is important to undertake more cross‐cultural comparative research of the effects of occupational stress and well‐being to determine whether any boundary conditions exist for previous results based in North American and European samples. In addition, future research should include assessments of some national culture values.

Resource scarcity is a major difficulty facing firms that engage in new product development (NPD) projects. The purpose of this paper is to understand how resource allocation strategies affect NPD performance and which strategy is the best alternative, a research and development (R&D) process model is constructed using system dynamics.

Moreover, resource allocation strategies are categorized into two types: design‐stage‐first strategy and manufacturing‐stage‐first strategy, and several important indicators of performance evaluation are defined. Then different workload scenarios are developed to test the relationships between resource allocation strategy and various NPD performance measures.

The most important finding from simulation results is that a firm should allocate its resources into early development stage first in order to obtain superior R&D performance.

This paper has successfully constructed new system dynamics model for quantifying the performances of R&D process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of work intensity and of work hours on potential antecedents and work and well‐being consequences.

Data are collected from 309 male and female managers working in 3‐, 4‐ and 5‐star hotels in Beijing, China using anonymously completed questionnaires with a 90 percent response rate.

The 15‐item measure of work intensity is found to have high internal consistency reliability. Work intensity is significantly correlated with work hours, but modestly. Gender, age and organizational level predict work intensity but not work hours; males, younger hotel managers and hotel managers at higher organizational levels indicate greater work intensity. Hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for personal demographic and work situation characteristics, show that work intensity but not work hours is a more consistent and significant predictor of work outcomes (e.g. work engagement) and psychological well‐being (e.g. exhaustion, work‐family conflict). Somewhat surprisingly, neither work intensity nor work hours have significant relationships with important work outcomes (job satisfaction, career satisfaction, intent to quit). The interaction of work intensity and work hours is not a significant predictor of work or well‐being outcomes. Interestingly, work intensity is positively related to work engagement and negatively related to indicators or psychological well‐being.

These findings are only partially consistent with previous conclusions suggesting the possible role played by cultural values and level of economic development.

This study aims to examine the location determinants of market expansion of the biotechnology industry to China’s second-tier cities.

The authors involved 68 top management officials of biopharmaceutical firms in China by applying triangulation data collection, which comprises depth interview, questionnaire survey and focus group discussion.

Data collection results reveal the following: 20 location determinants are determined and categorized into 5 clusters (i.e. 3 cost/tax factors, 5 demand factors, 1 macroeconomic factor, 3 socio-political factors and 8 strategic factors); among these 20 factors, 9 factors contribute to firm benefits, 5 factors open opportunities for business growth and 6 factors pose potential risks.

This study proposes a framework of location determinants for biotech pharmaceutical industry in expanding second-tier cities of China market. The findings of this study can be used as a reference for multinational companies, specifically in market expansion to second-tier cities in China.

The purpose of this study is to present a fractal model of thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces based on elliptical asperity.

The effects of contact load, fractal dimensional, fractal roughness and eccentricity on thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces were investigated by using numerical simulation.

The results indicate that the thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces increases with the increase of the contact load, increases with the increase of the fractal dimension and decreases with the increase of the fractal roughness. The thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces increases with the increase of eccentricity. The shape of the asperity of rough surfaces has an important influence on the thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces.

A fractal model of thermal contact conductance of rough surfaces based on elliptical asperity was established in this study. The achievements of this study provide some theoretical basis for the investigation of thermal contact conductance of bolted joint surfaces.