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The purpose of this study is to explore how hotels evolve their dynamic capabilities to adjust their technology-based strategy to improve performance and to gain competitive productivity (CP) during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the aftermath.

In-depth interviews with hoteliers were conducted to unveil their dynamic capabilities amid the pandemic as regard adjustments and performance of self-service technology (SST)-based strategies. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.

Data analysis revealed four types of dynamic capabilities (i.e. sensing, learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities). Equipped with these capabilities, hotels made minor adjustments to their SST strategies. In general, during an economic downturn, hotels refrained from introducing new SSTs. SSTs introduced before the pandemic were used more frequently and received enhanced customer feedback. The findings further revealed that the factors influencing hotels’ application of SSTs before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 remained similar.

This is the first research integrating CP, dynamic capabilities and strategic management process to explain how hotels adjust technological strategies to recover in a suddenly changed environment. Such a framework enables scholars and practitioners from content-oriented and process-oriented perspectives to make quick but sound strategic management decisions in adapting to turbulent environments. This timely study enriches the expertise of using technology as a recovery strategy and contributes to future research on the practical application of SSTs and crisis management.

This study aims to gain insights into how students perceive online examination practices and evaluation, as well as identify the key factors that impact their intentions toward online exams.

This empirical study conducted in India utilized an online survey method between May 24 and June 14, 2022. The data were collected from 712 undergraduate and postgraduate students through a Google Docs questionnaire. Descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), regression and reliability analysis were conducted to analyze the data.

There are many studies related to the adoption of online learning. However, there are limited studies that explore the adoption and acceptance of online examinations and evaluations. This paper intends to fill this gap and tries to highlight important factors influencing online examination usage by the students. Five important factors emerged in the study include “pedagogy, validity, reliability,” “practicality,” “security,” “facilitating condition” and “intention,” The study concludes that taking tests online is preferred for several reasons, including the perceived increased dependability of grades and the decreased cost, time and effort associated with taking exams.

This research explores students' perceptions of learning management systems (LMS)-based online exams and provides insights for students to better prepare and adapt. It assists policymakers in developing fair assessment policies and improving LMS platforms. The study contributes to the theoretical understanding of e-learning and calls for further research to enhance the effectiveness of online exams. It identifies gaps in existing literature and recommends larger sample sizes, broader representation, longitudinal data collection and conversational methods for future research.

This study shows increasing research on e-learning and online examinations, mostly using quantitative methods. The important variables for understanding students' perceptions of online exams are “pedagogy, validity, reliability,” “practicality,” “security,” “facilitating condition” and “intention.” Concerns raised include validity, fairness and security. Electronic exams are more suitable for formative evaluation, and validity, reliability, security and adaptability are key pillars for successful online testing.

There is an increasing recognition in the public audit profession that the emergence of big data as well as the growing use of business analytics by audit clients has brought new opportunities and challenges. That is, should more complex business analytics beyond the customary analytical procedures be used in the engagement and if so, where? Which techniques appear to be most promising? This paper starts the process of addressing these questions by examining extant external audit research. 301 papers are identified that discuss some use of analytical procedures in the public audit engagement. These papers are then categorized by technique, engagement phase, and other attributes to facilitate understanding. This analysis of the literature is categorized into an External Audit Analytics (EAA) framework, the objective of which is to identify gaps, to provide motivation for new research, and to classify and outline the main topics addressed in this literature. Specifically, this synthesis organizes audit research, thereby offering guidelines regarding possible future research about approaches for more complex and data driven analytics in the engagement.

Tremendous change has taken place in organisational structures, networks and strategy over the past 25 years. Yet, a strategic management framework developed 25 years ago has increased in popularity among researchers in the past decade. This paper aims to review how Simons’ Levers of Control (LOC) framework has been used in empirical research studies over the past 25 years.

The findings are based on electronic database searches of papers adopting Simons’ framework published in accounting and management journals.

A total of 45 empirical studies adopting the LOC framework are presented chronologically by research method. The review highlights the far greater use of the framework in qualitative compared to quantitative studies. Qualitative studies have extended the application of the framework to broader organisational issues such as sustainability, environmental accounting and inter-organisational controls. The quantitative studies have mainly sought to add to our understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of the use of interactive control systems.

This paper furthers our understanding of Simons’ framework by synthesising and analysing the literature over 25 years. It provides insight into the varying interpretations of the concepts underlying the framework in empirical studies including differences in operationalisation of the concepts in quantitative studies. In addition, it highlights the application of the framework beyond the original domain in which it was developed. Fruitful areas for future research are pointed to in the paper.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of teaching style, English language and communication and assessment methods on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses such as Statistics for Business 1 and 2, Quantitative Methods for Business, Operations and Production Management and Operations Research in a non-Western setting.

Data was collected from 750 undergraduate business students in third- and fourth-year classes at the UAE University (UAEU). Descriptive statistics were used to gain some insights into the demographic and educational characteristics of respondents and their opinions regarding the importance of the three factors of concern to their understanding of quantitative courses material, along with multiple regression analysis that was used to test the hypotheses of the study.

The results of the present study indicate the importance of the teaching style in terms of the way the lecturer speaks and the pace of presenting the material, in addition to the structure of the lecture in understanding quantitative course material. Additionally, availability and contents of the material on the course website play an important role in helping undergraduate business students understand the subjects of quantitative courses. The study revealed that the UAEU undergraduate business students are, to some extent, uncomfortable in reading printed textbooks and writing reports on quantitative topics in English. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that both teaching style and English language and communication have a great influence on the academic performance of UAEU undergraduate business students.

The paper has a number of limitations. For instance, the sample was taken only from students in a single university. Moreover, this study focuses on the business students and in turn, it excludes students of other colleges. On the other hand, it has a number of implications for administrators, instructors and researchers. Administrators should pay special attention when setting admission standards. Instructors teaching quantitative courses should prepare well-structured lectures and deliver them at a reasonable pace to allow students the time to understand them. They should also pay attention to the way they speak. For researchers, this study will indicate the need for further research to confirm or refute the results of the present study.

The present study is the first attempt to investigate the impacts of the three factors of concern on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses in a public university setting in the UAE context.

This paper provides a few examples of techniques that are being used at the Thornton Research Centre of “Shell” Research Limited in the development of lubricants. No attempt has been made to provide a detailed description of how the techniques were developed or how they are used. For some of them detailed information is already available in published articles or papers, and references are provided; others are still in the development stage and more information will probably be published at some later date. It will be obvious that to attempt to cover any one of these developments in detail would require much more time than is either at your disposal or mine, and I have therefore given only sufficient detail to perhaps whet your appetites for more. Typical of the sorts of information required for lubricant development are the following :— 1. Accurate temperature measurements of the moving and/or contacting and rubbing surfaces of the mechanism to be lubricated. 2. A qualitative or quantitative assessment of surface damage of contacting or rubbing parts. 3. An accurate measurement of wear rate. 4. An accurate measurement of the chemical change occurring on the surface of rubbing components in the presence of E.P. additives. This list could be extended almost indefinitely but it provides a fair cross‐section of the type of information likely to be required for the development of a lubricant. This sort of information must often be obtained from simulated mechanisms specially instrumented and designed, but we are designing lubricants for actual mechanism, gear trains, transmissions, bearings, clutch plates, etc., where it is extremely rare to find provision or access for the qualitative and/or quantitative examination so desired. As a result very elaborate and complicated methods have sometimes to be employed to obtain the necessary information. The following techniques represent only a few of those that have been used or are being used, but I hope they will demonstrate how some of our difficulties ware overcome.

Supply chain management (SCM) proficiency is generally associated with superior business performance. Yet, SCM research continues to focus predominantly on the performance of individual firms, rather than on the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants as espoused by the extended enterprise (EE) concept. In response to calls for quantitative studies that examine the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants, this research study compares the combined performance of triads comprising focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency and their upstream (supplier) and downstream (customer) supply chain partners with that of their close industry competitors' triads.

The triadic, longitudinal examination of multiple supply chain participants' collective performance utilized archival financial data of the period 2007–2017 from the Compustat database and the supply chain (SPLC) function of Bloomberg.

Findings of this study indicated that supply chain triads that included focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency experienced significantly lower sales and general administrative expenses and significantly higher productivity, return on assets and profitability over time than their close industry competitors' triads. However, contrary to expectations, the performance advantages identified did not extend to revenue growth.

Supply chain triads cannot fully represent entire supply chains or EEs. However, this study’s triadic analysis can be viewed as a practically achievable proxy for further validating the EE concept. Moreover, based on assertions that triadic studies are suitable for SCM research and on empirical studies that consistently show individual firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency outperform competitors, the authors contend that the study’s findings appropriately corroborate the value of the EE concept.

Because such empirical evidence is so rare, the consistent, collective performance advantages identified in this study should be highly significant to managers.

Robust, longitudinal evidence that supply chain triads which include focal firms recognized for relative SCM proficiency collectively outperform their close industry competitors' triads extends generally accepted associations between SCM proficiency and business performance, suggesting that the application of extended resource-based view (ERBV) in supply chain contexts warrants further examination and further substantiates the efficacy of the EE concept.

This paper aims to examine the use of the increasingly important virtual concept to deliver value in projects, focusing on the manifest, critical issues which can enhance value delivery in virtual construction projects.

The study uses both quantitative and qualitative triangulated methods to examine the concepts in the study. Triangulated data analysis is also used to give insight.

The study disentangles 16 manifest, independent variables as being crucial in enhancing value delivery in virtual construction projects. Also the research gives a fresh view, by differentiating between influential and necessary crucial variables in virtual construction project value delivery.

The study demonstrates the use of triangulation in critical variables research. It also gives integrated insight on rigorous, triangulated, data analysis to enhance understanding in the critical variables research domain.

The research gives insight to managers on the issues which need attention in the design and implementation of virtual construction projects to deliver value.

The research adds value to the literature on the virtual construction project delivery concept, where little knowledge exists. Based on empirical evidence, the study also gives a fresh insightful lens, for the examination of critical variables from the perspective of influential and necessary items.

The Method section of research articles offers an important space for researchers to describe their research processes and research objects they utilize. To understand the relationship between these research materials and their representations in scientific publications, this paper offers a quantitative examination of the citation contexts of the most frequently cited references in the Method section of the paper sample, many of which belong to the category of research material objects.

In this research, the authors assessed the extent to which these references appear in the Method section, which is regarded as an indicator of the instrumentality of the reference. The authors also examined how this central measurement is connected to its other citation contexts, such as key linguistic attributes and verbs that are used in citation sentences.

The authors found that a series of key linguistic attributes can be used to predict the instrumentality of a reference. The use of self-mention phrases and the readability score of the citances are especially strong predictors, along with boosters and hedges, the two measurements that were not included in the final model.

This research focuses on a single research domain, psychology, which limits the understanding of how research material objects are cited in different research domains or interdisciplinary research contexts. Moreover, this research is based on 200 frequently cited references, which are unable to represent all references cited in psychological publications.

With the identified relationship between instrumental citation contexts and other characteristics of citation sentences, this research opens the possibility of more accurately identifying research material objects from scientific references, the most accessible scholarly data.

This is the first large-scale, quantitative analysis of the linguistic features of citations to research material objects. This study offers important baseline results for future studies focusing on scientific instruments, an increasingly important type of object involved in scientific research.

The peer review history for this article is available at: 10.1108/OIR-03-2021-0171

The purpose of this paper is to examine and propose an extension of Lundman's theory. Lundman presented a theoretical framework that predicted the evolution of policing from an informal to a formal type. Essentially, he stated that the types of policing in society were determined by the patterns of solidarity, élite interests, and crimes rates/images of disorder. This research argued that the theory could be extended not only to predict the type of policing but also the quality and quantity of policing. Particularly, this research explored the relationships of the élite interest and the rates/images of criminality to policing practices by examining evidence from the research literature about India.

Research studies about Indian police practices were extracted from the major western criminology, criminal justice, and policing journals. Using content analyses, two propositions were analyzed. The first proposition was that the evidence from the literature would suggest that threats of the disadvantaged and marginalized groups against the dominant élite groups would influence the quality of policing. The second proposition was that the evidence from the literature would show that rates and images of criminality would influence the quantity of policing.

Very little quantitative literature exists to examine the propositions using meta‐analysis. The existing policing literature from India that was examined indicated support for the propositions.

As the literature was mostly anecdotal and normative, a more dynamic view of the relationships among the variables should be explored using the positivist approach.

Police characters are influenced by the social order. Systemic reforms often fail because of the obstacles presented by the social and political influences. Therefore, a larger social reform should be undertaken.