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Exoskeletons are characterized as wearable, mechanical orthoses that augment the physical performance of the wearer, enhance productivity and employee well-being when used in value producing contexts. However, limited research involving exoskeleton usage by service employees in frontline contexts has been undertaken within service research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of exoskeleton research undertaken within the context of value-producing roles, introduce exoskeletons conceptually to the service research domain, provide new conceptualizations of service exchange interactions involving physically augmented service actors and propose future avenues of exoskeleton research in alignment with key service theories.

A multi-disciplinary structured literature review based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses method was undertaken across a variety of literature fields. A final selection of n = 25 papers was selected for analysis from an initial sample of N = 3,537. Given the emergent nature of exoskeleton research and the variety of methodology types used between literature fields, a thematic analysis approach was used for analysing identified papers.

The literature review identified four main themes within role-focused exoskeleton research. These themes informed proposals for future exoskeleton research with respect to key service theories and typologies. The findings demonstrate that the presence of an exoskeleton changes the behaviours and interactions of service employees. The augmented social presence AugSP typology is conceptualized to explain the influences of human enhancement technologies (HETs) within service actor interactions.

This research introduces the AugSP typology to conceptualize the impacts that exoskeletons and HETs impose within technologically mediated service interactions and provides a service-specific definition of exoskeleton technology to guide future service research involving the technology.

The purpose of this paper (editorial) is to take a stock of the research focused upon South Asia, in order to evaluate if it has produced useful results, and to discuss its future directions as per the scope and mission of the South Asian Journal of Global Business Research. In view of pleas for greater attention to context effects, the authors use the concept of contextualization as the basis for analysis.

A qualitative content analysis of research published in 21 top‐tier business journals is employed, including a total of 96 articles focusing upon South Asia or any South Asian country.

A contextualization typology is presented, related to purpose (whether context guides the research or not) and methodology (whether new or old framework and/or scales are used) and continuum of attention to contextualizations for hypotheses and/or research questions, and research findings in order to discuss the status of published South Asian research.

The authors discuss limitations of their philosophical underpinning and epistemological standing that have influenced their analytical approach and results.

This paper presents a contextualization typology as a starting point to discuss contextualization in international business theory and practice. The paper also provides directions for future research for scholars interested in South Asian research.

Sponsorship has become an important marketing activity. However, research on the topic treats the sponsorship context, characterized according to the type of sponsored property and the social role of these properties, as a stable characteristic or as a dichotomous characteristic within empirical studies. Therefore, the authors outline a multi-level typology of the different types of sponsorship contexts to account for traditional types of sponsorship as well as emerging themes such as online sponsorship. The authors then propose an agenda for future research.

The authors conduct a general review of the sponsorship literature to synthesize established sponsorship types with newly emerging themes to develop a multi-level typology of sponsorship contexts and a research agenda.

The authors’ conceptual analysis revealed a typology of sponsorship contexts that captures both general and specific types of sports sponsorship, prosocial cause sponsorship, culture and community sponsorship, and media and programming content sponsorship.

The authors’ typology provides an organizing framework for future research focussing on different sponsorship contexts. However, the emergent categories still require further empirical testing. Therefore, the authors develop a set of questions to guide future research on the topic.

The authors’ typology outlines the different sponsorship contexts that should be considered by organizations that engage in sponsorship-linked marketing.

This paper provides a multi-level categorization of sponsorship contexts that integrates both traditional categories and newly emerging categories to better inform future research on situational differences in sponsorship.

This chapter engages in a methodological discussion of the notion of context in qualitative research on inclusive teaching practices from a global perspective. We argue that it is crucial to reflect on processes of contextualization within data analysis in international research. Two research projects, building on ethnography and the documentary method respectively, are used to illustrate challenges and implications for data analysis in international research projects. We discuss challenges with respect to contextual information, the problem of reification and the strategies of comparison. As illustrated in the examples of data analysis, involving researchers and participants from the local context in the joint interpretation of data and the reflection of the research process is crucial to assure that research approaches reflect local perspectives. Additionally, using different strategies of comparison helps to identify global perspectives as well as elaborating particular local understandings and practices on teaching and learning. Taking due account of these challenges in international research on inclusive education and considering the local perspectives and research practices might further the critical reflection of research methodologies and strengthen local research approaches.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Customer engagement is of critical interest to both academics and practitioners. Extant literature focusses primarily on customer engagement with a single focal object, usually brands; this study takes another view to consider customer engagement with multiple focal objects (service provider and context). In addition to testing the relationship of the individual dimensions of engagement with the service provider and engagement with the context, this research elaborates on their drivers, with a particular focus on distinct engagement platforms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A survey captures customer engagement with a service provider and a context in a higher education setting, with 251 responses collected across first- and third-year marketing courses in an Australian, mid-sized university.

Engagement with the service provider can drive engagement with the context. In turn, engagement with the service provider can be stimulated through the use of engagement platforms that enable customer-to-service provider interactions. The results show limited effects of customer-to-customer engagement platforms on engagement with the context though. The results are consistent across gender and student grade levels; some differences arise between international and domestic students.

This unique study broadens understanding of customer engagement with various focal objects and also details the flow of effects, from engagement with a service provider to engagement with the context. This research builds on conceptual discussions of engagement platforms and empirically examines their ability to facilitate affective, cognitive and behavioural engagement.

Context impacts the design and practice of entrepreneurship education, but there is limited focus on context in entrepreneurship education literature. The purpose of this paper is to review the entrepreneurship education literature to understand how context has been addressed, derives contextual elements from prioritized literature and explores how context can be adapted to and designed with in entrepreneurship education.

A systematic literature review is undertaken to explore context in entrepreneurship education literature. Context entrepreneurship education yielded 239 items. After refinement, 232 entrepreneurship education associated publications were reviewed by the team of authors. Using selection criteria, 26 prioritized publications were analyzed and categorized according to a theoretical framework.

Context has been addressed both conceptually and empirically, quantitatively and qualitatively, and can be categorized across three sociological phenomena levels – micro, meso and macro. Within these levels, more specific context elements emerge from the entrepreneurship education literature. The findings assert that while context is highly influential in relation to entrepreneurship education, it is arbitrarily described, and holds a variety of documented and diffuse elements. Educators have a limited span of control in relation to context elements, however, for the most parts elements can be adapted to or designed with. Finally, due to the influence of context it is difficult to identify a universal best practice of entrepreneurship education because there simply is no ceteris paribus.

Contextual elements which emerged from the literature consider various subjects, spaces, structures and networks. Context is complex and has had limited treatment in entrepreneurship education literature, thus additional analysis and experimentation is necessary.

Context shapes understanding and influences learning. Addressing entrepreneurship education across three levels – micro, meso and macro – and through four framing questions – who, what, where and when – guides educators in how context influences and can be used when designing education.

The paper gives new insight into how context is addressed in entrepreneurship education literature, and how this can influence educational design.

The purpose of this article is to develop a contextualized definition of the phenomenon of rapidly internationalizing ventures (RIVs) ‐ such as born globals or international new ventures ‐ building upon the commonly noted dimensions of internationalization: speed, degree and scope.

The study builds on a theory informed review of 62 empirical studies on RIVs from the USA and the European Union and an empirical survey among 103 academics in the field of international entrepreneurship.

After specifying the core characteristics of RIVs (speed, degree, and scope of internationalization), it is shown that the discrepancies in definitions result in a dysfunctional fragmentation of empirical results. Thus, research on the phenomenon of RIVs urgently needs contextualized definitions because the three core characteristics are context‐sensitive, and will therefore manifest themselves differently across contexts.

The paper contributes to international entrepreneurship research by introducing a feasible strategy for defining RIVs which ensures the identification of the very same phenomenon across different contexts, thus bridging the gap between different research contexts and enabling a common body of knowledge to evolve.

This insight is particularly important for identifying, analyzing and understanding how managers in RIVs recognize and exploit opportunities in a global sphere and what drives their behaviour and development paths with regard to international activities.

Based upon the theoretically‐driven identification of the core characteristics of RIVs, the paper formulates the concept of contextualized definitions which enable researchers to identify the phenomenon within any specific context. These relative definitions are suitable for identifying the very same phenomenon in diverse contexts.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.