Research summary: We examine why a firm takes specific competitive action in nonmarket and resource-market spaces, particularly when it perceives threats from informal and foreign competitor groups, ...respectively. We address this question by combining insights from competitive rivalry, strategic groups, and nonmarket strategy literatures in an emerging economy context. Specifically, we theorize how threats from informal and foreign rival firms in an emerging market influence a firm's engagement in corruption activities and its investments in HR training, respectively. We also argue that the likelihoods of such focal firm actions against competitor group threats differ, contingent on the focal firm's market and resource profiles. Results from the empirical analyses, with survey data from the Indian IT industry, provide broad support to our hypotheses. Managerial summary: Based on a World Bank dataset on the Indian IT industry, this study finds that corruption and HR training are pursued by firms in emerging economies as mindful strategies against specific types of rivals—informal and foreign firm rivals, respectively, and are not pursued simply as culturally-based practices. Multinational companies may need to understand that domestic firms in emerging countries will engage in corruption strategically to reduce their costs and time to market of their products/services. Therefore, multinational firms may need to devise suitable strategies other than corruption to reduce their costs and time to market if they wish to compete with firms in emerging economies for customers who don't care about ethical issues and will buy a cheaper product/service that is delivered quickly.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•Social media affordances facilitate social support in social media.•Social support can facilitate self-management of chronic diseases.•Informational support and experiential support promote ...self-care behavior;.•Informational support and emotional support are related to psychological health.•Self-care and psychological health can lead to physical health.
Due to the popularity of social media, patients are increasingly using social media for the social support exchange to improve health outcomes. To understand this phenomenon of social media-enabled healthcare, we propose a conceptual framework by integrating literature from three areas—social media affordance, online social support, and health behaviors and outcomes—with the goal of developing propositions on how social media can help patients improve self-management of chronic diseases. We identified and distinguished three social media affordances: affordance for community co-creation, affordance for social learning, and affordance for social relationships. We also distinguish three kinds of social support and tailored them to the healthcare domain and the social media context: informational support, emotional support, and experiential support. We posit the following: (a) social media affordances foster social support, where co-creation facilitates informational support, user interaction facilitates emotional support, and social learning facilitates experiential support; (b) informational support and experiential support are both linked to self-care; and (c) informational support and emotional support are both linked to psychological health. Our work advances the literature in the area of social media-enabled healthcare.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Knowledge about the cognitive schema of IS professionals with respect to IS failure is crucial but lacking in the IS literature. To fill this gap, we conducted an exploratory study in which 86 ...experienced IS professionals categorized a comprehensive set of 70 IS failure risk items into failure clusters that they ranked in the order of their expected organizational impact. These data were analyzed using the MDSORT procedure. Findings indicate that IS professionals do not treat causes and effects as separate failure constructs but rather combine a set of related causes and effect into a single
IS failure rule
. Through successive refinement, a stable, reliable, and parsimonious IS failure rule schema was developed that consists of six IS failure rules. We also developed specific change agent behaviors that IS professionals can enact, or expect to be enacted by relevant other IS professionals, with respect to each of the six IS failure rules to mitigate failure risk and reduce IS failure.
This study aims to understand how older adults’ socioemotional reactions to perceived remaining time in life influence their satisfaction from their knowledge contribution and seeking in virtual ...communities (VCs). Rooted in socioemotional selectivity theory, we choose a positive attitude toward aging and meaning in life to describe older adults’ reactions to aging, and test the proposed hypotheses based on 204 valid survey responses. Results confirm that while both knowledge contribution and knowledge-seeking activities promote older adults’ satisfaction, the impact of knowledge contribution is stronger on satisfaction. Furthermore, as hypothesized, the positive attitude toward aging amplifies the impact of knowledge-seeking while meaning in life weakens the impact of knowledge contribution on older adults’ satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature on how older adults derive satisfaction from their knowledge contribution and knowledge-seeking activities in VCs and offers insights into using VCs to build a digitally inclusive society.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Online markets for mental health care (OMMH) allow clients to connect remotely with counselors to receive psychological therapy. Rooted in signaling theory and in the specific context of an OMMH, we ...theorize relative credibility of signals as the boundary condition that determines whether the demonstration signal of responsiveness to client questions substitutes or complements the two description signals of professional qualifications and counseling style in predicting market demand for counselors from new clients in an OMMH. Based on a panel dataset of 823 observations from 309 counselors participating on YiXinLi, a leading OMMH in China, we tested our hypotheses using linguistic and sentiment analysis methods and zero-inflated negative binomial models. We found broad support for nine out of ten hypotheses. Findings are robust with respect to different measures of variables, potential endogeneity from the simultaneity of responsiveness and counselor demand, and potential selection bias from both observable and endogenous covariates. Our study extends the literature on signaling in online markets in the unique context of OMMH by showing that: (1) relative credibility of signals is the boundary condition that determines when a demonstration signal will complement and when it will substitute for a description signal, (2) previous clients’ feedback on counselors’ empathy and warmth was deemed not credible by new clients in the context of online counseling, and (3) responsiveness to client questions is the most influential predictor of market demand from new clients in an OMMH.
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CEKLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
•Studied purchase intention in retail settings using food traceability systems (FTS).•Typified FTSs as voluntary, direct consumer-use decision support systems.•Theoretical constructs from principal ...agent theory and technology acceptance model.•Perceived regulatory effectiveness an information asymmetry reducing antecedent.•Willingness to pay price premium an important mediator between trust and intentions.
We combined the most relevant variables from the principal agent theory and the technology acceptance model to develop a parsimonious model of technology acceptance for food traceability systems, which are voluntary, direct consumer-use decision support systems that reduce health risks for consumers by reducing information asymmetry between consumers and sellers in retail settings. Results from a survey about a beef traceability system show novel findings about the important roles played by consumers’ perceived regulatory effectiveness as an exogenous antecedent, and by their trust in seller and willingness to pay a price premium as mediators, that shape their intentions to use a BTS and conduct a purchase transaction.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This study extends the view that formal contracts and relational governance function as complements rather than as substitutes. We investigate how specific characteristics of service level agreements ...(SLAs) impact relational governance in information technology outsourcing relationships. Eleven contractual elements (categorized into three SLA characteristics: foundation, change, and governance characteristics) are hypothesized to act as complements of three relational governance attributes: relational norms, harmonious conflict resolution, and mutual dependence. Data for the study were collected through a survey of South Korean IT executives. Results of the study support the fundamental proposition of complementarity between formal contracts and relational governance, and indicate that well-structured SLAs have significant positive influence on the various aspects of relational governance in IT outsourcing relationships. However, the study also reveals that change characteristics of SLAs may act as a substitute for relational governance as these characteristics were found to dampen the level of trust and commitment through moderation effects. Overall, the findings support the proposition that well-developed SLAs not only provide a way to measure the service provider's performance, but also enable effective management of outsourcing engagements through the development of partnership-style relationships with high levels of trust and commitment.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Rooted in theories of competitiveness and social comparison, we model the effects of users' structural and trait competitiveness on their engagement and performance growth in an informal learning ...environment. We hypothesise that game elements of points and leaderboards stimulate users' structural competitiveness, which affects users' engagement and has an inverted-U effect on performance growth. We further hypothesise that these effects are stronger among individuals with higher trait competitiveness. We tested our hypotheses using data from a natural experiment conducted over 300 days on 88,310 unique users who made 215,920 game interactions within the Cyber Detectives exhibit at the Tech Interactive museum in California. Our results are based on two objective measures of trait-competitiveness as both behaviour and outcome (percentile ranking on total time spent and number of badges earned, respectively), multiple objective measures of user engagement (time spent per attempt, number of reattempts, and daily user attempts), and an objective measure of performance growth (points). Results provide overall support to our hypotheses. We contribute to the gamification literature by providing strong causal evidence of points and leaderboards triggering structural and trait competitiveness, which interact to affect both engagement and performance growth in informal learning contexts.
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BFBNIB, GIS, IJS, KISLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
Summary
What role does an ego's brokerage location—within a team (intra‐team) or outside the team (inter‐team)—play in the evolution of an instrumental knowledge‐seeking network in terms of both ...proximal (i.e., within the team) and distal (i.e., outside the team) tie formation and tie decay? We address this question by drawing on literature about social networks, brokerage, and teams. We use temporally separated data from 302 students embedded in 97 teams to test our hypotheses about the impacts of intra‐team and inter‐team brokerage on proximal and distal network evolution, specifically on four network changes in knowledge‐seeking networks: proximal tie formation, proximal tie decay, distal tie formation, and distal tie decay. We find that these four changes depend on individual network brokerage location even after controlling for personality and task characteristics. Specifically, inter‐team brokers change their networks both within and outside their teams, whereas intra‐team brokers curtail their network changes. We argue that these opposite effects occur because inter‐team brokers have greater autonomy than intra‐team brokers. This study adds to the ongoing dialog about network evolution in social network literature and to the conversations about brokerage and its location in the context of team‐based work.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose
As older adults are increasingly active in virtual communities (VCs), these platforms for knowledge exchange present opportunities for companies to use elder human capital. The purpose of ...this study is to understand the antecedent factors that motivate older adults’ knowledge contribution and knowledge seeking (KS) behaviors in VCs.
Design/methodology/approach
Rooted in socio-emotional selectivity and social cognitive theories, this study included five key variables and developed models for older adults’ knowledge contributing (KC)/KS behaviors. This paper tested the hypotheses using data from a sample of 204 older adults in 3 VCs in China.
Findings
The results provide support for most of the hypotheses and show that while other members’ participation (MP) acts as a substitute for meaning in life and attitude toward aging, it acts as a complement for outcome expectations (OE) focused on others and OE focused on oneself in their impacts on KC/KS activities.
Practical implications
The study provides practical insights for developing elder human resources via VCs to avoid knowledge loss.
Originality/value
This study described older adults’ unique characteristics when modeling their information and communication technologies-related behaviors and built two models to explain their KC/KS behaviors. It confirmed that the same factor has different levels of impact on older adults’ KC/KS behaviors in VCs. In addition, it confirmed and reinforced the complementary and substitutive effects of other MP as an environmental factor on these behaviors.
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