The antecedents of digital collaboration through an enhanced digital platform for destination management: A micro-DMO perspective

While the tourism sector shifts towards digital transformation, Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) often struggle to adapt to their changing technological environment. This study explores the antecedents of digital collaboration and develops a framework for micro-DMOs to enhance effective destination management through digital technologies. An integrated sequential qualitative approach was adopted by conducting multi-phase interviews, in addition to designing and trialling a real-world trial digital platform. The research provides empirical evidence that digital collaboration is essential for micro-DMOs, necessitating them to transform their current “websites” into digital platforms which act as a hub for business stakeholders to actively be involved in. Antecedents of successful digital collaboration include mutuality, trust, control, and leadership which may be manifested differently from non-digital collaboration. Additionally, the study identifies three aspects for digital collaboration; marketing, networking and knowledge sharing that demands specific attention. Our results have theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for academia, industry and policymakers.     

Examining artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in marketing via a global lens: Current trends and future research opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human–machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.     

技术创业型企业孵化资本投入的风险管控——来自多案例对比

待孵化的技术创业型企业同时具有概念性技术向差异化产品转化的高风险与产品异质性被认同后溢价评估的高收益特点，导致其投资者多处于隔岸观火却欲罢不能的的孵化投资矛盾中。对孵化资本实施有效的风险管控，成为吸引外部资本投入的关键。基于此，选择在可创概念选育与技术创业孵化领域探索出高成功率路径的概念证明中心、YCombinator和创新工场为研究案例，分析其在创业项目筛选、孵化资金运营等关键环节的风险管控方式，以期完善我国孵化资本管控理论、助力我国商业孵化器提高资金风险管控能力、促进外部资本投入。     

Exploring the factors that drive consumers to use contactless delivery services in the context of the continued COVID-19 pandemic

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the launch of contactless delivery services. This research integrates resource matching, service quality evaluation, and perceived value theories to explore the factors that promote the use contactless delivery services. The data was obtained through questionnaire surveys, and research hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modelling approach. With the exception of convenience, the results show that privacy, reliability, security, and flexibility have a significantly positive effect on consumers' intention to use “contactless” delivery services through consumers' perceived value. This study contributes to the literature by introducing theoretical frameworks from various paradigms and enriches the academic research on existing theoretical structure models. It also helps optimize resource allocation and realize the social environment related to coexisting with the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Conditional Mandates on Management Earnings Forecasts: The Impact on the Cost of Debt

Exploiting a unique conditional disclosure mandate on management earnings forecasts (MEFs) in China, we examine the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on the cost of debt. We find that firms providing voluntary MEFs have lower cost of debt than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters. The results of the channel analyses reveal that voluntary forecasters have greater commitment to voluntary MEFs in future periods than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters, and the precision, accuracy, and timeliness of MEFs are higher for voluntary forecasters than for mandatory forecasters. Additional analyses show that the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on cost of debt are stronger for voluntary forecasters operating in opaque information environments, issuing high-quality and confirming forecasts, controlled by private shareholders, and operating in highly competitive product markets. Overall, our results indicate that, compared with mandatory MEFs, voluntary MEFs are more informative for credit investors, particularly for firms facing greater information risk and operating uncertainty.     

Transforming under deep uncertainty: A strategic perspective on risk management

Companies increasingly face the need for transformation in today’s rapidly changing business environment, characterized by major shifts in technology, regulation, and customer behavior. A lack of strategic risk insight and foresight leaves many incumbents insufficiently prepared in the face of such deep uncertainty. We argue that traditional risk management falls short because it predominantly focuses on strategy execution while leaving strategy formulation largely untouched. Moreover, an administrative-heavy risk management process can create strategic inertia and a misleading sense of control. In today’s dynamic business context, companies must not only increase the speed and impact of their strategy execution but also continuously explore the development of new strategies in response to disruptive events or emerging opportunities. Our research shows how leading companies develop a strategic risk management (SRM) capability to increase their resilience and agility in response to deep uncertainty. SRM takes a strategic, forward-looking perspective and focuses on strengthening processes, people, and practices for purposefully integrating risk into the strategy formulation process. This article offers a framework with three proven configurations of content and timing integration, risk management roles, and leading practices that enable effective SRM.     

‘It’s a Harsh Fact of Life with the RMA’: neo-liberalism and the realities of community sports facility development by the private sector in New Zealand

Despite the importance of facilities as primary sites for delivery of leisure and sport services, there has been a scarcity of academic literature on the provision of community sports facilities and the processes through which they are developed. In particular, this paper provides empirical analysis of leisure facility provision with a focus on practice and experience of policy and planning actors. By employing a case study approach and semi-structured interviews, the study identified a sharp contrast between the discourse of neo-liberalism and the realities of a highly regulated environment for the private sector under a national legislation of New Zealand, namely the Resource Management Act 1991. While both public and private actors recognised benefits of the resource consent process in mitigating the negative environmental impacts and facilitating public input, the findings also revealed its potential impediments to both private and philanthropic developments and their potential resultant benefits to communities and social citizenship due to its costly, restrictive and undifferentiated nature. Consequently, the paper suggests that future research needs to examine empirical evidence of how social citizenship and citizen engagement are enhanced by both public and private sectors through planning and development of community sports facilities and services.     

The influence of school size,principal characteristics and school management practices on educational performance: An efficiency analysis of Italian students attending middle schools

The aim of the paper is to identify which among the aspects that relate to the composition of the student body, school (district) size, management practices and the school principals' own characteristics are associated with the performance of Italian students at grade 8, measured through standardised test scores in reading and mathematics. The analysis makes use of a student-level efficiency model, and several school level variables are included as explanators for efficiency scores. The results show that, especially for reading, the most influential variables relate to the composition of the student body, while the students' performance in mathematics is partly correlated with the management practices adopted by the school principal/head teacher. Schools and schooling can only explain a minor part of the variance in achievement scores, however, and the characteristics of the students themselves play the most significant role.     

Strategic entry or strategic exit? International presence by emerging economy enterprises

By proposing an integrated strategic choice framework, we theorize the distinctive dynamics of international expansion by emerging economy enterprises. Specifically, we explicate how these firms build international presence based on combined strategic entry (i.e., prompted by internal capabilities such as innovation and diversification) and strategic exit (i.e., pushed out by external handicaps at home such as institutional obstacles and market competition). Further, a firm’s cooperative ties with foreign multinationals in the former’s home country fortify the strategic entry intent, while ties with home government institutions weaken the strategic exit intent. We also demonstrate that building international presence helps bolster firm performance, highlighting the economic catch-up consequence of international expansion. Analyses of a two-year imbalanced panel data of 2136 firms statistically support our hypotheses.