Gamified interactions: whether,when, and how games facilitate self–brand connections

Firms increasingly use games to interact with their customers. Yet, surprisingly little is known about whether, when, and how such “gamified” interactions engage consumers with a firm’s brand, thereby facilitating self–brand connections. Building on flow theory, we show that gamified interactions that are highly interactive and optimally challenging facilitate self–brand connections, because such games lead to emotional and cognitive brand engagement. A field study and three experiments across various product domains and game designs support our theory. We also identify conditions under which consumers do not become engaged with a brand, namely when firms restrict their decisional control either to voluntarily participate in the game (i.e., compulsory play) or to spend as much time as desired playing the game (i.e., time pressure). Our findings advance existing knowledge about the use of games in marketing and provide important implications for how marketers can harness their potential to build self–brand connections.     

How is Benevolent Leadership Linked to Employee Creativity? The Mediating Role of Leader–Member Exchange and the Moderating Role of Power Distance Orientation

Previous research has shown that virtuous leader behavior in the form of benevolent leadership has considerable impact on employee creativity. However, little is known as to how and under what conditions these constructs are linked. In the current research, we proposed and tested a moderated mediation model positing leader–member exchange (LMX) as a mediator, and employee power-distance orientation as a moderator of this relationship. Two studies were conducted to test our hypothesized model. In Study 1, repeated measured data collected from 284 Chinese employees in an information technology company demonstrated that benevolent leadership had a lagged effect on LMX. In Study 2, analyses of multisource and lagged data from 391 Chinese employees in 42 research and development teams, and their direct supervisors indicated that benevolent leadership was positively related to supervisor-rated employee creativity via LMX. In addition, the relationship between benevolent leadership and LMX was stronger for employees high in power-distance orientation. Theoretical implications of benevolent leadership’s research and practical contributions concerning promoting creativity in organizations where benevolent leaders prevail are also discussed.     

Coping with coopetition—Facing dilemmas in cooperation for sustainable development: The case of the Dutch smart grid industry

This paper is amongst the first to examine coopetition strategy for sustainable development at the network level. Companies who want to successfully implement complex innovative technologies that support sustainable development need to collaborate with other actors of the innovation ecosystem, including their competitors, so that they can develop standards, interoperable products, pool knowledge, and resources and bundle forces to compete against other technologies. Collaboration with competitors brings benefits, but also many risks. We investigated how firms cope with these risks when establishing an innovation ecosystem to implement a new technology in society. We conducted research in the Dutch smart grids sector and explored how these firms minimize inherent risks of coopetition. We found that system‐building actors in the Dutch smart grid field not only minimize inherent risks, but from the start of their collaboration they implement so‐called enablers to prevent these risks upfront.     

Transmission of information within transnational social networks: a field experiment

Several studies have shown a relationship between the stocks of migrants and country-level investment in the home country; however the mechanism through which this relationship operates is still unexplored. We use a field experiment in which participants who are recent immigrants send information about risky decisions to others in their social network in their home country. The results demonstrate how this information influences decisions in the home country. We find that the advice given by family members and decisions made by friends significantly affects an individual’s risky decision-making.     

土木工程管理与工程造价的有效控制

土木工程管理和成本管理对土木工程很重要,适当引入先进的管理和思想观念,并利用现代科学技术和社会进步来管理项目和控制成本,从而使建筑企业可以有效地管理项目成本,加快项目建设并提高企业效率.本文对土木工程成本的管理和项目管理中需要解决的关键问题进行深入分析,并提供切实可行的解决方案来促进我国土木工程行业的健康和可持续发展.     

Contagion of network products in small-world networks

We formulate a model in which agents embedded in an exogenous social network decide whether to adopt a new network product or not. In the theoretical part of the paper, we characterize the stochastically stable equilibria for complete networks and cycles. For an arbitrary network structure, we develop a novel graph decomposition method to characterize the set of recurrent communication states, which is a superset of stochastically stable equilibria of the adoption game presented in our model. In the simulation part, we study the contagion process of a network product in small-world networks that systematically represent social networks. We simulate a generalization of the Morris (Rev Econ Stud 67(1):57–78, 2000) Contagion model that can explain the chasm between early adopters and early majority. Our numerical analysis shows that the failure of a new network product is less likely in a highly cliquish network. In addition, the contagion process reaches to steady state faster in random networks than in highly cliquish networks. It turns out that marketers should work with mixed marketing strategies, which will result in a full contagion of a network product and faster contagion rates with a higher probability.

     

非正规就业人员工作自主性与体面劳动感知——情绪耗竭和超时劳动的视角

与正规就业相比较,劳动者选择非正规就业的重要理由是其工作自主性.对于非正规就业人员来说,工作自主性是否能带来体面劳动感知,工作自主性对体面劳动感知影响过程中存在哪些关键变量,学术界尚未有明确的实证结论.基于工作-需求资源模型,本研究利用中国劳动力动态调查数据库对上述猜想进行实证检验,结果发现:工作自主性对体面劳动感知有显著正向作用;工作自主性显著负向影响情绪耗竭;在工作自主性与体面劳动感知之间,情绪耗竭起着部分中介作用;超时劳动负向调节工作自主性与体面劳动感知之间的关系,即超时劳动越严重,工作自主性对体面劳动感知的正向影响越弱;超时劳动在工作自主性和情绪耗竭之间不存在调节作用.通过对正规就业人员与非正规就业人员的对比分析发现,与非正规就业人员相比,正规就业人员工作自主性对情绪耗竭起着显著正向作用,超时劳动正向调节工作自主性与体面劳动感知之间的关系.