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Purpose This study aims to examine the key determinants of word-of-mouth intentions among freshmen in a Taiwanese college. It investigates the causal relationships among different indicators of organizational sustainable development. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study is conducted on a sample of 3,159 college freshmen. A survey instrument with 41 measurement items are used to recognize the implementation of management practices at the college level. Descriptive statistical and multiple regression analyzes are performed to analyze the data, using SPSS software. Findings The results show that course identity, professional identity toward teachers, self-identity, learning attitude and satisfaction have a positive and significant impact on word-of-mouth intentions. Among these, satisfaction is the most crucial influencing factor. Colleges, particularly Taiwanese colleges competing in the field of higher education, must identify critical factors influencing the implementation of management practices to increase performance. Practical implications This study’s findings make a valuable contribution to understanding management practices in Taiwanese colleges. In addition, they serve as important guidelines for Taiwanese colleges to implement management practices effectively. The findings can also help improve organizational sustainable development, in view of the new insights they offer on the topic of the determinants of word-of-mouth intentions among Taiwanese college freshmen. Originality/value This study contributes to management practices in Taiwan-based colleges. It provides crucial information for decision-makers involved in the implementation of management practices in colleges and serves as a useful reference for further research in this area.

Science parks and innovation policies have a major mission in driving innovative resources and nurturing emerging industries, while the government-academia-industry collaborations and the establishment of an ecosystem are essentials. To investigate the key driving forces for sustainable development of the collaborative ecosystem, this article evaluates the technological innovations and the ecosystem of Science Parks in Shanghai based on historical data obtained from Shanghai Zhangjiang Science Park (Zhangjiang Park in short). Systems thinking and causal loop analysis are adopted to explore the structure of the collaborative ecosystem and reflections of the policy impact on the science park. The role of the government in science parks and innovation ecosystems is identified with systems mapping and empirical study. The economic impact of Zhangjiang Park policies and the performance of innovation activities in Shanghai are further evaluated. Lessons learnt from the benchmarked science parks and policy implications for facilitating the innovation ecosystem are addressed.

E-business and e-commerce services have been globally applied across various industries in the digital era. Leading e-commerce platform companies should invite open innovation to explore new market...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing bargaining decisions and systematically develop a framework to support collaborative innovation within a strategic alliance. This framework can help companies resolve bargaining problems and facilitate cooperation and effective negotiation of strategic alliances to build successful business relationships. Design/methodology/approach The study considers Taiwanese agents’ bargaining power during negotiations with suppliers, using decision analysis to identify the variables affecting judgment. It uses Delphi–AHP methods to evaluate and develop a multi-criteria model explaining the critical factors to increase agents’ bargaining power and collaborative capability in the negotiation process. Findings Two significant differences between supply chain management practices and managerial specialty are found. Results suggest that better supply chain management practices of agents could assist suppliers in reducing their stock and processing delivery costs, and suppliers could offer more of their marketing planning and strategies to agents to increase confidence in each other’s products. Research limitations/implications It is hoped that this study will encourage more academics in the supply chain management field to investigate the extent to which other bargaining considerations act as facilitating or constraining factors in other Asian and non-Asian economies and other industries. Practical implications This study focuses on collaborative thinking and cooperation to develop and improve positive and relational outcomes in agent–supplier relationships. Originality/value The study analyzed the bargaining power of agents and collaborative innovation in the semiconductor industry from three major perspectives: professional competence, managerial competence and channel efficiency. The study provides effective suggestions for enhancing profits in agency-based cooperation.

As engineering is required to answer directly and more heartily than before the requirement of society and markets, we want to answer the following questions. What kind of open innovation channels exist, and how can these channels operate as a knowledge funnel to conquer the growth limit of capitalism in the 4th industrial revolution? At first, we built up the concept model of open innovation engineering from a conceptual experiment and attempted to prove this model by literature reviews. Second, we applied this open innovation concept model at the papers of Society of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (SOI) 2019 Special Issues of Electronics as a preliminary study. Additional field researches on each open innovation engineering channel in addition to research on finding out more open innovation engineering channels are required.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) is prevailing, the concept of creating sharedvalue (CSV) by coordinating business activities and social concerns brings a great opportunity totransforming the business model for sustainable development. To better understand the systemscomprising corporate shared value chains would be beneficial to economics, society, andsustainability. This study refers to the ecosystem as the theoretical lens in the exploration of the CSVcomponents and contexts, and takes Macy&rsquo, s as a focal case. In terms of academic contributions, thisstudy generalizes the CSV components, including markets, social innovations, social performances,new business models, corporate entrepreneurship, and social network support. The researchfindings contribute to conceptualize and systemize the concept of CSV. In terms of practicalcontributions, the contexts for the operation of CSV, as summarized by this study, can serve as atemplate for corporate planning of CSV activities and sustainable development.

In the globally competitive environment, open business innovations have become one of the essential strategies for enterprises to develop competitiveness and market potential. However, the executio...

The paper constructs a sectoral system of innovation model specifically for the mobile payments (m-payments) sector. Both the UK and Indian sectoral system of innovation were studied in regards of the actors involved in providing the m-payment service with an emphasis on emergent business models. We integrated open innovation and Ogle&rsquo, s ideas into our model and demonstrated the importance of active agency in shaping innovation systems, for example in leveraging existing social networks. The research draws upon original interviews with companies and regulators in both India and the UK. Our overall conclusion is that the m-payments sectoral system of innovation in India is more customer-oriented and far-reaching as compared to the practices in UK. It concludes that no matter the context, the importance of integrating firms&rsquo, activity into integrated service systems in demand-driven innovation is key for success.

Amid increased emphasis on sustainable development, understanding the sustainability initiative and practice of companies has attracted the attention of both academia and industry. Corporate sustainability combines triple values including environmental protection, social wellbeing, and economic benefit for companies. Drawing on institutional theory and employing an inductive case research method, we examine companies developing their green innovation and sustainability projects in a challenging context of China. Four representative case studies and in-depth interviews were conducted to examine how these firms overcome barriers in the less developed institutional environment. To better explain corporate sustainability with green innovations, a conceptual framework has been proposed to illustrate how firms operate in a network of relationship and cooperate with their external stakeholders. Firms&rsquo, strategies to dynamically achieve the aim of corporate sustainability were identified based on a co-evolutional mechanism in the interface between institutions and organizations.

Since Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum declared the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there has been much discussion about it. However, there is no commonly agreed-upon definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Therefore, we attempted to answer the following four research questions. &ldquo, What is the definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?&rdquo, &ldquo, How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of institutions?&rdquo, How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of technology?&rdquo, How can we respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in terms of firm innovation and start-up strategy?&rdquo, Brainstorming was conducted by 11 scholars from several countries to answer these four research questions. Therefore, this research is not the end product of four research questions, but a kind of advanced template to answer the four research questions for continuing research.

This paper explains the concept of a city-based cultural ecosystem service, and how innovations and systematic operations management can help an international city to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. Previous studies suggest that most of the PPP models focus on the operation and analysis of PPP construction projects, limited attention of the subsequent operations and management for PPP facilities. This paper thus proposed an integrated PPP management framework with the principles of Cultural Ecosystem Service (CES) and open innovation to support better operations management of PPP projects. While the management of modern PPP projects will inevitably encounter the challenges of cross-disciplinary management and service innovation in the period of operations management, Cultural Ecosystem Service Innovation (CESI) framework is useful to support the practice and continuous improvement. A real-world case of Kaohsiung Dome in Taiwan has been benchmarked and analyzed with empirical data. With in-depth expert interviews, the paper demonstrates the use of CESI framework to support business strategy and operations management for sustainable system development and shared values. Management implications were addressed to promote multiple positive feedbacks with the government, enterprises, and the general public and jointly strive to support the development of a benchmarked city.

The present study explores the impacts of corporate strategic orientation on innovation ecosystems through the perspective of systems thinking. Multiple-cases method was adopted to analyze three representative companies of different industries. In terms of academic contribution, the results of this study verify an innovation ecosystem model in a generalized manner, and find that market orientation, interaction orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation generate a positively reinforcing effect on the paths of the innovation ecosystem model in all phases, thus, diversifying the available literature of innovative ecosystems. In terms of practical contribution, this study presents a dynamic context of the development of new business, and describes the links between innovative activities and the market. Enterprises can refer to the proposed framework as well as strategic architecture in this study to effectively transform innovative activities into market performance.

Essential oil and aromatherapy industry is increasingly gaining prominence in the global market. Previous studies have been carried out on the benefits of essential oils in healthcare and as part of the healing arts of many cultures, as a proven method of caring for our physical, spiritual and mental health. To enter an open market and promote the awareness of essential oils and aromatherapy, strategic planning capability is important to drive business growth. This paper utilizes a simulation-based strategic decision support system (SSDSS) to conduct a real-world case study with empirical data and examine the effectiveness of SSDSS applications in supporting market development and business growth with service innovations. Through iterative computer simulations and scenario analysis of healthcare promotion and business development for performance improvement, the effects of strategic business innovations could be systematically analyzed to identify different stages of adopters and effective approaches to achieve the established objectives with market value creation.

National policies for science parks and innovation have been identified as one of the major driving forces for the innovation-driven economy, especially for publicly funded science parks. To investigate this collaborative ecosystem (government-academia-industry) for growth and sustainable development, this paper proposes a nation-wide economic impact analysis of science parks and innovation policy based on historical data drawn from one of the globally recognized high-technology industrial clusters in Taiwan. Systems thinking with causal loop analysis are adopted to improve our understanding of the collaborative ecosystem with science park policies. First, from a holistic viewpoint, the role of government in a science parks and innovation ecosystem is reviewed. A systems analysis of an innovation-driven economy with a science park policy is presented as a strategy map for policy implementers. Second, the added economic value and employment of the benchmarked science parks is evaluated from a long range perspective. Third, the concepts of government-academia-industry collaboration and policies to innovation ecosystem are introduced while addressing the measures and performance of innovation and applied R&D in the science parks. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and the policy implications of science park development and an innovation ecosystem.

The impacts of high technology industries have been growing increasingly to technological innovations and global economic developments, while the concerns in sustainability are calling for facilitating green materials and cleaner production in the industrial value chains. Today’s manufacturing companies are not striving for individual capacities but for the effective working with green supply chains. However, in addition to environmental and social objectives, cost and economic feasibility has become one of the most critical success factors for improving supply chain management with green component procurement collaboration, especially for the electronics OEM (original equipment manufacturing) companies whose procurement costs often make up a very high proportion of final product prices. This paper presents a case study from the systems perspective by using System Dynamics simulation analysis and statistical validations with empirical data. Empirical data were collected from Taiwanese manufacturing chains—among the world’s largest manufacturing clusters of high technology components and products—and their global green suppliers to examine the benefits of green component procurement collaborations in terms of shared costs and improved shipping time performance. Two different supply chain collaboration models, from multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) and universal serial bus 3.0 (USB 3.0) cable procurements, were benchmarked and statistically validated. The results suggest that the practices of collaborative planning for procurement quantity and accurate fulfillment by suppliers are significantly related to cost effectiveness and shipping time efficiency. Although the price negotiation of upstream raw materials for the collaborative suppliers has no statistically significant benefit to the shipping time efficiency, the shared cost reduction of component procurement is significantly positive for supply chain collaboration among green manufacturers. Managerial implications toward sustainable supply chain management were also discussed.

The importance of research and development (R&D) for business sustainability have gained increasing interests, especially in the high-tech sector. However, the efforts of R&D might cause complex and mixed impacts on the financial results considering the associated expenses. Thus, this study aims to examine how R&D efforts may influence business to improve its financial performance considering the dual objectives: the gross and the net profitability. This research integrates a rough-set-based soft computing technique and multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to explore this complex and yet valuable issue. A group of public listed companies from Taiwan, all in the semiconductor sector, is analyzed as a case study. More than 30 variables are considered, and the adopted soft computing technique retrieves 14 core attributes—for the dual profitability objectives—to form the evaluation model. The importance of R&D for pursuing superior financial prospects is confirmed, and the empirical case demonstrates how to guide an individual company to plan for improvements to achieve its long-term sustainability by this hybrid approach.