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Purpose Lawler (2001) posits that social exchanges create a sense of shared responsibility for outcome success. The purpose of this study is to apply this framework to the vendor/frontline employee/customer triad to examine the underlying role of emotions in how frontline employees’ evaluations of vendors and customers trigger and temper brand advocacy efforts, respectively.Design/methodology/approach With cross-sectional data from 168 frontline employees working at a leading national retailer of electronic goods, path analysis is used to evaluate the hypotheses.Findings Frontline employees’ relationship quality with the vendor and perceptions of vendors’ product quality positively influence brand advocacy. Also, customers’ brand affinity and recommendation preference both demonstrate a significant, negative curvilinear relationship with brand advocacy.Research limitations/implications Frontline employees’ emotion-laden evaluations of vendors and customer influence brand advocacy in different ways. Vendor relationship quality and brand quality perceptions “trigger” brand advocacy. However, customer’s affinity toward a vendor’s brand and willingness to seek recommendations “temper” brand advocacy. Specifically, brand advocacy effort is low when customers possess very low and very high affinity toward a focal brand – moderate affinity spurs high advocacy; likewise, advocacy is low when customers demonstrate very low and very high interest in seeking the frontline employees’ opinion – moderate interest spurs high advocacy. Although ideal to examine vendor and customer emotional exchanges, using only frontline employee data from a technology-selling retailer may constrain generalizability.Practical implications Frontline employee training programs should emphasize the customer’s role in the transaction to increase perceptions of shared responsibility, as a means to create a favorable emotional experience, and accentuate timing strategies on when to pursue heightened or diminished emotionally charged brand advocacy efforts.Originality/value This study contributes to the frontline employee behavior literature by viewing shared responsibility in transactions as a source of emotional value, explaining variance in frontline employee brand advocacy through relationship and product quality dimensions, and uncovering curvilinear effects for customers’ brand affinity and recommendation preference in elucidating brand advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and build a hierarchy of the factors influencing competitiveness of electronics manufacturing industry (EMI) at the industry level and apply the interpretive structural modeling, fuzzy Matriced’ Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á UN Classement (i.e. the cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification; MICMAC) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approaches. These factors have been explained with respect to managerial and government policymakers’ standpoint in Indian context.Design/methodology/approach This study presents a hierarchy and weight-based model that demonstrates mutual relationships among the significant factors of competitiveness of the Indian EMI.Findings This study covers a wide variety of factors that form the bedrock of the competitiveness of the EMI. Interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy MICMAC are used to cluster the influential factors of competitiveness considering the driving and dependence power. AHP is used to rank the factors on the basis of weights. Results show that the “government role” and “foreign exchange market” have a significantly high driving power. On the other hand, the “capital resource availability” and “productivity measures” come at the top of the interpretive structural modeling hierarchy, implying high dependence power.Research limitations/implications The study has strong practical implications for both the manufacturers and the policymakers. The manufacturers need to focus on the factors of competitiveness to improve performance, and at the same time, the government should come forward to build a suitable environment for business in light of the huge demand and frame suitable policies.Practical implications The lackluster performance of the industry is because of the existing electronics policies and environmental conditions. The proposed interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy MICMAC and AHP frameworks suggest a better understanding of the key factors and their mutual relationship to analyze competitiveness of the electronics manufacturing industry in view of the Indian Government’s “Make in India” initiatives.Originality/value This paper contributes to the industry level competitiveness and dynamics of multi-factors approach and utilize the ISM–fuzzy MICMAC and AHP management decision tool in the identification and ranking of factors that influence the competitiveness of the EMI in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using CCR model, BCC model and scale efficiency method, this paper mainly analyzes the dynamic development trend of technological innovation efficiency in equipment manufacturing industry and its sub-sectors in 2010-2014 from input orientation, and finds out the change trend of technological innovation efficiency in equipment manufacturing industry and each sub-sector under the condition of certain output. It is found that technological innovation efficiency in computer and communications and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry, equipment manufacturing industry, electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing industry, metal products industry and transportation equipment manufacturing industry is relatively high, and that in the general equipment manufacturing, special equipment manufacturing industry, instrumentation and cultural and office machinery manufacturing industry ranks relatively backward which should be further improved. It is pointed out that in improving the efficiency of technological innovation, electrical, mechanical and equipment manufacturing industry and equipment manufacturing industry as a whole can only improve the efficiency of pure technology, and other sub sectors can improve their technological innovation efficiency by improving the efficiency of pure technology and scale efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The goal of this paper is to describe, model, and optimize inventory in a reverse logistics system that supports the warranty returns and replacements for a consumer electronic device. The context and motivation for this work stem from a collaboration with an industrial partner, a Fortune 100 company that sells consumer electronics. The reverse logistics system is a closed-loop supply chain: failed devices are returned for repair and refurbishing; this inventory is then used to serve warranty claims or sold through a side sales channel. Managing inventory in this system is challenging because of the short life cycle of these devices and the rapidly declining value for the inventory. We examine an inventory model that captures these dynamics. We characterize the structure of the optimal policy for this problem for stochastic demand and introduce an algorithm to calculate optimal sell-down levels. We also provide a closed-form policy for the deterministic version of the problem, and we use this policy as a certainty-equivalent approximation to the stochastic optimal policy. Finally, using numerical experiments, we analyze the sensitivity of this system to changes in various parameters, and we also evaluate the performance of the certainty-equivalent approximation using data from our industrial partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) industry has increased its mass production; however, the EEE life span has similarly diminished. Owing to the rapid expansion of manufacturing, innovation and consumer demand, there has been a vast improvement in various electronic equipment, so the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, or e-waste) generated has also increased proportionally to production. The main objective of this article is to evaluate the remanufacturing concept which can be adopt by the electronic manufacturing industry. The article reveals differential steps debated by industry as well as academia in assets to reduce the amount of e-waste. The concept of e-waste remanufacturing is quite dissimilar from case studies among developing and developed countries and regions. The findings can assist the academic research and leads to industry regardless remanufacturing of used EEE or WEEE by exemplifying different methods and ideologies of remanufacturing implementation plus the main issues in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about electrical appliance wholesaling in the United States. The author points out achievements in the appliance industry and technological innovations that had a drastic effect on everyday life. A discussion is presented about the structure of the appliance wholesale trade and the responsibilities of the distributor in regard to inventory control, developing markets, and sales promotion. The author reports on the economic aspects of the electrical appliance industry and speculates about the industry's growth.

We explore how Chinese firms vary in the extent to which they use illegal overtime (working hours beyond the statutory limit) in the face of emerging institutional pressure against such practices. Over the past three decades, local as well as foreign-owned firms in China have extensively exploited the practice of illegal overtime. This is now being challenged by a changing environment that emphasizes the rule of law. Yet, not all Chinese companies are equally responsive to this emerging reality. While some companies are cautious about violating overtime regulations, others still ignore the law, relying heavily on illegal overtime. We explain such variances by drawing on recent developments in institutional theory literature that highlight the institutionalization process as a mechanism to elicit varied, rather than unified, organizational reactions. Using data from 182 electronic parts firms in China, we found that firms’ use of illegal overtime is affected both by organizations’ inner constituents who generate internal institutional pressures (HR personnel, labor unions and migrant workers), and organizational characteristics that magnify external institutional pressures (geographic location, company size and foreign ownership). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recyclable materials can potentially be either resources or pollutants, and this is especially the case with end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment (EoL EEE). We often experience difficulties in assessing whether EoL EEE trade should be promoted or regulated. This study looks to determine the level of consistency among the components of Japan’s governance system related to EoL EEE trade. As a result, we found that the conceptual direction is to accept or promote trade on the condition that such trade does not in turn promote environmental pollution. However, we also found that at the present time, the governance system within Japan that defines various procedures in support of this direction is not keeping pace with this concept. The prevention of illegal exportation without disturbing the promotion of recyclable-resource trade predicated by the prevention of environmental pollution should be addressed as the most crucial issue here. Especially, the decision-making criteria for the relevance of the legal “waste” definition pose an institutional problem, when the material that may have a positive market value when recycled abroad, while not when recycled domestically. We estimated the value of EoL EEE, both for the case of domestic recycling and for that exported to and recycled in China and found that only PHS terminals and cellular phones could be economically recycled in Japan. One effective solution for prevention of improper exports is to make recyclable resources legal “waste,” when they bear a net negative value fall under the condition of being processed domestically based on the estimated value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The narrative on global shipments of used electronic devices to Africa is incomplete. It focuses on end-of-life device dumping and on health and environmental hazards for local populations. Utilizing fieldwork and interviews in Accra, Ghana, with e-waste processors, scrap recyclers and exporters, local industries, and the Ghana Customs Excise and Preventive Service officials, as well as analysis of customs trade data, Grant and Oteng-Ababio uncover the development of informal urban mining of valuable metals from used electronics, a practice that calls into question conventional city-mine, consumption-production, and waste-resource spatial oppositions. Urban mining is an important heuristic concept for understanding Accra's place within the global political economy and for creating and implementing policies for improving the livelihoods of informal e-waste workers in Ghana and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the annual International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) conference to be held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel in San Francisco, California from December 1-5, 2018.

Wastivity is a wholesome measure of performance of any system. It considers the waste generated during the working of any system concerning the input provided to the system. This article deliberates on the concept of ‘lifetime wastivity’ of any system incorporating the waste of all types of resources such as material, energy, manpower, capital, and time. It first considers the context of electrical power systems, based on fossil fuels such as coal. The lifetime wastivity in the electricity sector is of very high order incorporating energy wastivity of all the processes in the life cycle, auxiliary energy wastivity, and different types of pollution-related wastivity at all stages. The paper takes another example from services sector such as hospitality industry. There is a need to put in place wastivity accounting and audit systems to portray the pattern of wastivity of different resources overtime to minimize lifetime wastivity. As an editorial, it also gives a brief of all the papers scheduled in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world there are growing concerns for waste electrical and electronic equipment. This is motivated by the harmful effects of waste electrical and electronic equipment on the environment, but also by the perspectives of materials recovery. Differences between countries regarding waste electrical and electronic equipment management are notable in the European Union. Romania is among the countries that have made significant efforts to comply with European Union regulations, but failed reaching the collection target. The article presents a mini review of the waste electrical and electronic equipment management system in Romania, based on legislation and policy documents, statistical data, research studies and reports published by national and international organisations. The article debates subjects like legislative framework, the electrical and electronic equipment Romanian market, the waste electrical and electronic equipment collection system, waste electrical and electronic equipment processing and waste electrical and electronic equipment behaviour. The recast of the European directive brings new challenges to national authorities and to other stakeholders involved in the waste electrical and electronic equipment management. Considering the fact that Romania has managed a collection rate of roughly 1 kg capita−1 in the last years, the new higher collection targets established by the waste electrical and electronic equipment Directive offer a serious challenge for the management system. Therefore, another aim of the article is to highlight the positive and negative aspects in the Romanian waste electrical and electronic equipment field, in order to identify the flows that should be corrected and the opportunities that could help improve this system to the point of meeting the European standards imposed by the European Directive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the topic of research and development investments and its use in small and medium-sized enterprises SME's operating in the electronic industry. The aim of the article is to find out the impact of innovation activities on enterprises, especially the influence of the sources of funding for the research activity. The Czech Republic is the geographic segment to be explored. A chapter on theoretical issues is followed by a description of the current situation in the Czech Republic and abroad, and access to legal support for research and development in the business sector. Primary data collected from a survey are analysed in the analytical part. The statistical data processing was done using Statistica 12 software. Some SME's of chosen group of manufacturing industry focus on research and development performed by their own means, and they searched for the possibility of financing the research from various sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]