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Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) use social media to reach a global audience. Simultaneously, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an important feature of MNEs’ communications with stakeholders via social media. It is, therefore, important to understand the country and industry level differences in how stakeholders engage with CSR communications of MNEs via social media. We examine this across four countries and three industries by focusing on stakeholders’ engagement with CSR (vs. non-CSR) posts on Twitter. We find significant differences across industries within countries for three separate aspects of behavioural engagement (likes, retweets and replies). In addition, CSR posts have a positive effect on stakeholder engagement based on likes and retweets at the industry-within-country level. Moreover, CSR posts are not fully effective in developed countries. Hence, achieving legitimacy through CSR on social media is a complex challenge, requiring a nuanced understanding of stakeholder reactions based on specific industry and country contexts.

Drawing from contingency theory, we investigate the impact of Supplier Quality Management (SQM) activities on internal quality performance and examine the role of Supply Chain Oriented (SCO) culture in the relationship between SQM and internal quality performance. A survey-based research was designed to collect data from 518 UK manufacturing firms. The results indicate that organisations with strong SCO culture are more conducive to increased levels of trust, commitment, cooperative norms, organisational compatibility and managerial support. As such, effective supplier development and integration activities appear to bring about a higher level of internal quality performance. The results also support the moderating effect of SCO culture on the relationship between supplier quality management and internal quality performance. The study highlights the importance of SCO culture – if organisations want to optimise internal quality and organisational performance in a sustainable manner through effective buyer-supplier relationships. This study contributes to the literature by analysing SQM and internal quality performance relationships through the lens of contingency theory and presents empirical evidence in support of the context dependency nature of SQM and its impact on performance. In this respect, a contextual variable theorised as ‘SCO culture’ is conceptualised to understand the SQM – performance relationship.

Firms motivate users to enhance their fan page engagement. Existing research has thus far concentrated on firms’ fan page management strategies which lead to different results in terms of numbers o...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the usability and applicability of Porter's generic strategies in the current e-business environment. In this paper, a review of Porter's generic strategies was conducted to recognise the limitations and weaknesses of the model, which prevent its effective application in the e-business environment. To do so, a case study approach on three pure online firms, e.g., Amazon, e-bay and Google was employed. The findings acknowledged the application of Porter's generic strategies to pure online firms in order to achieve competitive advantage and proved the positive impact of generic strategies on firms' performance. The paper suggests that although cost leadership strategy is able to generate greater performance, pursuing a differentiation strategy can be more worthwhile and sustainable for pure online firms compared to cost leadership strategy. This research contributes to existing research by suggesting Porter's generic strategies as a valid and viable model for pure online firms which operate in the current e-business environment.

The purpose of this study is to understand the role of social media content on users' engagement behavior. More specifically, we investigate: (i)the direct effects of format and platform on users' passive and active engagement behavior, and (ii) we assess the moderating effect of content context on the link between each content type (rational, emotional, and transactional content) and users' engagement. The dataset contained 1,038 social media posts and 1,336,741 and 95,996 fan likes and comments, respectively based on Facebook and Instagram. The results reveal that the effectiveness of social media content on users' engagement is moderated by content context. The findings contribute to understanding engagement and users' experience with social media. This study is a pioneering one to empirically assess the construct of social media engagement behavior through the effects of content types and content contexts on a dual social media platform.

Phishing, as a social engineering attack has become an increasing threat to organizations in cyberspace. To prevent this, a well-designed continuous security training and educational program needs to be established and enforced in organizations. Prior studies have focused on phishing attack from a limited view of technology countermeasure, e-mail’s characteristic, information processing, and securing individual’s behaviors to tackle existing gaps. In this research, we developed a theoretical model of factors that influence users in the clicking of phishing e-mails from a broader Socio-Technical perspective. We applied Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) and habit theory for investigating individual factors, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Deterrence Theory for investigating organizational and technological factors accordingly. The findings revealed habit and protective countermeasure positively affect clicking on phishing e-mails, whereas, no effect of the procedural countermeasures was evident. The results of this study can be used to design phishing simulation exercise and embedded training for vulnerable employees.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explicate the role of dynamic capabilities in the ability of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to create value and also investigate the relationship among different dynamic capabilities, competitive strategy and SMEs’ value sources.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical evidence based on a survey conducted on a sample of 441 UK-based SMEs was used to test the research hypotheses.FindingsThe findings illustrate that sensing, learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities play a significant role in SMEs’ value creation, and competitive strategy mediates the impact of dynamic capabilities on value creation.Research limitations/implicationsThis study demonstrates the benefits of understanding the relationship among the four types of dynamic capabilities, competitive strategy and value creation. Moreover, this study contributes to the notion of the contingency nature of dynamic capabilities.Practical implicationsIt offers managers insight into the aspects on which to focus their efforts to enhance their firm’s capacity of value creation.Originality/valueWhile much of the prior studies have conceptually/qualitatively investigated the financial return of uni-dimensional dynamic capabilities of large firms in the manufacturing sector, this study made a significant effort to quantitatively examine the non-financial value potential of SMEs in service sector through four processes of dynamic capabilities.

The overall interplay between competitive strategies and dynamic capabilities is an integral part of value creation in terms of novelty, lock-in, complementarities and efficiency. Short title: Competitive strategy, dynamic capability and value creation Key points: -In response to insufficient systematic research on the impact of competitive strategies and dynamic capabilities on value creation, this study expands prior studies (e.g., Rashidirad et al., 2013) by proposing carefully testable research hypotheses and empirically explore the research phenomenon. -This study analyses the complex interrelationships between competitive strategies and dynamic capabilities and the resulting impact on value creation through adopting a multidimensional approach in which each construct is decomposited to its dimensions, so the relationships between each dimension of the research constructs are investigated. -This study prompts rethinking of the impact of dynamic capability and competitive strategy on value creation in firms by using a multidimensional perspective.

One of the areas of significant importance in the growth of Information Technology (IT) in the world is the issue of open source software. The movement of open source software has led to considerable advancement and transformation in the world's IT industry. It is considered as one of the hotly-debated issues today. In Iran, open source software has recently received remarkable attention due to its many advantages. In this study, the problems of software industry in Iran, the opportunities created by using open source software, and the impacts and advantages of producing local open source operating system have been addressed through semi-structured interviews with the producers of local operating system and experts of open source software. Solving security problems, attending international markets, creating the spirit of cooperation and team work and flourishing the software business are some of the main impacts of producing open source software in Iran.

Resource-Based Theory (RBT) has become an acceptable theory to describe the importance of resources and capabilities in generating high performance. Our literature review shows that there are two approaches to RBT: reductionistic and holistic. Adopting a reductionistic approach has led to an inconsistency in the findings about the relationship between RBT constructs (i.e. resources and capabilities), and their impact on performance. This paper proposes that a holistic approach to RBT has a greater power to explain the complex interrelationships between dynamic capabilities, firm’s resources and competitive strategies. Through a critical review on both views, this study highlights areas in which future research is needed for greater understanding of the co-impact of a firm’s internal factors and competitive strategies on performance.

This study extends contingency theory’s account of organisational size and culture by exploring the relationship between supplier development and internal quality performance. Drawing on supplier development research, the study aims to examine the moderating impact of organisational size and culture on the relationship between supplier development and design and conformance quality dimensions. Using survey data of 518 UK manufacturing organisations, we found that larger organisations with greater access to resources and a strong supply chain orientation culture tend to place the most weight on supplier development programmes which in turn yield higher internal quality performance. These findings contribute to ‘Operations Management Practice Contingency Research (OM PCR)’ and will raise awareness among operations managers of their future sourcing decisions.

The holistic approach of the technological, organizational, and environmental (TOE) framework, which is based on resource-based theory (RBT), puts forward a valid theoretical background on how different contextual factors contribute to improve e-business value. TOE factors, except firm size, positively affect the ability of e-businesses to generate high value with regard to the strategic alignment between their competitive strategies and dynamic capabilities.

Strategic alignment of competitive strategies and dynamic capabilities may enable e-businesses to create superior value for their stakeholders.

So far, the human society has experienced four stages of development namely: Hunter–gatherer age, Agricultural age, Industrial age and Information age. Many researchers have tried to explore some scenarios to envision where human being is going in the future but the question is still unresolved and there is no unique answer. This paper aims to probe the next stages using a metaphor of an ancient Persian poem from Attar Neyshaburi (that is one of the famous Iranian poets and mystics, lived around 13th century A.D.). In this poem, Attar argues that the wayfarer must traverse seven valleys to achieve perfection. In this paper, it is hypothesised that these valleys could provide a fruitful source of vision – as a metaphor – to think about the evolution of human society. The results suggest that the next three stages which human society would experience might be: Technological convergence age, Intelligence age and Post-humanity age. These results could be helpful in providing vision for the process of technology policy design and social development.

The impact of information & communication technology (ICT) in increasing financial transactions in different fields, shows the positive developments of this industry in Iran. But could the ICT industry also be effective in the economic capital of the country? This could occur when the ICT industry has a good performance in the capital markets. In this research, the ICT industry in the Tehran Stock Exchange was used to assess its performance in the economy's capital. The data and documents related to the profitability of corporates in ICT industry for six years over the range studied. A total of eight corporate companies with the nature of ICT, and 68 other corporate companies from a total of 17 industries were selected. To discover the informational efficiency, runs test, for analysing trend, linear regression and for comparative assessment, a TOPSIS model has been used. The results showed that the ICT industry in the Tehran Stock Exchange does not have even a weak level of efficiency of information. In addition, it has had a declining trend and finally, in comparison to other industries, it has delivered a poor performance; the results are completely inconsistent with results from other countries and show that Iran's ICT status needs fundamental reflection.

Drawing on Configuration theory and Resource Based Theory (RBT), we examine the value creation of the alignment among three constructs of strategic resources, dynamic capabilities and competitive s...