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The paper aims to explore and analyze how multinational companies (MNCs) in Bangladesh define corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how CSR is used by these companies as a strategic tool to improve business and social performances.

The authors choose a qualitative case study approach for this study, using multiple semi-structured interviews with 15 CSR managers and secondary data from websites and annual reports. Both primary and secondary data were collected from ten leading MNCs that operate in Bangladesh.

The findings indicate that most of the MNCs in Bangladesh are moving toward strategic CSR and away from the conventional altruistic (philanthropic) CSR. It also appears that stakeholder prioritization and one-way communication are key for managing stakeholders.

The most unavoidable limitation of this research lies in sample selection. A total of ten companies were selected because of lack of accessibility to additional MNCs. To overcome this limitation and increase the credibility of findings, the authors triangulate interview and secondary data from annual reports and websites.

The findings indicate that MNCs are increasingly recognizing the importance of using their core competencies to generate social benefits. The idea of adopting strategic CSR is predominantly steered by business benefits, which also provide the necessary resources for social and environmental activities

The findings suggest that the shift from philanthropy to strategic postures leads to creating and fostering social benefits such as developing an entrepreneurial spirit and empowering women.

MNCs operating in Bangladesh are gradually departing from philanthropy and moving toward strategic CSR by aligning business strategies with CSR. Transition from philanthropy to strategic CSR also reflects on MNCs’ CSR definitions, which include various dimensions such as social, stakeholders and sustainability, except philanthropy. In Bangladesh, where CSR was previously viewed as philanthropic activity, the findings make important contributions to the extant literature, particularly international CSR strategic literature, and can be useful for future research in other developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to determine the role of emotions in customer evaluation of service failures; and second, to examine how customers’ emotion regulation impacts customer satisfaction and behavioural responses (e.g. repurchase intentions and negative word-of-mouth).

A scenario-based survey was used to elicit responses in a hospitality setting. Structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results show that both positive and negative emotions mediate the relationship between perceived injustice and customer satisfaction. The emotion regulation of customers through suppression and reappraisal influences the effects of satisfaction on both negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

This study advances service managers’ understanding of customer experience during service failure by demonstrating how emotion regulation influences customer response behaviours. With a better understanding of customers’ emotion regulation strategies, managers and frontline employees can more effectively develop and execute recovery strategies which adapt to customer emotions while eliciting more satisfying outcomes.

This research is one of the first to examine the moderating role of customers’ emotion regulation strategies in determining their behavioural responses. Conducted in the hospitality services context, this study provides support for relationships among perceived injustice, customer emotions, emotion regulation, customer satisfaction, negative word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

Project governance has been linked to project success because top management support is necessary for projects to succeed. However, top managers are time poor and it is not clear which project governance mechanisms are effective for project success. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with success.

This is a quantitative study. A theoretical model of project governance was developed and tested with secondary industry data gathered from 51 global organisations and 66,817 responses.

The results found five project governance mechanisms (Vision, Change, Sponsor, KPI and Monitor) significantly correlate with project success and are effective at different stages in the project lifecycle.

Earlier research has found a relationship between project governance and project success but it has not been specific enough to guide top managers in practice. This is the first research to take this next step and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with project success. One finding of this research that has particular value is the identification of when in the project lifecycle a particular governance mechanism is most effective.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the role of service convenience in the relationship between organizational characteristics (such as brand equity, store ambiance, store layout, customer information and employee responsiveness) on customer engagement behaviors (CEBs), including service improvement, customer cooperation, positive word-of-mouth and customer helping customers. It examines two research models, with service convenience as a separate antecedent of CEBs (model A) and as a mediating variable between organizational characteristics and CEBs (model B).

Using a positivist paradigm, data were collected from 384 respondents representing the existing customers of grocery retailers based in India via a survey instrument. Data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling.

Results demonstrate service convenience as a motivational driver of CEBs. Results also show that the organizational characteristics significantly influence service convenience which in turn impacts CEBs.

The findings have important implications for store managers in effective management of customers' time and effort in terms of saving customers' time and effort as well as motivating customers to elicit their engagement behaviors.

The originality of this paper lies in identifying the impact of organizational characteristics in helping customers to save time and effort in their shopping activities and thereby elicit various types of CEBs. The paper also adds to knowledge by examining the role of service convenience in the nexus between organizational characteristics and CEB types.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale for measuring consumers’ perceived service value in the Indian retail banking services. This purpose is rooted in the absence of consensus on what constitutes service value and how to measure such value in the above context.

The scale development procedure comprised qualitative and quantitative approaches. A list of possible measurement items was compiled based on literature review and expert opinion through focus groups. Data were collected from a sample of 442 respondents representing the Indian retail banking sector using survey instrument and were analyzed using the structural equation modeling.

The study revealed a seven-dimensional scale for measuring service which includes service equity, service quality, customer intimacy, product leadership, operational effectiveness, customer communication, and perceived sacrifice. Thus, the scale emerging from this study is consistent with established scales and is applicable to the Indian retail services setting. This study contributes to the knowledge gap by confirming that the west-centric service value measurement scale is moderately applicable to the services sector in India.

This research is a direct response to calls from the leading marketing pundits to explore the validity and applicability of the existing marketing constructs and models originated in the west to Indian markets. Keeping in mind the established service value measurement scale, this study develops and validates a seven-dimensional scale for measuring service value in an Indian setting with novel sub-dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore international buyer–supplier relationships in an emerging developing country context. The study examines a number of factors derived from internationalization process (IP) theory and their impacts in a novel research setting. The relational variables of trust and commitment, and their drivers, are integrated into a model examining importers’ perspectives of their supplier relationships.

This study applied a sequential methodological approach. Initially, a conceptual framework was developed from qualitative research and then quantitatively validated using structural equation modeling (SEM). The data for this study were collected conducting in-depth interviews and survey questionnaires. For empirical validation, the SEM technique was applied to assess the proposed model.

Importing firm managers perceived that the commitment of their suppliers bolstered their trust in the relationship, this contrasts with the conventional contention of a reverse relationship. The findings confirm cultural similarity facilitates communication, leading to increased knowledge and experience of importers, thereby contributing to an enhanced commitment to build trust in the relationship.

The conceptual framework developed in this study provides a direction to manage and enhance understanding of IP and relationship outcome. The findings have strategic implications for practicing managers in developing and supporting their importer–foreign supplier relationships.

This study is unique in assessing as well as validating key constructs of IP theory in an international exchange (importer–supplier) relationship. The study offers completely a new insight in relation to applying IP theory’s relational perspectives.

This study aims to capture the mediation role of customer–frontline employee rapport on customer satisfaction and affective, calculative and normative commitment by using three alternative models. It also verifies the moderation effect of relationship age on the rapport-satisfaction link in each alternative model.

The survey data collected from bank customers were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with the partial least square (PLS) method.

Results confirmed rapport as a significant mediator between satisfaction and each of the three types of commitment. Relationship age significantly moderates the links between rapport to affective and normative commitment but not to calculative commitment.

Additional findings from “importance–performance analysis” suggest that satisfaction is more import to customers than rapport for developing commitment, so further investigations can reveal the underlying reasons. Also, complementary mediation shows one or more missing mediators, which calls for future research.

Managers need to use rapport strategically with customers in different relationship ages to build different types of commitment. Specific tactics to build rapport and possible long run implications for developing affective, calculative and normative commitment have been discussed in the “note to practitioner” section.

Using “broaden-and-build” theory, the study extends the literature by confirming the mediation influence of rapport on satisfaction and three types of commitment relationships.

Mobile health (mHealth) service is an Australian Government initiative aiming to improve the quality of health-care services. However, little is known about Australian health consumers’ willingness to adopt mHealth. The purpose of this paper is to study the usage behavior of mHealth service users in Australia. While various factors may impact users’ willingness to accept mHealth, this research investigates factors influencing the mHealth adoption decisions of the Australian health-care consumers, and the moderating impact of demographic factors on the usage behavior (UB) of mHealth services which has been rarely addressed in an Australian setting in the past.

The theoretical framework is based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data were collected from residents of the Australian Capital Territory using a survey questionnaire and examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The proposed mHealth usage model demonstrated a good fit and indicated that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, service quality and government influence are critical issues shaping mHealth UB. The moderation analysis revealed that users’ demographics, namely, gender, age and education are instrumental in broadening the understanding of UB of mHealth service in Australia.

The findings will inform health-care service providers about the critical importance of the key factors driving the usage of mHealth services. Health-care providers and relevant authorities can develop targeted communication strategies that maximize the acceptance of mHealth services. Furthermore, deeper understanding of users’ demographic profiles would enable health-care service providers to promote their services to the right clients.

The above findings on the factors and user demographics informing the usage of mHealth services have unique practical, contextual and theoretical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of organisational harmony and fellow-feelings in the relationship between intelligence generations, dissemination and implementation on business performance and explain how market orientation impacts certain aspects of organisational behaviour which in turn lead to the performance of service firms.

The data set comprises 108 responses of senior managers within the logistics sector. The multi-level sequential mediation path analysis is used to examine the above mediating role.

Results indicate that intelligence dissemination (ID), response implementation (RI) and business performance relationship is significantly mediated via fellow-feelings and organisational harmony. However, the relationship between dissemination, implementation and overall business performance is mostly mediated by fellow-feelings and followed by organisational harmony. Furthermore, when overall market orientation (intelligence generation, dissemination and RI) is used as a determinant of business performance, organsiational harmony emerged as the most significant contributor to organsiational performance.

Managers are urged to focus on building fellow-feelings among their employees, resulting in a harmonious work environment between functional units and market orientation organisation wide.

Compared to previous research, this is one of the first attempts to develop an understanding of fellow-feelings, contributing to organsiational harmony resulting market orientation and, hence, business performance. Market orientation conceptualisations lump intelligence generation, dissemination and RI of business activities together but do not explain how market orientation impacts fellow-feelings and organisational harmony which in turn leads to performance. The authors specifically address this important lacuna in our conceptualisation and propose that ID and RI lead to fellow-feelings within functional departments and results in organisational harmony.

While scholarly attention has mainly focused on team-level or relational constructs for the success of team performance, understanding the inter-play between these two streams of research remains limited in digital transformation projects. Borrowing from social exchange theory, this study aims to explore the antecedents of team alignment leading to team performance with mediation effects of trust, commitment and customer–service provider relationship. The moderating role of relationship length was also examined.

Data was collected using a survey of 180 employees working on digital projects in B2B context, mostly in the Indo-Pacific region, specifically Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. Partial least squares method with multi-group analyses and bootstrapping method were used to analyze the data.

Findings show that customer control and team capability are the strongest antecedents of team alignment, and inter-play between the customer–provider relationship with team-level constructs is also significant. Relationship length has higher level of moderation impact on trust–team performance link compared to commitment–team performance relationship.

The study considers moderation impact of relationship length on trust, commitment and team performance but not other constructs. Also, gender ratio is skewed in the data set.

Digital transformation practitioners need to be aware of relational constructs (not only team-level constructs) when designing successful long-term digitalization strategies for organizations.

This study is one of the first to document the inter-play between team alignment and relational constructs (such as trust, commitment, and customer–service provider relationship), with moderation impact of relationship length leading to team performance in digital transformation projects.