Search results

Past research recognizes the important influence of individual beliefs on technology acceptance and use. This line of research has also identified a variety of factors that drive the formation of these beliefs. One category of variables that has received less attention in this research stream consists of individual preferences, in particular time‐use preferences. In the current study we address the gap in the technology acceptance literature by introducing and empirically testing a new construct labeled computer polychronicity, which captures individuals’ time‐use preferences regarding information technology. A new measure of computer polychronicity is developed and subsequently tested using partial least squares estimation. Computer polychronicity is then theorized as a key driver of perceived usefulness, linking computer anxiety and computer playfulness to perceived usefulness. Overall, the results of model testing support the notion that preferences play an important role in the formation of technology‐related beliefs.

The purpose of this paper is to understand why people shop at small retailers in their community. The authors investigate the influence of consumers’ civic commitment, measured at behavioural and perceptual levels, on small-retailer patronage (SRP).

Data from 984 respondents represent four French cities that host common town-centre shopping streets and large out-of-town retail parks. A structural equation model applied to the theoretical framework tests the relationships between civic behavioural commitment (CBC), civic perceptual commitment (CPC) and declared SRP.

The more an individual consumer exhibits civic behavioural commitment (CBC) to his/her community, the greater his/her small-retailer patronage (SRP). Furthermore, consumers who express strong civic perceptual commitment (CPC) prefer to patronise small retailers. Results show that CPC has a stronger impact on SRP than CBC does.

If the CPC has stronger effects on SRP than CBC does, town managers can catch people’s attention by communicating civic commitment to enhance CPC. Solidarity could be developed through large-scale social projects to send a strong signal to consumers regarding retailers’ commitment in the community. Finally, the study highlights the role businesses, retailers and consumers play in building communities. Partnerships across all local stakeholders should be built.

This paper is the first to define civic behavioural commitment within consumers’ life place based on social capital theory. Moreover, it offers a new framework for understanding perception of commitment within a community, and its impact on SRP. This measurement scale allows more efficient capturing of civic commitment to communities.

This article examines the early post-World War II civil rights organizing of black women radicals affiliated with the organized left. It details the work of these women in such organizations as the Civil Rights Congress and Freedom newspaper as they fought to challenge the unjust conviction and sentencing of black defendants caught in the racial machinations of U.S. local and state criminal justice systems. These campaigns against what was provocatively called “legal lynching” formed a cornerstone of African American civil rights activism in the early postwar years. In centering the civil rights politics and organizing of these black women radicals, a more detailed picture emerges of the Communist Party-supported anti-legal lynching campaigns. Such a perspective moves beyond a view of civil rights legal activism as solely the work of lawyers, to examining the ways committed activists within the U.S. left, helped to build this legal activism and sustain an important left base in the U.S. during the Cold War.

Most years, several AIB members are elected as AIB Fellows on account of their excellent international business scholarship, and/or past service as AIB President or Executive Secretary. The Fellows are in charge of electing Eminent Scholars as well as the International Executive and International Educator (formerly, Dean) of the Year, who often provide the focus for Plenary Sessions at AIB Conferences. Their history since 1975 covers over half of the span of the AIB and reflects many issues that dominated that period in terms of research themes, progresses and problems, the internationalization of business education and the role of international business in society and around the globe. Like other organizations, the Fellows Group had their ups and downs, successes and failures – and some fun too!

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how French universities can play a key role in generating Smart City (SC) through an innovative Public-Private Partnership (PPP) dedicated to urban transformation.

The authors led an action-research study for five years with several research and pedagogic projects, including users or citizens.

The paper points out main factors of SC development. It also presents shared demonstrators’ characteristics, including industrial scale, sustainability, and citizens’ participation.

This research is experimented with only one regional multi-case study.

Practical implications of this paper include a University of Lorraine diversification strategy through the “Chaire REVES” supported by public and private partners.

At the regional level, industrial-university-territorial partnerships could tackle both societal and economical issues “with,” “for,” and “by” citizens.

Based on the Living Lab concept, this case study shows a concrete regional university strategy involving: user-centric design, collaborative processes, citizens’ workshops, and new financial and organizational answers enabling collaboration between private companies and public institutions. The paper also argues that innovative PPPs involving users are necessary for developing SC.

The purpose of this study is to investigate union effects on wages, employment, and productivity in China. The relationships between unionization and these three economic variables are first tested at the national level and then examined in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively.

Provincial-level panel data from 1994 to 2014 are used in this study, compiled from various Chinese Statistics Year Books, and covering 29 provinces. The Ordinary Least Square is firstly employed to examine union impacts. Then, in view of the endogeneity of unionization, the Two-Stage Least Square estimation with instrument variables is adopted to reexamine union effects. Overidentification tests are conducted, verifying the validity of these instruments.

At the national level, Chinese unions have significantly positive effects on wages but no significant effect on employment and productivity. In the eastern region, unions are significantly related to increased employment. In the western region, union activity not only significantly promotes wages but also improves productivity. In the central region, unionization has no significant impact. These findings suggest that equipping Chinese unions with a collective and cooperative face can generally help them improve workers' interests. Their effectiveness varies across the three economic regions.

Compared with the survey data conducted in certain cities and industries, the provincial-level panel data used in this article have the advantage of capturing the overall effects of unionization. An instrument variable method is used to address the endogeneity issue. After exploring union effects at the national level, this paper focuses on observing the differences in union roles in three economic regions.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

Media and academic attention on Airbnb focuses on user experiences, implications for traditional accommodation establishments and negative sociocultural impacts. The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of Barcelona residents who have been impacted by the proliferation of Airbnb rentals.

A qualitative approach was adopted, involving semi-structured interviews with residents of Barcelona.

It highlights the problem of unregistered Airbnb rentals throughout the city, carrying implications for the gentrification of neighbourhoods, the displacement of local residents and anti-social guest behaviour. This study points to a consequent rise in anti-tourist feeling. It also reveals that the authentic experience promised by the sharing economy is illusory.

This paper presents a model that highlights a clash between the vaunted benefits of the sharing economy for hosts and tourists and the negative implications for a city’s residents.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

Traumatic events can cause post-traumatic stress disorder due to the severity of the often unexpected events. The purpose of this paper is to reveal how conversations around lived experiences of traumatic events, such as the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, can work as a strategy for people to come to terms with their experiences collaboratively. By encouraging young children to recall and tell of their earthquake stories with their early childhood teachers they can begin to respond, renew, and recover (Brown, 2012), and prevent or minimise more stress being developed.

The study involved collecting data of the participating children taking turns to wear a wireless microphone where their interactions with each other and with teachers were video recorded over one week in November 2011. A total of eight hours and 21 minutes of footage was collected; four minutes and 19 seconds of that footage are presented and analysed in this paper. The footage was watched repeatedly and transcribed using conversation analysis methods (Sacks, 1995).

Through analysing the detailed turn-taking utterances between teachers and children, the orderliness of the co-production of remembering is revealed to demonstrate that each member orients to being in agreement about what actually happened. These episodes of story telling between the teachers and children demonstrate how the teachers encourage the children to tell about their experiences through actively engaging in conversations with them about the earthquake.

The conversation analysis approach used in this research was found to be useful in investigating aspects of disasters that the participants themselves remember as important and real. This approach offers a unique insight into understanding how the earthquake event was experienced and reflected on by young children and their teachers, and so can inform future policy and provision in post-disaster situations.