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The most significant event for the School has been the announcement of the creation of the National Centre for Management Research and Development. The Centre is due to open in 1986 and will provide research facilities for up to 20 major projects designed to improve the competitiveness of Canadian business practices.

“There are all sorts of helpful services we can provide to our customers, if only they'll take them,” said Kingsley Allaster, Vice President, Finance for D. H. Howden & Co. Ltd., a London, Ontario‐based hardware distributor, thinking out loud about ways that his firm could bind themselves more tightly to their existing customers — retail hardware store dealers. Allaster had long championed the use of information technology as a tool for gaining a competitive advantage over other distributors. The philosophy of Howden was to constantly strive for ways to help the dealers become more successful. “Their success will eventually become our success,” thought Allaster, working through the problem of how best to use information technology to develop systems that the dealers themselves could use to improve their own success. He knew that, no matter how sophisticated a support system might be, if the dealers refused to adopt it and use it, the whole effort would fail.

To establish and sustain their KM programs organisations need to establish mechanisms to ensure their governance. KM programs require business integration, senior management involvement and decision making authority. The present research aims to investigate the KM governance mechanisms organisations use to guide and control their KM programs. The research seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the governance of KM and to support organisations in the development of their KM programs.

The study employs multiple case research methodology to analyse the KM governance arrangements of 12 international organisations and identify patterns in their governance configurations.

The analysis identifies a range of structural, process and relational mechanisms that are critical for governing an organisational KM program. Different patterns among the KM governance mechanisms are identified which lead to the development of generic KM governance typologies.

The development of the KM governance framework allows future research to systematically investigate the KM governance phenomenon. As the present study is based on a configurational analysis, future research should particularly target the performance implications of different KM governance configurations.

The research provides insights into the diversity of KM governance mechanisms and their impact on a KM program. The KM governance framework can assist managers in reviewing their present and prospective KM programs and thereby support benchmarking or re‐organisation efforts.

Building on prior research that has focused on individual KM governance aspects, the present study adopts a comprehensive perspective integrating structural, process and relational governance mechanisms.

In order to manage library or information functions you must be able to persuasively communicate with your management. To accomplish this, you must communicate in the language of your management, marshalling trendy and persuasive points on your own behalf With that as a given, there has been a very heartening development over the last few years for library and information managers—a burgeoning management attention to information.

The chapter presents a senior management view on the role of new and technologically advanced tools, such as social media in internal communications.

We conducted 23 in-depth interviews with senior managers of large- and medium-sized companies in Slovenia.

The results obtained in the research confirmed that the senior management possess a strong awareness of the importance of internal communications in managing their organizations. Moreover, many top managers even pointed out that internal communications play a crucial role, and add value to the business performance through more motivated employees and that social media in the context of internal communications are vivid and growing in importance.

The study provides a starting point for further research in this area. However, the core policy recommendation would mainly be focused on internal communication experts, who must no longer underestimate the urgency of developing communication programs that help employees and senior management start working with social media successfully.

The research presents a new — senior management view on the role of social media in internal communications.

This paper aims to examine whether self-efficacy plays an important role in shaping the effect of cognition and affects in high technology adoption. It also examines whether cognition and affect mediate the effect of self-efficacy on attitude toward adoption.

Using an experimental survey to collect data, subjects performed two different tasks (utilitarian and hedonic) to make sure that they had cognitive and affective experiences to draw upon as they developed attitudes toward the focal innovation. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the model.

The result shows that self-efficacy influenced cognitive perceptions and emotional reactions. Specifically, self-efficacy was found to play a substantive role in shaping individuals’ attitudes via a cognitive route (perceived usefulness and ease-of-use) and an affective one (pleasure, arousal and dominance).

The study of self-efficacy as an external variable provides further insights into the process and is expected to increase the explained variance of the theoretical model.

This study confirms that a belief about something besides the product also plays a key role; it is the confidence consumers have in their own abilities to understand and effectively use a new piece of technology.

The research makes important contributions to our understanding of technology acceptance and has implications for marketing managers.

Movement of people from one retail trade area to another in search of better options and deals has been studied across the world owing to its large impact on trade flow. Studies have been done in various rural and urban settings. However, almost all except one fails to provide a comprehensive model of outshopping which has its own limitations with regard to its applicability’s across cultures and in various settings. Nonetheless findings from the literature provides necessary inputs to start studies in various other cultures and settings. Results are presented in form of various definitions, various types, methodologies used, factors identified (individual characteristics, market characteristics, product related variables and accessibility factors) and patterns across continents. Attempts have also been made to explain their applicability to Indian conditions along with various limitations and gaps.

This research evaluates the impact of sales promotional tools, namely coupon, price discount, free sample, bonus pack, and in‐store display, on product trial and repurchase behaviour of consumers. In addition, the moderation role of fear of losing face (or embarrassment) on the relationship between the sales promotional tools and product trial was examined. The sample points for the research were supermarkets in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. A total of 420 randomly selected customers were surveyed using structured questionnaire, out of which, 312 usable responses were received. The results of data analysis show that price discounts, free samples, bonus packs, and in‐store display are associated with product trial. Coupon does not have any significant effect on product trial. Trial determines repurchase behaviour and also mediates in the relationship between sales promotions and repurchase. Fear of losing face significantly moderates the relationship between in‐store display and product trial. Details of the findings and their implications are discussed.

There is a growing demand worldwide for the adoption of Learning management systems (LMS) by academic institutions to support e-Learning platform. Yet limited research has been conducted to investigate the factors affecting its usage, particularly by university instructors. To fill this research void, the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) was used as the core framework for analysis, while additional critical independent factors related to organizational, technological and individual characteristics were added to find a better model to understand university instructors’ continuance intention to use Blackboard system as a popular LMS.

Sample data were gathered from 158 university instructors at a university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who volunteered to participate in this study. Structural equation modeling technique was used to verify the causal relationships between the constructs.

Perceived usefulness (PU) affected satisfaction of Blackboard system. Both PU and satisfaction affected instructors’ continuance intentions to use Blackboard system. User-interface design affected both PU and satisfaction. Technical support influenced perceived usefulness. Training influenced perceived usefulness, but it had no influence on satisfaction. Computer self-efficacy had no influence on perceived usefulness.

Based on the ECM, this study contributes significantly to the limited body of research on capturing the influence of organizational, technological and individual motivators to explain university instructors’ continuance intention to use LMS.