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Using the analogy of “If you build it, they will come” from the movie Field of Dreams, this study aims to draw on relational signaling and commitment–trust theories to examine the role of different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) in the relationship between relational-encounter quality and customer loyalty to service employees and to the organization in the case of an integrated casino resort. The study confirms that building it (trust), they (customers) will come to the casino exhibited in their loyalty to casino hosts and their affiliated casinos.

The study was conducted with very important person (VIP) customers who have a designated VIP host to provide them with personal services at an integrated casino resort in Macau. The questionnaire was distributed to the respondents by VIP hosts using WeChat and Tencent QQ.

The study shows that different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) play a significant mediation role in the relationship between relational-encounter quality and the customers’ loyalty to the hosts and their affiliated casinos.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the roles of different types of trust (cognitive, affective and relational) in the relational encounter between casino hosts and VIP customers and provides insights into the link between service employees and their firm through the nurturing of the service encounter with the firm’s key accounts.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight trends affecting student writing and studying in the twenty‐first century and, as a consequence, the changing nature of literacy in this digital era.

The paper uses Thomas Friedman's concept of “flattener” technologies that are creating new levels of access and participation around the globe to emphasize changes that learners and schools need to use to become literate. Making use of a vignette followed by discussion of the research relevant to these developments, the features and distinguishing characteristics of these literacies are explored.

Six overarching recommendations for capitalizing on present and future innovations in technology and communication that provide new potential for twenty‐first century learning and future consciousness are made: competence; convergence; curriculum; customization; collaboration; and connectivism.

The paper provides an overview and insight into some of the many changes and challenges impacting on the world of education due to the large‐scale availability and use of digital text and digital media. The exploration of strategies to capitalize on the media rich environments in which our students live is compelling and evidence‐based.

Teacher educators are expected to create experiences for pre-service teachers to prepare them for the world of teaching and the ever-changing contexts of schools and teaching. In this article, we discussed integrating two different aspects of teacher education—field-based instruction and technology—through the use of Evernote^®, a digital note-taking and archiving application, to create digital interactive student notebooks. Our goal was to provide other practitioners with insight into our use of Evernote^® to address two different pedagogical goals of a field-based course: 1) to enrich our pedagogies through the use of a digital interactive notebook with pre-service teachers who were spending more time in Pre-Kindergarten-12 social studies classrooms, and 2) to teach pre-service teachers to use a particular cloud-based technology that could be implemented in their future classrooms. We described Evernote^®, how we used it to work against the notorious theory and practice gap in teacher preparation, and discussed the importance of taking the time in teacher education to teach technology to digital natives.

This chapter of the book seeks to use famous mathematical functions (statistical distribution functions) in evaluating and analyzing supply chain network data related to supply chain management (SCM) elements in organizations. In other words, the main purpose of this chapter is to find the best-fitted statistical distribution functions for SCM data. Explaining how to best fit the statistical distribution function along with the explanation of all possible aspects of a function for selected components of SCM from this chapter will make a significant attraction for production and services experts who will lead their organization to the path of competitive excellence. The main core of the chapter is the reliability values related to the reliability function calculated by the relevant chart and extracting other information based on other aspects of statistical distribution functions such as probability density, cumulative distribution, and failure function. This chapter of the book will turn readers into professional users of statistical distribution functions in mathematics for analyzing supply chain element data.

This study uses information obtained from the advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) literature to develop a conceptual framework that seeks to illustrate the impact of the management information systems (MIS) department on the different facets of AMT adoption. A detailed survey instrument was administered to a cross‐section of manufacturing firms in the USA to collect the data required to test five hypotheses relating to the efficacy of this framework. The results of this study indicate that the proposed framework is particularly useful in explaining the role of MIS departments in firms that are attempting to integrate advanced process and information technologies. This finding and other results of this study and their implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an investigation of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) implementation practices and performance at 82 discrete‐parts durable goods manufacturing plants in the USA.

A mail survey was used to gather information about: the types of AMT that the plants were using; the planning, justification and installation activities that were used to support the adoption of these technologies; and changes in plant performance that could be attributed to the AMT adoptions. Several propositions that were derived from the AMT literature are tested.

Our results indicate that firms that are desirous of adopting integrated technologies should be prepared to exert considerable effort on: fostering a supportive planning environment; integrating investment justification; engendering human and technology resource consistency; and promoting team‐based project planning and installation. Additionally, our analysis indicates that effort on three of these components contribute to explaining improvements in firm performance.

Although this research unveiled some significant findings, there is a need for testing of the propositions on a larger scale.

The managerial framework that is developed in this paper will be particularly useful to firms that are in the pre‐planning stages of AMT adoption or that are considering adding new AMT to their existing technology portfolio.

While most AMT research studies simply report, discuss and explain their findings, this paper goes further by harnessing the findings into a simple managerial framework for the adoption of AMT that is easy to understand and implement.

Presents the results of an exploratory investigation of the level of importance that firms place on several business and technical objectives when they are considering AMT adoption. Mail survey data obtained from 125 manufacturing firms in the USA that had adopted a wide variety of AMT are used in this analysis. On average, these firms had placed the highest levels of importance on improving product quality, reducing manufacturing leadtimes, reducing per unit production costs and improving responsiveness to changing customer needs. Lower levels of importance were reported for the market‐based objectives of increasing market share and gaining earlier entrance to market. In addition, although firms had also ascribed lower levels of importance to the organizational adaptation benefits of developing an integrated organization and developing management expertise, they were satisfied that implementation of the technologies had a positive influence on achieving these benefits. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the 15 benefits that were investigated in this study can be viewed as representing three interdependent dimensions: technical/operational objectives, total quality management‐based objectives, and business or marketing‐based objectives.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of brand attachment and familiarity on perceived congruence between the logo and the brand. It explores the role of an under-researched factor, surprise, on perceived congruence in the case of a radical logo change.

A study was conducted with 220 students following a university logo change. Perceived congruence between the logos (old and new) and the school brand values was measured for two kinds of students, current and future (i.e. applicants).

Results show the importance of surprise in the acceptance of a logo change. Brand familiarity and brand attachment affect surprise in opposite ways, such that higher familiarity increases negative surprise, whereas higher attachment enhances positive surprise.

This research used a school logo. Because schools represent a particular type of company, brand attachment to another type of brand could be different. The current model needs to be tested in different contexts.

Companies must pay special attention when communicating with their most attached consumers. In particular, companies that aim to change their logos must prepare for the change by relying on communications that can lead to positive surprise.

This study was conducted in a real context of logo change. It is the first study to focus on the link among familiarity, attachment and surprise when a radical logo change takes place within a company.

In this second part of the review the roles that copper and dietary carbohydrate play in the cardiovascular system, pregnancy and lactation, haemopoiesis, and in male and female animals, are summarised. The mechanisms that may contribute to the exacerbation of copper deficiency when simple sugars are consumed are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of instruction in information problem solving within the world wide web (the web) environment. The participants were 20 seventh and eighth grade students with a learning disability (LD) in reading. An experimental pretest‐posttest control group method was used to investigate the effects of intervention in which the treatment group was instructed in information problem solving with the Big6 Skills model. Both groups utilized an essay map organizer. The students researched science and social studies topics on the internet and the web and wrote reports over a three‐month period.

Experimental pretest‐posttest control group study, with a repeated measures design, and a repeated measures ANOVA analysis.

Both groups significantly improved in the quality of writing, text length, and navigation. The treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on the measure of text length and text organization. There were no significant differences between the two groups in prior knowledge, motivation, or gender.

The study was conducted predominantly with the researcher as the instructor in a number of individualized sessions, which limits the generalizability of the study.

This study reveals that students with a reading disability in reading could be taught information problem‐solving skills within the web environment. As technology reshapes our notion of what constitutes “basic skills”, learning with the web calls for instruction in which reading, writing, and information skills should be viewed as interconnected. This interconnection might be especially important for students with LD who are often engaged in practicing various skills in isolation.

This study experimentally examined information problem solving on the web with students with an LD in reading. Much research has been focused on basic reading skills for this group of students, but few studies have examined their learning within electronic environments.