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The purpose of this paper is to extend the social loafing literature by investigating the role of group development process on perceptions of social loafing within groups. Building on extant literature, it is contended that group members’ association with the group development stages can help in predicting their perceptions of social loafing.

Using a cross-sectional survey data were collected from 164 individuals nested in 39 groups. Mixed-effect modeling in R was unitized to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results of mixed-effect modeling in R show that group development stage of inclusion and dependency (stage 1) has no significant effect on perceptions of social loafing. Whereas, group development stage of counterdependency and fight (stage 2) has positive, and trust and structure (stage 3) and work (stage 4) has negative effect on perception of social loafing by group members.

This study investigates unique relationships between group members’ association with different stages of group development and their perceptions of social loafing. Additionally, a newer, shorter and cost-effective scale to measure four stages of group development is developed.

More studies have investigated the relation between option measures and stock returns during scheduled corporate events. This study adds to the literature and investigates the informational role of options concerning stock returns following unscheduled corporate news events. The authors focus on individual analysts' recommendation changes rather than consensus revisions, as the recommendation consensus might discard a large amount of potentially valuable information in the aggregation process.

Based on the econometric model, the authors follow Bakshi et al. (2003) to construct the model-free option implied measures. The authors further decompose the implied option variance into upside and downside components. In such a way, the different informational roles of call and put options can be distinguished. A variety of regression analyses are conducted to examine the predictive power of option implied measures, and the ordered probit model is used to test the tipping hypothesis of analyst recommendations.

This study’s results show that the option market impounds the “valuable” firm-specific news; thus, the pre-event option market is strongly related to stock returns around recommendations even though recommendation changes are largely “unscheduled”. At the same time, these results suggest that upside (good) and downside (bad) implied volatilities contain distinctive information on subsequent stock returns.

This study provides new evidence that an increase in upside (downside) volatility around analyst recommendation changes would increase the probability that analysts upgrade (downgrade) the stock. The findings provide implications for investors and risk managers in making investment decisions.

With the rapid development of e-commerce in China, the third-party payment system greatly improved the efficiency and volume of the entire trading market. The purpose of this paper is to put forward a suitable prediction model to analyse its development trend.

The authors analyse internet third-party payments in China, taking into account online payment transaction values coupled with an ARMA model and the fractional grey model (FGM). First, the rolling FGM model is applied in order to characterise the trends of the transaction volume. The influence of the initial value change on the FGM model is analysed. The optimisation mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) model is constructed to determine the optimal translational values, the corresponding optimal accumulation order and optimal inverse accumulation order.

This paper uses China’s recent third-party online payment data to quantify its development trend. The authors find the coupling model suitable for the development trend of third-party online payment transaction. The results show that the model is suitable to quantify its development trend of China’s recent third-party online payment.

Considering the complex influence factors that lead to the third-party online payment volume data of time-varying grey feature, this paper combines the FGM with ARMA model to describe the development of third-party payment mode.

Targeting the common functions of the Zhejiang Library website, elderly individuals were invited to complete six experimental tasks on the improved website interfaces, and subjective data (PAD emotion scale and usability evaluation) and objective data (eye movement data) were recorded to verify the effects of graphic layout and navigation position on the information-seeking experience of elderly individuals.

This study analyzes the effect of the graphic layout and navigation position of the Zhejiang Library’s website interface on the emotional state, perceived usability and information-seeking time of elderly individuals, with the aim of providing guidance and suggestions for the elderly-oriented reform of the public library website.

The experimental results show that the graphic layout has a significant effect on the emotional state and perceived usability of elderly individuals, and the navigation position has a significant effect on the information-seeking time; the interaction between graphic layout and navigation position exerts a significant effect on the information-seeking time of elderly individuals. The eye movement data show that elderly individuals have a better information-seeking experience when the top navigation bar and image-text matched arrangement are used for the interface layout.

This study adopts a new approach combining subjective data and eye movement data to evaluate the effect of the public library website’s interface layout on the information-seeking experience for older people. The findings can provide a theoretical basis and methodological support for the elderly-oriented reform of public library websites. They can also provide scientific design suggestions for age-friendly interface layouts of other Internet products and service applications.

This paper was formulated to address the impact of different individual decision modes on purchasing managers' satisfaction and find out whether different environments could influence the strength of the relationship between the sourcing managers' individual modes and their decisions.

A new model was built based on the variables selected from literature. Two identical surveys were sent to manufacturing firms in China and Egypt. Around 450 questionnaires have been sent to respondents, and about 300 responses have been collected in the two countries.

The key findings of this study showed that although the influence of decision modes is not changeable across decision-makers in different markets' environment, the strength of the relationship between different individual decision modes and the buying decision significantly differed across different dynamic task environments of buyers.

The research in this paper focused on the purchasing managers' individual decision-making. On the other hand, purchasing managers' market environment is rarely recognized as a main factor affecting their decisions. Furthermore, this research tries to understand more about the supplier selection decision-making in Eastern Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

An Interview with Min Zhu, Webex Founder and Active Venture Investor in China. In a public speech on April 21, 2007, Bill Gates acknowledged, “There was a survey done in the US that asked where the next Bill Gates will come from. Sixty per cent of the United States said that the next stunning success would come from Asia. I think it’s true and amazing that it’s so well organized that the investment and change here are leading to very innovative work”. To learn more about the current status of venture investment in China, we interviewed Mr. Min Zhu, who co‐founded Webex in Silicon Valley, and recently moved to China to focus on venture capital investment. He answered JABS questions on May 12, 2007 in Hangzhou, China.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of green supply chain management on environmental performance (EP), operational performance (OP), and business performance in the context of a developing country, Jordan. In addition, the mediating effects of environmental and OP on the relationship between green supply chain management and business performance are investigated.

The study is based on survey data collected from 215 manufacturing firms from different industries in Jordan. Validity and reliability analyses were carried out using SPSS and Amos. Direct and indirect effects were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that green supply chain management positively and significantly affects both EP and OP. The results also demonstrated that the total effect of green supply chain management on business performance is positive and significant. The direct effect of green supply chain management on business performance proved to be negative, but insignificant. Thus, the total positive effect of green supply chain management on business performance is indirect and fully goes through EP and OP.

This study is one of the first to examine the direct and indirect effects of green supply chain management on business performance, especially in a developing country and the Middle East in particular. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by investigating the mediating effects of EP and OP on the green supply chain management and business performance relationship.

In recent years, we can observe the emergence of firms, born both digital and global, that have disrupted existing industries. Deploying digital technologies, they have developed innovative value chains and business models that threaten established multinational companies (MNCs). In this chapter, we examine how MNCs can and do respond to the challenge digital technologies represent. We describe the main facets of digital technologies and discus the potential these have to undermine the value chains and business models of established MNCs. In order to illustrate this, we employ longitudinal data from Telenor, a leading multinational mobile telecom company. Telenor perceives digitalization as a critical threat that in turn is causing a radical rethink about the viability of its decentralized, locally responsive value chain and business model. Our data provides insights into business models in-the-making at the top management level. We argue that the case of Telenor is generalizable to multi-domestic MNCs across a range of industries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of the environment for development of Small and Medium Enterprises (hereinafter referred to as SMEs) in Sichuan, China. Focus group discussions and case analyses were used to diagnose problems that SMEs encountered in technology implementation and institutional innovation in Sichuan. Data from a layered sample survey was used to assess how the environment could influence the growth of SMEs and to examine what the SMEs need for their future development. The findings indicate that market success for the SMEs was mainly a function of market development/low labor cost/high efficiency/ and operational methods. Failure was generally caused by a lack of funds and/or market fraud. The results also suggest that the environment needs to be improved mainly on government efficiency and market disciplines. The research also gave policy suggestions that local government should conduct to help the SMEs to develop especially in operation and commercialization.