Environmental Turbulence and Scanning Behavior: The Moderating Effects of Organizational Maturity

This paper examines the relationship between environmental turbulence and information scanning behavior in a sample of 242 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the moderating effects of organizational age. Our results suggest that SME decision makers utilize a selective, cognitive simplification process in their information search activities. Scanning behavior of SMEs is highly differentiated and very selective in the face of turbulent task environments. In general, our sampled SMEs seem to be more attuned to technological and competitive turbulence. Additionally, young and mature SMEs also exhibit different scanning behaviors. While young SMEs prefer a search mode of proactive continuous internal gathering, mature SMEs opt for a mode of reactive internal and external information gathering. Implications of this study are discussed

Wireless Business And The Impact On Firm Performance: The Strategic Move To Adopt A New Technology

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is receiving increased attention due to the vast potential it presents for rural and underserved settings. Successful adoption of new technology, in particular mobile commerce, can serve as a catalyst for improving quality of life and reducing the digital divide. Adoption of new technology is dependent upon variables such as: organizational culture, business strategy, as well as their surrounding environment. Hypotheses that investigate the relationships between the above variables and business performance in the context of the new technology adoption process are formulated. A sample of small and medium-sized businesses from the American Midwest that adopted, or are in the process of adopting, wireless technology is used to test these hypotheses. The methodology, results, and managerial implications are discussed

GraphX: Unifying Data-Parallel and Graph-Parallel Analytics

From social networks to language modeling, the growing scale and importance of graph data has driven the development of numerous new graph-parallel systems (e.g., Pregel, GraphLab). By restricting the computation that can be expressed and introducing new techniques to partition and distribute the graph, these systems can efficiently execute iterative graph algorithms orders of magnitude faster than more general data-parallel systems. However, the same restrictions that enable the performance gains also make it difficult to express many of the important stages in a typical graph-analytics pipeline: constructing the graph, modifying its structure, or expressing computation that spans multiple graphs. As a consequence, existing graph analytics pipelines compose graph-parallel and data-parallel systems using external storage systems, leading to extensive data movement and complicated programming model. To address these challenges we introduce GraphX, a distributed graph computation framework that unifies graph-parallel and data-parallel computation. GraphX provides a small, core set of graph-parallel operators expressive enough to implement the Pregel and PowerGraph abstractions, yet simple enough to be cast in relational algebra. GraphX uses a collection of query optimization techniques such as automatic join rewrites to efficiently implement these graph-parallel operators. We evaluate GraphX on real-world graphs and workloads and demonstrate that GraphX achieves comparable performance as specialized graph computation systems, while outperforming them in end-to-end graph pipelines. Moreover, GraphX achieves a balance between expressiveness, performance, and ease of use

The relationship between innovation, knowledge, and performance in family and non-family firms: An analysis of SMEs

This study seeks to examine the relationship between innovation and knowledge in family versus non-family businesses with regard to performance. Data from 430 small and medium-sized enterprises were analyzed through hierarchical regression analysis, and innovation was found to be a significant factor in both family and non-family samples. However, knowledge in family firms was also found to be significant with innovation. Implications for theory and practice are discussed that may provide possible competitive advantage for small family firms

The Regional Mall’s Persona Wish List: The Hedonist, the Influencer and the Local Champion

This study investigates three consumer archetypes (hedonist, influencer, and local champion) and their potential to influence mall revitalization. Results show that a belief in the importance of the mall leads to a more enjoyable shopping experience, a subsequent willingness to pay more for locally owned stores, a greater propensity to spend more at the mall, and to engage in positive word-of-mouth. Findings suggest that local champions and influencers are vital for bringing patrons back to shopping centers in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is argued that the mall and its tenants will benefit from co-marketing; the mall offering and promoting enjoyable settings and individual stores accentuating their unique experiences