Collaboration Impact on Social Well-being for Business Sustainability: A Case Study of a Malaysian Water Treatment SME Company

This study demonstrated how collaboration advances the manufacturing-based industry to transform its business structure as a social service-oriented and well-being solution, thereby being able to sustain its business vis-à-vis market competition. Thus, this paper presents an approach for industry analysis from the corporate collaboration rationality perspective. The study was performed in the Malaysian water management service industry and examined the operations of a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) water treatment company as a case example. Data were gathered by conducting an explorative questionnaire survey with the SME water service provider in Kedah, Malaysia. Potential scenarios were identified for establishing viable future directions of SMEs, which include the needs of mutual corporate collaboration for service encapsulation, and ecosystem oriented approach for social welfare value creation. This research can help overcome the managerial challenges of a company, thus enable it to succeed in the commercial market by ensuring service-oriented social well-being solutions

The role of employees in digital transformation: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior on Australian employees’ cloud technology usage

Even though digital technologies such as cloud technologies are prevalent in transforming businesses, the role of employees and their digital skills in the process is, to a large extent, neglected. This study brings forward the novel concept of digital literacy to explore the role of employees in understanding the wide variety of opportunities of digital technologies and their actualization. By treating digital literacy as the antecedent of cognitive behavior of employees in utilizing cloud technology at companies, we apply the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) for analyzing preliminary empirical data collected from 124 Australian employees’ technology use intentionality and behavior. The quantitative analysis shows that the TPB holds for the utilization of cloud technology and there is a positive relationship between employees' digital literacy and the utilization of cloud technology at companies. Overall, the study contributes to the technology management literature by offering a workable construct to measure the digital skills of employees in the form of digital literacy. Further, it expands the TPB framework by introducing digital literacy as a perceived behavior control variable that helps to examine the role of employees in digital transformation. The paper ends with implications and limitations of our preliminary study, followed with suggestions for future studies

Value co-destruction causing customers to stop service usage: a topic modelling analysis of dental service complaint data

This study aims to identify the types of value co-destruction (VCD) emerging in healthcare services that cause patients to reduce or extinguish their intentions to continue using the services; it also aims to identify the VCD antecedents. Complaints from 1075 dental clinic patients, which are collected as textual data, are analysed in this study. The authors adopt an exploratory approach comprising a quantitative analysis based mainly on the topic model, a type of machine learning, and a qualitative analysis based on the KJ method. Twelve types of VCD were empirically identified, three of which had a significant negative effect on the intention to continue using the service. Ten antecedents that cause these types of VCD were identified, when examined based on a multi-level perspective, institutional factors and social norms were found to be related to the VCD process. This study contributes to understanding the mechanisms by which failures in healthcare services occur and to developing effective decision making to overcome them

Relations between open innovation and product quality: an empirical study of Japanese electronics firms

Abstract In late years, the concept of open innovation receives attention from industry and academic. This concept means that firms utilize resources outside for their R&D beyond their boundaries. Behind this background is the fact that firms have more opportunities to utilize resources outside. Previous studies indicate that by utilizing resources outside, firms could make R&D process more efficient or create new products. On the other side of the coin, we have to solve some aspects in open innovation context. First, product quality on the basis of activities of open innovation has to be defined. The definition of product quality is still unclear; thus, it is necessary to identify product quality in open innovation context. In addition, comparison between open innovation and in-company cooperation is not done so much. In the examination of effectiveness of open innovation, we should compare utilization of resources outside with that of in-company ideas. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze relations among product quality, utilization of resources outside, and utilization of internal resources on the basis of Covariance Structure Analysis. This analysis is based on a questionnaire survey at Japanese electronics firms in July 2015