Guest editorial

Contributors

The paper by Demirel evaluates the technological developments of smart cities and the facilities they offer to citizens based on developed and developing country profiles. The main problem of the study is to examine the main factors that make a city smart, the effects of governance-based policies in smart city projects and the political reforms that enable the transformation of smart cities. Methodologically, content analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, was applied in the study. Words such as smart city, smart city research, smart city management and smart city planning were searched in Web of Science, EBSCO, ABI/Inform databases. The articles found are categorized according to the themes. In the academic literature, determinations about smart cities and the privacy and security problems caused by these cities are common. Smart cities not only produce innovation and prosperity but also increase local cooperation and citizen participation. Amsterdam and Barcelona are smart city models that we can consider as the best examples in the literature. Ankara was chosen because it draws attention with its projects based on strategic vision and planning for smart cities. Kocaeli is one of the important industrial centers of Turkey and has been included in the study because it adopts the innovative multi-stakeholder model in smart city projects. Barcelona, one of the examples examined in the study, has succeeded in ensuring democratic participation in the implementation of the model, as it prioritizes cooperation with local actors in the smart city model. It is seen that stakeholder participation provides healthy solutions to urban problems. It can also be said that technological progress and innovation increase the quality of life of the local people. Amsterdam is another example of success in implementing smart city projects. Amsterdam’s success is largely based on strong collaboration with the private sector. The private sector has an important role in financing projects and strengthening its technical infrastructure. Civil society and universities are included in the model. Through the network governance model, smart city projects receive support from different segments of society. Compared with Amsterdam and Barcelona, Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality, which adopted the smart city model after 2007, produces smart city projects in cooperation with the university and industry, but currently, citizens have little knowledge about the projects, and the rate of using smart applications is low. Ankara Metropolitan Municipality started smart city studies in 2011; unlike other smart cities, the projects realized are mostly at a bureaucratic level due to the lack of common negotiations with the private sector and non-governmental organizations. Cities are grouped as beginner, intermediate and advanced together with the evaluations made. After grouping, main differences were determined by making comparisons between cities according to their qualifications. As a result, countries achieve the success that care about the participation of common stakeholders in smart city applications, invest in technical infrastructure and raise awareness of the society using smart platforms.

The second contribution, by Bachnik, Moll and Montana, focuses on designing has become a decisive tool to gain competitive advantage and enhance innovation across industries; therefore, its effective management is a requirement to compete in the markets. The ultimate goal of design management is to serve the business goals, and it needs to be integrated within other business functions and processes. Design management is a cyclical process that includes key stages such as the generation of ideas and concepts, the new product development and design strategy and the assessment of the results. All these are strongly influenced by the corporate culture and the design orientation. With this in mind, we should not overlook the many challenges that an effective design management suppose being one of the most important ones, the necessary fruitful collaboration between managers and designers. This is precisely the focus of this paper. The paper elaborates on a design management model putting special emphasis on this crucial part of the framework, the management and the design resources. With this in mind, the source of analysis has been a joint project for a real company in which design and business students participated. Besides the observation and interaction with the students during the project, a survey was conducted. The purpose of the data collected was to explore the perceptions and expectations held by both design and management students of their roles in larger business structures and the roles of other professional subcultures in light of the prospects of common undertakings within a business. The research enabled us to highlight how different the subcultures of both groups of professionals are but also how important it is that they recognize each other and that there is a willingness to undertake a joint effort to achieve the given goals. This is accomplished through leveraging on one another’s professional expertise, building trust through finishing the business projects, and discovering tangible end results. Any evident differences between the groups seem to complement one another; thus, creating common ground for effective collaboration. As a result of the analysis of the research, we could also develop the design management model, further stressing the growing need for organizations to create collaborative spaces for both designers and managers and to push for greater recognition and greater understanding of those two professionals’ groups and the key role that the corporate culture and the design orientation play in enhancing them.

The paper by My-Trinh Bui and Don Jyh-Fu Jeng focuses on digital media and content platforms worldwide produced total revenue of US$177.2bn in 2019, and this is expected to grow to US$255bn up by 2025 (Statista, 2020). Regarding online networks, considerable research has recognized the benefits of entrepreneurial and educational networking and coproduction. Two-thirds of the global online population participates in social networking sites (Benevenuto et al., 2012) for connection (Ansari et al., 2011), information dissemination (Garg et al., 2011) and commercial value derivation (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). Scant research has focused on alumni collaboration networks and their contribution to institutes, including intentional knowledge sharing and coproduction behaviors. By applying attachment theory, conservation of resources theory and digital platform networking perspectives, our study describes major implications for designing inspiring and compatible community platforms. This study explored resource conservation (belongingness) as the primary relational mechanism for alumni to share their instrumental resources (knowledge sharing), supporting resources (citizenship behavior) and competent resources (coproduction behavior). Knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior act as intermediate agents to trigger coproduction behavior. We show how subjective norm, group norm and trust is regarded as a tool to reduce bonding intrusiveness (i.e. the intrusive side-effects of a bond) and moderate the indirect effect of belongingness on coproduction, and the direct effect of citizenship on coproduction. Using the data from 711 respondents selected from an alumni collaboration network and structural equation modeling analysis, the study examines individuals who attribute their need to become part of an institute to their online alumni community. Contribution behavior toward an institute is critical for the institute’s well-being and effectiveness. To develop well-being and effective performance, in addition to a member’s in-role participation behavior, their extra-role behavior involves forms of knowledge sharing and cooperative tasks, such as citizenship and coproduction behavior. Guidance is provided for improving sustainable alumni communities through citizenship-sharing and coproduction behavior. Given that network embeddedness binds an alumnus to an institution, it is reasonable to assume that belongingness, as a type of psychological membership, would encourage people to preserve connections with others. Under the perspective of attribution to digital platforms, our findings support the concept that alumni transform their roles as passive recipients of resources to enactors and active contributors of resources by knowledge sharing, citizenship and coproduction, which actively form their alumni relation networks. Online alumni communities are regarded as resource conservators who can result in valuable coproduction via the sharing of knowledge, expertise and skillsets to create profit for a range of institutions and industries. Alumni networking platforms encourage alumni cohesiveness, stimulate knowledge exchange and improve professionalism. Alumni are valuable assets that online community administrators may consider developing as instruments that can motivate other members to engage in collective activities. Universities may better understand how value is produced by observing alumni’s online social activities, as well as how alumni use contributions as a way to show thanks for the value obtained from their university experience. Colleges should devote resources to creating and encouraging participation in reunion activities. Universities should also think about how to extend their present social cultural offerings on campus and in their virtual communities. Online alumni communities are regarded as a renewable resource in an industry where innovation, expertise and skillsets are resources that can be commercialized to create profit (Lubis et al., 2020).

The next paper, by Jianfang Qi, Xin Mou, Yue Li, Xiaoquan Chu and Weisong Mu is based on the improvement of people’s living standards, consumers’ preferences for certain fruits have gradually presented a trend of diversification, i.e. consumers consider not only the extrinsic quality attributes of fruit but also their intrinsic quality attributes. Consequently, determining how to correctly identify consumers’ actual demands and quickly mine consumers’ preferences has become an important link for fruit distributors to consider in the context of fierce market competition. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to analyze the preference data of fruit consumers to help fruit distributors better understand market demands and develop more reasonable marketing strategies. Among the main methods of analyzing fruit consumer preferences, BWS, descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing are the most commonly used. While these methods are conceptually simple, they are limited in their ability to mine cross-information from multi-dimensional attributes, which results in the very limited availability of recommendations to act as references for fruit distributors. Based on this, the study considers another effective method of mining consumer preferences, namely, association rule mining, which is an analysis tool and can be used to analyze consumer preferences in more than three dimensions. Furthermore, most previous relevant studies have ignored that different consumers contribute differently to the same market, thereby leading to the failure to obtain some association rules with lower support but from high-value consumers, and ultimately the loss of some valuable information. Thus, to change the calculation results of support and make more rules related to important consumers pass the support filter, different weights are assigned to consumers so that their contributions to a market can be highlighted to varying degrees during the process of calculating support. Specially, in this study, we extend the conventional association rule problem by associating the “annual purchase amount”–“price preference” (AP) weight with a consumer to reflect the consumer’s contribution to a market. And these two indicators are chosen for two reasons. First, fruit consumers’ annual purchase amounts and price preferences for certain fruits are often different, which will cause different consumers to have different weights. Second, in terms of their purchasing power and consumption amount, these two indicators can indeed reflect a consumer’s contributions to a market. Then, a novel consumer preference mining method, the AP-weclat algorithm, is proposed by introducing the AP weight into the weclat algorithm for discovering frequent itemsets with higher value. In this study, the proposed method is verified by using the Chinese table grape consumer data. The experimental results demonstrate that compared with the weclat algorithm, the proposed AP-weclat algorithm is more conducive to finding high-value association rules and helping distributors determine consumers’ consumption preferences quickly and accurately. In addition, according to the mining results, the proposed algorithm is helpful for fruit distributors to design professional and personalized marketing strategies and improve their profits. It is worth noting that this study is the first to introduce the AP-weclat algorithm for discovering frequent itemsets from transactions through considering AP weight, and the AP-weclat algorithm can be considered for application in other markets.

The contribution by Costa Climent, Haftor and Chowdhury examines the advent of powerful mobile digital technologies in the 2000s, increased international harmonization of regulatory frameworks, continued urbanization, and the development of flexible supply chain technologies have acted as enablers of companies’ multi-channel efforts. These efforts soon evolved into cross-channel practices. Digital technologies offer the possibility of channeling information and information-based products to customers and provide other capabilities that make it possible to respond to actual customer behavior in the channel. One of the key capabilities is the interaction between the customer and the company. This interaction provides a collection of data points that provide a complete understanding of customers, which can be used to personalize offers individually. A second advantage is the synchronization of content across different channels. Digital technology enables the transfer of information between the company and the customer and between different channels for each customer. Thus, companies can establish omnichannel practices where customers have a fully synchronized and seamless experience throughout the customer journey, regardless of the channels they choose. Empirical studies on omnichannel practices are recent. They point to two fundamental limitations. First, companies fail in their omnichannel initiatives because they are overwhelmed by the inherent complexities involved. Second, omnichannel practices are poorly conceptualized. Therefore, there is little knowledge to ensure their successful development and management. A conceptual view of omnichannel practices is proposed, this paper addresses the fundamental question of what omnichannel practices are. This paper examines in detail omnichannel studies from the point of view of research approach and theoretical perspective. This analysis reveals three fundamental limitations of current conceptions of omnichannel practices:

• the conception of the customer as a single actor;

• the lack of attention to the potential value created by omnichannel practices; and

• the predominantly static notion of omnichannel practices.

We advance the conception of the customers targeted by omnichannel practices. A multi-player customer replaces the current single-player customer. Second, we articulate four distinct sources of value creation that are potentially generated by omnichannel practices: novelty, efficiency, complementarity and lock-in. In doing so, we move beyond the current notion of convenience as an implicit justification for firms to establish omnichannel practices. Third, the current static notion of omnichannel practices as an entity is replaced by evolutionary processes. In these evolutionary processes, the structure and content of omnichannel co-evolves in its interaction with other contextual factors, such as new technologies, institutional changes and competitor initiatives. Fourth, the three conceptual developments are integrated into a coherent conceptual framework.

The study by Calzadilla, Marín, Carrero and Lohan presents the social and work inclusion of people with disabilities is an important area of public action and research today. Future trends in the economy and lifestyle represent new challenges for the inclusion of disabled people. This review, therefore, aims to generate a dialogue and provide data to understand the role of people with mental disorders over physical disabilities in the business world, where existing social stereotypes must be challenged and in particular attention needs to be paid to those on the autism spectrum. Given the interest and volume of publications, the purpose of this paper is to study the differing proposals for disabled people that emerge in a changing economy, reviewing existing literature and revealing the current status of research in the field. The bibliographic source supporting this analysis resulted from a search in Scopus using Disability, Employment and Work as search terms, which yielded 750 publications between 2011 and 2020. It shows a threefold increase in the number of publications over this period, indicating a growing interest in disability and employment-related research. In this study, the analysis is conducted using methodologies like network analysis and software tools previously developed for this purpose, like VOSviewer. Using such rigorous bibliometric tools established and emerging research groups, the interrelationships and patterns of collaboration can be identified. In addition, a bibliometric analysis helps to graphically illustrate the evolution of publications over time and to identify areas of current and possible future research directions. The results obtained in this paper give a current overview of the problems encountered by people with disabilities when seeking employment. In this way, the aim of the research, which was to provide an analysis of the growing body of research literature dealing with the situation of people with disabilities in employment, is achieved. Interesting conclusions are drawn that could contribute to the understanding of the employment situation of people with disabilities and may help to develop effective policies to challenge existing social stereotypes. Based on the co-keyword network analysis, three groups of research related to disability and employment can be determined: Cluster 1 addresses a variety of disability, education and employment issues; Cluster 2 includes articles on occupational health, partial disability and retirement benefits; Cluster 3 is more focused on diversity and discrimination. Their findings indicate that up until 2016, the conversation revolved around health and employment and from 2017 onwards, the research has become more focused on the employment of people with disabilities. Socioeconomic factors affecting people with disabilities appear as one of the causes impairing their inclusion, such as the different intellectual disabilities curtailing their employment and education for work. The results provided by this bibliographic analysis in the area of research on the disability employment field are very promising. It may serve as a valuable source of information for researchers for further investigations in this area and aid in the development of effective policies to address existing social stereotypes.

The next contribution, by Tin Trung Nguyen, Cong-Duc Tran, Jo-Yu Wang, discusses the importance of corporate governance in developed markets has received much attention from scholars and practitioners, its effect on firm performance in transitional markets has not yet been adequately considered. Moreover, the role of corporate governance mechanisms in firm performance and the capital market is inconclusive in the literature. Thus, this study aims to investigate the interconnection between corporate governance components and firm performance using data from the manufacturing industry in Vietnam – an emerging market. The findings indicated that the low power concentration in the leadership structure should be carefully considered. The reason is that if shareholders obtain a substantial fraction of a firm’s equity, they tend to pursue their best interests rather than enhance firm performance. Next, the diverse background in the boardroom from gender equality and a higher number of directors will contribute to better firm performance. That is because the high female proportion in the boardroom raises the legitimacy of corporate practices, whereas larger boards provide better advice from diverse perspectives and tend to reduce the workload to improve final strategic decisions. Therefore, firm performance and sustainable growth can be enhanced when appropriate corporate governance mechanisms are selected. Their study contributed to the literature in two ways. First, the study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), along with econometric panel data analysis, to elucidate how alternatives of governance mechanisms impact firm performance. While panel data analysis revealed the net effects of solitary governance components (i.e. board size, ownership concentration, and CEO duality) on accounting-based performance and no effects on market-based performance, fsQCA highlighted the joint presence and absence of different governance variables, which equally lead to high firm performance. These findings reflect the fact that contradictory cases coexist, thereby reconciling the debates in previous studies. Second, this study offered top managers practical guidelines on appropriate corporate mechanisms by advocating the use of “appropriate” corporate governance because any “good” governance mechanism should consider not only the single but also the combinatorial effects of governance components. As there are equifinal paths leading to the desired outcome of high performance, firms from different industrial and national contexts should mindfully apply any uniform corporate governance code.

The last contribution, by Cristina González-Tejero and Cayetanois Molina, is focused on the impact of corporate entrepreneurship. To this end, the learning process of the individual in skills, competencies and agile methodologies is considered, as well as the influence of corporate culture, ways of working and organizational capabilities in SMEs. The results yielded a positive and direct link between the organization and the training of business leaders in programs of skills and competencies, as well as between this training and corporate entrepreneurship processes carried out in the organization. However, there is an indirect relationship between organizational activity and processes of the organization and intrapreneurship activities.