This research seminar traces the journey from ideas to measurement, illustrating how meaningful research emerges when scholars integrate grounded inquiry, rich ethnography, and rigorous measurement development. Using the phenomenon of technoficing—the creative adaptation and repurposing of technology for social good (Qureshi et al., 2021)—as an example, the session highlights how compelling research ideas often originate in the field through close observation, immersion, and engagement with real-world practice. Ethnographic and case-based methods help researchers identify novel concepts and constructs that existing theories may overlook. Building on these grounded insights, the talk demonstrates how researchers can systematically conceptualize emerging phenomena and translate them into measurable constructs through a structured scale-development process. By connecting discovery-oriented qualitative work with robust quantitative validation, the seminar underscores how researchers can produce theoretically insightful, empirically sound, and practically relevant contributions. The seminar will also explore the future possibilities for further developing this construct and its nomological network. The goal is to inspire participants to move from observing meaningful patterns in practice to constructing rigorous tools that advance both academic knowledge and societal impact.
The gig economy is reshaping platform-based tourism industries such as tour guiding. Despite its growing influence on the global labor market, limited research has explored how tour guides strategically present themselves and their offerings through self-branding. This study narrows this research gap by applying self-branding theory to investigate how Korean tour guides on tourism platforms, such as Airbnb Experiences, craft their experiences to attract tourists. By analyzing 193 host profiles in South Korea, two dominant branding strategies are identified: (1) the professional and authentic; (2) and the cosmopolitan. Analysis reveals that both these strategies are discursively accomplished through self-disclosure. The findings highlight that self-branding in platform-based tourism reflects an intense competitive pressure faced by gig tour guides, who individually compete to attract customers.
This study investigates how cognitive flexibility shapes the internationalization performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through distinct learning mechanisms. We develop a cognitive–behavior–performance framework that positions imitative and vicarious learning as mediators and international experience as a moderator. Using survey data from 367 SMEs in China and Poland analyzed via PLS-SEM, we find that cognitive flexibility significantly enhances both types of learning, which in turn fully mediate its effect on financial and strategic performance. Furthermore, international experience negatively moderates the link between cognitive flexibility and imitative learning but does not significantly affect the vicarious learning path. These results clarify the cognitive micro-foundations of organizational learning, demonstrating how SMEs can leverage differentiated learning strategies to succeed in uncertain global markets.
Cross-border alliances are typically understood as fragile under conditions of political hostility. Challenging this view, we develop a signaling-based theory of how multinational corporations (MNCs) strategically adapt alliance portfolios in response to national animosity. We argue that national animosity heightens MNCs' reputational vulnerability and impression-management pressures, motivating firms to form CSR strategic alliances as observable, partner-endorsed signals of social responsibility in host countries. We further theorize that this tendency is amplified when host-country geopolitical risk politicizes stakeholder evaluations and when firm visibility magnifies reputational spillovers. Analyses of U.S. MNCs operating across host countries support these arguments. Our study reconceptualizes hostility not only as a constraint on collaboration but also as a condition that reshapes firms' alliance choices toward credibility-enhancing governance forms.
Service quality frameworks such as SERVQUAL and SERVPERF have long guided hospitality research, yet they struggle to capture emerging forms of personalized and experiential excellence. This study re-examines service quality through the lens of butler service, a historically significant but under-theorized domain of hospitality. Drawing on an auto ethnographic study grounded in professional butler experience, the research conceptualizes butler service quality as an embodied practice characterized by multi-skilled adaptability, anticipatory personalization, and unseen grace. By articulating the core dimensions of butler service, this study advances service quality theory and proposes butlering as a human-centered benchmark for contemporary and future hospitality service design.
This study explores how the legitimacy needs of firms influence their voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the context of the financially repressive environment created by China's state capitalism. The team utilizes a government-led deleveraging campaign as a quasi-natural experiment and verifies the surge was not a spillover from other policies. CSR disclosures increased among firms that are more susceptible to legitimacy pressures during the deleveraging shock period. Although the CSR disclosures were of lower quality covering a few CSR aspects, they helped ease credit access. Some firms engaged in unsophisticated CSR disclosures to gain legitimacy for easier credit access under a more difficult financing environment. Non-SOEs and firms with symbolic political connections increased CSR disclosures significantly during the deleveraging campaign while SOEs and firms with material political connections did not.
