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PurposeThis paper investigates the effect of diversity management on employees' innovative work behavior (IWB) through human resource management (HRM) and affective commitment (AC).Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 358 employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The hypothesized model has been evaluated using structural equation modeling.FindingsFindings suggest that workforce diversity management directly and significantly affected HRM and AC. Furthermore, findings revealed that HRM significantly influenced both employees' IWB and AC, while AC had a significant positive influence on IWB. Moreover, concerning the indirect effects, AC and HRM significantly mediated the relationship between DM and employees' IWB.Research limitations/implicationsA cross-sectional single source dataset is used to evaluate the hypothesized model.Originality/valueGrounded in the social exchange and institutional theories, this research fills the gap in the literature by addressing the “black box” of how workforce DM influences employees' IWB while examining the mediating role of employees' AC and firm HRM policies.

WeChat, a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, is an emerging social media platform that has been integrated into the daily lives of Chinese people, including travel. However, despite the growing proliferation of WeChat, surprisingly, little attention has been paid to the gratifications obtained by Chinese travelers when using WeChat in travel-related decision-making. Adopting the well-grounded Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), this exploratory research paper aims to address this void in prior literature and identify why and how Chinese millennial travelers use WeChat to make hotel choice decisions. Findings stemmed from the semi-structured interviews using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling approaches with eighteen WeChat users reveals that hotel choice decisions through WeChat are influenced by various social, process, and content gratifications. As indicated in our findings, hotels in China should be aware of gratifications obtained by travelers in stimulating them to utilize WeChat in the hotel selection process. Further, our study contributes to extant UGT literature by emphasizing that it has specific relevance and should be given more prominence within tourism, hospitality, and social media literature.

Acknowledging that research on social customer relationship management (CRM) adoption remains scant, grounded in the theoretical perspectives of dynamic capabilities and technology adoption, and exploratory results from a field investigation of twelve firms drawn from a single industry, we identify and group relevant variables that potentially influence social CRM adoption into nine first-order categories. This qualitative picture can be used as a theoretical basis for studying social CRM adoption. Extending practitioners’ understanding of the nature of these categories may lead to better insights into how social CRM adoption can be managed more effectively.

Cloud Computing has recently emerged as a noteworthy milestone in the area of information and communications technology (ICT) systems development. In particular, Cloud Computing improves reliability and scalability of ICT systems, which allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to scale down its ICT infrastructure while improving performance. Yet, there remains a dearth of literature that explicitly addresses the determinants of Cloud Computing adoption by SMEs. This paper aims to address voids in extant literature by developing a meta theoretical framework by assimilating two dominant theories in technology adoption literature. Following the pragmatism research paradigm and mixed methods research design, a face-to-face questionnaire survey was conducted as the main research strategy. Data stemmed from 142 SMEs in Sri Lanka were used to test the proposed framework using PLS-SEM. Twenty semi-structured interviews were initially used to validate the measurement scales before the main survey was undertaken. At the end, a supplementary qualitative phase was included with eight follow-up interviews to further discuss the findings of PLS-SEM analysis. Relative advantage, complexity, training and education, top management support, competitive pressure and trading partner support were identified as significant determinants.

Although the interrelationships among customer perceived value, revisit intention and customer loyalty has been widely studied in various tourism and hospitality settings, it has yet to be comprehensively addressed in the Airbnb context. Based on the value-attitude-behavior hierarchy, our paper proposes a theoretical framework assessing the influence of self-gratification and social values on creating revisit intention and customer loyalty of Airbnb users. Analysis of empirical data stemmed from two focus group discussions, eight in-depth interviews, and a survey with 192 Airbnb users reveals that self-gratification value influences revisit intention and customer loyalty of Airbnb users. However, as the findings indicate, although the social value is influential in forming revisit intention, its effect in creating customer loyalty towards Airbnb is insignificant.

The rapid emergence and vast adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) have transformed tourism marketing strategies from a conservative, static marketing model to an emerging, transformative conception. The transformative power of ICT has created a paradigm shift in the tourism industry by providing an opportunity for tourism service providers and tourists to co-create value. Moreover, recent technological developments have paved the way for new markets, product/ service innovations, management practices, and competitive strategies, thus forming a complex socio-technical tourism ecosystem. Meanwhile, postmodern, digitally savvy tourists expect tourism service providers to be more active in digital platforms. Consequently, a burgeoning research stream has started looking into these new developments, capabilities, and changes driven by ICT advancement in the tourism and hospitality industry in recent times. Moreover, to better understand and anticipate these fundamental changes, novel theoretical lenses, approaches, concepts, themes, and even research methods have emerged lately. Future of Tourism Marketing, edited by two renowned contemporary tourism scholars, Seongseop (Sam) Kim and Dan Wang, adds to this growing research stream by emphasizing how ICT developments have revolutionized conventional tourism marketing strategies. The reviewer used the academic approach as applied by Gamage (2021) and Peiris et al. (2020) in reviewing this book.

Accommodation purchase decision is a complex field that makes predictions of revisit\ud intentions hard to examine. Our work explores psychological factors motivating visitors'\ud decision-making concerning accommodation purchases by integrating the theory of planned\ud behavior and value-attitude-behavior model. Using a group of multiple informants in Swiss\ud universities, we performed partial least squares structural equation modelling to assess the\ud impacts of subjective norm, attitude and perception of quality on visitors' revisit intention and\ud loyalty in Airbnb and hotel contexts. Although the influence of said factors on purchase\ud decisions varies in the two contexts, results suggest that subjective norm has an indispensable\ud role in prompting revisit intention towards Airbnb and hotel accommodations. This paper's\ud findings advance our understanding of visitors' decision-making processes concerning\ud traditional hotels and accommodation establishments operating in sharing economy platforms.

Digitalization has profoundly changed and keeps changing the way people live, work and travel and has opened up unprecedented opportunities for tourism and hospitality firms to compete in global markets. Rapidly evolving multiplicity of technological novelties (e.g., robotics, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, blockchain and cryptocurrency) has influenced tourism and hospitality industries in all aspects of its operations. Digital innovations and technological novelties are changing the way work is organized and services delivered, and also presents opportunities to capture and process data and information on supply and demand, and integrate operations along value chains and business ecosystems. In line with the technological revolution, there is a dynamically increasing demand for unique, seamless tailor-made travel experience beyond mass tourism. Accordingly, tourism and hospitality firms have started leveraging technology to reinvent the customer experience through service innovations. Although digitalization has opened up unparalleled opportunities for tourism and hospitality firms of all sizes to reach new heights in profitability, successful digital transformation has been a great challenge for many firms. With a compilation of eleven chapters edited by the renowned contemporary tourism, hospitality and strategic management scholars, namely Kayhan Tajeddini, Vanessa Ratten and Thorsten Merkle, this book is a timely effort which critically analyzes various challenges tourism and hospitality industries face in coping up with digital transformation and how the two sectors have strategically responded to such challenges.

Marketing literature states perceived value is crucial in predicting customer choice in marketing literature. However, perceived value of online services can be different from its offline counterpart due to its temporal and spatial nature, which has been relatively under-researched, where a lacuna of theoretical frameworks and well-accepted measurement scales exists. This paper addresses the above research gap by developing a 19-item measurement scale that can be used to assess perceived value of online services. Data collected from a questionnaire survey of 147 customers of hotels in Sri Lanka were used to assess the reliability and validity of the proposed scale in a post-purchase situation, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The findings produces six value dimensions (conditional, epistemic, social, monetary, convenience and emotional value) all of which were found to demonstrate acceptable psychometric properties based on a variety of reliability and validity tests. Managerial and theoretical implications stemming from the empirical findings are also discussed