Social Success Factors Research Articles

Examining the Antecedents of Return Policy Leniency in eCommerce

As eCommerce has become widespread, the challenge of successfully navigating the returns process has grown perilous. The product returns issue is even more difficult for microenterprises that sell unique or custom products with fewer resources. The authors examined the impact of the antecedents of return policy leniency, specifically economic and social success factors. Using a web crawler over a 24-week period, the authors collected and analyzed data for a sample of 781 shops from Etsy, an eCommerce platform. Results indicate that the well-studied factor of sales, in addition to a new social factor – community dialogue – impacts an Etsy shop's return policy leniency.

A STUDY OF SOCIAL SUCCESS FACTORS OF KM FOR CREATION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Dearing report by Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2006, suggested that in the times of intensified global competition, high- level skills and knowledge would become pertinent and indispensable for the country’s economic success. The SECI model of knowledge conversion given by Nonaka and his colleagues, is extensively used across industries and nations to explore the knowledge creation dimension of knowledge management. Areas of KM such as creation of novel knowledge and knowledge as intellectual capital require a lot of work and consideration from both theoretical as well as applied perspectives. With this in mind, the present study seeks to explore the social enablers or success factors contributing to knowledge creation in the higher education institutions in India. The findings suggest that the social success factors in the study significantly impact the process of knowledge creation. Moreover, different social enablers contribute significantly to different modes of the process of conversion and creation of new knowledge. The pragmatic implication of the present study could guide institutions to assess the prevalence of knowledge creation practices and success factors to be emphasized more to increase knowledge conversion and creation with respect to their organization.

Social Innovation for Sustainability Challenges

Social innovation is concerned with social mobilization and impact, and is increasingly seen as an option to address sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, the concept of social innovation is quite open in character and requires empirical accommodation to establish how it differs from other types of innovation in this setting. This article contributes empirically to the concept of social innovation as it reviews categories of success factors of social innovation against those of five other innovation types (product, service, governmental, organizational, system) in 202 innovation cases that focus on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. Statistical analysis with contingency tables is applied to examine the distribution of five kinds of success factors across the innovation types: economic, environmental, political, social, and technological. The results confirm empirically that social innovation is indeed a distinct type of innovation. There are statistically significant differences in the distribution of categories of success factors between social innovation on the one hand and product, service and governance innovation on the other. In addition to the prevalence of social success factors, social innovation is characterized by a lesser emphasis on political and technological success factors.

Sharks, rays and marine protected areas: A critical evaluation of current perspectives

AbstractMarine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly advocated for the conservation and management of sharks and rays. However, substantial uncertainty remains regarding which species can benefit from MPAs. Meanwhile, area‐focused protection targets have spurred recent and rapid gains in the creation of large MPAs, many of which carry vague objectives set by a diverse group of stakeholders with potentially different notions of “success.” Here, we capture and critically evaluate current views on the use of MPAs for shark and ray conservation. Through interviews with scientists, MPA managers, fisheries experts, conservation practitioners, advocates and policy experts (n = 53), we demonstrate a variety of perspectives regarding: (a) the effectiveness of MPAs as a tool for shark and ray conservation; (b) which factors influence the success of MPAs for sharks and rays; and (c) the desired outcomes of these MPAs. While MPAs created specifically for sharks and rays were viewed to be slightly more effective than regular MPAs as a tool for shark and ray conservation, both were generally considered insufficient in isolation. Despite greater emphasis on social success factors (e.g., local support) over biophysical success factors (e.g., size), biological outcomes (e.g., increased abundance) were prioritized over social outcomes (e.g., livelihood benefits). We argue that a stronger focus on achieving social outcomes can enhance the potential for MPAs to benefit sharks and rays. In revealing current thinking regarding the drivers and indicators of MPA success for sharks and rays, the results of this study can inform efforts to conserve and manage these species.