The double-edged effects of data privacy practices on customer responses

Requesting personal information in frontline service encounters raises privacy concerns among customers. The proximity contact tracing that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic provides an intriguing context of information requests. Hospitality venues required contact tracing details from customers, and customer cooperation varied with concerns about privacy. Drawing on gossip theory, we investigate the roles of businesses' data privacy practices and government support in driving customers' responses to contact tracing. Our findings show that perceived transparency of a business's privacy practices has a positive effect on customers' commitment to the business, while perceived control exerts a negative effect on commitment. These effects are mediated by customers' information falsification rather than disclosure, because the former is a sensitive behavioral indicator of privacy concerns. The results also reveal the moderating roles of government support. This research contributes to the customer data privacy literature by demonstrating the distinct effects of perceived transparency and control on commitment and revealing the underlying mechanism. Moreover, the research extends the conceptual understanding of privacy practices from online contexts to face-to-face contexts of frontline service. The findings offer implications for the management of customer data privacy. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Piezoelectric Nanofiber Membrane for Reusable, Stable, and Highly Functional Face Mask Filter with Long-Term Biodegradability

The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and airborne particulate matter (PM) pollution has led to remarkably high demand for face masks. However, conventional respirators are intended for single use and made from nondegradable materials, causing serious concern for a plastic-waste environmental crisis. Furthermore, these facemasks are weakened in humid conditions and difficult to decontaminate. Herein, a reusable, self-sustaining, highly effective, and humidity-resistant air filtration membrane with excellent particle-removal efficiency is reported, based on highly controllable and stable piezoelectric electrospun poly (l-lactic acid) (PLLA) nanofibers. The PLLA filter possesses a high filtration efficiency (>99% for PM 2.5 and >91% for PM 1.0) while providing a favorable pressure drop (≈91 Pa at normal breathing rate) for human breathing due to the piezoelectric charge naturally activated by respiration through the mask. The filter has a long, stable filtration performance and good humidity resistance, demonstrated by a minimal declination in the filtration performance of the nanofiber membrane after moisture exposure. The PLLA filter is reusable via common sterilization tools (i.e., an ultrasonic cleaning bath, autoclave, or microwave). Moreover, a prototype of a completely biodegradable PLLA nanofiber-based facemask is fabricated and shown to decompose within 5 weeks in an accelerated degradation environment. © 2022 Wiley-VCH GmbH

Intra-Organizational Factors Affecting Business Performance: An Empirical Study in Vietnam

In the era of industry 4.0 with the robust digital transformation, especially under the trigger of the Covid-19 pandemic, the process of transforming businesses to achieve the desired business performance depends much on the mindset transformation of each member of the organization, beginning with the thoughts of leadership and stakeholders. This study will evaluate the relationship between leadership's strategic reasoning perspectives on employee engagement or commitment and the company's reputation, thereby directly or indirectly affecting organizational performance. The study examines data from 382 companies out of 500 samples in typical industries in Vietnam using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques. The results show that holistic thinking is closely related to employee retention and corporate reputation, thereby increasing the business outcomes of the organization, whereas there was no evidence to support analytical thinking in this study. As a consequence, transforming the business to achieve the desired business performance is heavily reliant on changing the mindset of each member of the organization, beginning with the top leaders and influencers of the business. This will assist Vietnamese leaders in gaining a comprehensive understanding of corporate governance and controlling the relationships between organizational constructs.