HEC Montréal

About: HEC Montréal is a education organization based out in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Vehicle routing problem & Corporate governance. The organization has 1221 authors who have published 5708 publications receiving 196862 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal & HEC Montreal.

Whether and How Virtual Try-On Influences Consumer Responses to an Apparel Web Site

Abstract: Lack of direct experiential information is part of the explanation as to why only a small portion of apparel sales are performed online. To alleviate this problem, there are several forms of virtual experience that assist consumers in evaluating apparel online. Particularly significant among such virtual experiences are those facilitated by image interactivity technology (IIT). This paper focuses on one form of IIT, the "virtual try-on" (VTO), and analyzes whether and, if so, how using a virtual 3D model to try on clothes influences cognitive, affective, and conative responses to a retail Web site. Our comparison of personalized VTO with nonpersonalized VTO and mix-and-match technology in a laboratory-controlled environment shows that VTO does not lead to greater influence over consumer responses per se. We underline the utmost importance of model self-congruity and body esteem in increasing the impact of VTO on these responses. Hence, apparel Web sites proposing VTO, as well as companies providing these solutions, should focus on ways to efficiently maximize the perceived resemblance between the consumer and the model. By introducing body-related constructs such as body esteem and perceived model self-congruity, this study augments prior research on IIT by proposing and validating the underlying mechanism by which VTO influences consumer responses.

Examination of the Relationships Between Servant Leadership, Organizational Commitment, and Voice and Antisocial Behaviors

Abstract: This study examines the relationships of servant leadership to organizational commitment, voice behaviors, and antisocial behaviors. Adopting a multifaceted approach to commitment, we hypothesized that servant leadership would be positively related to affective, normative, and perceived sacrifice commitment, but unrelated to few alternatives commitment. We further hypothesized that affective commitment would be positively related to voice behaviors, controlling for the other commitment components, and would mediate a positive relationship between servant leadership and voice behaviors. Similarly, we hypothesized that normative commitment would be negatively related to antisocial behaviors, controlling for the other commitment components, and would mediate a negative relationship between servant leadership and antisocial behaviors. These predictions were tested using matched data from a sample of 181 Canadian customer service employees and their managers. Results largely supported the above predictions. Importantly, affective commitment mediated a positive relationship between servant leadership and voice behaviors. Yet, while servant leadership was positively related to normative commitment and the latter was negatively related to antisocial behaviors, the indirect effect of servant leadership on these behaviors through normative commitment was nonsignificant. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Information flows and business process integration

Abstract: Purpose – Many business process improvement efforts emphasize better integration, yet process integration can mean many things. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of information flows to modern business processes, and draw upon recent organizational and information systems literature to characterize process integration and to derive four principles of process integration: accessibility, timeliness, transparency, and granularity of information flows.Design/methodology/approach – Using a field study, the four principles of process integration are applied to analyze ten different business processes across five organizations.Findings – In total, 18 generalized activities are identified that describe non‐integrated behavior, and “keying in known data” was found to be the most common. Among other findings, analysis highlights the importance of documentation to modern business processes, especially for coordination roles, and the paper describes three different purposes for documentation fo...

A Comparison Between ACO Algorithms for the Set Covering Problem

Abstract: In this paper we present a study of several Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms for the Set Covering Problem. In our computational study we emphasize the influence of different ways of defining the heuristic information on the performance of the ACO algorithms. Finally, we show that the best performing ACO algorithms we implemented, when combined with a fine-tuned local search procedure, reach excellent performance on a set of well known benchmark instances.