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Assessing the individual and synergistic effects of quality management practices on operations performance	[ "Quality management practices", "Operations performance", "Synergistic effect" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Quality management (QM) provides a paradigm shift in the management philosophy for improving organization effectiveness and competitive advantage (Barker and Emery, 2006; Psomas and Jaca, 2016). It is a holistic management philosophy with principles and practices as the focus of QM implementation (Bouranta et al., 2017).\n2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses development: Section 2 contains three subsections. It starts with the scope and operationalization of QM practices, and the choices of the major QM practices for this research purpose. Section 2.2 reviews the individual effects of each QM practices on performance, while Section 2.3 builds the argument for the synergistic effects among these QM practices.\n3. Methodology: Section 3 describes the methodology of data collection (Section 3.1), constructs measurements (Section 3.2) and research model (Section 3.3). Though we used the mature measurement scales for the key constructs, we still tested the psychometric property (Section 3.2.1) to make sure the validity and reliability of QM construct before we conducted the regression analysis later.\n4. Analysis and results: Figure 2 portrays the regression model to test the proposed hypotheses. Please note that the key variables in Figure 2 are not the same as yet related to those in Figure 1. Table III and the notes detail the procedure of converting the original data to the variables used in the regression analysis. First, after the QM practices model was validated, the factor score of each QM practice was used to represent each construct (without measurement error). Next, the minimum score of five factors was extracted to reflect the minimum level of implementation of these commonly used QM practices (denoted as MinQP). As discussed in the prior section, this variable was viewed as the proxy of synergies across QM practices. Then, the difference between each QM practice factor score and MinQP was calculated to form a series of new variables (denoted as AVTML, AVTR, AVTM, AVEQP and AVIQP), representing the relative strength of each QM practice over the weakest one.\n5. Discussions: This study revisits the relationships between QM practices and operations performance through a different approach that accommodates both the synergistic effects and individual effects. We found evidence to support both, but most importantly, the synergistic effects are very strong and should not be missed out from the picture. Section 5 discusses the theoretical and practical implications of synergistic effect (Section 5.1) and individual effect (Section 5.2) as well as methodological contribution (Section 5.3).\n6. Conclusions: This study makes theoretical contribution to the field of QM by providing empirical support of the interdependence assumption of QM practices. This assumption is crucial in guiding the process of QM implementation, yet it has never been empirically confirmed. We deploy a novel approach to capture the complicated interactions among QM practices to proxy their interdependency and found consistent results to support the assumption.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Quality management (QM) practices have long been suggested as a package to improve the quality performance of a company. Yet, empirical studies offered little support of this perspective as only a small set of QM practices were found to be conductive to quality improvement. By taking a new approach, the purpose of this paper is simultaneously evaluate the individual and synergistic effects of several key quality practices on operations performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Survey data were collected and used to test the proposed hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to assess the magnitude of synergistic effects and individual effects.\nFindings: It is found in this study that the synergistic effects across QM practices are substantial in enhancing all operations performance dimensions whereas individual effect varies for different performance goals.\nOriginality/value: This study makes theoretical contributes to the field of QM by providing empirical support of the interdependence assumption of QM practices and resolving the inconsistent findings. Practically, the results suggest that in-depth implementation of various QM practices simultaneously can be highly effective to achieve performance improvement on all accounts. In addition, the positive additional individual effects also open up a firm's strategic choices of where to focus the resource investment in the adoption process as long as the strategic focus can justify its contribution toward the desired performance goals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Do multicultural faculty members perform well in higher educational institutions? Examining the roles of psychological diversity climate, HRM practices and personality traits (Big Five)	[ "Job performance", "Job satisfaction", "Personality traits", "Higher educational institutions", "Diversity training", "Psychological diversity climate", "Multicultural workforce" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As businesses become more competitive, organizations have continuously been advancing towards improving their products and services to better compete at the global level; however, this can only be made possible by achieving a highly skilled workforce. Organizations often face difficulties in finding skilled workforce domestically. This pushes firms to search for talent in other countries, henceforth, creating cultural diversity in the organization. Although diversity has many dimensions, cultural diversity is considered to be an important element in HR but a constant challenge for organizations to manage effectively. In this regard, Bhatti et al. (2014) argued that cultural diversity can help organizations to gain competitive advantage in the local and international markets if managed effectively. In addition, Shen et al. (2009) argued that diversity issues vary from country to country, but gender inequality and multiculturalism are considered the most common diversity issues across the globe, especially so in the West.\nPsychological diversity climate: James et al. (1990) defined psychosocial diversity climate as \"the employee's cognitive judgment of his/her work environment that leads to a perception about his or her organization that is significant to the individual\". Employees gain these perceptions from organizational policies, procedures and working environments but the perceptions about organizational value for diversity can vary from one employee to another. Myung et al. (2017) argued that organizational diversity policies and procedures play important roles in enhancing the diversity climate. In this regard, human resource managers should play an active role to promote an inclusive organizational climate and properly handle diversity issues. Mor Barak et al. (1998) suggested that employee perception towards diversity and discrimination policies in the organization create a psychological diversity climate. Madera et al. (2016) argued that past researchers have ignored the examination of perceived positive diversity climate and job satisfaction. In addition, McKay et al. (2011) further argued that research has begun to highlight the outcomes of perceived diversity climate like job satisfaction and higher organizational commitment. Furthermore, Hye et al. (2015) argued that the employees' level of organizational commitment and job satisfaction increase when the employees' perceive that organizational policies and procedures apply fairly to all employees regardless of their gender, culture, race and ethnicity.\nPersonality traits: On the basis of Norman's (1963) labeling, the Big Five factors comprise Extraversion or sociability, Neuroticism or emotional stability, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness to experience or culture. Extraversion refers to those individuals who are socially active, motivated, assertive and active. These individuals perceive difficult situations as opportunities and believe that all problems can be solved with hard work and continuous efforts. In this regard, Cheng-Liang and Mark (2014) argued that extraversion influence job performance positively because their main characteristics are assertive, active and sociable. In the context of the multicultural environment, these characteristics of extraversions (assertive, active and sociable) might help the individuals develop good relationships with peers and understand work requirements which might make them feel satisfied with their job.\nHuman resource practices: Human resource professionals have been using different practices, such as recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal and compensation to manage employees. However, as business environments change and diversity is increasingly present in the workforce, the nature of these practices has changed. Therefore, human resource professionals considered the diversity element while implementing any practice or approach in managing employees, so that they can be more effective in managing a multicultural workforce. Past researchers (Brubridge et al., 2002; Goodman et al., 2003) have suggested that human resource managers deal with inequalities in recruitment, training, performance evaluation and rewards. By using the HRM toolkits, managers have gradually improved the state of equal employment opportunities, and boost creativity in multicultural workforce.\nJob satisfaction and performance: Past researchers have been investigating the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, but because of contradictory findings, the relationship between these two variables is still unclear. Cheng-Liang and Mark (2014) argued that limited studies have been done on investigating the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Contradictory findings might be because of different individual factors that contribute towards job satisfaction. Although past researchers have reported that job satisfaction is an important element and positively influences job performance (Champathes Rodsutti and Swierczek, 2002), human resource professional are still trying to understand the role of job satisfaction in multicultural workforce job performance. In this regard, Nolan (2012) argued that globalization has considerably changed the nature of work for employees, that it has become a new challenge for managers wanting to enhance employee job satisfaction. Therefore, management scholars have given sufficient attention to job satisfaction (Biswas and Varma, 2012); however, past research studies still only provided limited knowledge about what influence employee job satisfaction in cross-cultural/multicultural settings (Andreassi et al., 2014). Furthermore, Malgorzata and Beata (2015) argued that research is limited on multiculturalism and job satisfaction. Therefore, this paper hypothesized that:\nMediating role of job satisfaction: Past researches have highlighted many factors that influence employee job satisfaction, mainly because job satisfaction enhances employee performance. In other words, satisfied employees perform better at the workplace. In this regards, Cheng-Liang and Mark (2014) suggested that personality traits play an important role in boosting employee job satisfaction, which further leads to better job performance. Van and Fegi explained that personality traits not only influence job satisfaction but job performance as well. For example, agreeableness explains the individual's level of happiness, and any individual with a higher level of agreeableness is approachable and friendly. Therefore, individuals with a higher level of agreeableness tend to mix with other people faster. This fulfills their social needs and that they feel satisfied with their job (Organ and Lingl, 1995) which then further help them in getting support on job tasks that help them to improve job performance (Mount et al. (1998). Similarly, individuals with conscientiousness are deeply involved with their work, hardworking and good in planning, which leads to better rewards. This then creates job satisfaction (Cheng-Liang and Mark, 2014), which then further enhance job performance as well (Barrick and Mount, 1991). In addition, individuals with the Extroverts trait are friendlier then introverts and spend more time in social activities, which create a good working environment. This then leads to higher satisfaction (Judge et al., 2003) and their direct participation without conflicting with others, which further improve their performance (Schmidt et al., 2000). Furthermore, Connolly and Viswesvaran (2000) argued that individuals with a lack of emotional stability often have arguments with others that create less job satisfaction, and the lack of support from peers lead to poor job performance. Therefore, emotionally stable employees can handle pressure, which creates satisfaction (Peltokorpi, 2008).Because of less conflict with others, they would get more support from others on job activities, which help them improve their performance (Cheng-Liang and Mark, 2014). Finally, individuals with openness to experience, like to try new things, and are more independent create job satisfaction (Topolinski and Hertel, 2007). Moreover, individuals with openness to experience trait are more inclined to experience new things and happily accept new challenges that help them perform better at the workplace (Salgado, 1997).\nMethodology: The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of personality traits (Big Five), HRM practices (recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal and compensation) and psychological diversity climate on multicultural workforce job satisfaction and performance. The data was collected from 258 expatriates working in the higher education sector of Saudi Arabia and their peers, which include third country nationals and host country nationals. To avoid the common method bias problem, two different questionnaires were developed and respondents (expatriates and their peers) were asked to respond to a set off statement as per their level of agreement or disagreement. Holopainen and Bjorkman (2005) critically reviewed the past literature and argued that the major problem in expatriate literature is the common method bias. Majority of the previous studies that have examined the relationship between personality traits and expatriate performance were conducted through surveys, which were sent to the expatriates to respond. When the same expatriate provide information about dependent and independent variables, it created the common method bias problem. In this regard, Podsakoff and Todor (1985) stated \"Invariably, when self-report measures obtained from the same sample are utilized in research, concern over same-source bias or general method variance arises\" (p. 65). Therefore, Conway and Lance (2010) suggested that researchers should try to minimize common method bias variance by collecting data about independent and dependent variables from two different sources (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Similarly, many other researchers like Caligiuri (2000) have adopted the same technique and collected data from two different sources to avoid the common method bias variance. This study can be considered to be free from the common method bias because the information about the independent and mediating variables were provided by the expatriates and information about the dependent variable were provided by the expatriates' peers. Therefore, 260 questionnaires were distributed to expatriates and their peers and 258 questionnaires were returned after completion. Two questionnaires were discarded because of illogical responses. Finally, 258 questionnaires were used for analysis (Table I).\nMeasurement: Demographic data of respondents\nNotes for the model: The results of the study supported H1 and indicated that the multicultural workforce job satisfaction mediates the relationship between psychological diversity climate and job performance (t = 5.140; t > 1.96; Hair et al., 2007). The results show that psychological diversity climate have a stronger direct effect on job satisfaction (effect = 0.548) in comparison with the indirect effect (effect = 0.148). The results of this study also provide evidence about p-value (p = 0.001; p < 0.05: Garver and Williams, 2009), which indicated that the path (psychological diversity climate have positive relationship with satisfaction) is statistically significant.\nDiscussion: Cultural differences among employees create challenging situations for organizations but organizations can better use these differences if managed effectively. Organizations can gain competitive advantage through multicultural workforce if their product/services developed are based on multicultural workforce feedback. In addition, this can only happen if a multicultural workforce is given the opportunity to get involved in the development process of product and service. By using effective HRM practices, developing certain personality traits in a multicultural faculty member, higher educational institutions can encourage these faculty members to play their active roles in producing a higher-quality teaching environment. Faculty involvement in this process will also make them feel important as an organizational asset, which might create job satisfaction. Unfortunately, past researches have not fully explained how different HRM practices and personality traits influence job satisfaction and performance of a multicultural workforce. Although past researches have explained these factors in a conventional setting, because of the diverse nature of the multicultural environment, it is important to understand how these factors influence job satisfaction and performance in a multicultural setting. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine how HRM practices, personality traits (Big Five) and psychological diversity climate influence the multicultural faculty members' job satisfaction and performance in a multicultural environment.\nImplications and future research directions: This paper suggested many theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical view point, this paper strengthens the body of knowledge by examining the role of the psychological diversity climate, HRM practices and personality traits (Big Five) in multicultural job satisfaction and performance. Past researchers have never highlighted the role of the psychological diversity climate in multicultural settings. This paper explained that employees experience different psychological diversity climates from different human resource management practices like cross cultural training and equal employment opportunities. Some examples include having employees from minority cultures in performance appraisal teams, equal opportunities for training and development activities, and avoiding discrimination in compensation and reward systems, and developing positive psychological diversity climate, which influence multicultural job satisfaction and performance among faculty members in higher educational institutions. Future research should highlight other individual and organizational factors that might help employees gain greater psychological diversity climates. Discussion of these HR practices will help researchers to understand the nature and scope of these practices in multicultural settings. Future researchers should also explain the role of other HR practices, such as health and safety and industrial relations in multicultural settings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Globalization has brought many challenges to organizations, namely, in managing the performance of multicultural workforces to achieve organizational objectives. Past researchers have highlighted many factors that influence the employee's performance, but the nature and scope of these factors is limited to the conventional setting. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework to better understand the role of the psychological diversity climate, HRM practices and personality traits (Big Five) in job satisfaction and performance of the multicultural workforce.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 258 faculty members working in Saudi Arabia's higher educational sector. Structural equation modeling was used with Amos 18 to analyze the data.\nFindings: The findings of this study suggest that managers should adopt diversity practices to improve the psychological diversity climate among multicultural workforce. In addition, diversity training and unbiased performance appraisal systems also increase the faculty member's job satisfaction and performance in multicultural settings. Finally, managers should consider openness to culture and sociability traits while selecting faculty members to work in multicultural settings.\nOriginality/value: This framework has never been tested in higher educational institutions and in multicultural setting.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intercultural engineering beyond stereotypes: Integrating diversity competencies into engineering education	[ "Diversity", "Culture", "Cross-cultural management", "Intercultural engineering", "Intercultural competency", "German higher education", "Integrated competencies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Engineering today has become increasingly complex, not only with regard to technology itself but also with regard to its boundary conditions which often require engineers to work across cultures, locations, professions and organizations (Mahadevan and Mayer, 2012). As a result, study programs in engineering are starting to make cross-cultural seminars part of their curriculum (Male, 2010), and companies have included cross-cultural training activities into their internal human resource development (HRD) programs (Mahadevan and Mayer, 2012). Based on recent literature, this article argues that current practice has two shortcomings. First, cultural difference is only understood as a societal and national cultural difference and, therefore, neglects the multiplicity of cultures in engineering, such as professional, functional or organizational cultures (Mahadevan, 2012). Second, cross-cultural HRD is often done additively, meaning that culture and engineering remain unlinked (Kilian-Yasin and Muller, 2012). When combined, both shortcomings hinder the development of full intercultural competencies on behavioral, cognitive and affective levels.\nTheoretical background: The multiple cultures paradigm\nShortcomings of current CCM theory and practice for engineering: A tendency toward sophisticated stereotyping\nThe design of the specific study program Business Administration and Engineering/International Management: The study program of Business Administration and Engineering (BAE)/International Management (IM) at Pforzheim University is the first in Germany to integrate engineering, managerial education and intercultural/diversity competency (www.hs-pforzheim.de/wi-im). It is an International Industrial Engineering program, the intercultural curriculum of which has been designed based on the above stated theoretical assumptions and observations from industry practice. The university is located in a region of Germany with a strong industrial focus. It is a University of Applied Science, a specific type of a German institution of higher education which focuses on applied research. As a rule, own professional experience is a requirement for becoming a professor at such a university. BAE/IM has seven interdisciplinary goals which are divided into measurable learning outcomes accompanied by evaluation (Kilian-Yasin and Muller, 2012). Intercultural competency is one of them. Courses are taught in German and English; the fifth semester is dedicated to an industry internship abroad. An additional study semester abroad is recommended. ICE is taught in the forth, fifth, and sixth semester. Additional courses cover International Industrial Engineering (forth semester), International Business Operations (seventh semester) and Interdisciplinary Projects (seventh semester). These courses are mandatory.\nDiscussion: The given description of this specific study program can serve as an example of how to integrate ICE into the engineering curriculum. During the time of writing this article, the study program has been running for 10 semesters, and the first graduates have left the university three semesters ago. In this section, the research and practical implications as well as ensuing research questions based on initial challenges and lessons learned will be discussed. After acknowledging the implications of this approach, further steps for researching and implementing ICE will be suggested. In line with current debates in CCM research, the focus will be put on how to conceptualize culture and on how to design methods of teaching diversity competencies based on this conceptualization.\nImplications and limitations: Research implications\nSummary and conclusion: This article has highlighted the need for developing integrated diversity competencies in engineering. The latest theory, namely, the multiple cultures paradigm, it has defined intercultural competency in interactions. Against this theoretical background, it has identified the shortcomings of current HRD practice for engineers. First, cultural difference is only understood as national cultural difference and, therefore, neglects the multiplicity of cultures in engineering, such as professional, functional or organizational cultures. Second, cross-cultural HRD often fails to link culture and engineering in an integrated manner. This hinders the development of full intercultural competencies and might result in sophisticated stereotyping. To overcome these shortcomings, this article suggests the integrated approach of ICE which acknowledges cultural diversity in engineering and which enables long-term intercultural learning. Based on these principles, the intercultural curriculum of a German bachelor program in International Industrial Engineering has been designed. It requires students to reflect on themselves and to always apply own experiences to theory, to link theory to practice, and to transfer learning from one seminar to the other. To prevent sophisticated stereotyping, the following principles are suggested. First, students should reflect on themselves before trying to define other cultures. Second, students should apply problem-solving skills to their experiences in other cultures rather than learned theory. Based on this example, diversity competencies should be integrated into engineering education and HRD. The requirements for and benefits of doing so have been discussed in this article.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This article aims to suggest implementing an integrated approach - named intercultural engineering - at university level. Engineering today often takes place across cultures, locations and organizations. As a result, many companies have included cross-cultural training activities into their internal human resource development program. However, current practice neglects the engineering context and might enable sophisticated stereotyping.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This article presents the case of a German bachelor study program in International Industrial Engineering and the theoretical foundations of its design.\nFindings: Engineering education needs to move beyond simplistic comparative cross-cultural management theory. It needs to acknowledge cultural complexity in engineering through an integrated development of competencies for utilizing the benefits of cultural diversity.\nOriginality/value: The contribution of this article lies in providing a practical example of how to develop integrated competencies for cultural diversity in engineering, as based on latest theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Indoor air in healing environments: Monitoring chemical pollution in inpatient rooms	[ "Indoor air quality", "Healthcare facilities", "Design and management strategies", "Inpatient rooms", "Monitoring activities", "VOCs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Universally, public health must be guaranteed and preserved. Among the main health promotion requirements, architecture should respond to social demand guaranteeing also environmental and economic sustainability (Buffoli et al., 2013; Capolongo et al., 2016). Thus, managers and architects for health should carry out those crucially actions aimed at promoting health through sustainable strategies, both in design (site construction, building typology, technologies, finishing materials, etc.) and management phase (organization, maintenance, cleaning activities, etc.) (Capolongo, 2014; Buffoli et al., 2015).\nMaterials and methods: Starting from the current state of the art, the research investigates the efficiency of inpatient rooms, analyzing the concentration of VOCs, the relative influence of microclimatic parameters and ventilation ones, room configurations and finishing materials, etc. (Pereira et al., 2017; Fuselli et al., 2013) and the management strategies for healthy inpatient rooms (Macedo et al., 2013). As the systematic review by Smielowska et al. (2017) highlights through proper control and improvement of IAQ, as well as disinfection of spaces and sterilization of medical instruments, hospital infections can be prevented significantly.\nDiscussion: application on case studies and results: At the beginning of the research project, the selection of case studies provided an extended sample: several public and private hospitals in Lombardy region in Italy. Only few facilities took part to the experimentation. Currently, some of them have been totally investigated, whereas others are currently under investigation.\nConclusions: The data collected permitted to investigate the quality of indoor air in relation to VOC concentrations. Although the topic can be considered a timely contribution, the authors aim to highlight the priority of the issue related to the health status of hospital employees and users. Next frontiers should consider the study of the interactions among different molecules and their effects, as Stucchi et al. (2018b) have highlighted in their studies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Several countries have carried out air quality monitoring in professional workplaces where chemicals are used. Health-care spaces have been less investigated. This paper aims to define a protocol, as developed by a research group, for inpatient rooms to understand the state of the art and to suggest design and management strategies for improving process quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Starting from the ISO-16000 standard and guidelines for monitoring activities, a protocol is defined for a one year investigation, with passive samplers. Through data analysis of the investigations and analysis of the cleaning and finishing products, heating, ventilation and air conditioning and maintenance activities, etc., it is possible to highlight the potential influences of chemical pollution.\nFindings: A methodology is defined for understanding the chemical pollution and the possible factors related to construction materials, cleaning products and maintenance activities.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper analyzes only a limited number of case studies because the monitoring activity is still in progress.\nPractical implications: The investigation offers a starting point for a wide tool for the definition of design, maintenance and management strategies in health-care facilities.\nSocial implications: The research project, aimed at improving the knowledge of indoor air quality (IAQ) in inpatient rooms, is a starting point for a supporting tool for future regulations concerning health-care facilities.\nOriginality/value: IAQ is an issue on which many governments are focusing. Several health-care researchers have reported studies that aim at improving users' health. Most investigations are about biological and physical risks, but chemical risks have been less studied. The paper suggests some design and management strategies for inpatient room.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Emotional intelligence in transcendent customer experiences	[ "Customer loyalty", "Willingness to pay", "Emotional intelligence", "Service encounter", "Transcendent customer experience", "Word of mouth recommendations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The power of experience profoundly affects how we live, interact and interpret the world[1]. Consequently, service managers strive to create positive consumer experiences as a persuasive marketing tool to enhance customer/firm relationships (Atwal and Williams, 2017; Wu et al., 2014).\nLiterature review and hypotheses development: Transcendent customer experience\nMethodology: Survey design and instrument development\nDiscussion and implications: Recent marketing research (Atwal and Williams, 2017) has indicated that positive and transcendental consumption experiences can enhance firm success, but marketing theory regarding TCE has focused on whitewater rafting experiences (Arnould and Price, 1993b) and travels to deserts, mountains, and poles (Laing and Crouch, 2009).\nLimitations and future research: In the first study, participants wrote about their own positive/negative service encounters. Thus subjective differences in their evaluations might have caused valence to insignificantly affect the relationship between EI and TCE. Future research should determine how the theoretical relationship works in an actual restaurant/hotel setting to provide better insights about an actual consumption setting.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This services marketing research provides a theoretical framework for experiential and relationship marketing and extends the theory of transcendent customer experience (TCE). Specifically, this paper aims to identify how the drivers (emotional intelligence [EI]), outcomes (customer loyalty, willingness to pay and word of mouth [WOM] intentions) and influences (openness to experience) of TCE are integrated. The research contributes to the theoretical debate regarding ability-based and self-reported EI measures by examining their influence on TCE.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Students and general consumers provided data through structured online surveys in three survey-based experiments. Linear and multiple regressions, mediation analyses and simple effects tests were used for data analysis.\nFindings: Findings suggest that self-reported and ability-based measures of EI influence TCE differently. Participants who had high self-reported EI evaluated positive service encounters as more transcendent than they evaluated negative service encounters. Participants who had high ability-based EI evaluated positive service encounters as less transcendent than they evaluated negative service encounters. TCE experiences evoked higher loyalty, willingness to pay (WTP) and WOM recommendations. Furthermore, dispositional factors were significant in forming TCE: participants who were highly open to experience and had high ability-based EI interpreted their service encounter as less transcendent than did participants who were more closed to experience and had low ability-based EI.\nResearch limitations/implications: TCE, a relatively new concept, offers theoretical advancement in context and constructs. The student-provided data gave high internal validity; the general consumer-provided data gave external validity. Ideally, a future field study in an actual consumption setting should replicate the findings. A self-reported questionnaire used to measure constructs may have introduced common method variance that biased the results.\nPractical implications: By understanding that EI affects perceptions of transcendence in positive/negative service encounters, marketers can better implement consumer-oriented marketing strategies that will enhance TCE, customer loyalty, WTP and WOM.\nOriginality/value: Despite considerable research in experiential and relationship marketing, room remains for theoretical and practical enhancement in the under-researched concept of TCE. This research is the first attempt to extend TCE theory to marketing by identifying the drivers, outcomes and moderators of TCE in service encounters. The research also provides theoretical advancement in EI research. The results contradict previous research claiming that ability-based and self-reported measures are equally valid. Instead, using the two EI scales interchangeably leads to potentially different outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Supply chain agility, adaptability and alignment: Empirical evidence from the Indian auto components industry	[ "Survey", "Resource-based view", "Supply chain agility", "Supply chain adaptability", "Supply chain alignment", "Top management commitment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Firms operating in the globalized era need to respond quickly to external changes (Lee, 2002) and challenges, including uncertainty (Prater et al., 2001; Joshi et al., 2013). Three properties differentiate firms when dealing with these issues, namely, agility, adaptability, and alignment (Lee, 2004; Lin et al., 2006). While there is rich body of literature on supply chain agility (Gligor and Holcomb, 2012; Blome et al., 2013; Gligor et al., 2015; Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2017), research on the combined effect of agility, adaptability, and alignment is scant apart from few notable exceptions (Lee, 2004; Whitten et al., 2012; Eckstein et al., 2015). These focuses on the impact of the combination of agility, adaptability, and alignment on supply chain performance (Whitten et al., 2012), or on the impact of supply chain agility and adaptability on cost performance and operational performance under the moderating effects of product complexity (Eckstein et al., 2015).\n2. Theoretical framing and development of hypotheses: 2.1 RBV\n3. Research design: 3.1 Construct operationalization\n4. Data analyses and results: Before evaluating the reliability and validity of the constructs and their measures, we tested for assumption of constant variance, existence of outliers, and normality. We used plots of residuals by predicted values and statistics of skewness and kurtosis. To detect multivariate outliers, we used Mahalanobis distances of predicted variables (Eckstein et al., 2015). The maximum absolute values of skewness and kurtosis of the measures in the remaining data set were found to be 1.7 and 2.37, respectively. These values were well within the limits recommended by past research (univariates skewness<2, kurtosis<7) (Curran et al., 1996). We did not find any plots nor did the statistics indicate any significant deviances from the assumption.\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n6. Conclusions: Drawing on RBV we developed and tested a theoretical framework that reconciles the independent contributions of two well-established streams in the literature: studies that explain the impact of RBV on supply chain properties and those that consider the role of top management in supply chain networks. We attempted to explicate how top management moderates between SCV and SCAAA. Analyses based on 351 Indian auto components manufacturers support the hypothesized relationships in the theoretical framework. The research contributes to supply chain design literature focusing on building agility, adaptability, and alignment. It confirms that from an RBV perspective, the moderating effect of TMC can contribute to the achievement of SCAAA.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine when and how organizations create agility, adaptability, and alignment as distinct supply chain properties to gain sustainable competitive advantage.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The current study utilizes the resource-based view (RBV) under the moderating effect of top management commitment (TMC). To test the research hypotheses, the authors gathered 351 usable responses using a pre-tested questionnaire.\nFindings: The statistical analyses suggest that information sharing and supply chain connectivity resources influence supply chain visibility capability, which, under the moderating effect of TMC, enhance supply chain agility, adaptability, and alignment (SCAAA).\nOriginality/value: The contribution lies in: providing a holistic study of the antecedents of agility, adaptability, and alignment; investigating the moderating role of TMC on SCAAA; following the RBV and addressing calls for investigating the role of resources in supply chain management, and for empirical studies with implications for supply chain design.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is the health care price inflation in US urban areas stationary? Evidence from panel unit root tests	[ "Cross-sectional dependence", "Health-care price inflation rate", "Multiple structural breaks", "Panel unit root tests", "C32", "E31", "I1" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Applied economists are increasingly interested in studying the relationship between inflation and other economic variables (Thanh, 2015; Nguyen, 2015). This requires stationarity of the time-series data of the variables, in levels or when differenced, to avoid spurious regression parameter estimates. More specifically, for decades, economists have been testing whether the inflation rate series are stationary at the regional or national level in developed countries and in varying panels of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Rose, 1988; Johansen, 1992; Culver and Papell, 1997; Ericsson et al., 1998; Crowder and Wohar, 1999; Lee and, 2001; Rapach, 2002; Holmes, 2002; Charmeza et al., 2005; Basher and Westerlund, 2006; Lee and Chang, 2007; Romero-Avila and Usabiaga, 2009a, 2009b). However, empirical evidence on the stochastic properties of the inflation rate series is mixed. For example, while Lee and Chang (2007) and Culver and Papell (1997) claim that inflation rates in the OECD countries are stationary, integrated of the order of zero, I (0), Rodrizuez (2004) and Arize (2005) report that inflation rates in the Latin American and many developing countries are non-stationary, respectively, and therefore, they are integrated of the order one, I (1).\n2. Data, methodology and panel unit root tests: Data on the aggregate US medical care consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate and the US urban area medical care CPI inflation rates for 17 large urban areas for the period 1966-2006 are obtained from Bureau of Labor Statistics - BLS (2007) (http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=cu). The BLS computes annual health-care inflation rates using the 1982-1984 = 100 as the base period. Details of the urban areas included in the analysis are given in the appendix. Data summary statistics in Table I show greater variations in the health-care price rise for some urban areas (e.g. Houston-Galveston; Kansas City) than others (e.g. Boston; Philadelphia-Wilmington). The mean annual rate of health-care price rise, greatest in Cincinnati-Hamilton, Boston-Brockton and Philadelphia-Wilmington areas, may arise from their greater incomes, demographics, more generous insurance coverage and greater use intensity of frontier medical treatment technologies and testing procedures (innovations).\n3. Empirical results and discussion: The univariate unit root test results for the aggregate US health-care inflation rate are reported in Table II. While the results of the ADF tests, ADFGLS and Phillips-Perron tests, with the null hypothesis of the presence of a unit root, clearly indicate that the aggregate US health-care inflation rate series in levels are integrated of the order 1, I ~ (1), and therefore non-stationary, the series in their first differences are found to be integrated of order 0, I ~ (0), and hence is stationary. The results of KPSS unit root test with the null of stationarity show that the series are non-stationary in levels and in first differences, indicating that the aggregate US health-care inflation rate is persistent. Any shocks to these series are permanent and hence they do not return to their mean.\n4. Conclusion: This paper, for the first time in the literature, using a battery of univariate, panel unit root tests, the Im et al.'s LM panel unit tests that permit two structural breaks and the recently developed Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. panel stationarity tests that allow for multiple structural break points, empirically confirms the existence of a unit root in the US health-care inflation rate series during the period 1966-2006. While the null of unit root cannot be rejected for the aggregate series, for the disaggregated series, they are rejected under the assumption that the panel members are independent. Stationarity of the disaggregated series implies that it is mean reverting. This suggests that related macroeconomic shocks (such as changes in fiscal or monetary policies) or health policy changes (e.g. reimbursement and financing of covered procedures) have transitory effects on health-care inflation rates.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate, for the first time in the literature, the stochastic properties of the US aggregate health-care price inflation rate series, using the data on health-care inflation rates for a panel of 17 major US urban areas for the period 1966-2006.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This goal is undertaken by applying the first- and second-generation panel unit root tests and the panel stationary test developed recently by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2005) that allows for endogenously determined multiple structural breaks and is flexible enough to control for the presence of cross-sectional dependence.\nFindings: The empirical findings indicate that after controlling for the presence of cross-sectional dependence, finite sample bias, and asymptotic normality, the US aggregate health-care price inflation rate series can be characterized as a non-stationary process and not as a regime-wise stationary innovation process.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research findings apply to understanding of health-care sector price escalation in US urban areas. These findings have timely implications for the understanding of the data structure and, therefore, constructs of economic models of urban health-care price inflation rates. The results confirming the presence of a unit root indicating a high degree of inflationary persistence in the health sector suggests need for further studies on health-care inflation rate persistence using the alternative measures of persistence. This study's conclusions do not apply to non-urban areas.\nPractical implications: The mean and variance of US urban health-care inflation rate are not constant. Therefore, insurers and policy rate setters need good understanding of the interplay of the various factors driving the explosive health-care insurance rates over the large US metropolitan landscape. The study findings have implications for health-care insurance premium rate setting, health-care inflation econometric modeling and forecasting.\nSocial implications: Payers (private and public employers) of health-care insurance rates in US urban areas should evaluate the value of benefits received in relation to the skyrocketing rise of health-care insurance premiums.\nOriginality/value: This is the first empirical research focusing on the shape of urban health-care inflation rates in the USA.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Configuration and options management processes and tools: an automotive OEM case study	[ "Change management", "Case studies", "Mass customization", "Configuration management", "Configuration change" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Configuration management: In order to remain relevant in the global economy, manufacturers are compelled to focus increasingly on the needs of the individual customer. As a result, there has been a widespread shift in manufacturing practice from mass production to mass customization (Da Silveira et al., 2001). With mass customization, companies are able to retain the high production volumes typically associated with mass production, while gaining the flexibility to reach the needs of individual customers (Scavarda et al., 2010).\n2. Existing configuration management methods: A wide variety of techniques have been developed to assist in the implementation of configuration management. For the purposes of this paper, the classification scheme proposed by Sabin and Weigel (1998) is used to illustrate the different existing methods. To examine the different methods, the type of reasoning is used as the central comparison characteristic, specifically rule-based reasoning, model-based reasoning, and case-based reasoning (Summers, 2005).\n3. Configuration management in an automotive OEM: To further understand configuration management practices in modern manufacturing, a case study was conducted with a major automotive OEM. The purpose is to identify the methods used for configuration management and provide recommendations for improving the process.\n4. Proposed configuration management support tools: In order to address the specified requirements, a series of support tools are proposed to support the configuration and configuration change management processes. The four tools are as follows and are described in more detail below: interaction identification, visualization and interaction (V&I), change complexity analysis (CCA), and algorithmic validation (AV). Figure 4 shows how the proposed tools would fit into the current configuration change management process. For the purposes of implementing the tools, a simplified process model is used.\n5. Conclusions and future work: As the need to satisfy a growing amount of variety in customer requirements increases, many manufacturers turn to principles of mass customization in order to remain relevant (Eckert et al., 2003; Simpson, 2005; Da Silveira et al., 2001). However, in order for mass customization to be effective, a company must use some form of product configuration to ensure feasibility of the different product variants (Phelan Wilson, Summers and Kurz, 2014; Phelan, Summers and Guarneri, 2014; Shankar et al., 2014; Jiao et al., 2007). In this paper, a review of existing configuration management practices was presented. A case study on an automotive OEM was introduced and discussed with regards to the vehicle configuration practices in use at one of their manufacturing facilities. As a result of the work, two major deficiencies were identified: the inability of the OEM to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the rule database and the difficulty in maintaining the rule set during regular product launches.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a three-staged approach to configuration change management that uses a combination of complexity analysis, data visualization, and algorithmic validation to assist in validating configuration changes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In order to accomplish the above purpose, the authors conducted a review of existing configuration management practices. This was followed by an in-depth case study of the configuration management practices of a major automotive OEM. The primary means of data collection for the case study were interviews, ethnographic study, and document analysis. Based on the results of the case study, a set of support tools is proposed to assist in the configuration management process.\nFindings: Through the case study, the authors identified that the OEM used a configuration management method that largely represented the rule-based reasoning methods identified in the literature review. In addition, many of the associated challenges are present, primarily, the difficulty in making changes to the rule system and evaluating the changes.\nResearch limitations/implications: The primary limitation is that the case study was based on a single OEM. However, the results are in line with other practices identified in the literature review. Therefore, it is expected that the findings and recommendations should hold true in other applications.\nPractical implications: A set of configuration management tools and associated requirements are identified and defined that could be used to assist companies in the automotive industry, and perhaps others, in managing their option changes as they continue to move towards full mass customization of products.\nOriginality/value: The proposed approach for configuration management has not been seen in any other organization. The value of this paper is in the effectiveness of the proposed approach in assisting in the configuration change management process.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Job evaluation and gender pay equity: a French example	[ "Gender", "Women", "Employment legislation", "Job evaluation", "Pay gap" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite advances over the last 30 years, the gender pay gap (GPG) remains a concern. According to the International Labor Organization (Oelz et al., 2013, p. 12), globally, \"women earn 77.1% of what men earn.\" In this paper, we focus on the portion of the GPG that is attributed by some researchers to the undervaluation of female-dominated jobs. In our view, this \"comparable worth\" issue is of great interest for public policy actors, researchers and human resource practitioners, as it questions the way jobs are graded to establish pay structures.\nGender pay equity and comparable worth: Across the world, all other things being equal or rather \"unequal\" (Silvera, 1996), women still earn less than men. Various factors account for the GPG, many relating to the domestic work of women - part-time work, maternity leave, delayed career investments due to children's upbringing. In addition, a significant proportion of the GPG stems from occupational segregation as jobs mostly held by women have lower wages than those predominantly held by men (Blau and Kahn, 2016). Not everyone agrees that this differential is due to discrimination (Levine, 2003). For the comparable worth proponents, however, the pay gap between male and female occupations is caused by a systemic and historical undervaluation of female work (Acker, 1989, 2006; England, 1992; Figart and Kahn, 1997; Chicha, 2006), which can only be reversed by \"a public policy that advocates remedies for any undervaluation of women's jobs\" (Noe et al., 2010, p. 530). We refer to such policy as \"comparable worth\" (Acker, 1989), although it is sometimes called \"pay equity.\" As we develop infra, the comparable worth proponents question the gender-neutrality of labor markets and traditional job structures (Steinberg, 1987). They promote the use of gender-neutral job evaluation to better adjust wages to the relative value of jobs in a non-discriminatory way. Their work inspired changes in pay practices in the USA and in Canada. Comparable worth is becoming an issue in European countries.\nFrom theory to practice: legal aspects and examples of public policies: Legal provisions\nHow to prevent gender bias in job evaluation?: Methodology\nDiscussion: Our analysis, along with others conducted in the committee, informed the choice of recommendations written in the Guide. We expose here the main recommendations regarding job evaluation. We then discuss the potential progress achieved by this Guide and the shortcomings of the French model.\nConclusion: In this paper, we reported a study made for the French Equality Ombudsman which shows how gender bias can be hidden in a job evaluation and pay grading system. To remedy this, we emphasized the importance of questioning apparently gender-neutral criteria and weighting systems which perpetuate gender bias, of sharing a diagnosis and training the negotiators. After three decades of research and concrete experiences in North America especially, knowledge is available for those who aim to reduce this significant source of GPG. In France, the subject has largely been ignored by HRM researchers and practitioners. The Ombudsman Guide is an initiative to raise awareness. It is also up to us to disseminate this knowledge through research and teaching.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Despite significant anti-discrimination laws in most countries, gender pay gap still remains a substantial concern. The notion of comparable worth has been promoted for several years by the ILO and a few countries to fight against relatively lower female salaries. The purpose of this paper is to review the rationales for comparable worth and explain how gender biases, generally involved in traditional job evaluation, can be prevented.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To do this, after reviewing the motives, logics and three major applications of comparable worth logics in pay equity policies, the authors expose an analysis of a French sectorial job classification that the authors carried out as experts for establishing a French Equality Ombudsman's guide.\nFindings: The findings show how the redundancy and definition of job evaluation criteria, along with the weighting system, contributes to undervaluation of clerks jobs, predominantly held by women. The authors also highlight the main recommendations of the guide to prevent gender bias in job evaluation, that are derived from this case study, among others. The authors conclude on the difficulties of implementing comparable worth in France, in a period of long lasting economic crisis and of weak union power.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is based on a single case study, conducted for policy actors. It was not conducted at first for academic research purposes, and may thus have some methodological limitations. The implications of the research are, however, important at academic level - highlighting the persistence of gender bias - and at policy level, as it provides recommendations for negotiators.\nPractical implications: The guide originally aimed at giving guidelines and \"good practices\" in order to prevent gender discrimination in job evaluation.\nSocial implications: The paper draws attention to the importance and difficulty of undergoing such classification changes in times of economic crisis. Stronger legal action seems necessary.\nOriginality/value: This experience is the first of its kind - promoted by the Ombudsman - in France. It has never been related in an academic journal as far as the authors know.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using structural equation modelling (SEM) to understand the relationships among critical success factors (CSFs) for stakeholder management in construction	[ "Relationships", "Critical success factors", "Construction", "Structural equations modelling", "Stakeholder management", "Project success" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite continuous efforts aimed at improving project success (PS) in the construction industry, it has seldom been a common occurrence for construction projects to be successfully delivered. Construction projects are generally unique in nature due to their processes and interaction with numerous parties within and around them. Construction projects are traditionally divided into a series of activities undertaken by different individuals or groups who may have different levels of interest and or involvement in the project (Egan, 1998). Just like any other venture, they are constrained by time and resources which are needed for the projects to be delivered successfully (Ibrahim and Nissen, 2003; Bourne, 2005). The lengthy process of design and execution of construction projects constitutes a complex system which involves interactions, collaboration and negotiations among many stakeholders which include but are not limited to the clients, designers, contractors, local authorities and the general project environment (Cheeks, 2003; Winch 2010). Some individuals or groups (such as labour unions, employers' association, general public, the media, and institutional forces/nationalised industries (professional bodies), etc.) may not be directly involved in the project but may have interest in and could have the power and be capable of influencing the project delivery process (Leung and Olomolaiye, 2010). All parties involved directly or indirectly in the project are referred as the project stakeholders. Satisfying the dynamic expectations of project stakeholders throughout the life cycle of the project is instrumental to the successful completion of construction projects (Atkin and Skitmore, 2008). This can be achieved through stakeholder management. Stakeholder management on projects should be carried out in order to obtain the support and contributions of stakeholders as much as possible towards the project and achieve the best possible results and PS (Black, 1995; Akintoye et al., 2003; Bourne, 2005; Olander and Landin, 2008; Jepsen and Eskerod, 2009). In the UK, client and stakeholder satisfaction is considered as one of the main performance indicators of construction projects and construction projects are now expected to be delivered to meet social value, sustainability and consideration of all stakeholders' interests and needs (Winch, 2010).\nCSFS for stakeholder management in construction: For effective stakeholder management in construction projects, it is necessary to identify and understand the interrelationships among the CSFs for stakeholder management. Therefore, CSFs should be given constant and careful attention in stakeholder management in construction being enablers of the process CSFs according to Rockart (1979) are \"areas, in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organisation; they are the few key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish\". In other words, CSFs are actions, decisions, conditions or circumstances in which the right things have to be done in order for the desired goals to be achieved in a project. A very important step for the study reported in this paper is the identification of CSFs for stakeholder management in construction as they constitute the measured attributes (indicators for the measurement model). Past studies (Jepsen and Eskerod, 2009; Olander and Landin, 2008; Chinyio and Akintoye, 2008; Jergeas et al., 2000) have focussed on identification of the factors which are critical to the success of stakeholder management in construction projects. For example, Olander and Landin (2008) identified four factors affecting stakeholder management process: analysis of stakeholders' concern and needs; communication of both potential benefits and negative impacts to stakeholders; evaluation of alternative solutions; and project organisation and relationship with the media. Similarly (Jergeas et al., 2000), suggested effective communication with stakeholders and setting common goals and priorities among them for the project will improve stakeholder management. Providing top level management support; responding to power interest dynamism; maintaining existing relationship; being proactive with decisions; negotiations and tradeoffs among others were considered necessary for successful stakeholder management/engagement in construction projects (Chinyio and Akintoye, 2008). Furthermore, Jepsen and Eskerod (2009) found stakeholder identification and classification as well as predicting the expectations of stakeholders through stakeholder analysis (SA) to be critical to stakeholder management process. The extensive literature review resulted in 23 CSFs for stakeholder management in construction projects, which are presented in Table I including the specific actions and decisions. These are all encompassing factors which can vary from project to project and as the project progresses as a result of which some CSFs may be omitted during some projects. Deciding which CSFs to omit will depend on project's organisation and mission among other things. These CSFs for stakeholder management in construction were used to develop the conceptual model used in this study based on the groupings by Molwus, et al. (2013) with slight modifications.\nConceptual measurement and structural models of CSFs for stakeholder management in construction: Identifying the CSFs for stakeholder management in construction and grouping them are good initial steps towards successful stakeholder management in construction projects (Yang et al., 2009). However, in order to further equip industry practitioners and ensure successful stakeholder management, the relationships between these success factors and their groupings should be clearly understood. This section presents a conceptual (theoretical) model of the interrelationships among the CSFs for stakeholder management in construction and their latent variables (constructs) drawn from the extant literature. The following underlying principles were used for development of the conceptual model:\nResearch methods adopted to test the conceptual measurement and structural models: Data collection and screening\nAcceptance, commonality and reliability tests results: It was necessary to carry out consistency tests to make sure that there are no issues of consistency associated with the data set. These tests include the mean ratings and ranking of all CSFs by the survey respondents to ascertain the acceptance of the CSFs by the respondents; un-rotated principal component analysis to check for commonality; and Cronbach's a coefficient test to check for reliability of the measured variables scale (Hair et al., 2008). All of these tests were done using IBM SPSS 20 software.\nResults of measurement model of CSFS for stakeholder management in construction: IBM SPSS AMOS 20 software was used to empirically test the hypothetical model of CSFs for stakeholder management in construction. To achieve this, the measurement model component of SEM was used to investigate the appropriateness and strength of the relationships between the observed and latent variables as well as to measure if there are any, correlations/co-variances among the four latent variables.\nResults of structural model and hypotheses testing: Figure 4 presents the final SEM of CSFs for stakeholder management in construction projects with standardised path coefficients on the structural paths of the supported hypothesised relationships shown in Figure 2. The standardised path coefficients of the hypothesised relationships were tested using CR, standard errors and their level of statistical significance to ascertain whether the hypotheses are supported by the data set or not (see Table IX).\nDiscussion of findings: This study investigated the interrelationships among the CSFs for stakeholder management in construction projects based on four latent variables drawn from previous research. The results indicate the existence of statistically significant relationships between the measured (CSFs) and latent variables and among the latent variables (SCPC, SA, SD and SE).\nConclusions: The aim of this study was to enhance the knowledge on stakeholder management in construction and improve the understanding of the CSFs of stakeholder management and the interrelations among them. In order to achieve this aim, a conceptual measurement model was developed based on the analysis of literature review findings. The fit between the extant theoretical standing and the survey data was examined and after an iterative statistical process the final structural model for CSFs of stakeholder management was developed and accepted.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Stakeholder management plays a significant role in successfully delivering construction projects. However, being able to carry out effective stakeholder management in construction is contingent upon understanding the interrelationships among critical success factors (CSFs) for stakeholder management in construction and how they are related to project success (PS). This would enable the persons responsible for stakeholder management to know the logical process for addressing the CSFs in order to get stakeholder management right. The understanding of this relationship has not been addressed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships between the CSFs for stakeholder management and PS in construction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: From an extensive literature review, 23 CSFs for stakeholder management in construction were identified. A conceptual structural equation model (SEM) of the relationships between CSFs was developed (including measurement and structural models) using the groupings of the CSFs for stakeholder management in construction. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from construction industry practitioners. The data so collected were analysed using SEM in analysis of moment structures (AMOS).\nFindings: The SEM analysis of data collected resulted in the best fitting measurement model comprising 16 CSFs as indicators of four latent variables, namely, stakeholder characteristics and project characteristics (SCPC); stakeholder analysis (SA); stakeholder dynamics (SD); and stakeholder engagement/empowerment (SE). Furthermore, it was found that only SE has a direct positive impact on PS. The other three constructs SCPC, SA and understanding SD collectively impact on PS through the construct, SE.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research reported in this paper was carried out in the UK; hence, the findings may have portrayed the UK construction professionals' opinion. However, the theoretical principles on which the research was based are general and similar research could be replicated in different countries whose construction procurement processes and industries are structured like those of the UK or otherwise.\nPractical implications: The main contribution of this study to existing knowledge is an empirical evidence of the interrelationships among the CSFs for stakeholder management in construction through their latent variables which is portrayed in the best fitting structural model showing the relationships between the constructs of CSFs for stakeholder management and PS. This should serve as a guide to construction project management team or responsible professionals for undertaking stakeholder management in construction projects.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to theory by empirically identifying the interrelationships among the CSFs for stakeholder management linking to PS which will serve as a guide to construction professionals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Broadening participation - the future of resource discovery	[ "Document delivery", "Interlending", "Libraries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The requirements from our users for the search and retrieval of information are changing. Libraries are at an important juncture; they offer users a trusted brand of information. How do they keep themselves relevant as a trusted source of information for this new generation of users?How are services such as Amazon, Google, eBay, Skype and Flickr affecting the library? What can libraries learn from the experiences of these companies? What techniques and approaches could be adopted amongst libraries to promote library resources and enrich the student's experience? The time is now ripe for libraries to challenge traditional practices and consider how information professionals can, together change the shape of resource discovery and interlending.\nExternal trends: The internet has become an integral part of everyday life with over 1 billion users[1]. Web sites such as Amazon and Google have capitalised on the success of the internet and have engaged with an increasingly literate audience. This is affecting the role of the library and how it is used.For example, despite the undeniable rise of an online information market, recent figures from a survey[2] of over 3,000 current internet users in six countries suggest that a remarkable 96 per cent have visited a public library in person, at some point in their lives. However, only 27 per cent of respondents have visited the web site of a public library, a figure that rises as high as 42 per cent in Canada, but drops to a mere 9 per cent in the UK. Amongst college students[3] questioned during the survey, 73 per cent claim to have used the resources of a physical library compared to 47 per cent who have accessed it online.These figures suggest that although the library still has a crucial role to provide information, it is increasingly becoming one of many possible sources.\nOpportunity or threat?: Google conveys the impression that everything and anything is discoverable online. Understandably, the rise of such services are often viewed as a threat. But what opportunities does this present for libraries and information professionals?Traditionally, an individual library has never had the ability to be exposed to such a large captive audience, but now with the aid of technology and the internet, together with a change of attitude, it has become possible. Imagine the impact if the inherent value of the library could be captured - harnessing both the expertise of information professionals and the rich, engaging interfaces of new and popular web destinations - beyond the library OPAC.\nWeb 2.0 and Library 2.0: In 2004 O'Reilly Media created Web 2.0; a concept of a second-generation of internet-based services that enable people to collaborate and share information online in ways that were previously unachievable.In 2005 the vision of incorporating Web 2.0 principles in the library was described, resulting in the coined term Library 2.0. In this vision, the library makes information available wherever and whenever the user requires it (Miller, 2005).\nMoving the library boundaries: Liberating library functions and data from hitherto closed systems enables libraries to use their content and services in other contexts. As library services become more visible in a range of contexts, so the incentives to challenge certain aspects of the ways in which we traditionally operate grow.Making the information available wherever and whenever the user requires it presents two challenges for libraries: technical barriers and traditional business models.Traditional, monolithic automated library management systems were not developed in a manner that enables system interoperability, nor do they offer the freedom to easily liberate data. Such limitations were not deliberate, but simply reflected the needs of libraries at that point in time.The second challenge is that of business models and the subsequent costs that are passed on to the libraries. Open WorldCat has made important progress in raising the visibility of library holdings. However the cost of contributing their library holdings data to this shared catalogue, together with the associated cost of consuming this shared data is proving prohibitively expensive for many libraries.The days of closed, proprietary and monolithic library software systems are drawing to a close. So are the self-perpetuating business models that have generally led to a lack of substantial innovation.This view is shared by many and was reinforced by Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google) who recently commented at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco:If you look at the historical large company behaviour, they ultimately do things to protect their business practices or monopoly or what have you, against the choice of the users,\" he said. \"The more we can, for example, let users move their data around, never trap the data of an end-user, let them move it if they don't like us, the better.A different approach\nCase study examples: Talis library platform powers new library portal for Wales\nConclusion, new horizons: The emergence of new and innovative sites such as Google and Amazon do not threaten many responsive and adaptable libraries. Instead, they validate much that libraries have always done, bringing their expertise to the fore to a wider audience.Libraries can learn from these organisations, and combine this knowledge with the unique skills and assets of information professionals in order to deliver a truly compelling set of services.Across all aspects of current library services there are questions to be asked. Does it make sense for holdings data aggregated across a number of libraries to be difficult for information consumers to locate or interact with? Does it make sense for libraries to still pay to both liberate and view their own data?The library sector needs to challenge the current assumptions and practices, sweeping aside those that no longer make sense and determining if and how it makes sense to work around those that remain. That does not mean we will have to revise all aspects of library services, but we must now be prepared, collectively, to adapt to the changes in user expectations, the way in which information is used and embrace technological changes that will continue to emerge.\nHow can I get involved?: As Ian Davis, Talis's Platform manager wrote, \"Web 2.0 is an attitude, not a technology\" (http://internetalchemy.org/2005/07/talis-web-20-and-all-that). Think about what you could do, or how innovation might help your library. Do you want to shape the future of resource discovery and interlending?For further information please refer to www.talis.com/platform or contact Grant White. E-mail: grant.white@talis.com Tel: +44 (0) 870 400 5425.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This article seeks to describe the new service offered by Talis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach suggested in this article will not only promote the library and the value that it provides to the community as a whole, but suggests how it will increase the efficiency of library staff.\nFindings: - The emergence of new and innovative sites such as Google and Amazon do not threaten many responsive and adaptable libraries. Instead, they validate much that libraries have always done, bringing their expertise to the fore to a wider audience.\nOriginality/value: - The article provides a view and explanation of Talis from the company itself illustrated with examples.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Quality and developing countries: the role of international and organizational factors	[ "Quality management", "Developing countries", "International organizations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: World-class manufactures compete on several dimensions including quality. In shaping and assessing their competitive posture in a global market place, business firms continue to examine their value-chain activities with regard to the comparative advantage various countries seem to offer. In particular, multinational corporations (MNCs) have found some developing countries suitable as sourcing platforms for products requiring high degree of primary inputs such as, labor and raw material. In addition, some large developing countries such as India and China offer a vast consumer base and huge potential markets with rapid growth rates. As a result, (MNCs) have started to spread their operations around the world and source internationally. With customers expecting ever more from the products they buy, it becomes imperative for multinational conglomerates to keep operations at far-flung locations abreast with the level of quality demanded of world-class manufactures.Quality is becoming universally important (Chen, 1997; Corbett and Rastrick, 2000) and is found to affect the performance of companies (Adams et al., 1999; Hendricks and Singhal, 2001). It has also been described as a means to improving the competitiveness of companies in developing countries (Mersha and Merrick, 1997). How quality is manifested within an organization can be reflected (and measured) in a variety of ways. It can be reflected in the level of quality a product exhibits (Maheshwari and Zhao, 1994; Zhao et al., 1995), through the importance the company places on quality as a priority (Feigenbaum, 1994), or by the degree to which quality-driven programs such as TQM or ISO are implemented and are successful (Erel and Ghosh, 1997; Roney, 1997; Youssef and Zairi, 1995).The international quality management literature is indeed extensive (Prasad and Tata, 2003). However, much of the findings in this area have been derived from experiences in the industrialized world. In view of the large consumer base and huge potential markets in some developing countries, MNCs searching for growth are increasingly realizing that they must produce in and cater to the emerging markets of developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil (Prahalad and Lieberthal, 2003). Managing operations in developing countries requires cognizance of a set of complexities less common in the developed world. It is likely that MNCs will find the process of implementing modern operations procedures in the developing world to be uneven and uncertain. Inherent host-country factors are likely to affect quality. Such factors are deserving of research consideration. Two sets of factors emerge from earlier studies as general categories of important influence. The first set includes international factors associated with developing host nations, and the second set encompasses organizational factors that affect the way in which businesses manage their operational facilities in host nations.The purpose of this paper is to summarize and synthesize the literature on important factors affecting quality in the developing world. In doing so, it develops a framework for quality in developing countries as a function of international and organizational factors. By drawing from the literature and using input from industry panels, it formulates specific propositions on how certain international and organizational variables affect the operational outcomes of quality in developing countries. These propositions can serve to form a basis for future research and empirical validation.\nMethodology: To identify and integrate the existing literature on quality in developing countries, exhaustive manual and computer searches of the literature were conducted using several search techniques. Information searches were conducted using key words such as \"developing countries\" and \"quality\". In addition, use was made of the ancestry and the descendancy and invisible colleague approaches (correspondence with researchers active in this domain to locate published and unpublished papers) (Mullen, 1989).We also perused the reference lists of relevant articles and numerous literature reviews, and browsed through a range of journals, many of which have been identified by scholars (Barman et al., 1991; Coe and Weistock, 1984; Stahl et al., 1988) as leading research outlets. Seminal articles identified were examined relative to both international and organizational variables.Critical international factors affecting quality in developing countries were identified using a two-step process:1. identification of all potential international factors from the international operations management literature; and2. the narrowing down of factors by two panels, one composed of industry practitioners (Panel A), and the other of individuals who had lived in both developing and developed countries (Panel B).Using a seven-point (1-7) scale, every panel member independently rated the importance that, each international factor identified from the international operations management literature has for developing countries. Panel A's and Panel B's average rating of each factor was then computed and only those factors that were rated high in importance by both panels were selected for further analysis and the development of propositions in this study.Organizational factors used in this study were identified from the literature and further insights on both international and organizational factors gleaned from panel members.International factors\nDiscussion: From a quality management perspective, economic, political/legal, cultural/social conditions and organizational factors pose unique challenges for MNCs that engage in operations in developing countries. Poor infrastructure, an inadequate local supply base, tight government controls, the past legacy of colonization, and misaligned organizational structures are just a few of the obstacles to achieving quality in developing countries.There are a number of interesting issues in the context of developing countries that directly or indirectly influence quality and have yet not been identified in the international quality literature on developing countries. One such variable is the difference in perception of quality and of what it takes for a product to be able to effectively compete in global markets between people in developing countries and those in the industrialized world. MNCs might well set up operations in developing countries only to offer their product in the emerging local markets there. However, MNCs often tap the country's abundantly-available cheap labor and the country's geographic proximity to other markets by setting up operations in developing countries as production hubs primarily for export to other world markets.One major challenge a multinational corporation setting up operations in a developing country is likely to face is making employees in the host (developing) country understand and realize that competing in the relatively more protected local and regional markets of developing countries is quite different from being able to successfully compete in the open and more intensely competitive markets of the West. The economies of many developing countries have historically been protected through government regulations and significant import duties. As such, people constituting the workforce there remain unexposed to the kinds of choices (extent of substitute competing products) available to consumers in industrialized countries and thus fail to comprehend the level of quality it takes to satisfy demanding consumers in open and intensely competitive world markets.Given this lack of comprehension on the part of the local workforce of developing countries, it can be quite difficult for MNCs to get their local employees to buy into the need for a much greater commitment to quality, continuous improvement, and individual involvement. The importance of environmental scanning for international business is well established (Babbar and Rai, 1993). To overcome this comprehension hurdle, MNCs operating in developing countries must not only train employees but also systematically engage in broad environmental scanning efforts and have information gathered through such efforts filter down through the organizational layers of local operations there so as to raise the general level of awareness of the global competitive environment.Another issue that emerged from discussion in the context of operations in developing countries is that of \"customer-orientation\". With limited competition and significant import duties in place, companies (manufacturing and service alike) in developing countries have not been as customer oriented as their Western counterparts have in the past. In developing countries, emphasis was placed more on making a sale than on satisfying or pleasing the customer. Rarely could a customer \"return\" a product and receive a refund if the product malfunctioned or was less than satisfactory. With the opening of markets, cross fertilization, training, and environmental scanning efforts, the mindset of the workforce in developing countries must be recast so as to be customer focused with a realization of the long-term benefits that can accrue from customer loyalty.Cultural traits such as masculinity/femininity, power distance, or even the fact that in some societies (developing countries in South-East Asia for example) people are customarily expected to follow and not question what elders say, can affect decision making and employee involvement in developing countries and hinder the effectiveness of groups and quality circles there.Manufacturing companies will likely need to invest and significantly contribute to process technology and control procedures of their suppliers in developing countries to bring them up to par on quality and to assure quality at the source. Governments of developing countries are likely to require the substantial use of local input. Employee training and relationship building with suppliers thus becomes even more important in this context.While training and changing the mindset of local employees is a challenge that must be faced, MNCs might find the workforce in developing countries eager and willing to learn because of the new-found opportunity for greater earnings and the potential for improvement in their quality of life that opening of the economy and employment with MNCs offer.\nConclusion: As MNCs outsource more of manufacturing to developing countries in order to tap the benefits of cheap labor and access to potentially vast emerging markets, they should be cognizant of the underlying international factors and the need for organizational realignment.MNCs have indeed overcome many barriers in developing countries. Evidence from Free Trade Zones in China and Mexico suggests that with the right approach quality levels can in fact be at par with those in the developed world (Prasad et al., 1996; Solis et al., 2000). Lessons from such ventures point to issues firms should focus upon in terms of the goals/priorities they set, commitment of top management, consistency of quality policies, decentralizing the organizational structure, and developing supplier relationships as part of their network. These lessons can then be transferred to operations in other developing countries that still remain untouched by the quality movement. Specifically, goals and priorities need to emphasize a cultural change that facilitates employee transition from an autocratic system focused on meeting quotas to one which is market oriented and values customers. Top management polices and their commitment to quality should be such that workers are motivated to contribute and further the cause of quality.If quality management practices become established in the developing world, a number of positive outcomes should become apparent. With the capability to produce world-class products, firms based in these countries will effectively be able to compete in global markets and bring wealth and prosperity to developing countries. One goal of quality management is the reduction of waste in the system. Poor countries with minimal resources stand to gain the most from such quality management practices.Synthesis of the literature undertaken in this research should serve to lay the groundwork for a number of potentially significant future studies. In our review, we found a number of gaps in the literature where findings were not sufficiently established so that propositions could be derived. For example, the connections between quality and the size of markets, labor turnover ratios, customer focus and the degree of international communications in developing countries could be explored. Future studies might want to ascertain these relationships in developing countries via empirical investigation.The framework developed here presents general relationships between quality and international and organizational variables. Using the propositions developed within this framework, researchers can specify hypotheses, collect data, and conduct empirical testing. In this research, the various international factors and organizational variables are looked upon independently. If sufficient data were available, it would be interesting to examine the interaction effects of the two sets of independent variables on quality outcomes in developing countries.Environments of countries do change over time. Longitudinal studies could reveal the long-term effects of international factors such as changes in culture, economy, or the political/legal system on quality in developing countries. Such studies would be of value to governments and international agencies in developing and implementing long-range policies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This research examines the literature on quality management in developing countries and explores the influence of important international and organizational variables on quality in developing countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - By drawing from the literature and gaining input from industry panels, it formulates specific propositions depicting the influence of international (economic, political/legal, cultural/social) and organizational (goals/priorities, commitment/control, centralization/decentralization, networking) factors on quality.\nFindings: - A number of gaps are identified in the literature on quality management in developing countries along with significant challenges including differing perceptions of quality, the legacy of colonization and protectionist policies, and tight governmental controls.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The framework of this research develops general relationships between quality and international and organizational variables. Based upon the propositions developed within this framework, future research can formulate and empirically test more specific hypotheses. Further, international and organizational variables are looked upon independently. Future research can explore possible interaction effects of these sets of variables on quality outcomes in developing countries.\nPractical implications: - Based upon this research, mangers of multinational corporations (MNCs) can better understand the role and affects of international and organizational factors on quality of goods and services in developing countries. Such understanding is an important requisite for the effective management of operations in developing countries.\nOriginality/value: - This research identifies for MNCs the unique challenges international and organizational variables pose for quality management and operations in developing countries. The propositions developed help synthesize the literature on quality management in developing countries and provide a framework for future empirical research needed to support theory development in this area.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Process orientation: conceptualization and measurement	[ "Process management", "Austria", "Measurement", "Manufacturing industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Organizational process alignment, which is also often referred to as (business) process orientation (PO), can be interpreted as the organizational effort required making business processes the platform for organizational structure and strategic planning (Reijers, 2006; Sabherwal et al., 2001; Suter, 2009). A process-oriented organization is also often referred to as \"horizontal organization\" (Ostroff, 1999), \"process-centered organization\" (Hammer, 1996), \"process enterprise\" (Hammer and Stanton, 1999), \"process-focused organization\" (Gardner, 2004) or simply \"process organization\" (Osterloh and Frost, 2006; Gaitanides, 2007). A process-oriented organization comprehensively applies the concept of business process management. A firm which adopted the process view of its organization, regardless of whether it has already run through business process reengineering and/or process improvement projects or not, is concerned with the management of its business processes (Armistead and Machin, 1998). While there are factors such as strategy, technology, people, etc. which impact organizational performance (Thorp, 2003), the capability of managing and improving the organization's business processes represents an important determinant of firm performance as well. Many companies started to realize the benefits associated with implementing business PO (Kumar et al., 2008). Several authors and empirical studies refer to a positive impact of process-oriented organizational design on firm performance (Kohlbacher, 2010). However, a lot of the existing literature of the process-oriented organization aimed at educating managers on implementing process management practices and lacks research or an empirical focus (Benner and Tushman, 2003; Sussan and Johnson, 2003). Despite the growth in the business process management literature, certain important gaps still remain. Specifically, the definition of the PO construct and its antecedents is sometime ambiguous. Clearly, the intangible nature of the construct represents a hurdle to its conceptualization, but the problems outlined above are mainly due to the fact that the literature adopts the concept without questioning its scope. Many studies into process management use proxy variables as an indicator for PO (e.g. ISO 9000 certification). Other studies treat the construct as a unidimensional measure. However, unidimensional measures meet with increasing criticism, as they turn out to be insufficient to capture the richness of such a complex construct. This study attempts to rectify the content deficiencies in the literature on the construct by specifying its theoretical domain and dimensionalization.The paper will begin by developing the theoretical dimensions of PO (from now on called a priori model). The study then applies a factor analysis using data from a sample of 152 Austrian manufacturing firms. The result of the factor analysis is the revised model, consisting of empirical unidimensional factors, each measuring a certain aspect of PO. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results, implications, and issues for further research.\n2 Developing the a priori model: In order to define or specify a construct domain, one has to represent the construct from the literature to provide the concept with theoretical meaning, and one has to specify the dimensions that represent the construct (Churchill, 1979; DeVellis, 1991).The approach of PO emphasizes processes as opposed to hierarchies (McCormack and Johnson, 2001). PO means focusing on business processes ranging from customer to customer instead of placing emphasis on functional structures (Reijers, 2006). It capitalizes on improving an organization's efficiency through high-level coordination of an organization's activities in a rationalized system of end-to-end processes (Benner and Tushman, 2002). The process management philosophy is a comprehensive problem-solving heuristic that is process oriented, customer focused, fact based, and participative throughout a firm (Winter, 1994). Business process management incorporates the discovery, design, deployment, execution, interaction, control, analysis, and optimization of business processes (Smith and Fingar, 2003). These definitions have proved cardinal to the conceptualization of the PO construct, to such an extent that very few studies have revised or expanded this definition.Shenkar et al. (1995) stipulate that the definition of a construct domain must fulfill two requirements: the construct must be testable, in other words, one must be able to operationalize its dimensions; and the construct must also be global, that is, incorporate the dimensions that different classifications propose. Following the line of authors who did extensive research in the field of PO (Fischermanns, 2006; Hammer, 2007a; McCormack and Johnson, 2001; Reijers, 2006; Vera and Kuntz, 2007) and in accordance with the authors' interpretation of the construct, nine different dimensions cover the domain of PO which will be discussed in the next section. Each dimension is operationalized by several items by using Likert-type self-evaluation scales. In total, this study uses 37 indicators for measuring the PO construct. To enhance the construct validity, the resulting model was discussed and approved by three chief process officers from different organizations operating in different industries. The nine dimensions of the a priori model are:1. process design and documentation;2. management commitment;3. process owner;4. process performance measurement;5. corporate culture in line with the process approach;6. organizational structure in line with the process approach;7. people and expertise;8. process-oriented HR systems; and9. coordination and integration of process projects.The indicators of each dimension are described in the following.2.1 Process design and documentation\n3 Validating the PO measurement model: 3.1 Data collection\n4 Conclusion: This study advances the understanding of the PO construct by developing a measurement model incorporating the multidimensional nature of the construct. The study suggests that PO is a construct consisting of seven dimensions:1. design and documentation of business processes;2. management commitment towards PO;3. the process owner role;4. process performance measurement;5. a corporate culture in line with the process approach;6. application of continuous process improvement methodologies; and7. process-oriented organizational structure.The model is grounded in a thorough review of the literature and its dimensions exhibit satisfactory unidimensionality, reliability, and validity. At present, many managers are looking for ways to make their organization more process oriented. Our findings indicate that business process management involves many different aspects, ranging from process performance measurement to process-oriented organizational structure. The developed model has potential use for an organization to review its internal progress of process-oriented organizational design and has potential use for process assessment, either as an alternative measurement or supplementary measurement of process capability and organizational maturity. Including as many as 33 items in order to assess process-oriented organizational design might be a problem from a practical point of view. However, in order to get a complete assessment, one should use the whole range of items. In summary, we advance the growing body of literature on process management by contributing to a greater clarity and better understanding of the PO construct and its dimensions.As with any empirical study, this work has obvious limitations that should be recognized. First, the sample in this work only included Austrian manufacturing companies. Although one should expect similar findings in similar industries, generalizability of the findings to other industries or other countries is open to scrutiny. However, no specific reason points to the fact that nationality might bias the results in a predictable direction. Second, only one interview per firm was conducted. Interviewing several managers per firm would have led to even higher data quality. A third important limitation of this work is the small sample size. Such a small number of cases is not appropriate for a solid validation of the measurement model. Fourth, the model's dimension measuring process-oriented organizational structure exhibits non-satisfactory internal consistency. Much work remains to be done to improve the understanding and conceptualization of the process-oriented organizational structure dimension.There are a number of avenues for further research. First, this study could be applied to other industries (particularly interesting would be service industries) and/or other countries. Second, other methodologies, such as a structural equation model, could be used to assess the underlying dimensions of the PO construct. However, this would require more data in order to obtain reasonable results. Third, the introduction of size as a moderating variable in the suggested measurement model is another interesting area for future research. The inclusion of this variable allows us to test the equivalence of the proposed measurement model across groups of firms based on size. Fourth, we treated the PO construct and its dimensions as reflective measures. Future studies should build a measurement model which considers the construct and the dimensions as formative measures and compare the results to this paper. Finally, future studies could use the measurement model to investigate the effects of PO dimensions on organizational performance. This empirical research is needed in order to determine whether the outcome effects of different specific aspects of PO are linear or additive or if they also involve interactions and diminishing returns. Such studies are - to date - remarkably limited.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Attention to processes has increased, as thousands of firms have adopted the process view of their organization. Process orientation (PO) means focusing on business processes rather than emphasizing functional structure or hierarchy. Despite the huge growth in the business process management literature, a methodological gap still remains about a certain ambiguity in the definition of the construct specifying its theoretical domain and dimensionalization. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the literature on PO through the creation and validation of a model to measure the key dimensions of the PO construct.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors derive from literature several dimensions which shape the concept of PO. In a second step, the study includes factor analysis on a sample of 152 Austrian manufacturing companies to verify that the model is empirical valid.\nFindings: - The paper provides insight in the concept of PO. It concludes that PO is a multidimensional construct, consisting of the following dimensions: design and documentation of business processes; management commitment towards PO; the process owner role; process performance measurement; a corporate culture in line with the process approach; application of continuous process improvement methodologies; and process-oriented organizational structure.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The sample used in this work only included Austrian firms operating in manufacturing industry. Generalizability of the findings to other industries or other countries is open to scrutiny.\nOriginality/value: - Several studies into process management use proxy variables as an indicator for PO (e.g. ISO 9000 certification). Other studies treat the construct as a unidimensional measure. However, unidimensional measures meet with increasing criticism, as they turn out to be insufficient to capture the richness of such a complex construct. This paper attempts to rectify the content deficiencies in the literature on the construct by specifying its theoretical domain and dimensionalization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer relationship management system; a case study of Ghavamin Bank	[ "Customer relationship management", "Iran", "Relationship marketing", "Customer satisfaction", "Banking industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Customer relationship management (CRM) has attracted much attention in marketing and information technology (IT) in recent years. Academics, software salesclerks, practitioners, and other pertinent businesses are specially engaged and have developed the CRM concept which proves all organizations attempt to increase the value proposition to their customers. Organizations have widely recognized customers as their most important property and look at CRM as profitable and mutual deals and opportunities requiring management (Plakoyiannaki, 2005). These systems support an important field of company's main activities especially in marketing, sales, and customer services by presenting information on customers' profile and history (Ling and Yen, 2001).\n2. Statement of the problem: The CRM's roll as a strategic instrument in generative and service organizations is undeniable although it is not a new topic and whenever supply exceeded demand, making customer relationship was considered to maintain him and create a feeling of loyalty in him since the existence of supply and demand. Nowadays, with the advent of new electronic communication technologies, the CRM topic has undergone changes and has presented organizations and economic agencies with many and new facilities regarding the creation of new communication channels. All accept and confirm the mentioned points in our country, Iran, but the problem is that determined indexes and factors do not exist which can be expressive of an organization and help the organization manager to make decisions in this respect.\n3. Theoretical framework of the research: 3.1 Customer satisfaction\n4. Research hypotheses: Based on the review of literature mentioned above briefly, the following hypotheses are raised:\n5. Research methodology: The questionnaire used to collect the data were pretested using seven academics and three bosses of Ghavamin Bank in order to assess the face and content validity of the measurement items (Battor and Battor, 2010). After obtaining the views, corrections were made to questionnaire and the corrected questionnaire's validity was confirmed by the mentioned group. A 30-member sample of the population was also selected to measure the reliability. Finally 26 completed questionnaires were collected and Cronbach's a was calculated using SPSS 16 software. The statistical population included all customers and users of the branches of Ghavamin Bank located in the capital city of Tehran. Since determining the exact number of customers is impossible, the statistical population considered infinite. In sum, a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed and 388 were returned, yielding a response rate of 86 percent (Table I).\n6. Statistical analysis: 6.1 Studying variables' normal distribution\n7. Discussion and conclusion: 7.1 Service characteristics-customer satisfaction\n8. Suggestions: Based on the results derived from this research the following suggestions are presented to the top management and policy makers of Ghavamin Bank:\n9. Suggestions for further research: For further research the following suggestions are recommended.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between customer relationship management (CRM) system and customer satisfaction in branches of Ghavamin Bank in the capital city of Iran, Tehran.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the review of literature a questionnaire was designed. After the verification of its validity and reliability, the data were collected from statistical population, the customers of selected branches at Tehran city. The data were analyzed using inferential statistics and the SPSS software, and frequency distribution, distribution indexes, Pearson's correlation, and regression methods were also used.\nFindings: The results revealed that the four factors of CRM system, i.e. service quality, service characteristics, level of service access, and handling complaints have a positive effect on customer satisfaction in the surveyed branches of Ghavamin Bank.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample is restricted to only one city, so in generalizability of the obtained results caution should be taken.\nOriginality/value: Given the ever growing importance of banking industry in Iran as a developing country, the results of this study could help policy makers of the surveyed bank to realize the importance of CRM's criteria and characteristics in increasing customer satisfaction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Portfolio forming decisions: the role of intellectual capital	[ "Growth", "Intellectual capital", "Portfolio comparisons", "Sharpe coefficient" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The idea of forming an investment portfolio on the basis of fundamental factors has been thoroughly investigated. However, the knowledge economy has helped to identify new value drivers that are intangible by nature. Therefore, investment attractiveness lies in the influence of both tangible and intangible internal factors as well as external factors. Although the literature broadly discusses the creation of a portfolio using intellectual capital (IC), no consensus exists on method.\n2. Literature review: The literature review is divided into two research areas: capital markets and the analysis of IC. All papers discussed attempt to discover the influence of IC on market performance. However, the papers that analyse the problem from a capital market perspective usually concentrate on market performance measures and techniques. Indeed, they refer to IC as just another determinant of return or market capitalization and do not analyse them in depth. Conversely, papers dedicated to IC recognize market performance as one of the possible outcomes and stress the nature, variety, and measurement of IC. This paper considers both points of view.\n3. Research design: According to the previous research, IC is regarded by investors as a source of competitive advantage and therefore provokes growth in market capitalization. Investors seek undervalued companies; however, growth potential determined by IC can be previously recognized by the market and capitalized into share prices. Therefore, a company is attractive only if it has a high quality and quantity of IC and the market undervalues it. Consequently, the methodology must necessarily identify and measure how much a company is undervalued.\n4. Sample and method: The author investigates this framework based on a sample of European companies from, namely, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The chosen countries have developed financial markets and an aggregate GDP that makes up 71 per cent of European Union's GDP. The development of the knowledge economy in these countries is taken into account with the help of two composite indexes calculated by World Bank: the knowledge index (KI) and the knowledge economy index (KEI). All sample countries are in the first quartiles of KI- and KEI-based country ratings. This study supposes that institutional innovativeness allows investors to recognize intellectual value drivers more easily. Each sample company is a public company so that information is available to internal investors.\n5. Results: 5.1. Portfolio formation\n6. Discussion: The literature exploring the influence of IC on market returns is limited as it takes into account only one component of IC, usually human capital, R\n7. Conclusions: This paper develops a tool that distinguishes two attributes important in identifying investment-worthy companies: IC and the capitalization of IC-based growth potential in market indicators. To determine the capitalization, the M/B ratio is adapted following Sveiby (1999), and Nold (2012). These study finds that companies that create or effectively use IC raise the M/B ratio and are, therefore, attractive to investors. Portfolio comparisons with benchmarks and random portfolios validate the proposed tool.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a tool to categorize companies as potentially profitable on the basis of an intellectual capital (IC) analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper distinguishes two crucial attributions for picking shares: IC and capitalization of IC-based growth potential. Using these two attributions, the author creates a portfolio from a sample of European companies and annually rebalances it. To test its attractiveness, the author then compares the portfolio with benchmarks and random portfolios during the period from 2006 to 2013 using a Sharpe coefficient.\nFindings: The comparison of the constructed portfolio with the benchmarks demonstrates the importance of IC for market investors and the validity of the proposed tool. The Sharpe ratio of the portfolio is significantly higher than the mean and median Sharpe ratios of random portfolios. In addition, the importance of IC for choosing proper investment goal increases in crisis.\nResearch limitations/implications: This investigation can be improved by analysing other IC such as the qualification of CEOs, participation of the company in business alliances, and a company's innovation activity. In addition, the paper considers only European companies.\nPractical implications: The proposed tool provides a method to construct investment-attractive portfolios on the basis of IC.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to the literature by identifying the underestimated shares on the basis of a company's IC and by developing an algorithm to create an IC-based investment portfolio.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Fostering creativity through online creative collaborative group projects	[ "Creativity", "Creative teaching", "Creative learning", "Distance education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Creativity is commonly described as the capacity to create objects or ideas that are novel and effective (Runco and Jaeger, 2012). It is valued highly across many disciplines and has been identified by educational institutions as an extremely important competency (Creely and Henriksen, 2019). Creative skills are in demand in the workforce and are considered essential for both personal and professional success. According to LinkedIn, an American online business and employment-oriented service, creativity tops the list of skills that companies need the most (Petrone, 2019). It is given priority in job recruitment processes because of the crucial role that innovation plays in business (Wesley et al., 2017).Higher education institutions (HEIs) should therefore prepare their students for integration into the work force by equipping them with the theory and skills that are aligned with current employers' demands (Collet et al., 2015). While many employers are satisfied with the technical abilities of the students, they express the need to develop soft skills such as creativity (Mareque et al., 2019).However, the importance of encouraging creative thinking in students has frequently been overlooked. Since the view of many current educational systems is dominated by academic ability, creativity is not valued as much as literacy is (Robinson, 2006). In educational contexts that are heavily reliant on curriculum controls, very limited opportunities are available for students to exercise their creative capacity. There is not much motivation for teachers and learners to develop a creative mind-set, and few incentives are given for manifesting creativity in educational institutions (Cremin, 2015).The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate whether the creative collaborative group project is a feasible, effective and acceptable learning activity for fostering the development of creative skills in a graduate course offered by a HEI through distance learning. It intends to achieve this through the qualitative phenomenological approach of understanding the experience of graduate students participating in a creative collaborative group project in a master's level course of a fully online distance education (DE) institution.Background\nLiterature review: Review of related literature\nResearch design and methodology: Research design\nResults and discussion: Demographics\nConclusion: The objective of this exploratory study was to find out whether it was feasible, effective and acceptable to use the creative collaborative group project as a learning activity for fostering creativity in a master's level course offered in a fully online DE mode.The fact that all seven groups were able to turn in high-quality creative projects that satisfied or even exceeded the standards set by the course and were able to do so on time supports its feasibility.The effectiveness of the creative collaborative group project may be seen from the quality of the output itself, as well as the reflections of the study participants. As mentioned, the participants turned in projects worthy of being considered \"creative.\" The reflections of the study participants, when mapped or correlated against the 21st century student outcomes for creativity based on the P21 framework, show an almost exact direct correlation or alignment with the said outcomes, supporting the effectivity of the learning activity in fostering the development or enhancement of creative skills.The positive overall experience of the study participants as seen in their description of the activities as a pleasant, enjoyable, meaningful and rewarding experience, together with the absence of negative feedback about working on the group project, also indicates that it is an acceptable learning activity.These findings support the feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability of the creative collaborative group project as a learning activity for fostering creativity in a master's level course offered by a state university though a fully online distance learning mode.The research study has the following limitations: it involves a specific cohort of graduate-level students, all of whom belong to a specific program of study (i.e. the MDE program) in UPOU, the national university. The nature of the discipline, the program, the type of students accepted in the program and the institution may be factors that could influence the student's perception of their learning experience. The fact that all except one of the study participants are Filipino may also be a factor in terms of certain cultural traits that may influence group dynamics and interaction. The course was also offered at a fully online DE mode at well-established distance learning institution. Because of these limitations, the results of this study cannot be generalized to all populations.The findings of the study can inform the instructional design of graduate-level courses in the future by paving the way for fresh and innovative options for learning activities, which would foster the development of creative skills and enable learners to benefit from an improved learning experience. It will also benefit various stakeholders in the workplace and industry, in terms of improved creative competencies of learners who are either current or future members of the workforce.Recommendations for future research are as follows:Explore the use of the creative collaborative group project in other contexts (i.e. different courses, programs and institutions).Investigate the feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability of collaborative group projects in fostering other 21st century skills and competencies.Explore the use of other new and innovative learning activities to develop 21st century skills for courses delivered in the fully online DE mode, notwithstanding existing prevailing preconceived notions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Higher education institutions (HEIs) frequently overlook the importance of encouraging creative thinking in students. A review of the prevailing practices in a fully online tertiary distance education (DE) institution revealed a lack of learning activities that foster creativity. The study aims to find out whether the creative collaborative group project is a feasible, effective and acceptable learning activity for fostering creativity in students of a fully online graduate-level DE course.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Seven groups of five to six graduate students each had five weeks to conceptualize, prepare and deliver a creative collaborative group project on lifelong learning using key concepts learned from the course.\nFindings: All groups submitted well-crafted creative projects within the given time frame. Reflections on their experience positively correlated with known outcomes associated with creative skills. Students valued the experience and had a better understanding of the concepts. These support the feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability of the project for fostering creativity in a fully online DE institution.\nResearch limitations/implications: The feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability may vary in different contexts; future iterations in the same and/or other courses are recommended.\nPractical implications: The creative collaborative group project is a feasible, effective and acceptable strategy for fostering creativity in online distance education.\nSocial implications: Creativity can be enhanced through appropriate online collaborative learning activities.\nOriginality/value: The study adds to the body of literature on the use of creative collaborative group projects to foster creativity in HEIs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Short sales and price discovery of Chinese cross-listed firms	[ "Price discovery", "Cross-listing", "Short sale" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: We examine the impact of the recently introduced short selling and margin trading regulation on the price discovery of Chinese cross-listed firms on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE). We are, specifically, interested to identify which of the two markets leads the process of price discovery when material new information arrives in the market.\n2. Institutional background of short sale in Chinese and Hong Kong stock exchanges: Many Chinese companies are dually listed in the Mainland of China and Hong Kong, either as A-shares listed in SSE or SZSE, or as H-shares in HKSE. In 2010, there were 82 Chinese companies with both A-shares traded in Mainland and H-shares traded in Hong Kong.\n3. Sample and data: Our sample consists of 67 Chinese cross-listed firms on A-share and H-share markets of which 18 firms are allowed to be sold short and traded on margin since March 2010. The sample period is from 1 April 2009 through 31 March 2011, one year before and one after the introduction of the new regulation. The daily information on short selling in number of shares and margin trading in yuan are collected from the websites of the two Chinese stock exchanges, the SSE and SZSE, over the sample period. The daily stock prices and number of shares outstanding are obtained from the Thompson Reuter DataStream.\n4. Methodology: In order to test the impact of short selling and margin trading on price discovery of Chinese cross-listed firms, we first need to quantify and test the intensity of short selling and margin trading. In their seminal paper, Diamond and Verrecchia (1987), argue that investors anticipate and incorporate an expected short sale into the stock prices, and thus rational investors will not adjust their price expectation based on an expected short sales. They show that it is mainly unexpected high levels of short interest that will cause price adjustment. Thus, we need to examine the effects of the arrival of material private information which should result in accompanying short sale activity by informed investors. To allow for such a proposition and to come up with the testable hypothesis, we thus concentrate on substantial market events as these events will certainly lead to changes in short selling positions of investors. We will concentrate on those events that could lead to price changes of more than 7.5 per cent in stock prices[4].\n5. Empirical results: We first examine whether the short selling and margin trading become abnormally high around the dates with large price change. For each large price change event, we classify it as either as a good or bad news. If the large price change is positive (negative), it is good (bad) news, and we calculate the average abnormal trading over three windows: the entire window of the 31 days around an event; the pre-event window of (-15, -1), and the post-event window of (+1, +15). The results are shown in Table III.\n6. Conclusions: We investigate the impact of the introduction of short selling and margin trading on the price discovery and price informativeness on a group of Chinese firms listed concurrently on the China and Hong Kong stock exchanges. While we observe that the home (A-share) market contributes more to the price discovery process over time, we show that this pattern is mainly driven by those Chinese cross-listed firms that were not allowed to be sold short or bought on margin. In fact, we note that there is no significant difference in the contribution of A-share and H-share markets to the price discovery process among firms with no short selling or margin trading constraint. The contribution of home market for these firms is even lower around the major events, when their stock prices move by more than 7.5 per cent. We further observe that the short sale activities become more intensive around the event days with good/bad price shocks, and such abnormal volume is significantly negatively related to the price discovery shares of A-share markets. Finally, we report that while the short sale activities appears to be informative as measured by the AS component of spread, it does not make the A-share markets more informative.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of short selling and margin trading on the price discovery and price informativeness of cross-listed firms, using a sample of Chinese firms listed on the China and Hong Kong stock exchanges.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sample consists of 67 Chinese cross-listed firms on A-share and H-share markets out of which 18 firms are allowed to be sold short/ traded on margin since March 2010. Using pre- and post-event period, the authors compare and contrast various market microstructure variables. The contributions of the home (A-share) and overseas (H-share) markets to the incorporation of new information into prices are calculated following the permanent-transitory approach of Gonzalo and Granger (1995) as well as the adverse selection component of Lin et al. (1995).\nFindings: The findings indicate that for the group of Chinese cross-listed firms that are not allowed to be sold short or bought on margin, the home (A-share) market contributes more to the price discovery process over time. However, for the group of cross-listed firms that are eligible for short selling and margin trading, the authors observe no significant difference in the contribution of either A- or H-share markets to the price discovery. The contribution of home market for these firms is even lower around the announcement of major events. The authors further find that while the short sale activities appears to be informative, measured by the adverse selection (AS) component of spread, on the whole they have not led the A-share markets to be more informative.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample of cross-listed Chinese firms that are allowed to be sold short or bought on margin are rather limited. Hence, the results should be read with some caution.\nPractical implications: The removal of short selling constraints appears to improve the contribution of the respective markets to the process price discovery, in the case for larger cross-listed firms.\nOriginality/value: The authors shed new lights on how the introduction of short selling and margin trading impacts on the price discovery of the Chinese cross-listed firms. A further contribution of the study is the use of high frequency data, while most of the previous studies on the Chinese markets use daily data.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Consumer wine knowledge: components and segments	[ "Marketing strategy", "Market segmentation", "Segmentation", "Consumers", "Wine", "Objective knowledge", "Subjective knowledge", "Knowledge types" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It has been said that there are more choices for wine than for any other type of product (Veseth, 2011). From a marketer's perspective, this variety makes for a highly competitive market (Famularo et al., 2010), and it is thus especially necessary to understand consumers to be able to analyse and profile segments, choose target markets and develop marketing strategies appropriate for the target markets (Walker and Mullins, 2014). Bruwer and Li (2007, p. 21) contend that the mass marketing approach in the wine industry is rarely feasible today, and it is an \"ongoing challenge for academic researchers to find the segmentation basis that is 'optimal' for a specific market\".\nLiterature review: While early models of the consumer decision-making process (Engel et al., 1990; Howard and Sheth, 1969) recognised the role of consumer knowledge, many of these early explanations did not differentiate between different types of knowledge. However, Brucks (1985) clearly distinguished three kinds of knowledge, namely, objective knowledge which is what people really know; subjective knowledge which is what they think they know and past experience with a product. Since then, research on the types of consumer knowledge as well as relationships between these and other aspects of consumer purchasing behaviour has been conducted.\nResearch methodology: For the purpose of this research, a quantitative, descriptive research design has been adopted. Such an approach is commonly used in consumer knowledge studies of this nature (Bruwer and Buller, 2012; Flynn and Goldsmith, 1999; Mishra and Kumar, 2011). To pursue the research objective described above, a survey instrument consisting of three sections was developed. The first section consisted of an objective measure of wine knowledge based on the measure used by Forbes et al. (2008), which asked respondents a series of five multiple-choice questions each featuring five choices, of which only one was correct. The items of this measure appear in Table I. It has been observed by Velikova et al. (2015) that there is a lack of uniformity or consistency in measures of objective wine knowledge, and each study tends to develop its own scale (Bruwer and Buller, 2012; Li et al., 2011). Generally, the alternative measures of objective knowledge that are available in the literature were found not have been developed or tested on US samples. Thus, for example, the measure by Veale and Quester (2007) was developed for a study of Australian respondents while that by Bruwer and Buller (2012) was developed for a study involving Japanese respondents. Another alternative four-item multiple-choice measure of objective knowledge developed by Barber (2008) and adapted by Kolyesnikova et al. (2010) was considered. However, the slightly longer measure by Forbes et al. (2008) which was previously tested on experts and novices and found to be reliable (Forbes et al., 2008; Forbes, 2012) was considered more suitable. An important aspect in this decision was the fact that the measure has been used in a study that included respondents from the USA, Australian, New Zealand and the UK (Forbes et al., 2008). In addition, the questions asked relate to various world wine regions (Velikova et al., 2015), thereby making it more appropriate for this study.\nResearch results: The sample profile details are shown in Table III.\nDiscussion and implications: Understanding the profiles of different segments is important for marketing decision makers for all types of products but particularly for information-intensive products such as wine, cars and IT products where large amounts of information exist and may affect consumers' behaviour. Consumers' product knowledge, real and assumed, potentially impacts all elements of marketing strategy for wines. The wine knowledge typology provided can potentially be a useful market segmentation framework for marketers of wine. In fact, while the consumers' categories constructed have been identified with specific regard to wine, this typology may well be applicable to all information-intensive products. Although this research was exploratory and more research would need to be done, the typology may provide wine, and other information-intensive product marketers, with a new framework for understanding, and thus targeting the different types of wine consumer. Possible distinctions between the different consumer knowledge types and preliminary implications for marketers are discussed below.\nConclusion: Understanding consumers and the differences between segments of consumers is critical for the development of targeted marketing strategies that achieve customer satisfaction and organisational goals. However, wine is a product that is information-rich that offers decision challenges for consumers that is compounded by an industry that offers extensive variety that, in turn, makes for considerable competition. In these circumstances, marketing success requires that the marketer finds innovative and useful ways to segment the market and target identified segments. In this study, consumer's differing levels and types of wine knowledge were investigated as a potential source of market segmentation. The typology that has been developed is based on the two facets of consumer knowledge, objective and subjective knowledge. It provides a useful basis for segmenting the wine market. Preliminary suggestions are provided to wine marketers targeting each of the four segments of wine consumers, although it is acknowledged that further research is required to test the responses of the segments to the variations in marketing mix variables suggested. While this study has focussed on wine, the focus on consumer knowledge in terms of objective and subjective knowledge is likely to be relevant to other information-intensive products.\nLimitations and directions for future research: As with all research, this study has limitations. Although MTurk has been reported to enable the recruitment of respondents with profiles in line with the broader US population (Goodman et al., 2013), it is an internet-based survey tool and as such faces the limitations of online surveys, particularly in terms of respondent bias. Although attempts to limit these biases are in place with MTurk (e.g. the ability of the \"Requester\" to screen \"Providers\" and affect these \"workers\" employability), there is always the possibility that these biases are not eliminated completely. Moreover, the online survey methodology can suffer from \"cheating\" by respondents when completing the objective test items. Notwithstanding, given a resultant mean score obtained by respondents of 1.91 out of a total of 5 for objective knowledge suggests that this aspect does not appear to have been a significant issue.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: What consumers know about a product affects many aspects of their behaviour and is particularly important for marketers to understand when it comes to developing marketing strategy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the components of consumer knowledge of wine and to investigate these as a potential basis for wine market segmentation and targeting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative, descriptive research design is adopted. An online survey consisting of three sections, measuring objective knowledge, subjective knowledge and classificatory variables, was developed and fielded, and data were collected from US wine consumers via Amazon.com's MTurk platform. The psychometric properties of the measures used were determined, and a two-dimensional segmentation typology was developed.\nFindings: The study supported the positive relationship between objective and subjective wine knowledge, while the combination of the two components led to the identification of four groups of consumers titled: neophytes, snobs, modest and experts.\nPractical implications: In a market that is highly fragmented, consumer knowledge about wine has been shown to provide a useful basis for wine market segmentation allowing for different marketing activities to target the four groups identified.\nOriginality/value: While other research has considered either objective or subjective knowledge on its own, this study's major contribution is the investigation of the wine consumer segments on the basis of the combination of objective and subjective consumer knowledge. A consumer knowledge type grid is developed that has implications for marketing segmentation and targeting. Implications of this new typology for future research are identified.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An ethnographic study comparing approaches to inter-professional knowledge sharing and learning in discharge planning and care transitions	[ "Knowledge sharing", "Patient safety", "Hospital discharge", "Care transition", "Inter-professional" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: The transition of care from hospital to community is widely regarded as a vulnerable \"pinch-point\" in the patient journey (Aase et al., 2017). A growing demand for urgent care at the hospital \"front door\" creates pressure at the \"backdoor\" to discharge patients, but a lack of integration with community health and social care sectors often makes the timely and safe transition of care difficult to realise (Coleman and Berenson, 2004). In the UK, there has been mounting attention to the breakdowns in care that lead to patients being sent home too early or without the necessary care to support recovery (Healthwatch, 2015; Waring and Bishop, 2019). International research suggests that as many as 20 per cent of patients experience sub-optimal or unsafe care during or after discharge, resulting in prolonged recovery, re-admission and long-term harm (Aase et al., 2017; Coleman and Berenson, 2004; Enderlin et al., 2013; Atkins and Kansagara, 2016). The safety challenges presented by hospital discharge illustrate the inherent complexities of modern care systems, in which multiple heterogenous professionals are engaged in myriad non-linear interactions giving rise to unanticipated outcomes (Braithwaite et al., 2018). This calls for attention to the relationships between care settings and providers, but, to date, patient safety research has been predominately concerned with risks located within care settings.\nProfessional boundaries and hospital discharge: The social organisation of health and care systems is characterised by well-developed professional boundaries, such as between doctors, nurses, occupational therapists and social workers (Apesoa-Varano, 2013; Martin et al., 2009; Nancarrow and Borthwick, 2005). Lamont and Molnar (2002) suggest \"symbolic\" boundaries are conceptual distinctions used by social groups to differentiate people, places and practices, and that particular resources and strategies are used to create, maintain and contest these boundaries - or boundary work (Gieryn, 1983). Following Abbott (1988), professions can be interpreted as occupations that have successfully established a specialist jurisdiction or boundary within the eco-system of expert labour. These jurisdictions demarcate exclusive areas of work, usually premised on an occupation's perceived legitimacy over the diagnosis and remedy certain problems based upon their expert knowledge. Professional boundaries are not fixed or impermeable, rather they are the sites for negotiation and conflict as occupations \"work out\" their functional relationships on a day-by-day basis (Allen, 1997, 2000). The study of professional boundaries, in healthcare and beyond, foregrounds questions of social power and influence (Abbott, 1988).\nStudy method: Study settings and communication interventions\nFindings: Although the preliminary aspects of discharge planning can commence at the point of admission to hospital, our observations found that the main work of discharge tended to occur across five common stages: determining readiness for discharge, including completion of hospital care prior to discharge; assessing and planning ongoing post-discharge care; determining the settings and resources for post-discharge care; managing care transition and re-settlement; and initiating ongoing care and rehabilitation in the community. Our observations found that three common types of intervention were used to facilitate inter-professional communication and coordination across these stages (Table II).\nDiscussion: The technologies, roles and group activities observed in our ethnographic study are widespread features to most developed care systems and have, individually, been the subject of previous research. However, few studies have compared or examined the interaction of these approaches, nor their contributions to inter-professional knowledge sharing and learning. Our findings suggest each affords opportunities for knowledge sharing and learning, but often with limits. It also suggests that the cumulative effect of these approaches, where appropriately aligned might best support discharge planning and care transition.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three communication interventions commonly used during discharge planning and care transitions enable inter-professional knowledge sharing and learning as a foundation for more integrated working. These interventions include information communication systems, dedicated discharge planning roles and group-based planning activities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A two-year ethnographic study was carried out across two regional health and care systems in the English National Health Service, focussing on the discharge of stroke and hip fracture patients. Data collection involved in-depth observations and 213 semi-structured interviews.\nFindings: Information systems (e.g. e-records) represent a relatively stable conduit for routine and standardised forms of syntactic information exchange that can \"bridge\" time-space knowledge boundaries. Specialist discharge roles (e.g. discharge coordinators) support personalised and dynamic forms of \"semantic\" knowledge sharing that can \"broker\" epistemic and cultural boundaries. Group-based activities (e.g. team meetings) provide a basis for more direct \"pragmatic\" knowledge translation that can support inter-professional \"bonding\" at the cultural and organisational level, but where inclusion factors complicate exchange.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study offers analysis of how professional boundaries complicate discharge planning and care transition, and the potential for different communication interventions to support knowledge sharing and learning.\nOriginality/value: The paper builds upon existing research on inter-professional collaboration and patient safety by focussing on the problems of communication and coordination in the context of discharge planning and care transitions. It suggests that care systems should look to develop multiple complementary approaches to inter-professional communication that offer opportunities for dynamic knowledge sharing and learning.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Going beyond journal classification for evaluation of research outputs: A case study of global astronomy and astrophysics research	[ "Astronomy", "Information retrieval", "Authorship", "India" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Performance evaluation of scientific units (from university departments to nations) requires analysis of research outputs in a given subject. For research groups or institutions, lists of papers can often be obtained directly from them, and they allow a comparative analysis on the basis of multiple partial indicators (Martin and Irvine, 1983). But for an evaluation of national performance, reliance is usually placed on an analysis of papers selected from large databases (Schubert et al., 1989; Braun et al., 1994; May, 1997). The Science Citation Index (SCI) is often used for this purpose because it covers all scientific fields and includes all the authors' addresses.Subject-based evaluation requires the extraction of an accurate subset of papers belonging to the particular subject from all papers listed in the database. The popularly accepted method of identifying papers in a particular subject is through journal classification. Journals are classified into different subject areas, and all papers in the journal are taken to belong to that subject area. However, the definition of subject boundaries using journal classification alone is unsatisfactory because there is often an overlap between lists of journals grouped by subject (except on the CHI Research Inc. system). Moreover, journal coverage ranges from very narrow for highly specialised journals to broad for non-specialist journals like Science or Nature, which are classified as multidisciplinary journals. When subject boundaries are defined using journal classification, papers in general or multi-disciplinary journals will be omitted, and in biomedicine these usually comprise the large majority of research outputs (Lewison, 1996). Given that these journals have high levels of citation impact, it follows that using journal classification alone will miss legitimate and prestigious output appearing in multidisciplinary journals and those in neighbouring disciplines.Other possibilities include using departmental names in the author addresses to assign the papers to different subjects (de Bruin and Moed, 1993). This has been found to be unsatisfactory as the subject areas of papers often do not correlate well with the names of the departments to which the authors belong (Bourke and Butler, 1998). Another alternative is to classify individual papers on the basis of their references (Glanzel et al., 1999). This works well when applied to a few multi-disciplinary journals but would be too cumbersome to apply to the whole SCI in order to identify additional papers in a sub-field that were not in specialist journals. Moreover, it cannot cope with references to papers in other multi-disciplinary journals. It is, however, now being applied routinely by Thomson Scientific in order to include such papers in their \"essential indicators\", although the procedure is not entirely justifiable. A specific counter example would be a paper that draws upon knowledge in a particular field to make a contribution in another. Judging by references alone may result in its being classified as being part of the first field whereas it should in fact be classified as being part of the second.Titles are often the best indicator of the content and subject of a paper. However, words can have different meanings in different contexts and this is a source of error in word-based information retrieval. Some input from a subject expert is invariably required to identify the subject area correctly from the title. In this paper we have used a combination of all three methods described above to design a title-word based filter for the subject astronomy and astrophysics (hereafter abbreviated as ASTRO). Using this filter for searching the SCI on CD-ROM, we have captured ASTRO papers that appeared in non-specialist or multidisciplinary journals in addition to those in astronomy journals. The filter is tuned with relevance input from the subject expert ensuring high precision and recall. The global output of ASTRO papers in the decade 1994-2003 is evaluated in terms of growth and two journal impact factor-based measures, one based on the logarithms (LOG) of journal citation scores and one a potential impact category (PIC). Next we have assessed the impact of collaboration (multiple authors, addresses and nations) on the perceived quality of output as measured by the potential impact category (PIC). Finally, we do a detailed case study of ASTRO research in India.\nBackground: Astronomy and astrophysics (ASTRO) has been subject to a number of bibliometric evaluations, for which it is regarded as a suitable model because almost all the work is conducted in the public domain and without commercial constraints on publication. It is also inevitably international in its purview so English is the normal language for communication and the SCI gives good coverage of outputs. A comprehensive survey of all the ASTRO literature, including books and reports, from 1969 to 1987 was published by Davoust and Schmadel (1991). They described the main trends and showed that the subject had advanced in terms of paper production, especially in France. More detailed investigations were carried out on particular bibliometric aspects by Abt (1981, 1984, 1988, 1990). Jaschez (1992) compared the outputs of five European countries (France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland) in the mid-1980s, and showed that Switzerland, despite having much the smallest output, received the most citations per paper.Perhaps the most comprehensive examination of ASTRO covered 15 OECD countries (van der Kruit, 1994) and compared their outputs with their expenditures on research. He showed that in the early 1980s, the countries varied substantially in their relative commitment (RC) to ASTRO research (expressed as the ratio of their percentage presence in the field to their percentage presence in all science). Italy (1.70), The Netherlands (1.40) and Germany (1.36) had the greatest RC values, and Japan (0.39) and the three Scandinavian countries: Sweden (0.38), Denmark (0.49) and Finland (0.52), the least. Van der Kruit also estimated total ASTRO research expenditure in the 15 countries as just over $2 billion p.a. in the early 1990s. A preliminary version of the evaluation of ASTRO research based on a title-word filter was presented by the authors at the 6th ISSI Conference in Sydney (Basu and Lewison, 2001).Subsequently a number of studies of ASTRO research outputs in individual countries have appeared, covering Australia (Bourke and Butler, 1995), Brazil (Leta and Lewison, 2003), China (Liu and Shu, 1995), India (Barve and Gopal-Krishna, 2002), Turkey (Uzun and Ozel, 1996) and the US (Trimble, 2000). One common finding is that, although ASTRO research is now increasingly the pursuit of small teams (with a mean number of authors per paper of three or more (Fernandez, 1998)), it still has a fair number of single-author papers. However, most of these scientometric studies used a rather simplistic delineation of the ASTRO field, based on a list of journals.\nMethodology: The filter that we developed was designed to capture ASTRO papers (including ones on the solar system) and was calibrated through a partnership between a subject expert (AB) and a bibliometrician (GL). First, the titles of articles in specialist (i.e. ASTRO) journals were taken from the Science Citation Index (SCI annual CD-ROM) and words arranged in descending order of frequency. Each title word from the list was checked in turn to see which extra papers it retrieved from the SCI. Some words had to be qualified by other \"yes\" or \"no\" words to filter out irrelevant titles. Papers were downloaded and samples of them were marked as \"relevant\", \"marginal/don't know\" or \"irrelevant\". If a word generated many false positives the search expression would need to be suitably modified. Similarly, if there were false negatives, more words would need to be included. The words were then combined with Boolean expressions to act as the title-word filter. The final filter was a combination of as many as 50-60 words. The specialist journals were also checked to see if 90 per cent of their papers were acceptable without using the title-word filter. Papers from these journals could then be downloaded directly.To calibrate the filter, random samples were selected from the downloaded titles and checked to find those not belonging to ASTRO. The difference between unity and the proportion of false positives to sampled papers determined the precision of the filter. Similarly, random samples from ASTRO departments were selected from the SCI to check for relevant papers not identified by the filter (false negatives). The difference between unity and the proportion of false negatives to sampled papers determined the recall. The filter was iteratively modified to improve both precision and recall. The final value of the calibration factor, C=p/r was 1.02, with precision p=0.98 and recall r=0.96.The papers were classified, on the basis of the journals in which they were published, by major field and sub-field (using the classification system of CHI Research Inc.), and also in terms of their potential citation impact. This was based on five-year citation scores (C0-4 values, taken from a file provided by the Institute for Scientific Information) and was represented by two numbers. One was called \"LOG\" and was based on the logarithm of this score:Equation 1Thus a journal with very few citations would have a LOG value of unity, and a highly-cited journal such as Nature would score about 5. This scheme follows a survey of research administrators (Lewison, 1998) in which they were asked to rate papers in \"excellent\" and \"good\" journals, relative to ones in \"ordinary\" journals. The mean ratings were about 6 to 1 and 2.5 to 1, respectively. Similar results were obtained from a survey of Swedish biomedical researchers (Bienenstock et al., 1996, p. 59).For some comparisons, it was convenient to use a categorical approach, and divide the journals into four groups, called \"potential impact categories\" or PICs, ranging from PIC1 (low potential impact) to PIC4 (high potential impact). Journals with C0-4<6 were assigned to PIC=1; ones with 6>=C0-4>11, PIC=2; ones with 11>=C0-4>20, PIC=3 and ones with C0-4>=20, PIC=4. The corresponding critical values of LOG were 2.69, 3.16 and 3.64.Results of bibliometric study\nDiscussion and conclusions: In astronomy, we can define the sub-field quite well with title words although some are ambiguous. We get an additional 25 per cent papers from general journals by using the filter. There are fewer papers than for biomedicine in general journals and they are of lower potential impact, except for the ones in Nature and Science. Internationally and nationally collaborative papers are in higher-impact journals, with a large number of single-author papers appearing in low impact journals. Collaborative papers with multiple addresses are also in higher impact journals. This is probably due to more explicit funding via peer-review committees and bigger teams than to multi-lab work per se. However, it contrasts with the situation in biomedicine where multi-institution papers are in lower impact journals when allowance is made for their having more authors (Lewison and Dawson, 1998).The case study of India showed two phases of growth in ASTRO papers and an increased share of internationally co-authored papers with higher potential impact. The average potential impact, which was below world average in the 1990s, equalled it in 2002-2003. Together with increased international collaboration, which produces papers in higher impact journals, this could also be due to a change in thematic content because there were more papers in cosmology and on black holes. A comparison with China showed that while China overtook India in terms of ASTRO publications, their impact was lower.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Seeks to characterise world astronomy research during the last decade by an analysis of papers in the Science Citation Index identified with a special filter and to study Indian output in order to identify the leading institutions and authors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Lists of specialist journals and title words of papers were selected to create a filter giving high precision and recall for astronomy papers. Some biology papers were erroneously retrieved because of ambiguous title words. Potential citation impact was determined from journal citation scores, and multiple regression was used to evaluate leading countries.\nFindings: - Title words added almost a quarter to the list of papers in specialist journals, and the final file contained over 96,000 papers. Potential impact increased with more authors per paper and more addresses; it was greater for papers from Canada, the UK and the USA, and less for papers from China, India and Russia; for other countries the effects of the author's location on potential impact were not statistically significant. Indian astronomy output has increased in potential impact, partly through greater international co-authorship, but also through indigenous papers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study was confined to one subject area, and impact was determined on the basis of journals, not of individual papers.\nPractical implications: - Use of title words in addition to journal lists is essential to sub-field definition in order to have high precision and recall. Because of the confounding effects of authorship numbers, it is necessary to use multiple regression analysis in order to see whether research from a given country is significantly better or worse than average.\nOriginality/value: - Characterises world astronomy research during the last decade by an analysis of papers in the Science Citation Index identified with a special filter.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Media impact on corporate governance in India: a research agenda	[ "Corporate governance", "Control", "Share", "Media", "Information media", "Transparency", "Reforms", "India" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Corporate governance (CG) issues have come out stronger in recent years because of corporate scandals and unethical behavior of executives. Firms, board members and executives have been subject to criminal and civil actions over hidden debt, inflated earnings, insider trading, tax evasion, misuse of funds, and breaches of fiduciary duties (Picard, 2005). Companies such as Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco have become well known because of massive failures in governance. In India, tainted agents and CEOs like Harshad Mehta (Securities Scam) to B. Ramalinga Raju (Satyam Scandal) have darkened the post-global India-shining discourses. Such developments have triggered the need for transparency and trust among firms, investors and the public. They have raised governance issues related to authority, representation on boards of directors, responsibilities of directors, independence of directors, independence of financial auditors, independence in determining executive compensation, and relations between boards and executives.It is estimated that nearly 50 percent of equity ownership in 200 large Indian companies are held by promoters or shareowners who also participate in management and have control over operations (Zafft, 2002). A number of such corporations do not seem to differentiate between share-ownership and ownership of the company itself. Block holding the management powers, they are inclined to believe that they own the company, the business and assets. In many of these firms, the realistic definition and prioritization of stakeholders in actual practice would be quite different from what is meant to be a formal, rational or objective corporate perspective (Reddy, 2009).The three committees (Confederation of Indian Industry Code recommendations; Birla Committee recommendations; Narayana Murthy committee recommendations) have explicitly mentioned the role, independence, remuneration and responsibilities of independent directors. However, promoter control in Indian companies affects the functioning of independent directors. The Satyam episode illustrates that a company with minimal promoter shareholding could still be subject to considerable influence by the promoters. Satyam had seemingly complied with requirements imposed by Clause 49 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires the appointment of an impressive array of independent directors, an audit committee, and the audit of its financial statements by a \"Big Four\" audit firm. However, the scandal raises serious questions about implementation of corporate governance norms in India.The presence of a reasonably strong financial press in India has obliged the law-enforcing bodies to be extra vigilant. For the past few years, the press has been vying for disclosure through its financial analysis and revealing stories of corporate misdemeanors (Bhasa, 2004). What is missing is an atmosphere of transparency and fair flow of information encouraging more vibrant journalism so as to enable the media for advocating for the rights of shareholders as well as the public at large with better conviction.Access to media is a major yardstick of power and equality in democracy. It is to be noted that the media can shape power and participation in society in negative ways by obscuring the motives and interests behind corporate decisions; or in positive ways by promoting the involvement of shareholders, consumers and the public in those decisions. The present paper envisages that the wide gap between unscrupulous owners and managers and the suffering large, minor shareholders and other stakeholders can, to a large extent, be bridged by proactive media campaigns - simultaneously shaming the former in the eyes of the public and uniting the latter through debates, analysis and reporting of unethical practices. In this context, this paper draws on the established literature to identify the media impact on CG in general and more specific challenges faced in the nuanced Indian context. These issues are used to generate a research agenda.\nConceptual background: Why independent media champion the cause of corporate governance\nResearch methodology and heuristics: Library databases in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur were searched using \"keyword\" search. A relatively simple methodological heuristic was used to identify research papers with a focus on \"media and CG\", \"CG in India\" and \"challenges faced by media in India\". The books and articles identified were then reviewed with two objectives in mind:1. to identify media impact on CG in general and challenges faced by CG and the media in India in particular; and2. to analyse and reflect upon the problem areas so as to build up a research agenda.It is to be clarified in advance that the literature on mass media response to CG in general is analyzed in the section \"Review of literature\" and the literature on specific Indian situation is highlighted in the \"Research agenda\" section. The overall body of literature is used to identify eight problematic areas that future research should take care of.\nReview of literature: A lot of research and debates have been carried on the role of the executive, legislative, and judicial wings of the governments, private bodies, pressure groups, people's forums, and shareholder activists in shaping the dynamics of CG. What is intriguing is the paucity of literature on the role of mass media, the fourth pillar of democracy, on CG. I wish to present a synopsis of premier and most relevant studies done in this field.Extant literature on the impact of mass media on corporate governance is basically focused on four leading issues. First, how do the media affect investors and other stakeholders? Second, how does the media news affect returns in business? Third, how do the media campaigns expose the unscrupulous companies and keep them restrained? Fourth, what are the various determinants of media impact on CG?How media affect various stakeholders of CG\nConclusion: This paper has reviewed a variety literature on media impact on CG. Stand out research has revealed that the media not only affects the existing stakeholders and shareholders, but also drive the potential ones into the action. There is a whole range of literature arguing that the media function as an independent actor shaping market reactions. Burgeoning studies by Dyke et al. highlight the massive impact of media disclosures and debates on managers' behavior. Finally, based on premier studies, it is argued that the media response to CG affairs and the impact of mass media on the shareholders and the public is conditioned by factors intrinsic as well as extrinsic to media.Researchers have employed a variety of methods in their studies, from conceptual to quantitative to qualitative. The first two issues are basically addressed by quantitative studies based on surveys. The third issue is mostly qualitative case study based. The fourth issue is answered by a range of methods from theoretical to surveys to focus group based ones.To sum up, mass media builds up its credibility by retaining, authenticating, aggregating, and diffusing business information and corporate ins-and-outs. It is the common meeting ground of the diverse stakeholders of CG for expressing facts, grievances and opinions; and for orchestring movements. With appropriate support mechanisms, enlightened readership, alert public, matured democracy, enhanced transparency aided by flow of information, and technically and ethically empowered workforce, mass media will work as the most potent force influencing CG trends.The four major issues discussed above regarding the impact of mass media on CG are mostly in the context of the Western media and democracy. Research is almost absent on the response of mass media to the CG issues in India, although the largest democracy of the world has suffered the biggest scandals of poor governance in the last two decades. It is to be noted that media activism in India in the last two decades has revealed a lot of scandals and corruptions and has exposed a number of high profile people who have abused power for personal gains. It has successfully stirred public response to various civic governance issues and has compelled the government to launch new laws and reformation programmes. However, the media response to CG issues is struck up somewhere for various well-known but unverifiable reasons. Moreover, CG in India consists of different structural components and operates in a cultural context different from the West (to be discussed). Against this backdrop, the present paper delivers a research agenda highlighting some of the basic questions central to mass media's commitment to CG in India.\nThe research agenda: In this section, I wish to highlight specific issues related to CG and the media in India. Out of the eight areas of concern raised here, the first three show the specific CG issues in India that the media should address. The next four relate to the public policy and practice that deter or promote the media's take on CG in India. The last issue suggests the methodological supports to answer the seven issues raised.Relationship-based governance model\nOriginality/contribution: Mass media is considered as the fourth pillar of democracy. Although there is plenty of research on the role of the executive, legislative and judicial wing of the governments in promoting better corporate governance, research on the role of media in pushing CG reforms forward is very limited. The review of literature shows that when it comes specifically to India, the stage is absolutely blank. The research agenda developed in this paper should be considered as an early effort to make researchers sensitive to the impact of media on CG in India. Methodological concerns are addressed. In addition, the structures of corporate governance, the culture of the people in corporate as well as the other stakeholders are also different in India. Suppression and denial of information, use of evolving information technology, training and protection of the media personnel and the inclusion of mass media in the dialogue for various democratic reforms are discussed. The paper highlights the gravity of these issues worth research attention.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of media on corporate governance and to develop a research agenda on the same issue in the peculiar Indian setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Extant and premier literature on the impact of media on corporate governance is reviewed. The relevance of the issue to the Indian context is analyzed. Based on that, a research agenda is developed keeping in view the problems unique to the Indian context.\nFindings: - The review of literature reveals that research on the impact of media on corporate governance is basically done in the context of Western media and democracy. There is no attempt to gauge the influence of media reports on corporate governance in India, although the largest democracy of the world has experienced the biggest scandals of unethical governance in the last two decades.\nOriginality/value: - This is an early effort to study the role of media in addressing corporate governance issues and abuses in India. The paper brings together the problems peculiar to the Indian situation indicating mass media's scope for having some impact on corporate ethics, regulators' responsibility and public opinion in India.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Measuring the comparative performance of branches of a credit union for internal benchmarking	[ "Data envelopment analysis", "Credit unions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: We have attempted to provide managerial insights for the branches of the selected credit union using an analytical technique called data envelopment analysis (DEA), which measures the comparative efficiency of entities that have multiple inputs and outputs. The results of this study are intended to help management understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of their branches and to develop necessary action plans to improve their own efficiency or productivity. The major motivation of our study is to propose and demonstrate a framework with an example for measuring and benchmarking the performance of branches of a credit union in the USA.\n2. Related studies: We limited the search of related studies to DEA applications on credit unions and found 23 studies as of January 2016. Among the studies, only one was about the branches of a credit union (Gregoriou et al., 2004). Meanwhile, there were many DEA applications in the banking sector. Paradi and Zhu (2013) found 275 DEA studies on banks between 1985 and 2011. Among them, 80 were on the branches of banks. Unlike commercial banks, credit unions are not-for-profit organizations and have different behavioral objectives. Accordingly, it is necessary to use different measures for examining the efficiency of credit unions (Worthington, 2010). The following summarizes DEA applications on credit unions by similar subjects.\n3. Methodology: This study employed DEA to measure the comparative efficiency of the branches of a credit union using variables related to the operations of the branches. DEA is based on a production theory or production possibility set proposed by Farrell (1957). Farrell (1957) demonstrated the frontier methodology using a data set with input and output variables. Since Farrell (1957) and Charnes et al. (1978) proposed DEA and solved the first model with CRS using linear programming (LP) in their seminal work followed by Banker et al. (1984) for VRS. Currently, there are numerous variations of DEA and plenty of applications in diverse areas. An entity that is an object to be measured for efficiency is called a DMU. Because DEA can identify relatively efficient DMUs among a group of given DMUs, it is a promising approach for performance measurement and benchmarking.\n4. Data and variables: We have collected internal data for evaluating the performance of 35 branches of a credit union located in a metropolitan area in a state of the USA. They are evenly scattered in the South, East, North, West, and Central districts of the area. We assess the comparative efficiency of the branches individually and test a location difference for its efficiency by districts.\n5. Results and discussion: We employed various DEA models and non-parametric rank sum tests for measuring comparative efficiencies of the credit union at both the branch and district levels. First, we pooled 35 individual branches and applied three DEA models to the data set of the branches: an output-oriented Banker-Charnes-Cooper model (BCC-O), an output-oriented Charnes-Cooper-Rhodes model (CCR-O), and an output-oriented, CRS, slack-based measure of efficiency (SBM-O-C). BCC-O measures pure technical efficiency (PTE), which shows the pure managerial efficiency of a branch. CCR-O evaluates technical efficiency (TE), which is the product of PTE and scale efficiency (SE) that exhibits efficiency due to a different operating environment or market condition. After calculating BCC and CCR scores, we computed SE by dividing TE by PTE. SBM-O-C scores are the product of TE and mix efficiency (MIX) that shows efficiency on the mix of input and/or output variables depending on the input or output orientation of SBM models. The following relationship can be used for identifying sources of inefficiency: SBM efficiency=TExMIX=PTExSExMIX. Next, we assessed the efficiency of five districts that consisted of branches grouped by geographical locations. For service businesses, location is critical, and we analyzed the efficiency of the branches by considering differences due to districts or systems. For this analysis, we chose output-oriented, CRS and VRS system models (SYS-O-C and SYS-O-V, respectively). Finally, to confirm any statistical significance on the differences of efficiencies among the districts, we applied non-parametric rank sum tests to the efficiency scores computed by the system models. All DEA models used in this study are solved using a computer program: DEA Solver Pro 7.1 (SAITECH, Inc., 2010). Consequently, we used model names and related terms from the computer program.\n6. Conclusion: Recently, many firms have experienced hard times due to severe competition and an unprecedented, prolonged recession. It is even more difficult for financial institutions because of regulated business processes and, as a result, the homogenized services offered. In fact, strict regulations severely limit financial institutions from being able to differentiate their services from their competitors'. Under this situation, performance measurement and benchmarking can be imperative actions that aid financial institutions in ensuring their sustainability. We selected a credit union with 35 branches in a state of the USA for performance measurement and benchmarking at branch and district levels. We performed internal benchmarking analyses and suggested managerial insights for credit union managers. For these analyses, we selected pertinent variables and applied a series of DEA models along with non-parametric rank sum tests. Results of these analyses included the efficiency scores of branches and districts, the sources of inefficiency for branches, projections on variables for inefficient branches, and the comparison of districts. Parts of our findings indicated that branches should focus on cost containment by reducing operating expenses and increasing their loan balance. In addition, districts operated in different market conditions, which were evidenced by SE.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the efficiency scores of branches and districts, the sources of inefficiency for branches and projections of variables for inefficient branches. It measures the comparative performance of branches of a credit union for internal benchmarking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper measures the performance of 35 branches of a credit union in the USA and suggests managerial insights. Data envelopment analysis is used for measuring the relative performance of the branches and districts of the credit union. The paper also compares performance differences among the districts using non-parametric statistical analyses.\nFindings: Parts of the findings indicated that branches should focus on cost containment by reducing operating expenses and increasing their loan balances. In addition, districts were operated in different market conditions, which were evidenced by scale efficiency. The major contributions of the study are filling the void of benchmarking studies at a branch level in the credit union sector, suggesting a framework for internal benchmarking, and providing practical insights to managers of credit unions. The framework of this study can be applied to similar financial institutions with minor revisions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limitation of this study is found in the use of cross-sectional data, which is mainly due to the sensitivity of information disclosure of the credit union.\nPractical implications: The paper includes implications for the development of benchmarking studies at a branch level in the credit union sector.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfills an identified need to study how to identify source of inefficiencies so as to further improve the efficiency of branches.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Spread decomposition with common spread components	[ "Bid offer spreads", "Financial markets", "Securities" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The difference between the price at which a liquidity supplier is willing to buy an asset and that at which he is willing to sell, the bid-ask spread, is the subject of much interest for financial market participants and securities regulators. The size of the spread measures market quality, defines liquidity and ultimately determines whether the liquidity supplier is successful. Existing market microstructure models incorporate at most three cost factors that market makers consider in setting the spread for a specific stock: their order processing costs, their inventory holding costs for the stock, and the costs arising from trading against a better informed counter party. In addition to these factors, market watchers would expect that market-wide trends might be a factor in setting the spread. Modern portfolio theory suggests that portfolio considerations should also play a role.We develop a spread decomposition model that incorporates these finance fundamentals. The theoretical model decomposes spreads into a market wide buying and selling pressure component and a specialist firm inventory component, as well as the three previously identified components. The existence of common components to short-horizon returns, order flow and liquidity has recently received a large amount of attention in the literature. Studies by Chordia et al. (2000), Hasbrouck and Seppi (2001) and Huberman and Halka (2001) focus on common determinants of liquidity, providing evidence that stock liquidity proxies, including bid-ask spreads, exhibit common variation over time. Chordia et al. (2000) find that spreads co-move with market-wide liquidity and they propose several possible explanations for the existence of commonality in liquidity. First, common variation in trading volume leads to co-movements in the optimal inventory levels, which in turn results in co-movements in individual securities' bid-ask spreads. Second, inventory risk depends on volatility, which could have a market component. Third, program trading of simultaneous large orders, as well as the trades of institutional funds with similar investing styles, might exert common pressure on dealer inventories. These reasons for commonality could be labeled market wide buying and selling pressure. Large groups of stocks are bought (sold) at the same time, simultaneously decreasing (increasing) market maker inventory levels and increasing (reducing) the prices of many stocks.Coughenour and Saad (2004) argue for a link between liquidity and the risk of providing liquidity among the groups of stocks handled by the same specialist firms and suggest that liquidity suppliers take a portfolio perspective in adjusting inventories. Ho and Stoll (1983) proposed that when buying a stock at the bid, the liquidity supplier will lower not only the bid and ask prices of that stock, but also the bid and ask prices of correlated stocks, the sale of which would hedge the position in the purchased stock. Conversely, if other stocks are subject to buying pressure, the liquidity supplier may decide not to lower the bid and ask prices of the stock, in order to encourage its sale and thereby hedge the purchases of other stocks. The portfolio approach to inventory management can be reinterpreted as an alternative explanation for commonality in liquidity because it allows for the possibility that the quotes for a specific stock are adjusted by a different amount than would be implied by its own information content or inventory effect. In particular, buying and selling pressure in other stocks will produce quote changes as liquidity suppliers attempt to keep their overall portfolios in balance. This explanation for commonality in liquidity will be referred to as specialist firm portfolio buying and selling pressure. Specialist firm portfolio and market buying and selling pressures differ in that the former relates to a group of stocks that are serviced by the same specialist or specialist firm, while the latter relates to the market, a much larger set of stocks that are serviced by different specialist firms.Our spread decomposition model accommodates these two potential sources of commonality. It is based on one of the models proposed by Huang and Stoll (1997), hereafter HS, which in itself is a generalization of many other models. These previous spread decomposition models focus on individual stocks, decomposing the spread into stock specific adverse selection costs, inventory holding costs, and order processing costs. In omitting determinants common to portfolios of stocks, traditional spread decomposition models may incorrectly attribute common spread components to spread components of individual stocks. The estimation of the adverse selection cost component has important implications beyond market microstructure research for pricing financial assets and for ascertaining required rates of return. Easley et al. (2002) find that the probability of information-based trading significantly affects the required rate of return for a stock. Accordingly, errors in the estimation of adverse selection cost components may lead to biased asset return expectations.We test our model empirically using NYSE Trades and Quotes (TAQ) data. Our results show that a significant proportion of the spread is explained by market buying and selling pressure, and that this proportion is largest for the most actively traded stocks on the NYSE. For example, for the sample of S&P 500 constituent stocks the average market buying and selling pressure variable accounts for 8.82, 9.11, and 3.04 percent of the spread for the periods with trading under eighths, sixteenths, and decimals, respectively.Hasbrouck and Seppi (2001) pose the question of whether stronger commonality would be found for stocks serviced by the same specialist firm. We find strong evidence that the specialists of Henderson Brothers, Inc. and of Labranche and Co. (subsequent to Labranche's acquisition of Henderson) consider the portfolio of stocks they service when setting spreads. For example, for the 90 S&P 500 stocks serviced by Labranche and Co. from February to June 2001, on average 3.03 percent of the spread is attributed to the specialist firm portfolio variable. Results for Wagner Stott Bear Specialists LLC and the predecessor Wagner Stott Mercator Partners LLC are less clear, but it appears that specialists for the firm started to take firm wide inventory into account in the second half of 1997 as well. The other specialist firms apparently did not actively manage their inventory risk exposure by taking off-setting positions in different individual stocks. For these firms, our findings are consistent with decentralization of the market making function within specialist firms to individual market makers, corroborating Naik and Yadav's (2002) findings for individual market makers on the London Stock Exchange1.Hasbrouck and Seppi pose a second question. They ask whether their results would be different for smaller stocks than the Dow Jones stocks they consider. We find a significant difference in commonality in spreads between the least and most liquid stocks for trading under minimum ticks of eighths and sixteenths, but the significance of this difference disappears under decimal trading.In the following section we develop a spread decomposition model that incorporates market buying and selling and specialist firm portfolio pressures. The third section introduces the data used to validate the model. The fourth section briefly defines the estimation procedure used in obtaining the empirical results. The fifth section presents the estimation results under three different pricing regimes and the last section concludes.\n2. Developing the spread decomposition model: 2.1. The model\n3. Data: All data for the study are extracted from the Trades and Quotes (TAQ) tapes from the NYSE. The data set includes the 20 stocks that constitute the Major Market Index (MMI) used by HS. Trades at the midpoint are excluded. Madhavan and Sofianos (1998) report that, on average, NYSE specialists participate in only 30 percent of all stock trades3. Unfortunately, as in other studies, we cannot directly identify which trades go through the specialist and which ones do not. However, trades at the midpoint are the most logical candidates for trades that take place between traders rather than through the specialist. In excluding these, we can then assume a binomial distribution for QM and QS since, when midpoint trades are excluded, each Qk can only have two outcomes. We use the 5 percent critical values to determine the thresholds UJ and DJ.The market buying and selling variable, QtM, and the specialist firm variable, QtS, both defined in equation (4), are based on the last trades and quotes for the 446 stocks that were part of the S&P 500 index in 1997, and the 421 stocks that were part of the S&P 500 index in 20014. We create three data sets of approximately similar length to cover three trading regimes. The first data set comprises a period of trading under minimum price increments of eighths of a dollar from January 1997 until June 23 and under sixteenths of a dollar from June 24 until December 1997. The third data set comprises a period under decimal pricing from February to June 2001 because the NYSE completed the transition to decimal trading on January 29, 2001. Using data for each of the three trading regimes ensures that our commonality findings are not period specific and robust with regard to changes in the minimum price increment. To be assigned to a specific specialist firm, stocks had to be with that specialist firm for an entire sample period. This procedure ensures the best possible comparability of the results for the two pricing regimes of eighths and sixteenths while not overly truncating the decimal trading sample. Figure 1 shows the stocks grouped by their specialist firms.The two graphs underscore the concentration process that has occurred in the three years between the samples. At the beginning of the year 1997 the NYSE had 34 specialist firms; at the end of June 2001 only 13 specialist firms remained. Our data set concentrates on the larger and more liquid stocks listed on the NYSE. Table I lists the top five specialist firms and the number of stocks in our sample for which they make markets.To ensure the integrity of the data set, the analysis is confined to transactions coded as regular trades and quotes that are best bid or offer (BBO) eligible. We subject the data to a number of error checks5. A further set of numerical checks is designed to filter data entry errors6.Following Henker and Wang (2006) each trade is paired with the last quote posted at least one second prior and no more than 120 seconds prior. This approach differs from, for example, HS (1997) and Ball and Chordia (2001), both of whom use a five-second quote delay.Following HS (1997), if the quotes remain unchanged, we aggregate same-price sequential trades. In effect, this approach, called bunching, treats a cluster of trades at the same price with unchanged quotes as a single order. Without bunching, HS find probabilities of trade reversals that are often smaller than 0.5. As HS point out quote reversal probabilities of less than 0.5 are inconsistent with trade indicator spread decomposition models and often result in negative adverse selection costs that are theoretically not permissible. The more frequent splitting of orders under decimal pricing leads to quote reversal probabilities of less than 0.5 even in the bunched sample for the majority of stocks. Spread sample statistics of the resulting data set are reported in Table II.The (percentage) spread drops significantly at the one percent significance level for the progressively finer pricing grids.\n4. Estimation procedure: Following HS, we use the generalized method of moments (GMM) procedure to estimate all models. The advantage of the GMM procedure is that it imposes weak distributional assumptions, an especially important property since the error terms include rounding errors.Define f(xt,o) to be a vector function such that for the model in equations (1) and (6), it is: Equation 7 where: Equation 8 and o=(p a b1 b2 b3)' is the vector of parameters of interest. The model implies the orthogonality conditions E[f(xt,o)]=0. Under the GMM procedure, the parameter estimates chosen are those that minimize the criterion function: Equation 9 where gT(o) is the sample mean of f(xt,o) and WT is a sample symmetric weighting matrix. Initially WT is set equal to the identity matrix. Using the estimate o^T, compute W^T=V^-1, where: Equation 10 and optimize the criterion function in equation (9) again with the updated weighting matrix. Repeat this iteration process until the parameter estimates converge. Hansen (1982) proves that, under weak regularity conditions, the GMM estimator o^T is consistent and: Equation 11 where: Equation 12 Equation 13 All models are exactly identified.\n5. Results: In discussing our results we begin with the original HS spread decomposition model. The original model is a restricted version of our new model. Section 5.2 reports results for the model with market buying and selling pressure cost component. Section 5.3 report results for the complete model with both market buying and selling and specialist firm portfolio pressures. In section 5.4 we evaluate the impact on the various parameter estimates of the changes to the price quotation regime. Lastly, in section 5.5 we test whether the omission of important variables biases the estimates of the reduced models and whether actively traded stocks have different parameter estimates than less actively traded stocks.In order to decompose stock specific adverse selection and inventory holding costs our model as the HS model requires quote reversal probabilities greater than 0.5. In recent years decimal pricing and declining order specific transaction costs have lead to the splitting of orders in ever smaller parcels. These smaller parcels are not necessarily executed consecutively without intermittent transactions from other market participants. In addition it is now common for orders to execute at slightly increasing or decreasing prices because they exhaust the depths of the inside quotes. Since we only bunch successive trades at identical prices with unchanged quotes these changes in the market environment lead to quote reversal probabilities in our bunched sample of less than 0.5 for the majority of stocks. This in turn leads to spurious stock specific adverse selection and inventory holding cost estimates. For this reason the results in sections 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 that relate to the decimal pricing regime have been relegated to the appendix. Equation (6) shows that the commonality components are not affected by the serial correlation in the order flow.5.1. Huang and Stoll model\n6. Conclusion: We develop a spread cost component decomposition model, based on Huang and Stoll (1997), that includes a market buying and selling pressure cost component as well as a specialist firm portfolio variable. We find strong evidence for the existence and significance of a common spread component under all three share price regimes. While all market makers appear to consider the market factor when setting bid and ask quotes, we find evidence that only market makers of selected specialist firms consider their firms' current portfolio position. The common market factor is largest for securities with the highest trade frequencies. However, this size effect diminishes as the price grid becomes finer. The magnitude of the common market factor also decreases as the pricing grid becomes finer, but remains highly significant in all three pricing regimes. Lastly, we find that the probability that buyer (seller) initiated trades are followed by seller (buyer) initiated trades falls considerably as the pricing grid becomes finer. This innovation in trading practices may necessitate a reevaluation of many existing theoretical microstructure models.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to incorporate a market wide buying and selling pressure cost component into a spread decomposition model as spread cost component.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper extends a commonly used trade indicator spread decomposition model to include a component common to all stocks of a specialist firm and a market wide component common to all stocks.\nFindings: - Strong evidence is found that specialists consider this common factor cost component when they set bid and ask quotes. Some specialist firms also take the next logical step and specifically manage their firm wide stock inventories. The common factor is in percentage terms largest for securities with the highest trade frequencies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The relative importance of the common factor spread component decreases as the pricing grid becomes finer, but remains highly significant under the decimal trading regime.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study to document not-security-specific spread cost components that are common to all stocks for which a specialist firm makes markets and to all stocks in the market. Using the model it is shown that market wide uncertainty translates into spreads of individual securities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Individual pathways of prior learning accreditation in France: From individual to collective responsibilities	[ "France", "Accreditation of prior learning", "Lifelong learning", "Lifelong learning policies", "Care sector", "Capability pathway", "Voice", "Professional development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: This paper aims at analyzing employees' pathways within the framework of the Accreditation of Prior Experience Learning (APEL) process in France. Many European countries have come to recognize non-formal learning as a tool to be used in the context of lifelong learning in order to respond to the flexibility requirements of the labor market; hence it is viewed as being consistent with the logic of individualization (Mehaut and Lecourt, 2009). In reality, lifelong learning is the outcome of social and educational public policies that intend not only to relieve some of the distress provoked by flexible labor market conditions, but also to provide people with more options as regards personal development (OECD, 2005).\nI. The APEL process: a new way to develop employability: I.1 Principles of APEL: a potential tool to increase individual responsibility in lifelong learning policies\nII. Impact of employer-employee relationships: We argue that candidates' pathway depend more on their environment than on individual characteristics. Numerous socio-economic issues affecting a given business sector or employer can exert an influence on whether the right to APEL will be implemented as a social and environmental conversion factor. Though experience seems to be integral to the APEL process, the model's outcomes demonstrate that the process does not recognize experience as a stock of time spent in an occupation. More generally, standard individual characteristics (gender, participation in vocational training, professional pathway and socio-professional indicators) are less significant than environmental factors.Nevertheless, the more the number of occupied jobs increases (in the sector of the desired qualification), synonymous of adaptability (Stankiewicz, 2002), the more the chances of securing the desired qualification rises as well. In addition, the probability of obtaining a qualification increases with the level of initial education. The APEL system seems to both perpetuate differences based on individuals' initial education levels and widen the existing gap between higher and lower qualified individuals. This would further increase inequalities (Dubar, 2004), casting doubt on hopes for social mobility and the likelihood of success in the fight against inequalities of access to qualifications. Individuals who may have the most to gain are the ones who are the most under-served, thus demonstrating a Matthew effect.Occupations within the social care sector have undergone significant changes in terms of recruiting organizations and their legal status, working hours and modes of service provision. Consequently, the need for functional flexibility plus the diversity of recruiting bodies, customers, and sites of service provision, make adaptation and the ability to get a formal qualification essential in such occupations (Devetter et al., 2009). The model's outcomes confirm this hypothesis.II.1 Extending employer and business sector certification policies\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyze employees' trajectories within the Accreditation of Prior Experience Learning process (APEL) in France. It seeks to understand how candidates implement this right, the resources and supports required to manage this implementation, and how employer-employee relationships impact on the end result.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on a new national survey of more than 3,000 employed APEL candidates, most of whom are women working in the care sector.\nFindings: - The paper argues that individual pathways within this process are influenced more by the socio-economic issues at stake in a given sector, its certification policies, environmental incentives and employer-employee joint investments than by individual characteristics. All these elements go to configure a \"capability pathway\", comprising individual resources, rights, and environmental, social and individual conversion factors.\nPractical implications: - A better understanding of employers' role and the support they provide during the course of the overall process can help increase the efficiency of lifelong learning. Spaces of mediation at candidates' disposal and real freedom at work, such as exercising one's right to voice and aspiring to development, are determinant.\nOriginality/value: - Not much is known about how corporate policies affect individual employee pathways within the framework of the Accreditation of Prior Experience Learning (APEL) process in France. The paper contributes to this literature by using a recent survey econometrically investigating the impact of joint employer-employee investment.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Parent and peer behavior: fueling adolescent binge drinking intentions?	[ "Peer", "Social marketing", "Adolescent", "Parent", "Binge drinking", "Multi-stream" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rise of digital media over the past decade has created new opportunities for the marketing of alcohol products and heavy episodic drinking or binge drinking remains prevalent among adolescents and young adults (Lobstein et al., 2017). Worldwide, monthly heavy episodic drinking is more prevalent among 15- to 19-year-old adolescents (11.7 per cent) than among the total population age 15 years or older (7.5 per cent), and in the Western Pacific Region, 37.3 per cent of adolescents were current drinkers (World Health Organization (WHO), 2014). While the immediate consequences of binge drinking for adolescents relate to accidents, violence, sexual assaults, unwanted pregnancy and injury to others (Laslett et al., 2011), other impacts include neurocognitive (Lisdahl et al., 2013; Pfefferbaum et al., 2015), academic (Sjolund et al., 2015), social and psychological development (Pedersen and von Soest, 2015). Moreover, early onset of alcohol drinking in adolescence has been linked to alcohol dependence and heavier drinking in adulthood (Connor et al., 2015). There is a clear need to continue addressing this public health issue.\n2. Theoretical background: Many risk behaviors have been studied in the context of the theory of planned behavior (TPB, Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and social marketing interventions are often grounded in this theory (Truong, 2014). TPB can be applied to understand how attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) influence binge drinking intentions and behavior. Attitudes are \"the degree to which a person has favorable or unfavorable evaluation or appraisal of the behavior in question\" (Ajzen, 1991). Subjective norms comprise perceptions of important others' approval of alcohol and the perceived acceptability of drinking behaviors (Dunleavy, 2008). PBC represents perceived control over performance of a behavior (Ajzen, 2002). According to TPB, intentions are determined by attitudes, subjective norms and PBC. In turn, intentions explain behavior (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). TPB predicts when attitudes are favorable toward binge drinking, norms are supportive of binge drinking and PBC regarding binge drinking is high, adolescent will hold higher intentions to binge drink. From a social marketing perspective, understanding these cognitive-attitudinal determinants of adolescent intentions to binge drink enables design of effective programs to modify those intentions.\n3. Hypotheses: To investigate the multi-stream correlates of adolescent binge drinking intentions, this study explored a potential moderation model based on the TBP framework and incorporating social-contextual factors and adolescent drinking status. In addition to theoretically based cognitive-attitudinal individual factors of attitude, norms and PBC, it was proposed social-contextual elements of parent and peer drinking behavior would interact with (either strengthen or dampen) adolescent binge drinking intentions and drinking status would potentially further modify the effects. The following hypothesis was proposed based on the TPB model and prior empirical evidence:\n4. Method: This study was part of a state-wide funded Game On: Know Alcohol (GOKA) alcohol education program designed using social marketing benchmark criteria (Rundle-Thiele et al., 2015; Dietrich et al., 2016), which included six modules alternating between online edutainment games and practical activities such as wearing beer goggles, pouring a standard drink and lying in the gutter. Participants were 2234 secondary school students attending Year 10 (mean age = 15.3 years, 48.7 per cent female) in Australia whose school board had previously agreed to have students participate in the GOKA program as part of their pastoral care or health and physical education program.\n5. Data analysis: Analyses were conducted using 2234 cases with complete data. A two-stage structural equation modeling approach (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988) was applied to test the hypothesized model structure as follows. Initially, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement model for the sample overall and for each drinking status group separately. Reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity were assessed based on the following criteria, respectively: composite reliability (CR) > 0.7; average variance extracted (AVE) > 0.05; square root of AVE > inter-construct correlations (Hair et al., 2010). In the second step, the full structural model was estimated to assess overall model fit and the hypothesized relationships with multi-group analyses to test for potential moderation effects. Both the measurement model and the structural model were estimated with the maximum likelihood algorithm using AMOS 22 (Arbuckle, 2013). Model fit was evaluated on the following criteria: Chi-square/degrees of freedom (Cmin/df) < 3; comparative fit index (CFI) > 0.90; goodness of fit index (GFI) > 0.95; standardized root mean residual [SRMR] < 0.09; and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) < 0.05 (Hu and Bentler, 1999).\n6. Results: Most of the participants were born in Australia (92 per cent), spoke English at home (95 per cent), lived with both parents (81 per cent) and reported achieving mostly A or B grades (72 per cent). According to the adolescent sample more than 76 per cent of participants' mothers and 68 per cent of fathers reportedly drink alcohol occasionally or in social settings. About two-thirds of participants (n = 1,332; 58 per cent male; 61 per cent female) had never consumed a full alcoholic beverage. Over 70 per cent of boys' friends and 61 per cent of girls' friends were reported to drink alcohol. The average percentage of boys' friends who had supplied alcohol was 41 per cent compared to 35 per cent for girls.\n7. Discussion: This study was built on a foundation of established psychological theory and marketing constructs, to investigate the interplay of downstream (individual level) and midstream (social-contextual) factors to better understand adolescent binge drinking intentions for drinkers and non-drinkers. Adolescents self-reported their drinking status and intentions to binge drink and therefore the outcome of interest (binge drinking intentions) could be higher than reflected by the data. It is possible that intentions are higher than participants are willing to admit, or that intentions are spontaneous and not accurately captured by survey measures. A structural modeling approach with cross-sectional self-report data from a large sample of adolescents was used. Based on the TPB model it was expected attitudes, subjective norms and PBC would be positively associated with adolescents' self-reported intentions to binge drink. Results showed attitudes and subjective norms accounted for intentions to binge drink among both drinkers and non-drinkers. PBC was not associated with intentions. This finding partially supports the applicability of TPB constructs in understanding behavioral intentions and is generally consistent with prior evidence showing the predictive utility of attitude and subjective norms (Cooke et al., 2016).\n8. Limitations: Limitations of the current study relate to the cross-sectional design, face validity and self-report methodology. Data were collected by survey, introducing common method variance which had to be statistically accounted for. Despite assurances of confidentiality and anonymity, self-reports of drinking behavior in an underage sample, and estimates of peers' drinking behavior could be stigmatized, thereby reducing the validity of measures. Alternative methods of gathering data such as behavioral observation or peer-report would help avoid common method bias and social desirability in responding.\n9. Implications: This study combined individual change (downstream) and important midstream factors (Hastings and Domegan, 2013) to understand the interplay of social and cognitive-attitudinal factors in adolescent binge drinking intentions. Limited research in the social marketing literature has examined complex multi-stream relationships within an established theoretical framework. Current findings demonstrate the importance of the social context surrounding the target audience, namely adolescents targeted by the EduCATE program.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Social marketing has been applied to alcohol education, changing adolescents' knowledge, attitudes and intentions toward binge drinking for the better. However, there remains limited research in the social marketing literature examining multi-stream models considering social-contextual factors and individual differences in the applied context of adolescent drinking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A multi-group structural equation model approach was applied to analyze cross-sectional self-report data from 2,234 (mean age = 15.3 years, 48.7 per cent female) Australian adolescents. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the role of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control in adolescents' binge drinking intentions were examined. Potential moderating effects of peer and parent drinking behaviors and drinking status were tested.\nFindings: The model explained 47.3 per cent variance in intentions for drinkers and 31.6 per cent for non-drinkers. Subjective norms were more strongly related to intentions than attitudes. Peer and parent behavior modified those associations, and drinking status further moderated interaction effects. Under conditions of favorable norms and attitudes, family and friends' behavior fuels adolescents' binge drinking intentions. Conversely, exposure to modeling of non-drinking peers and parents can bolster negative binge drinking beliefs.\nPractical implications: Social marketing programs seeking to change adolescent drinking culture should include peers and parents whose drinking behavior modified associations between attitudes, norms and intentions to binge drink.\nOriginality/value: This study investigated how social-contextual factors (midstream) and drinking status influence relationships between adolescents' attitudes, norms and perceived behavioral control (downstream factors) and their intentions to binge drink. These moderating effects have not previously been examined within the theory of planned behavior framework, and limited previous research has examined multi-stream models.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What drives the purchasing of foods with high sugar? Evidence from Turkey	[ "Consumer health", "Food expenditures", "Household panel data", "Sugar consumption" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Worldwide obesity rates have almost tripled during the last four decades. In 2016, 13 per cent of the worldwide adult population were obese (WHO, 2018). According to OECD (2017), obesity rates in Turkey were around 22 per cent in 2016 which is significantly higher compared to the worldwide average. Problematically, incidence of type 2 diabetes is closely associated with obesity (Malik et al., 2006; van Ansem et al., 2014; Johnson, 2016). The WHO (2016) Global Diabetes Report summarises the worldwide diabetes rate in 2014 as 8.5 per cent. The highest rate was found in the Eastern Mediterranean Region with 13.7 per cent where the report also shows the highest growth rates since 1980. In 2016, Turkey had the highest age-adjusted type 2 diabetes prevalence and highest share of total healthcare expenditure related to diabetes in Europe (IDF, 2017).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Purchasing behaviour and healthfulness of food purchases\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Results: The estimation results are provided in Table III. All of the time-variant explanatory variables related to purchasing behaviour show significant effects. A larger shopping basket increases the share of expenditure on foods with high sugar. The number of shopping trips has a negative and significant relationship with the share of expenditure on foods with high sugar. In line with earlier findings in the literature, higher rates of promotional purchasing are associated with a higher share of expenditure on foods with high sugar.\n5. General discussion: This research contributes to the area of food purchasing behaviour and consumer health. Obesity and type 2 diabetes rates are rising worldwide, especially in Turkey where the retail environment is fragmented and geographical regions are diverse. One of the main contributors to obesity and type 2 diabetes is the excessive consumption of foods with high sugar (Johnson, 2016). To support health researchers and public policy, this study analyses food purchases of a large representative sample of Turkish households (n=10,682) over a time span of two years to examine how the share of expenditure on foods with high sugar is influenced by purchasing behaviours and household characteristics. Results of this study provide novel and important insights for the body of knowledge analysing drivers of unhealthful food purchases.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how the share of expenditure on foods with high sugar is influenced by purchasing behaviour and household characteristics in Turkey.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Food purchases of a large representative sample of Turkish households (n=10,682) were observed over a two-year time span. A linear mixed effects model is estimated to analyse the drivers of households' share of expenditure on foods with high sugar in a longitudinal setting.\nFindings: Lower shopping frequency, larger shopping baskets, more promotional purchasing and higher usage of modern retail formats lead to a higher share of expenditure on foods with high sugar. This share decreases with higher income and education. Households living in urban areas have lower expenditure on foods with high sugar. Households in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions show the highest share of expenditure on foods with high sugar across Turkey. Children within the household lead to a higher share of expenditure on foods with high sugar whereas this share decreases with increasing household size and being in later stages of life.\nOriginality/value: Analysing household panel data provides a more realistic perspective of longitudinal food purchasing behaviour compared to studies using cross-sectional designs. Furthermore, this large-scale study in Turkey provides valuable insights for health researchers and policymakers to improve public health due to being conducted in a newly industrialised country with high rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes, a fragmented retail environment and diverse geographical regions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The linkage between status-leveling symbols and work attitudes	[ "Justice", "Employee attitudes", "Trust", "Leader-member exchange", "High performance work practices", "Status-leveling symbols" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In comparison to prevailing organizational forms of the past, contemporary organizations are more decentralized. Generally speaking, this is a decentralization of decision authority - driven by organizations' adaptive response to complex and turbulent environmental contingencies (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1998; Daft, 2009; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1986). Yet decentralized (or 'flatter') organizations are accurately characterized not only in terms of structure, but also culture. That is, decentralization is reflected not only in shifts in decision authority, but also in the norms, value systems and symbols that members use to interpret and to navigate their social worlds (Kunda, 2006; Martin, 2001).\nTheory and hypotheses: Status-leveling symbols\nMethods: Sample and procedures\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between status-leveling symbols (i.e. the symbols used by organizations to remove, blur, or downplay hierarchical distinctions) and employees' work attitudes, as mediated through perceptions of trust, justice, and leader-member exchange. The study intends to provide some empirical support relative to the role of symbolic-leveling symbols as a social influence process in the workplace.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, the authors developed a measure of organizational status leveling by focussing on three symbols - physical space, dress, and forms of address. Data were collected from 147 employees who were enrolled in a part-time MBA program. The paper used path analysis to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: Results fully supported the theoretical model except the mediating role of justice perceptions in the relationship between status-leveling symbols and affective commitment.\nPractical implications: The results of the study provide guidance for design of physical workspaces and setting or reinforcing norms regarding forms of address and dress codes. Such practices need to be integrated with other high-involvement HR practices so as to create and sustain the culture desired by the organization.\nOriginality/value: The paper is the first to measure status-leveling symbols in organizations, and the first to investigate the linkages between symbolic-leveling symbols and relevant work-related outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Reframing practice: creating social learning networks	[ "Social skills", "Workplace training" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change (Giuseppe Tomasi di Pampedusa, 1958).\nHow do you create social learning networks in organizational learning?: A number of recent studies have indicated that learners, who are connected in an online format, feel a greater sense of community and have perceived higher levels of learning satisfaction. Inherently participative by its nature, the social learning network is designed to augment group interactions and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and an aggregation of information exchanges in a web-based environment, while allowing the learner to clarify concepts and establish meaningful links with content that is transferable to their workplace context.Social software used to establish a social learning network is informed by the following assumptions that learners:* want to communicate and collaborate with others;* enjoy sharing their ideas with like-minded people;* will openly share their experiences;* look for recommendations and feedback from trusted resources;* will create their own contextual knowledge by self-publishing; and* will manage their own learning by subscribing to information that is relevant to their context.Collaborative publishing spaces such as blogs and wikis are at the core of the network where the use of writing allows learners to clarify and articulate their thoughts. Additionally, learners are able to review each others work, share meanings, and use critical reflection processes to contextualize the key learning points.Podcasts, and the newer versions including video or vodcasts, are gaining momentum as an alternative rich media communication method. Simultaneously, the aggregation of content into a personalised space using syndication tools or RSS (Really Simple Syndication), provides the learner with the ability to manage their information flow. The social structure, comprising of a variety of people, both readers and writers, supports a network that develops into an ecology of connections.All these applications, the so-called Web 2.0 technologies, have emerged as powerful tools in the organizational learning landscape, and are now being integrated - or \"mashed-up\" - to create social learning networks that are both individually driven, yet socially constructed.\nCase study example: MentorNet - a network of young women entrepreneurs: MentorNet (www.headshift.com/projects/2008/06/mentornet.php), launched in Australia in 2007, was the first national mentoring program for women in business and the first to use Web 2.0 technologies to provide a social learning network environment. The program provides a niche network that supports entrepreneurial women to grow their businesses through education, networking, and mentoring over a period of six months.The main challenge of MentorNet was to overcome the geographically dispersed nature of its participants, and to create a vibrant online social learning network that was able to support and empower Australian business women wherever they were located.Essential to the design of MentorNet was clarity of the underpinning assumptions about the nature of the mentoring and learning to be provided, while understanding the parameters or constraints that would need to be addressed before selecting and designing the software platform.\nThe solution: The core web-based context is shaped through a variety of large group, smaller peer groups and individual learning spaces based on a wiki and weblog environment, a mash-up platform, heavily customised using an enterprise wiki, Confluence.Live fortnightly meetings are conducted through synchronous webinar technologies, where participants are able to collaborate and share in real time.Mentees build their business plans on a personal wiki, while collaborating with the entire group analysing case studies and completing activities that relate to specific business practices.Additional functions, like event calendars, resources, social bookmarking, photo sharing, and other subscription services are displayed through RSS feeds in the central wiki that serves as the main portal for the group.All participants, who never meet face-to-face, create profiles based on digital storytelling principles that incorporate photos shared through Flickr and other rich media. These profiles build connections between people in a more personalised and contextual way to develop stronger network connections.\nThe results: These results have been collected from four programs by participant surveys:1. Mentorees:* 100 percent reported an increase their business skills;* 95 percent report having more direction in their business;* 100 percent have expanded their networks;* 50 percent report an increase in turnover (during the 6 months program);* 65 percent report business growth (during the 6 months program);* 35 percent have employed more staff (during the 6 months program);* 90 percent have developed their business plans;* 100 percent report increased confidence about their business; and* 100 percent are more enthusiastic about their business.2. Mentors:* 100 percent have expanded their networks;* 100 percent are more enthusiastic about their business; and* 100 percent reported an increase their business skills.Both the formal learning outcomes and the social networking results demonstrate a significant positive impact that can be directly related to the design of the learning platform. A comparative program, delivered entirely in a face-to-face classroom environment for six years prior to the development of MentorNet produced results that were notably lower in all categories reported above.\nBarriers to implementation: Simply creating a social learning network will not guarantee positive results and learning outcomes. The following three categories of inhibitors were identified during my PhD research as critical factors which may undermine the success of such an initiative.Organizational inhibitors\nFuture implications: Educators who dismiss learning networks as a fad, demanding results that unequivocally demonstrate improved learning outcomes, are opting for a model of learning that is no longer sustainable in a fast changing, information rich, networked society.Learners are increasingly discontented with the organizational learning landscape, expecting their experiences of social computing to enable the same sorts of interactions and networking functions they can access at home. Yet firewalls and other organizational inhibitors prevent their use and learners are presented with what appears to be outdated, static learning environments with little or no engagement with others.As educators, our responsibility lies with the creation and development of learning. While technology is providing us with radical new opportunities, simply embedding computers and software applications into our existing pedagogical practices is miserably insufficient. We need a more creative approach, not one that simply or directly replicates, renovates or reinforces traditional models of didactic teaching.A social learning network approach requires a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between technology and learning. We need to re-frame our practice and pay attention to the key inhibitors. Otherwise, the integration of social learning networks into existing organizational structures, (as with early implementations of other e-Learning technologies) will be unlikely to deliver the performance expectations of the organization.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that social learning networks can be implemented and achieve greater results than traditional e-Learning initiatives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A case study is used to illustrate the social learning networks framework and pedagogical underpinnings.\nFindings: - The case study shows significant outcomes not previously experienced in face-to-face taught environments. However, there are inhibtors to successful implementation and these are highlighted for the reader.\nOriginality/value: - The future of online learning lies with the development of social learning networks, but the value will only be experienced if organizational learning practitioners re-frame their practices to enable learners to share, collaborate, build knowledge, network and learn.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Alliance governance and product innovation project decision making	[ "Strategic alliances", "Product innovation", "Decision making", "Governance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Nowadays, developing new products is increasingly a jointly managed activity within a strategic alliance of two or more firms (Doz and Hamel, 1998; Gerwin and Ferris, 2004; Hagedoorn, 2002; Hillebrand and Biemans, 2004; Roijakkers and Hagedoorn, 2006). Alliances are defined as \"any voluntary agreement between firms that involves exchange, sharing, or co-development, and it can include contributions by partners of capital, technology, or firms-specific assets\" (Gulati and Singh, 1998, p. 781). Product innovation within a strategic alliance differs from product innovation in one organization due to coordination problems, amongst others, with respect to decision making. While decision making affects the project success (Cyert and March, 1992; Simon, 1997) and product innovation success (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Cooper and Edgett, 1996), it is bound to be affected by the idiosyncrasies of cooperation. For example, Gerwin and Ferris (2004) show that shared decision making in contractual alliances is subject to cooperative conditions, such as alliance newness, cooperation history and diversion of competences. In addition, the alliance governance structure (e.g. contractual versus institutional) may influence the product innovation projects.Until recently, product innovation scholars mostly investigate managing projects from the perspective of one firm that carries the responsibility even if this firm collaborates with suppliers or customers (e.g. Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Gerwin and Barrowman, 2002; Griffin, 1997). Furthermore, alliance management and product innovation literature show an increasing number of studies that relate alliance motivation or governance structures (such as joint ventures and non-equity alliances) to new product development (e.g. Bierly and Coombs, 2004; Bonaccorsi and Lipparini, 1994; Bruce et al., 1995; Chiesa and Manzini, 1998; Folta, 1998; Kogut, 1988; Linnarsson and Werr, 2004; Tao and Wu, 1997; Vilaseca-Requena et al., 2007). However, hardly any studies examine how these structures influence the decision making in general (Das and Teng, 2001), not to mention decision making in product innovation projects. In addition, studies on product innovation acknowledge the influence of new product characteristics and new product development context, while few studies take this influence into account when examining product innovation within various alliance governance structures (e.g. Gerwin and Ferris, 2004). So the question remains as to whether decision making within the product development process stages is more effective within a joint venture than for example in bilateral contractual alliance due to its larger interdependence and control.The purpose of this study is to contribute to both product innovation and alliance research by means of explaining how differences in alliance governance structures affect the decision-making process and its effectiveness in the context of product innovation projects. The scope of this study is limited to vertical alliances and alliances between two firms, which are called dyadic alliances (Gerwin and Ferris, 2004). The paper is organized as follows. First, our initial theoretical framework is presented based on alliance management research, decision making research and product innovation literature. Next, we describe the case research method used, followed by the empirical results. The last sections describe the conclusions and managerial implications as well as the limitations and suggestions for future research.\nTheoretical framework: Product innovation within an alliance differs from product innovation within one firm due to differences in decision making amongst others (Gerwin and Ferris, 2004). Decision making within firms takes place at various levels and in various forms. This study focuses on strategic decision making at the level of product innovation projects in dyadic alliances. The effectiveness of decision making may be related to the alliance governance structure. Our conceptual framework builds the proposition that decision making effectiveness is affected by decision making process antecedents that in turn are influenced by the alliance governance structure.Decision making effectiveness\nResearch method: This conceptual framework is studied in greater depth and elaborated upon using empirical research. The aim of the empirical research was to further develop theoretical propositions based on context-specific explanations. Because of the exploratory, contextual, complex and uncontrolled nature of the phenomenon a multiple cross-sectional retrospective case study method was used (Bonoma, 1985; Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994). A case study is defined as an empirical inquiry within the - not clearly circumscribed - context of reality, investigating a contemporary phenomenon (Yin, 1994). In the case studies, the unit of analysis is the decision making process at the level of product innovation projects within dyadic strategic alliances.Alliance case selection\nResults: The results can be subdivided into two parts. The first part consists of the empirical data that characterize the governance structure in terms of alliance forms. The second part contains the empirical data with respect to the relationships (as shown in Figure 1) between, first, governance structure characteristics and the decision making process characteristics of product innovation projects and, second, decision making process characteristics of the product innovation projects and its decision making effectiveness characteristics.Alliance governance structure forms and characteristics\nConclusions: Concluding, the case study results on the one side suggests how product innovation project decision making effectiveness is dependent upon strategic decision making process characteristics in terms of the presence of procedural rationality and the absence of political activity. On the other side, our empirical research indicates how procedural rationality and political activity are affected by the interdependence and control mechanisms of the governance structure. Furthermore, control mechanisms (except for trust) and interdependence (except for resource dependency) were found to distinguish contractual alliances from joint ventures. Moreover, we found an indication, though further research is needed, that product innovativeness, radical versus incremental may affect the degree to which task specialization as an interdependence measure is related to procedural rationality of the decision making process.\nDiscussion: These conclusions contribute to the recent debate in the product innovation literature whether and how product innovation within alliances differs from product innovation within a firm (Gerwin and Ferris, 2004). Specifically, it suggests that while strategic decision making is important for new product innovation success, strategic decision making within product innovation projects executed in dyadic strategic alliance is determined by the alliance governance structure. This is in line with other studies on the topic such as Bierly and Coombs (2004) and Linnarsson and Werr (2004) who found that the stage of product development is related to alliance governance structure and instability. These conclusions also contribute to alliance research studying alliance idiosyncrasies at the level of product innovation projects rather than at the firm or product development level. The conclusions also have managerial implications and are subject to limitations and future research efforts, which are described in the following sections.Managerial implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this exploratory study is explaining the effects of control and interdependence on decision making at the level of product innovation projects in dyadic strategic alliances.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Drawing on alliance research, strategic decision-making research and product innovation literature a conceptual framework is developed using a multiple case research methodology.\nFindings: - The empirical case results indicate that decision-making effectiveness in product innovation projects is dependent on the nature of the decision-making process which, in turn, is affected by alliance governance structure characteristics.\nResearch limitation/implications: - The case research results only gives an in-depth understanding of the nature of the effects. A large-scale quantitative study is needed to arrive at generalizations taking into account industry-specific and firm-specific factors.\nPractical implications: - Managers may want to take the effects on decision making into account when deciding on the alliance governance structure for a new product innovation project.\nOriginality/value: - This paper contributes to earlier research first, by viewing product innovation as a joint activity for which not only one organization is responsible, and second, by relating alliance governance structure to decision making beyond the strategic management level at the level of product innovation projects.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"Parents just don't understand" - generational perceptions of education and work	[ "Employment", "Education", "Parents", "Perceptions mismatch" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The opening lines of the 1989 Grammy Award winning song for Rap music \"Parents Just Don't Understand\" are \"You know parents are the same no matter time nor place [...]. There's no need to argue, parents just don't understand\" (Esquire, 2014). How much truth is there in these lines when they relate to education of their children? This is an issue that has received surprisingly scant academic attention. With technological change driving product and service innovation ever more rapidly, previously unknown types of work have emerged in a relatively short span of time (Bughin et al., 2016; Ross, 2016). In this situation, the risk of mismatched perceptions between parents and their children, whose educational experience spans a generation, is becoming increasingly real.\n2. The Malaysian context: Malaysia's education scene has several distinctive features that render a study of student-parent perceptions particularly interesting. The first is the co-existence of a large private sector alongside the public sector in higher education provision. The rapid expansion of private sector higher education began in the 1980s but was given impetus by the Private Higher Education Institutions Act 1996 (Act 555). The rise of private higher education owed much to the government's policy of affirmative action in which places in public universities were reserved for the local population, primarily Malays (Bumiputera), leaving insufficient places for the non-Bumiputera students graduating from secondary education. While students from affluent families were able to travel overseas for their education, those less affluent had to seek alternatives. These came in the form of private higher education (Tan, 2002). But more than catering for these students, private HEIs served to meet the demand for higher education that public education could not meet. The government's passage of the Private Higher Educational Institutions Act in 1996 permitted the private sector to register its education establishments as HEIs (Tan, 2002, p. 124). The result was a more than twofold increase, roughly 118 percent, in the number of private HEIs from 280 to 611 in the four years from 1995 to 1999; while the expansion of enrollment in these institutions took a little longer to materialize, the share of private higher education enrollment rose from 32 to 43 percent in the five years from 2006 to 2010, based on World Bank data.\n3. Data and methodology: The data used in this paper come from a local special-purpose sample survey conducted by the authors. This was a 2015 Graduate Employment Study (GES 2), sponsored by the British Council, and with particular emphasis on TNHE. Students who responded were mainly enrolled in private HEIs. Responses from 358 students (83 percent), 31 parents (7 percent) and 40 students (10 percent), the latter involved in focus-group discussion and interviews, were obtained. Data from the 358 student respondents were from a structured questionnaire administered online to students of several tertiary education institutions, both in the public and private sectors. The 40 students participated in several group interviews of students, in four focus-groups. A separate online questionnaire was also used to collect data from the sampled parents.\n4. Perceptions on employment as a goal in education: 4.1 Employment and education\n5. Perceptions on career: No less important a question to ask is whether there is convergence in career choice between parents and their children as students. To the extent that parents are able to decide their children's career choice, their children's disagreement with that choice can lead to a lack of interest in their field of study or be trapped in a profession for which they have no interest or competence. Of the two data sources, only the GES2 provided data that permit direct comparison of career prospects. A question in the GES2 asked about the HEI from which students have the most likelihood of gaining employment and another asked about the skills that were most important. This is discussed next.\n6. Conclusions and implications: While much of the extant literature assumes and lauds the positive role of parents and parenting in their children's education (see, e.g. Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1995), the findings from Malaysian data, limited as they are, reveal areas of divergence in parental and student perceptions that can lead to a revision, if not contradiction, of this view. These aspects, seldom discussed, relate to parental and student perceptions of the area of study and hence of career choice when times have changed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Using a Southeast Asian context, this paper asks a question that has seldom been researched: Is there a divergence between parents' and their college-going children's perceptions of education and employability at a time of rapid economic change? If such a divergence exists, it would have hidden costs for the children. Parents' choice of professions no longer in demand when their children reach working age can permanently damage the latter's earning power. Also, parents' choice of fields of study that their children are not proficient or interested in jeopardizes the latter's chances of success in their studies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected using mixed methods, a combination of structured online questionnaires from two local special-purpose sample surveys conducted by the authors, and follow-up interviews. Graduate Employment Survey 2 (GES2) was the second of a three-phase British Council-sponsored study, focusing on TNE, that used a structured online questionnaire for students of several tertiary education institutions, both in the public and private sectors, and for several group interviews of students in 2015. A structured questionnaire was also administered to a small number of parents.\nFindings: In terms of employment, the rankings of HEIs by parents and students were generally consistent. Study in foreign HEIs abroad has the highest likelihood of employment. Branch campuses were ranked next highest. Despite this, of interest is the difference in mean scores between first and second ranked HEIs. Whereas students rate branch campuses as not much inferior to foreign university campuses, parents see a major gulf between them - they rate foreign campuses more highly than branch campuses more poorly. This difference is likely caused by parents' traditional preference for foreign study over local, coupled with a lack of TNE knowledge.\nSocial implications: A fundamental issue of perception is how parents and students see the role of education. Is education a destination or is education a journey? This disconnect has consequences. Given the shifting nature of employment, the need for transferable skills and the fact that some of the jobs that the next generation will be doing are not even known today, parental advice based on what they know may not do justice to their children's choice of career. Likewise, the approach of TNE to promote traditional degrees to job paths is also a conventional approach that has a limited shelf life.\nOriginality/value: The role of parents in education choice has received surprisingly scant academic attention. With technological change driving product and service innovation ever more rapidly, previously unknown types of work have emerged in a relatively short span of time. In this situation, the risk of mismatched perceptions between parents and their children, whose educational experience spans a generation, is becoming increasingly real. While most studies of a parental role have been undertaken for Western countries, there is much less research on East Asian parents' role in their children's education.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Necklace or noose? Challenges to American hegemony	[ "International relations", "Globalization", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The debate on American exceptionalism is older than the republic itself. The creation of the myth that America is different was part of the founding process that established the contours of how Americans think about themselves. Captured variously in the early days in Winthrop's idea of the new republic as a shining \"city on a hill\" (Winthrop, 1838) and in Tom Paine's claim that \"the cause of America is the cause of all mankind\" (Paine, 1976) through Lincoln's perception of Americans as \"the last, best hope of mankind\" and up to the present day the conception of the US as an exemplary nation founded on universalistic principles has run as a thread up to the present day (Lipset, 1996), and indeed beyond in the sense that it informs the debate now raging about America's role in the future. As stated by Richard Slaughter, America \"is in a category of one\" and represents \"a messianic dream of global dimensions; its mission is to be the human future\". (Slaughter, 2008. quoting Sardar and Davies (2004). Typically, their distinctiveness is seen by American themselves as positive, couched as it is in terms of a uniquely liberal American Creed and an American Dream that carries connotations of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness denied to others in more benighted societies. This perception is not inevitable, however, and increasingly in the debate about American exceptionalism the negative connotations of the term have been drawn out, especially when it is considered in terms of America's impact on the rest of the world. The massive recent debate on the nature of the American global role, increasingly referred to as an empire, is the latest manifestation of this debate, as is perhaps only appropriate to the universalistic ideals that America claims to embody (Bacevich, 2002; Chua, 2008; Ferguson, 2004; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Johnson, 2006; Mann, 2003).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to consider the most likely future for the American empire. It is a speculative essay that takes as its starting-point Slaughter's argument that the American Empire is unsustainable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper shows that at this moment of flux in international affairs America enjoys unprecedented power but is meeting growing opposition. After a review of how America came to be in its current position the argument develops along different lines, exploring the capacities of states that might challenge the USA and exploring the new networks between states and other agencies that exclude America.\nFindings: - The paper finds that, while these networks have become increasingly dense, they are as yet insufficiently coherent to challenge US hegemony. If the USA adopts a less aggressive approach to the management of globalization it can build a new international architecture that will adorn its hegemony and avoid the new networks becoming a noose that will strangle its power. The US reaction to the new web of interstate and non-governmental relationships that exclude it, and are motivated to some extent by a desire to challenge its authority, has the potential to determine the longevity of American power and the future path of international affairs.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides a measured perspective to distinguish between the idea of America and the reality of its foreign policy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Incivility, satisfaction and turnover intention of tourist hotel chefs: Moderating effects of emotional intelligence	[ "Job satisfaction", "Emotional intelligence", "Turnover intention", "Workplace incivility" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Workplace incivility has been prevalent for a long time and is one of the most common anti-social behaviors at work (Cortina, 2008; Schilpzand et al., 2016). Previous studies concerning workplace negative behaviors of employees were mostly concentrated on those with high-intensity and obvious harm intentions, such as aggression and violence (Baron and Neuman, 1996; Douglas and Martinko, 2001; Yang et al., 2012; Meloury and Signal, 2014), bullying (Hershcovis, 2011; Glaso et al., 2011; Nielsen et al., 2012), deviance (Yen and Teng, 2013; Robinson et al., 2014) and anti-social behavior (Robinson and O'Leary-Kelly, 1998; Lee et al., 2005). Meanwhile, recent studies shifted their attention on workplace incivility which is characterized as having less intensity and not much obvious harm intentions that still violate the principle of mutual respect in the workplace (Andersson and Pearson, 1999; Cortina et al., 2001).\n2. Theoretical background and research: 2.1 Workplace incivility\n3. Research method: 3.1 Instrument and questionnaire\n4. Results: 4.1 Profile of sample\n5. Discussion and conclusions: 5.1 Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study examines the relationships among workplace incivility, job satisfaction and turnover intention for tourist hotel chefs. Furthermore, emotional intelligence is taken as the moderating variable on the relationships between workplace incivility and job satisfaction and workplace incivility and turnover intention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Tourist hotel chefs were invited to participate in this study using purposive sampling, and a structured questionnaire was administered to carry out the investigation on tourist hotel chefs.\nFindings: The results show that workplace incivility has negative effects on job satisfaction and casts positive effects on turnover intention through job satisfaction. Emotional intelligence has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between workplace incivility and job satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: This study firstly demonstrated the relationships among workplace incivility, job satisfaction and turnover intention for tourist hotel chefs. Furthermore, the moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between workplace incivility and job satisfaction was also validated.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Transitions theory and liminality in information behaviour research: Applying new theories to examine the transition to early career academic	[ "Academic staff", "Grounded theory", "Information behaviour", "Liminality", "Transitions", "Transitions theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Transitions are periods of change, rarely orderly or simple but rather complex processes experienced over time and space. Due to their association with developmental stages (e.g. puberty, adulthood, old age) and major life events (e.g. marriage, illness, starting work), transitions have been the subject of much study. It is at points of transition that values, views and ways of being in the world are challenged and require individuals to actively deal with the resulting changes. Whether anticipated or unanticipated, chosen or compelled, viewed as positive or negative, all transitions require redefinition of situation and self. Accompanying this redefinition are changes to personal resources and habits. All of this has implications for information needs, seeking, use, sharing and practices.\nLiterature review: The literature review will define transitions and discuss Transitions Theory, including the characteristics of transition and what influences transitions. This discussion will then turn to the related concept of liminality as a way to understand transitions. The review of the literature will then finish by discussing information behaviour and information practice research with populations in transition.\nMethodology and methods: This research examined the information behaviour and practices of early career academics during transition. While information behaviour and information practices are debated and contested terms, this research uses both information behaviour and information practices, examining information needs, seeking, use, sharing and practices that occur within a particular context and are socially and culturally produced and situated. The research sought to answer the following research questions:\nFindings and discussion: Transitions Theory, first developed in nursing, provided a lens to understand early career academics' transitions into their first continuing academic position. The findings of the study were examined in reference to Meleis et al.'s (2000) model of transitions and mapped onto this model (see Figure 2). Based on this research with ECAs, several aspects have been added to the model (indicated by an asterisk). The paper will focus on three of these added aspects: liminal space, information needs and comparison as a form of information use. (Affect and Information Flow will be explored in other papers, Willson (2019a) and Willson (2019b), respectively.)\nConclusion: This paper has described Transitions Theory and liminality, applying these theories to information behaviour research. Using Transitions Theory and concentrating on the transition itself provides a focus to better understand experience of transition, as it relates to information behaviour. Examining a transition requires questioning what the transition experience entails: what aspects of life are called into question, what changes, what stays the same, what adaptations need to be made, and what defines the experience. Examining a transition requires paying close attention to the experiences throughout the entire occurrence and how those experiences are modified at different points. Examining a transition requires focusing on the process, the changes experienced throughout as well as the idea of becoming, liminality and uncertainty that is held in tension throughout. Using Transitions Theory, acknowledging the multiple aspects that inherent in transition, requires a holistic view into the experience including the personal, the social and the contextual. The use of this perspective brought to light the importance of liminality (related to uncertainty and precarity) to understanding individuals' experiences of transition, their changing information needs and their use of comparison (related to expectations and preparation) to situate themselves in a new context. The addition of informational aspects to Meleis et al.'s (2000) model of Transitions Theory demonstrates the contribution that information behaviour can make to understanding experiences of transition, as well as highlighting the importance of information behaviour researchers turning their attention to transitions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Transitions - as a focus of study - have been missing from information behaviour research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of transitions - their characteristics and influences, the related concept of liminality and Transitions Theory - and what it can contribute to the field of information behaviour. This exploration includes the application of liminality and Transitions Theory to an empirical study of participants making the transition from doctoral student to early career academic.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In addition to an extended literature review, this paper reports on a qualitative study that used constructivist grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Early career academics were followed for a five- to seven-month period and data were collected using interviews and \"check-ins\". Transitions Theory and liminality were used to guide the analysis.\nFindings: Three important findings were highlighted: the complicating effects of being in a liminal space on information behaviour; the changing information needs of those undergoing a transition; and the importance of comparison as a way of using information to understand new situations. A revised model of Transitions Theory (Meleis et al., 2000) is also proposed, to incorporate information behaviour.\nOriginality/value: This paper demonstrates that by examining information behaviour over longer periods of time and by making transitions a focus of research, new understandings and insight can be gained into what information individual needs, how they find, share and use that information. This research demonstrates that information behaviour research adds important elements to the study of transitions and, conversely, that transitions (and Transitions Theory) add important elements to the study of information behaviour.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Demand uncertainty and inventory turnover performance: An empirical analysis of the US retail industry	[ "Operational performance", "Inventory management", "Retail industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Managing inventories is at the core of operational performance in many industries. Due to its importance in practice, inventory management has been a well-studied area of research in operations management. Starting with the economic-order quantity model more than a century ago (Harris, 1913), researchers developed mathematical models to guide decision makers on managing their inventories under a variety of settings. Some of these models are now standard material in operation management textbooks (e.g. Nahmias, 2008; Cachon and Terwiesch, 2005) and more advanced models are available in texts on inventory theory (e.g. Silver et al., 1998; Zipkin, 2000). However, the majority of these models are for a single product or a small set of products and assume away the complexities of industrial supply chains. Therefore, it is important to understand to what extent the prescriptions and predictions of these models are valid in industry. It is also crucial to understand how different factors, other than those studied in these mathematical models, affect the actual inventory performance of firms in practice.\nLiterature review: Empirical research in operations management, in particular on demand uncertainty and inventory management, received interest only recently. We divide the existing literature into two parts: inventory management in operations and demand uncertainty and inventory management in retail logistics.\nData description and definition of variables: We obtained the financial data for all publicly listed US retailers for the 25-year period 1985-2009 from \"Compustat North America Quarterly Updates\" and \"Compustat North America Annually Updated\" available at Standard\nHypothesis development: The hypotheses that we develop in this section are mainly inspired by the mathematical models of inventory theory. As mentioned before, many of these models are now part of standard textbooks in operations management (e.g. Nahmias, 2008; Cachon and Terwiesch, 2005). However, we note that most are for managing the inventory of a single item or a small group of items, while our analysis is for firm-level aggregate inventories. The data we use are aggregated for all products and locations that a firm manages. In addition, we consider the snapshots of data at the end of quarters or years while inventory decisions are made on a daily basis in practice. Thus, we are primarily interested in finding out whether the predictions of inventory theory are valid at the aggregate level through the hypotheses. Testing these hypotheses is crucial in understanding sources of variation in inventory performance across US retailers and over time. Once the sources of variation are clearly identified, one can benchmark a retailer's performance against others or over time by controlling for these sources.\nModel specification: We develop linear regression models by performing a logarithmic transformation on all independent variables and the dependent variable, in order to accommodate the skewness in data and reduce heteroskedasticity. This is in line with the previous work of Gaur et al. (2005), Rumyantsev and Netessine (2007) and Rajagopalan (2013) who also use log-linear specification to obtain a better fit to the data with lower prediction errors. In order to further justify the log-linear specification, Gaur et al. (2005) compare the prediction errors of both linear and log-linear models by simulating a periodic-review inventory model with stationary demand for various values of gross margin, lead time, and variance of demand and find that log-linear models lead to smaller prediction errors. Lee et al. (2015) show with retail data that the distributions of the log-transformed variables are closer to normal. Hence, log-linear transformation is more appropriate for empirical tests and statistical inferences. We note that when we have logarithmic transformation on both a dependent variable Y and an independent variable X and postulate a model ln Y=b0+b1 ln X, a p percent increase in the independent variable X will lead to 100x(exp(b1xln(1+0.01xp))-1) percent change in the dependent variable Y.\nResults: We use ordinary least squares (OLS) method to estimate the parameters in Models 1-5. OLS estimators are used in almost all papers cited above. The pooled estimates for the coefficients of ln GM, ln CI, ln SS and ln MAPE and R2 for Models 1-3 are reported in Table III. The standard errors are reported in parentheses for each estimate. H1-H3 are supported in all three models with p\nConclusion: In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of gross margin, capital intensity, sales surprise and demand uncertainty on the inventory turnover rates in the US retail industry. The first three factors are suggested in earlier literature and are shown to have significant effects on the inventory performance of a retail firm. In order to measure demand uncertainty, we define a new proxy, MAPE (MAPE) of quarterly sales forecasts obtained through times series forecasting. Empirical models using these variables are tested on sample financial data for 304 publicly listed US retail firms for the 25-year period 1985-2009 obtained from Standard\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of demand uncertainty on inventory turnover performance through empirical modeling. In particular the authors use the inaccuracy of quarterly sales forecasts as a proxy for demand uncertainty and study its impact on firm-level inventory turnover ratios.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use regression analysis to study the effect of various measures on inventory performance. The authors use a sample financial data for 304 publicly listed US retail firms for the 25-year period from 1985 to 2009.\nFindings: Controlling for the effects of retail segments and year, it is found that inventory turnover is negatively correlated with mean absolute percentage error of quarterly sales forecasts and gross margin and positively correlated with capital intensity and sales surprise. These four variables explain 73.7 percent of the variation across firms and over time and 93.4 percent of the within-firm variation in the data.\nPractical implications: In addition to conducting an empirical investigation for the sources of variation in a major operational metric, the results in this study can also be used to benchmark a retailer's inventory performance against its competitors.\nOriginality/value: The authors develop a new proxy to measure the demand uncertainty that a firm faces and show that this measure may help to explain the variation in inventory performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An exploratory study of the critical factors affecting the acceptability of e-learning in Nigerian universities	[ "Critical success factors", "E‐learning", "Factor analysis", "Nigeria" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The provision of qualitative and quantitative education to aspiring university students, undergraduates, graduate students and the like in Nigeria is a major responsibility of Nigerian universities, and their success or failure at this task is largely dependent on their capacity to respond rapidly to the opportunities that exist for education delivery in today's fast changing and technology-driven world.It is no new information that the advances in communication and computer technologies have culminated in the supplementation and near phase-out of traditional educational delivery media such as chalk-boards and overhead projectors with newer technology-based media which allow for more flexibility in learning and a wider reach for education in many countries worldwide. In recent times, the issue of mobile learning, which means the use of wireless electronic technology to deliver and receive knowledge and skill, has been raised and is practiced in the developed nations of the world. Nigerian universities, however, can be said to be behind in the adoption of these technologies as there is evidently an extremely low rate of diffusion of e-learning and as a consequence a low rate of usage. The reason for this are not farfetched, as Nigeria, apart from being a developing country and having an inadequate education finance policy, is also highly deficient in the area of engineering and technological development. These problems have had their toll on university education in the country, serving as obstacles to improvements in knowledge delivery, research and other facets of university education.By way of orientation, this paper first presents a brief introduction of the object of study after which the major factors affecting the acceptance of e-learning in Nigerian universities as identified by respondents were analyzed one after the other, after briefly looking at prior related research. Next, outlines of the research design and method used in analysis are made. After this comes the analysis of the results which is further clarified in the discussion area. Lastly, a conclusive review of the study incorporating its contributions to knowledge is made.\n2 Literature review: Prior research on e-learning has been geared towards the study of factors that influence the efficiency of e-learning in different sectors. According to Andreu and Jauregui (2005), there has also been research into whether traditional training is better than the use of technology or vice versa. Another aspect of research that has received considerable attention has been the use of the technology acceptance model TAM to identify and relate factors affecting the acceptance of e-learning in various sectors.This research has suggested that e-learning's acceptability is a function of the factors outlined below.2.1 Low awareness level\n3 Methodology: The review of prior literature on this subject shows that very few empirical studies that identify and rank the critical factors affecting the acceptance of e-learning have been conducted. The sources of data for this research were: documents, journals, questionnaires and books, with questionnaires being the most important. The others were used to provide affirmation and crosschecking of data and results.Questionnaires, mainly composed of questions structured to a five-point Likert scale, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree, was administered to 1,600 staff and students of three Nigerian universities: Olabisi Onabanjo University Ago-Iwoye Ogun state - a state owned university; Babcock University - a private university; and the University of Agriculture Abeokuta Ogun state - a public university.Out of the 1,600 questionnaires sent to these schools via computer science lecturers and administered to students to fill in as proof of attendance at a certain lecture and to staff as a pre-requisite to qualification for a raffle draw, a total of 1,433 were returned, showing the effectiveness of the incentives. The respondents were asked to tick the response which describes their level of agreement with the statements made. From the 1,433 questionnaires returned, 1,127 were considered useful for analysis, giving an effective response rate of 70.4 percent.The respondents averaged 29 years in age and 1.7 years of experience in computer usage. The ratio of male to female was 2:3. About 21 percent had completed university and possessed a bachelor's degree, 16 percent had completed a masters or postgraduate schooling (Dunteman, 1989).\n4 Data analysis and results: The analysis was done using the correlation matrix approach and a principal component factor analysis[1]. Only variables with eigen values over 0.6 are displayed. The results are analyzed below:Data screening. The validity of data used in the analysis was first crosschecked for suitability for factor analysis; this was done by perusing the correlation matrix for any unrelated factors or non-relation of factors, the absence of which led to the check for conformity with the correlation value of less than 0.9 and greater than 0.1 prescribed by Fields (2004) and again the data were observed to be moderate. The Kaizer-Meyer-Olkin's (KMO) and Bartlett's test of sphericity, which was prescribed by Fields (2004) to have values greater than 0.5 for a correct factor analysis, was also done and the data had a KMO value of 0.662. (Henrysson, 1957)Analysis. From the correlation matrix shown in Table I, it can be deduced that an inverse relationship exist between low level of citizens' and general awareness and the acceptability by organizations.The degrees of effect caused by each factor which can be deduced from the different degrees of variance for which they account are shown in Table II.To increase the accuracy of conclusions, the values of variables as depicted by the initial component matrix (Table III) was rotated using the Varimax method and normalized with the Kaizer normalization.This is the pre-rotated component matrix. We further rotate to enhance precision and allow for accuracy in deduction-making.Table IV shows the result after six iterations.4.1 Rotated component matrix\n5 Discussion: The level of general or citizens' awareness appeared to be a major determinant of the acceptability of results and certifications from e-learning by organizations, which is commonsensical. The cost of implementation also appears to determine how well organizations in Nigeria will accept e-learning. Computer literacy is significantly affected by citizens' or general awareness since as the awareness level goes up, computer illiteracy level goes down.More clearly, it can be seen that the acceptability by organizations is strongly affected by variables such as computer literacy level, citizens' awareness level and the low rate of diffusion of technologies into the university systems which are all strongly affected by the cost of executing such capital projects as e-learning centers. Thus, cost is the underlying factor responsible for the effect caused by the other factors. Cost can be measured in terms of money or the alternatives forgone.The opportunity cost for such projects would include such alternatives as building more hostels, improving the very poor state of science laboratories, carrying out research, paying staff and the provision of transportation for staff and students, amongst other competing needs.It can also be seen that the problems encountered in terms of vendor issues is accounted for by the low rate of diffusion of new technologies, which stems from the problem of the cost of acquiring such new technologies.5.1 Limitation\n6 Conclusive review: Increasing the level of e-learning's presence in Nigerian universities would solve the problems of overcrowding in lecture rooms and hostels, low lecturer to student ratios, insufficient laboratory equipment, cultism, too many applicants for too few schools and a lot more (Elearnframe, 2000), which has led the depreciation of the country's human resource and accounts for many of the social ills observed in the country today. Apparently, e-learning has the ability to provide a remedy for these problems, and should be encouraged in accordance with the policies of the government in Nigeria. This study therefore helps encourage e-learning by breaking down the problem of its low acceptance into identifiable and solvable units. The outcome of the research is as follows:* the results demonstrate how the low level of computer literacy in the country's universities is caused by insufficient finance which underscores the claims made by university administrators in the country;* it shows, by its results, that the problems of poor internet service quality, poor quality of software, software piracy and other vendor related issues have a reciprocal effect on the rate at which technology diffuses into the universities;* it makes clear and uniquely identifies the low level of e-learning awareness in the country's universities as the major factor affecting its acceptance;* it also shows that the high cost of e-learning infrastructure is the underlying factor responsible for the low level of e-learning awareness in Nigerian universities; and* it is also obvious from the research that the level of Nigerian university students' resistance to e-learning is significantly low and ignorable.From the outcomes of the research stated above, a good place to start in solving this problem would be the provision of adequate finance to universities which might be from the government, private or any other concerned bodies. Availing university administrators with adequate finance for the acquisition of necessary e-learning infrastructure and the establishment of e-learning centers in Nigerian universities should therefore be a front line issue in the country.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Education delivery via electronic media is becoming relevant in Nigeria educational systems, especially the universities. In spite of this, there are hindrances affecting the total acceptability of this technology.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this paper, we investigated these critical factors by analyzing the questionnaires collected from three sampled universities in Nigeria: private, public and state owned universities.\nFindings: - The results obtained indicated that mass unawareness, low computer literacy level and cost were identified as the critical factors affecting the acceptability of the technology.\nOriginality/value: - Analysis herein has shown the factors affecting the acceptability of e-learning in Nigeria. The results obtained will assist policy makers by finding solutions to literacy problems in Nigeria.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collision of marine vehicles in Bangladesh: a study on accident characteristics	[ "Marine transport", "Inland waterway transport", "Accidents", "Collisions", "Data analysis", "Bangladesh" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The inland shipping industry plays a very significant role in Bangladesh for carrying passengers and goods. It provides naturally suitable and relatively cheaper means of transportation and is being considered as one of the most popular modes for carrying passengers and commodities particularly in the southern districts of the country. In Bangladesh the water transport network is both extensive and well-connected with the rest of the transport system. In terms of traffic intensity, the inland waterway network generates about one-and-half million passenger-kilometres per route-kilometre of waterway (Bangladesh Economic Review, 2004). The density of inland ports and terminals is high with approximately three and half berthing facilities per one hundred route-kilometres. The density of passenger facilities on the inland waterways is also high at around 40 per 100 route-km. The Government of Bangladesh, therefore, considers inland water transportation as an essential mode of transportation for building a balanced multimodal transport system to confront the upcoming development challenges. However, with the increase in population and the growing economy of the country, the waterways are getting congested as the inland waterways are not expanding significantly. Therefore, problems relating to maritime safety are emerging with new dimensions every day. Like many other countries such as Canada, USA and UK (Transportation Safety Board of Canada, 2005; NTSB, 2007; Wang et al., 2005) maritime safety has become a severe issue in Bangladesh when a number of passenger launch accidents killed several thousands of people within the past few years. In response to such emergencies, the government took some remedial measures which by some degree provided noticeable improvement to the safety situation. However, the fact is that accidents are still taking place and often appear to be devastatingly fatal. The extent of damage and loss of property are tremendously expensive which severely puts substantial amount of burden on the national economy. There still remain numerous deficiencies on maritime safety and the scope for improvements in this aspect is a contemporary demand.This research work attempts to unveil the accident characteristics and patterns in the inland waterways of Bangladesh with particular emphasis on the collision type accidents; because collision of marine vehicles is one of two major causes of accidents in Bangladesh where the principal cause is being accidents due to Nor'wester or inclement weather. Unlike Nor'wester which is a natural disaster, the problem of collision type accidents initiate from manmade errors and the number of these accidents can be significantly reduced if basic safety measures are applied. This study investigates 156 collision accidents out of 443 incidents that took place during the period of January 1981 to May 2007. The purpose of this paper is also to provide an explicit idea on the characteristics of accidents so that the problems can be easily comprehended based on the analysis and necessary actions can be taken by the appropriate authorities to stop such devastations in the waterways of Bangladesh.\n2. Background study: It has been observed that most studies and accident investigations highlight the marine vehicle accidents as isolated events particularly blaming the individuals directly related to maritime safety rather than delineating the problem more systematically and identifying the underlying problems associated with technical, social, economical and other aspects. For example, The Report of the Task Forces (University Press Limited, 1991) claims that the fundamental problem relating to the inland shipping safety is that the private operators do not follow the rules and regulations for ship design, construction and operations. This is why their vessels are involved in disastrous and fatal accidents in the waterways. Preponderance of private sector in the inland water makes the assessment of operational efficiency and safety assessment difficult. Also, the private operators do not maintain regular and authentic statistics.Similarly, some research concentrated on modification and augmentation of the rules and regulations of inland shipping studying events that appeared extremely devastating. Bangladesh Transport Sector Study (Planning Commission of Bangaldesh, 1994) have classified the waterway accidents focusing on identification of broad types of waterway accidents and suggested several remedial measures commensurate with the classification of inland water transports. Huq and Dewan (2003) studied the geographical locations of passenger launch accidents and provided some description of the accident sights along with description of the waterway networks. Although the study was handicapped by the limited number of accidents it, however, concluded that most of the passenger launch accidents are of collision type. Some research findings by Khalil and Tarafder (2004) discussed the issue of design modifications for improving the extra initial stability by downward shift of centre of gravity and thereby preventing the vessels from capsizing in times of emergency. Chowdhury (2005) attempted to develop a GIS based accident information system for water transport accidents and recommended future research to be conducted on navigational system integrated with meteorological forecasting systems.It was observed that due to deficiency in accident data very few studies have so far been conducted on identification of the accident characteristics in a general perspective which could have provided an overall picture of the maritime safety situation. For example, some statistical analysis has been published by Awal (2006) in an attempt to identify the accident characteristics dealing with 197 accidents (passenger and cargo ships) which showed that majority of the accidents in the inland waterways of Bangladesh occur due to the effect of overloading and/or cyclone (43 per cent of total accidents). However, the conducted research had to deal with very limited amount of data available in usable format. Thereby, the actual number of accidents was much higher than the studied number of accidents. Similarly another investigation by Awal et al. (2006) dealt with 67 accident cases (passenger ships only) brought some interesting findings to light. It was ominous to note that 56 per cent of the passenger vessel accidents in Bangladesh end up in collision due to human error. The second largest cause was the loss of stability due to Nor'wester and overloading (21 per cent). However, the results were still inconclusive because of insufficient accident data.The deficiencies observed in the previous studies is that there have been very little work on the overall characteristics of collision type accidents and this is perhaps mostly due to deficiency in accident data. It is also observed that there are enormous scope for research and development in the field of maritime accident data collection, analysis and investigation. This study therefore, emphasises on presenting the characteristics of collision type accidents since such studies will provide the base line information for taking appropriate countermeasures and further research in order to improve maritime safety in Bangladesh.\n3. Data collection and analysis: 3.1 Data collection and methodology\n4. Conclusions and recommendations: 4.1 Conclusion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to investigate the marine vehicle accident characteristics in the inland waterways of Bangladesh, with particular emphasis on collision type accidents.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Accident data were collected from different sources such as the daily newspapers, reports of Department of Shipping (DOS) and Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA). The accidents are analysed according to different variables such as vehicle type, time distribution, spatial distribution, weather condition, nature of casualties, and others.\nFindings: - The study revealed that the leading causes of accidents were collision between ships, trawlers and country boats and loss of stability due to Nor'wester (a seasonal storm that appears from the north and western directions). Of the accidents, 80 per cent involve cargo vehicles hitting other vehicles. Collisions have increased dramatically over the last decade and the number of fatalities has increased significantly.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Many accidents in Bangladesh often remain under-reported owing to limited exposure to the media, which is probably because the victims represent the poorer segment of society. This under-reporting appears to be a major barrier for accident analysis and prevention.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides an explicit idea on the characteristics of accidents, so that the problem can be easily comprehended and necessary action can be taken by different stakeholders, such as operators, law enforcement agencies, designers, users and others concerned in order to come up with a coordinated action plan to stop these severe incidents.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
On the design, elastic modeling and experimental characterization of novel tensegrity units	[ "Class theta tensegrity prism", "Lattice metamaterials", "Form-finding", "Prestress stability", "Path following", "Large displacements" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Over the past decade, the research area of tensegrity metamaterials has drawn significant interest due to their unconventional behaviors which are often impossible to be achieved with natural materials (Skelton and De Oliveira, 2010; Fraternali et al., 2012; Amendola et al., 2015; Skelton, 2002; Skelton and de Oliveira, 2010a; Skelton and de Oliveira, 2010b; Carpentieri et al., 2017; Skelton et al., 2014; Carpentieri et al., 2015). Their elastic response, for example, may range from stiffening (specific to crystalline solids) to softening response (specific to foams), depending on the architecture of the unit cell, the load arrangements and prestress control as opposed to their chemical composition (Fraternali et al., 2014; Amendola et al., 2014; Donahue et al., 2014; Fraternali and Amendola, 2017; Mascolo et al., 2018). The present work presents numerical and experimental investigation on the mechanical characterization of a special class of tensegrity metamaterials (Mascolo et al., 2018; Modano et al., 2018; Bieniek et al., 2017; Bieniek, 2017a) obtained by the superimposition of two minimal tensegrity prisms (cf. Section 2). The examined structures are formed by discontinuous sets of tensile elements, which connect two sets of three compressed members. We have analysed two different physical models that correspond to thick and slender aspect ratios. First of all, we studied the existence of freestanding placements in absence of external loads, i.e. self-equilibrium configurations (Tilbert and Pellegrino, 2011) of the class th = 1 tensegrity prisms by varying values of two aspect parameters: the relative twisting angle between the terminal bases and the inclination above the horizontal plan of the internal strings (cf. Section 2.3). Local solutions of the self-equilibrium problem are numerically derived through Newton-Raphson method. Next, we solved the kinematic problem searching for possible infinitesimal mechanisms of the analysed physical model of the structure. The prestress stability of the structure is related to the positive definiteness of geometric stiffness matrix in correspondence to each possible mechanism (cf. Section 2.4). The following investigation of the elastic response of class th = 1 tensegrity prisms in large displacements regime under a uniform uniaxial loading took place. The incremental equilibrium problem is numerically solved through a path-following approach (cf. Section 2.5). Finally, an experimental validation of a thick and a slender model under quasi-static axial compression loading has been presented in Section 3. In the same section, the numerical results are compared with the experimental ones and subsequently discussed. Concluding Remarks section points out that the experimental results are in close agreement with numerical solutions, and highlights the multi-faceted elastic response of class th = 1 tensegrity prisms that can switch from softening to stiffening. Such peculiar response can be usefully exploited for the design and construction of novel tensegrity meta-materials (Fraternali et al., 2014; Amendola et al., 2018; Spadoni and Daraio, 2010; Theocharis et al., 2013; Herbold and Nesterenko, 2013).\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Physical models\n3. Results and discussion: 3.1 Numerical results\n4. Concluding remarks: We have reviewed literature results on the statics, kinematics and elastic response of novel tensegrity units, named class th = 1 prisms. Such results included a numerical approach to the form-finding problem of the examined structures by varying two aspect parameters. The examined approach can be easily generalized to arbitrary tensegrity structures. The infinitesimal mechanisms of class th = 1 prisms have also been computed, obtaining that the freestanding configuration has static indeterminacy equal to one and kinematic indeterminacy equal to then. Such a configuration can be stabilized through a suitable set of self-equilibrated internal forces. The nonlinear elastic response of class th = 1 tensegrity prisms under compressive loading was also reviewed, through numerical and experimental results, by discovering an unconventional elastic behavior switching from stiffening to softening for increasing values of the internal prestress and the applied compression load. The multi-faceted elastic response of class th = 1 tensegrity prisms suggests that such units can be used in tensegrity metamaterials to be experimented as waveguides, impact protection systems, vibration isolation devices and sound proof materials (Mascolo et al., 2018; Modano et al., 2018).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to focus on a short review on recent results dealing with the mechanical modelling and experimental characterization of a novel class of tensegrity structures, named class th = 1 tensegrity prisms. The examined structures exhibit six bars connected by two disjoint sets of strings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: First, the self-equilibrium problem of tensegrity th = 1 prisms is numerically investigated for varying values of two aspect parameters and, next, their prestress stability is studied. The mechanical behavior of the examined structures in the large displacements regime under uniform compression loading is also numerically computed through a path-following procedure. Finally, the predicted constitutive response is validated through experimental tests.\nFindings: The presented results highlight that the examined structures exhibit a large number of infinitesimal mechanisms from the freestanding configuration, and reveal that they exhibit tunable elastic response switching from stiffening to softening.\nOriginality/value: This multi-faceted elastic response is in agreement with previous literature results on the elastic response of minimal tensegrity prism, and suggests that such units can be usefully used as non-linear springs in next-generation tensegrity metamaterials.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Information overload in the context of apparel: Effects on confidence, shopper orientation and leadership	[ "Information overload", "Coping strategies", "Choice", "Consumer confidence", "Shopper orientation", "Leader/follower status", "Fashion industry", "Information management", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Consumers today are faced with almost unlimited choices when it comes to their shopping objectives. One that is physically visible on the consumer is fashion - shoes, clothing and accessories. It is a component of consumer expenditures with considerable personal importance, defining and reflecting one's self image (Majima, 2008) and projecting professional and personal roles outwardly (Piamphongsant and Mandhachitara, 2008). According to Clarke and Miller (2002), making fashion choices commonly evokes feelings of anxiety, social embarrassment and inadequacy, particularly among women. Women \"emerging\" from early motherhood or re-entering the workforce are among the most vulnerable to such negative emotions (Clarke and Miller, 2002)Making the decision to purchase clothing items or build a personal wardrobe can involve considerable information gathering by a consumer. From store circulars to magazine ads, television actors to peers and strangers on the street, the number of ways that an individual can obtain information about fashion trends and options is high. It is also evolving, as the internet, mobile phone ads and guerrilla marketing tactics grow as communication strategies by industry (Levinson, 2007). The stakes for industry are high, as garnering a share of the $193 billion retail market in 2010 (SGN Group, 2011) is very attractive. Thus, the effort to be the retailer or the brand of choice involves communicating with consumers in various ways.The influence that quantity of information has on the quality of and satisfaction with consumer decision making has been studied extensively, beginning arguably with the charged debate of the late 1970s, early 1980s (Jacoby et al., 1974a, b; Summers, 1974; Bettman, 1975; Malhotra, 1984). Much of the debate focussed on definitions - of information, of decision-making accuracy - but also contends with whether consumers actually feel an overload of information in ways that influence their satisfaction levels after decisions.Because making fashion choices has the potential to be an emotionally charged activity, the flow of information about fashion trends and the great variety of alternatives available to consumers may impact their decision outcome even more (Bettman et al., 1998). In emotionally charged settings, consumers may amplify problem-focussed coping strategies which increase their desire (i.e. stress level) for an \"accurate\" outcome, and they may also increase use of emotion-focussed coping strategies in which aspects of the decision that invoke the emotion are avoided. With abundant bits of information and choices, it may be difficult to reach an optimal decision.Given these expectations, it is important to investigate consumers' actual perceptions of information and choice. In particular, is the quantity of information they receive, and in particular about fashion choices, too much? How do they cope with that quantity of information? Do they avoid what may be pertinent information? How does that impact their strategies for making fashion choices, and by consequence, the quality of those decisions? These questions motivate the present study.In particular, we examine how perceptions of information impact other consumer attributes that act as antecedents to quality decisions. Reaction to information may impact consumer confidence which can influence quality of decision. If consumers do not feel confident, can they reach the goal of \"maximizing the ease of justifying the decision\" (Bettman et al., 1998, p. 210)? Further, does consumer reaction to information help predict shopping orientation and, by consequence, comfort-level with shopping decisions? If consumers begin the shopping experience with a predisposition to dislike it, the quality of their decisions could be affected. And, finally, do the consumer's strategies for coping with information flow result in different tendencies toward opinion leader versus seeker status? That role has implications for the success of targeted marketing strategies.In this study, we use survey data gathered from US consumers to examine consumer perceptions of information flow, coping strategies they exhibit for dealing with that information, and how these behaviors influence their confidence as shoppers, shopping orientation and tendency toward fashion leadership. While each of these latter constructs has been studied in the literature, the influence of information flow on them has not yet been examined.In the next section, we describe the literature relating to information overload, over-choice and coping strategies. We then build our conceptual model linking information overload to self-confidence, shopping orientation and fashion leadership, and develop testable hypotheses. Our methodology is then described and statistical results given. A discussion of managerial implications concludes.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Information overload\n3. Conceptual model and hypotheses: 3.1 Information overload and self-confidence\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Overview\n5. Factor analysis results: The results of all six-factor analyses are presented in this section. To keep sharper focus, no discussion is given here of the basic factor analysis statistics which can be viewed in the tables. Appropriateness of the data for factor analysis was gauged via the Kaiser-Meyer-Olin (KMO) test for sample adequacy (Kaiser, 1974) and Barlett's test of sphericity (Hair et al., 1998). Reliability of individual factors was measured using Cronbach's a, with scores considered \"acceptable\" for exploratory analyses when above 0.60 (Hair et al., 1998; Schuessler, 1971).5.1 Information overload\n6. Cluster analysis results: In order to keep our focus on the consumer segments that emerge from this analysis, we now describe each cluster in terms of both the information preferences they report (Table VII) and the confidence, shopper orientation and leadership characteristics they exhibit (Table VIII). The tables use weighted factor scores, and report via superscripts the entries that are significantly different from one another. The degree to which our hypotheses are supported is thus embedded in Table VIII. Demographics of each group are reported in Table IX.6.1 The overwhelmed avoiders\n7. Theoretical implications: As indicated earlier, the notion that theory of the rational consumer can serve as a guide to marketers is challenged by an overabundance of relevant information for consumer decisions. Bettman's (1975) \"bounded rationality\" and Malhotra's (1982) \"dysfunctional\" outcomes capture the essence of those challenges, as each is tied to the consumer's inability to absorb and analyze the information presented to them.Our results show that consumers acknowledge this overabundance, both in source and in product attributes (Jacoby et al., 1974b; Fasolo et al., 2007) and that their purchase behavior is affected. In a product category like clothing, where personal image can be tied intimately to the outcome of the purchase, the information burden can have particular impact on the purchase decision process.That process is often described to involve five stages (need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase behavior). Our results have implications for each. For example, it is not clear that all consumers feel a need to purchase fashionable clothing. Our \"fashion stuck\" construct captures the view - what was purchased in the past is sufficient to guide present and future purchase. As such, there is a distinction between utilitarian purchase of clothing and maintaining one's fashionable wardrobe. Thus, to gain appropriate insight into how consumers initiate a purchase process, the marketer or researcher would have to more finely describe the need itself so that fashionable clothing is specifically addressed.Most pointedly, our results have clear implications for the information search process (stage two of the purchase decision model) and the evaluation of alternatives (stage three). The information received about fashion choices and the product alternatives available are viewed by many as too abundant to appropriately utilize. Coping strategies, as evidenced by our respondents, curtail the type and quantity of information considered, which has direct implications for the quality of the outcome. Not least of these is that the final \"evoked set\" may be inadequate - in content, in size - to really satisfy the consumer's need. To really capture the breadth of attitudes toward information that is embodied in the purchase decision process, the model should be expanded to incorporate coping strategies more explicitly so that the \"dysfunctional\" and sub-optimal outcomes are better understood.Finally, our results would also suggest that the purchase and post-purchase behavior stages of the decision model are likely affected by an overabundance of information. Consumers may return to a store that appeared to offer a reasonable product - given information and choice challenges - even if that final product is not the actual optimum for the consumer. That loyalty may not be based on the highest level of satisfaction that the consumer could have achieved but, given the perceived complexities of making fashion choices, instead on achieving positive satisfaction at all. In that regard, the model may need to be expanded to consider loyalty based on sub-optimal amounts of information, and how any increase in consumer knowledge over time affects that loyalty.\n8. Managerial implications: This contextual view of the purchase decision model has direct implications for marketers aiming for increased sales, whether for branded clothing or at specific clothing stores. It is apparent that not every consumer even acknowledges a need to purchase fashionable clothing, but beyond that there is a considerable problem with information flow, number of choice alternatives and consumer confidence as they relate to the consumer achieving a satisfying purchase.Our findings regarding types of fashion consumers illustrate this. The overwhelmed avoiders, for example, are a potentially valuable target demographically. However, in order for the fashion industry to capitalize on that target, it will have to make a significant effort to solve the information overload problem felt by this group. Since modern information technologies generally only increase that flow, the group may have to be targeted by unconventional methods, perhaps in the form of educational initiatives and demonstrations, simplification of fashion messages or other industry overhaul. The overwhelmed avoiders count almost one-third of consumers, so their avoidance behavior and lack of confidence should be of concern to the fashion industry.In contrast, the unplugged consumers, constituting more than a quarter of the market, may be even more difficult for the modern fashion industry to reach. While everyone wears clothing, this group's insistence on avoiding fashion trends suggests that they would require considerable effort to reach, perhaps beyond the value it would generate to industry.Regarding passionate fashionistas, the challenge for industry is to grow this group, as it constitutes only about one of every four consumers. Members of this group show leadership tendencies, and could be utilized by industry in a targeted strategy that utilizes them as ambassadors to their peers, potentially increasing confidence levels in other groups.Perhaps of greatest interest to industry are the prime new targets. They like to shop, are often impulsive about what they purchase and are more confident than the overwhelmed avoiders. Yet they still suffer confidence issues and feelings of being overwhelmed. The fashion industry may be able to reach this group if it carefully examines avenues of information flow, considers in-store efforts to support shopping goals, and utilizes passionate fashionista leadership tendencies effectively.Beyond these consumer types, our results illustrate the inefficiencies that are present in current communications strategies, with consumers ignoring relevant information due to its overabundance. While the highly competitive nature of the fashion industry will mean that individual firms will have to develop a communications strategy, this is not the same as mass advertising or standardized messages. To reach target consumers, a more careful, individualized and innovative approach is needed so that advertising effort and dollars are not wasted.\n9. Conclusions: This paper has shown that information overload is a real notion in terms of consumers' perceptions of the fashion industry and their role in it and the way that consumers perceive and cope with that information can influence other aspects of their lives as fashion consumers. While our context is the apparel industry, similar findings could be expected to emerge in other settings where marketing strategies, suppliers and variety have increased over time.Our analysis is, to our knowledge, the first to link information overload, over-choice and related coping strategies to consumer confidence, shopper orientation and leadership. We have shown that consumers do relate differently to information flow and that too much information can be associated with lack of confidence and withdrawal from the specific market. This suggests that today's marketing strategies that attempt to diversify outlets in order to \"reach, reach, reach\" consumers may instead backfire with some consumer groups. While any industry can certainly analyze its market for segments of greatest interest and purchase intentions, and aim its messages as closely as possible to those segments, consumers outside those segments need to be considered as well, especially for goods with broad market appeal. Our respondents show that information flow is important to moderate and control, or the result can be confused, non-confident consumers who avoid the purchase altogether.There are limitations to this study, among them a need to improve the reliability of some constructs, especially with regard to Purposeful shoppers and Fashion followers whose reliability scores were below \"acceptable.\" This study attempted to incorporate a broad set of concerns into a single survey and its need for tractability somewhat limited the item set considered.More substantively, there is more to be learned about personality and intelligence influences which may shape adaptability and information processing abilities in the individual. That is, while the results of the study show the links between information flow and certain shopping behaviors, and our focus group discussions gave strong indications that reaction to information is an antecedent to behavior decisions, more research is needed to determine the path that consumers take to their individual coping strategies. Do some individuals react more negatively to the information flow simply because they have prior unsuccessful shopping experiences? Do our passionate fashionistas have such positive feelings because of having been 'trained' to shop by others? Do body type, occupational setting or geographic location influence attitude toward the value of fashion and the information presented? This type of research would place our analysis in its broader context of the reality of life, and give the fashion industry more information about their target segments.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to examine the nature and impact of information overload and related coping strategies in the context of apparel shopping. It also examines perceptions of overload and coping strategies as antecedents to consumer confidence, shopping orientation and leader/follower status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Focus groups and previous literature are used to develop components for a survey of US consumer perceptions. The 205 valid responses were factor analyzed to identify components of information overload and coping strategies, and cluster analysis was used to identify groupings of consumers around those constructs.\nFindings: - Consumer segments that result from cluster analysis show meaningful descriptions regarding information flow, over-choice and coping strategies. Segments also differ on confidence level, shopping orientation and fashion leadership in ways that appear logically related to their information and coping strategy perspectives.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study does not explore the underlying psychological and intellectual processes that influence attitude toward information flow and coping strategies.\nPractical implications: - By categorizing consumer attitudes toward and strategies for coping with too much information, the study offers the industry insight into how modern marketing strategies may backfire rather than create knowledgeable consumers ready to adopt the latest products made available to them.\nOriginality/value: - This study is the first to view information overload and coping strategies as antecedents to confidence, shopper orientation and fashion leadership.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The life cycle of a feature: modelling the transitions between feature states	[ "State", "Influence", "Life cycle", "Factor", "Feature" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Studies have investigated the relationship between customer requirements, the consumption process, and effects on the satisfaction of customers (Song et al., 2013). These studies have suggested that customer satisfaction (CS) and customers' perception towards a certain feature change with the passage of time (Woodruff, 1997; Mittal et al., 2001; Song et al., 2013). For example, Woodruff (1997) mentioned that the perceived value of a product/service feature before the time of purchase is somewhat different than after the time of purchase. Mittal et al. (2001) described how a new feature of a product is perceived as utility enhancing during the initial consumption, and how this feature might be perceived as utility preserving over time. Song et al. (2013) explained how customer preferences and requirements evolve in the current market. For example, a product feature that delights a customer now will become required or even unnecessary in the product in the near future.\n2. Methodology: The proposed methodology in this paper starts with a brief description of the theory of attractive quality attributes and the Kano model and then extends this theory by presenting a detailed unified model to describe seven states of a feature during its life cycle. The model then provides detailed explanations of the direct and indirect factors that affect the state of a feature, the ones that affect the rate of adoption, and the ones that trigger the transitions from state to state. In fact, these factors (eight major factors) are identified from different published studies and are supported by real-world examples. In addition to this, a current-market product's feature is used to discuss in details the effects of the identified factors on the life cycle of this feature. Figure 1 visualises the methodology used to develop the proposed model in this paper.\n3. Theory of attractive quality attributes and the Kano model: The theory of attractive quality attributes and Kano model are widely used by different industries and researchers to understand customer needs and to classify these needs into different categories. The models classify the needs of customers into the following categories: \"must-be\" attributes, ones that reveal no CS, but are expected to be fulfilled; \"attractive\" attributes, which excite the customers and lead to major CS; \"one-dimensional\" attributes, have a linear relationship to the level of CS; \"indifferent\" attributes, which whether fulfilled or not, result in neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction; and \"reverse\" attributes, ones that cause dissatisfaction if offered and satisfaction if absent. Readers can refer to Shahin et al. (2013) and Witell et al. (2013) for a literature review on the theory of attractive quality attributes and the Kano methodology.\n4. Feature life cycle: All product features in a market can be assigned a state in their life cycle. These states are defined by the prevalence of the feature in the marketplace. In this section we identify the following seven states for a feature: unknown/unimportant state, honey pot state, racing state, required state, standard state, core state, and dead state. These states are described in detail in the following subsections.\n5. Factors affecting the life cycle of a feature: When considering a product or a service with a set of features, it should be noted that a number of factors affect the state of a feature in its life cycle in different ways. These factors include demographic, socioeconomic, behavioural, psychological, geographical, environmental, organisational, and technological factors. Moreover, each factor can be further divided into sub-factors that can be used to understand their effects on customers' decisions and the state of the feature over time. Figure 2 demonstrates the factors and sub-factors that affect the state of a feature in its life cycle.\n6. Example of a feature life cycle model: In this section, we will work through a detailed example of how certain factors and sub-factors have influenced the transition states of a product feature. For the example, we have chosen the high-strength glass used as display covers and digitizers on touchscreen smartphones, tablets, and other computing/media devices. While it is manufactured by and sold under several brands, a pioneering company behind it was Corning Incorporated, which formulated the first generation of this glass technology and sold it under the brand name \"Gorilla Glass\". We will use the glass touchscreen as a feature found on a number of mobile phones. The state transitions throughout this feature's life cycle are demonstrated in Figure 3. In this figure, there are six columns, each representing a state with related factors and sub-factors that will affect the feature state and force it to transition to the next state.\n7. Conclusion and discussions for future research: Customers' preferences towards product or service features are in fast evolution. Public perception of an innovative feature that can initially excite the customer is expected to change with product usage. To better understand the current and future needs of customers, it is in the manufacturers' best interests to identify the current state and the inevitable transitions of their product features in the feature life cycle. It is also of a great importance to identify the factors that influence these transitions. This research proposes a model that explains the transitions of a feature in the feature life cycle. The research identifies seven states: unknown/unimportant state, pot state, racing state, required state, standard state, core state, and dead state. The transition from one state to another is affected by demographic, geographical, behavioural, environmental, psychological, technological, and organisational factors, each of which has related sub-factors. A current-market example of a glass touchscreen showed how a feature evolves over time and what factors may affect each state in a feature's life cycle. The understanding of the life cycle of a feature helps not only in introducing completely new features to meet exact customer needs but also in knowing when to remove a feature that might become obsolete. It can also help companies to study and plan ahead to mitigate losses and overuse of R&D resources.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Studies have suggested that attributes are dynamic and a life cycle of product and service attributes exists. When an innovative feature is introduced, the feature might attract and delight customers. However, with the passage of time the state of the attractiveness of this feature may change, for better or for worse. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed model that shows the factors and related sub-factors that affect the life cycle of a feature and thereby explain the changes that may happen to a feature over time.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This model provide detailed explanations of the direct and indirect factors that affect the states of a feature, the ones that affect the rate of adoption, and the ones that trigger the changes between states. The model uses a current-market product's feature to discuss the effects of these factors on the life cycle of this feature in detail.\nFindings: This paper extends the theory of attractive quality attributes by identified seven states of the feature in its life cycle. These states are as follows: unknown/unimportant state, honey pot state, racing state, required state, standard state, core state, and dead state. This paper also identified eight major factors that affect the transition of the feature from one state to another. These factors include demographic, socioeconomic, behavioural, psychological, geographical, environmental, organisational, and technological factors.\nOriginality/value: The findings of this paper provide additional evidence that product and service attributes are dynamic. This paper also increases the validity of the attractive quality attributes theory and the factors that affect the state of the feature in its life cycle. The understanding of the state of the feature in its life cycle, and the factors that influence this change, helps not only in the introduction of completely new features but also in knowing when to remove obsolescent ones.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Suboptimal financial policies and executive ownership in the UK: evidence from a pre-crisis	[ "Executive ownership", "Extreme financial policy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The aim of this paper is to identify firms adopting financial policies of high cash and low leverage and study the potential alignment/entrenchment role of executive ownership in the probability of firms adopting such policies in the UK. To this aim, a sample of non-financial UK firms adopting what we define extreme financial policy is identified, via both the classification rules proposed in the literature and the analysis of the distribution of cash and leverage. Then, a logit framework is used to estimate the likelihood of firms adopting extreme financial policies as a function of executive ownership, holding constant a number of other potential determinants.\n2. Theory and motivation: 2.1 How do managers achieve financial flexibility? A snapshot at the debate\n3. Empirical model and hypotheses: 3.1 The empirical model\n4. Sample and classification procedure: 4.1 Data\n5. Empirical results: 5.1 Classification results\n6. Conclusions: In this paper, by using a large sample of non-financial UK firms during the period of 1990-2007, we have identified firms adopting extreme financial policies of high cash and low leverage. Then, we have examined the impact of managerial ownership on the probability of adopting the extreme financial policy of high cash and low leverage. There are important features of our analysis, which, we believe, significantly extend the literature on extreme and conservative financial policies. First, in describing the firm's financial status, differently from previous empirical studies and in line with the corporate finance theory, we combine both high cash and low leverage, which leads to what constitutes a firm following an extreme financial policy. Second, as opposed to the existing studies that choose fixed threshold levels of cash holdings or leverage to identify firms adopting an extreme financing policy, we estimate the appropriate cut-off points without imposing a priori arbitrary threshold levels. Moreover, to allow these cut-off points to vary over time, we carry out this analysis for each year throughout the sample period. Third, we show that EFPs are suboptimal: firms following extreme financial policies tend to be persistently off-target with regard to both leverage and cash holdings decisions. They persistently hold larger than target-cash balances and lower than target-levels of debt than predicted by theories of capital structure.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify firms in the UK adopting a policy of high cash and low leverage and investigate how executive ownership contributes to this decision.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Firms following this policy are identified both by using a fixed classification approach and the analysis of the distribution of cash and leverage. Logit analysis is then used to estimate the probability of adopting the policy as a function of executive ownership.\nFindings: Extreme financial policies are suboptimal as firms adopting these policies tend to undershoot (overshoot) their target leverage (cash holdings) ratios. The impact of the executive ownership on the probability of adopting this policy is U-shaped, in line with the alignment-entrenchment hypothesis.\nPractical implications: Despite the substantial presence of non-executive directors in the boards and a significant amount of shareholdings by executive directors, the firms under analysis have adopted suboptimal financial policies possibly because poorly governed or because executive ownership is the range where entrenchment is feasible.\nOriginality/value: This is the first attempt at recognising policies of high cash and low leverage as being explicitly interdependent. It is also the first study focussing on the UK, a country of interest, because ownership structure is relatively dispersed. Moreover, instead of choosing fixed threshold levels of the variable in defining the extreme financial policy, this paper proposes the analysis of the distribution of cash holdings and leverage and accounts for target levels of cash and leverage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Great websites for art history	[ "Arts", "History", "Electronic media", "Worldwide web" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Chris Witcombe's pioneering Art History Resources on the Web (http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html) is one of the earliest portals devoted to the subject of art history. The massive growth of this site since 1995, when it first appeared, attests to the popularity and diversity of websites related to the study of the visual arts. Some of those sites, like Art History Resources on the Web, are labors of love created by individuals. Most, however, are maintained by museums and institutions of higher education. The scope of their contents ranges from encyclopedic to focusing on one single artist.\nGeneral: As a group, websites created by art museums are the best sources of information about the visual arts. They are usually well designed with high-quality images, scholarly texts, and supplemental educational materials. Since their offerings tend to focus on their own holdings, it is always a good idea to look up the sites of the museums with collections that are of interest. For example, the site of the Freer Gallery (www.asia.si.edu/) provides a great deal of information about Asian art. The British Library offers images of entire manuscripts selected from their collection (www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/viewall/index.html). Special software (\"Turning the Pages\") allows the user to browse through the pages of important books, which include Leonardo's manuscripts and Henry VIII's Psalter, and magnify any details of interest.The vast resources available to the public on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org), one of the largest museums in the world, match the quality and encyclopedic scope of the museum's collections. The Online Resources (www.metmuseum.org/education/er_online_resourc.asp) is an excellent portal to art historical links organized by the museum's curatorial departments. Over one hundred thousand items from the museum's holdings are represented in the online Collection Database (www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/). In addition to basic facts, the entry for each work often provides information on its provenance, exhibition history, and scholarly references. The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (www.metmuseum.org/toah) is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of art history from around the world as illustrated by works in the collection of the museum. Written by the museum's curatorial, conservation, and education staff, the Timeline is an excellent introduction to cultural and historical backgrounds from prehistory to the present. Among the fascinating topics on Explore & Learn (www.metmuseum.org/explore/el_acloserlook.asp) is a close look at the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, a miniature illuminated manuscript. The website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art exemplifies the best museum websites can offer.Of the numerous free art image databases on the web, VADS Image Catalogue (www.vads.ac.uk/collections/index.html) and Web Gallery of Art (www.wga.hu/) are among the most impressive in terms of their coverage as well as the quality of the images and the cataloguing information. Intended primarily for students and teachers of art history, the Web Gallery of Art is a searchable database of European painting and sculpture from twelfth to mid-nineteenth centuries. While the Web Gallery of Art provides standard images with reliable captions, VADS Image Catalogue presents works from various collections in the UK with in-depth collection records.Even these two sites, however, are more useful for exploration than locating specific images. Unsurpassed in terms of coverage are Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Google Images, which includes images from anything indexed by Google, as well as some 10 million pictures from Life magazine's photo archive (http://images.google.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org/hosted/life). An excellent portal for images is the Digital Images Collections Wiki (http://digital-image-collections.wikispaces.com/). Created by Wellesley College, it is a clearinghouse for free and fair use collections of quality images and cataloguing information. Organized by periods, geographic areas, and medium, the links include museums, libraries, fair use websites as well as Flickr groups and Wikimedia Commons.Begun by art historians Beth Harris and Steven Zucker at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Smarthistory (http://smarthistory.org) is designed as a multimedia web-book for art history survey courses. Winner of the 2009 Education Webby Award, Smarthistory is effectively and beautifully designed. Its content, organized stylistically and chronologically, includes text, images, audios, and videos. High revolution images can be downloaded from Flickr under a Creative Commons license. While most useful for students and teachers of survey courses, Smarthistory will engage anyone interested in art.\nPrehistoric art: Virtual tours of two prehistoric caves, The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc and Cave of Lascaux (www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/en/), are among the archaeological sites presented by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. In addition to reading about the scientific investigation carried out at the sites, the user can explore the caves, which are closed to the public, examine details of the wall paintings, and learn about prehistoric life and art.\nAncient art: Nova Online: Pyramid (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid) provides extensive information about ancient Egypt, the Pyramids, and excavations there. The Quick Time Virtual Realities panoramas of monuments from Giza and images of structures from Luxor and Karnak, all of superb quality, make these ancient wonders come alive. The accompanying maps, plans, diagrams, and sections are useful for serious studies.Another excellent site for ancient Egypt is Eternal Egypt (www.eternalegypt.org), created through a partnership between IBM and the Egyptian Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage. Sophisticated technologies are used to create an interactive experience of ancient Egyptian culture. In addition to exploring the interactive map and timeline, the user can look up information by museums and archaeological locations, topics (architecture, farming, transportation ...), or types (artifacts, characters, or places). The multimedia materials include high-resolution images, three-dimensional reconstructions of Egyptian monuments and antiquities, virtual environments, and panoramic images.Google has added to their Google Earth program an Ancient Rome 3D layer (http://earth.google.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org/rome/), which allows viewers to fly into Rome as it looked in 320 AD, tour the interiors of famous buildings, visit in 3D sites such as the Roman Forum and Colosseum, and learn about the way the Romans lived. The software Google Earth, Ancient Terrain, Ancient Roman Landmarks, and Ancient Roman Buildings needs to be downloaded to use the program.\nMedieval art: Chartres: Cathedral of Notre-Dame (http://images.library.pitt.edu.pitt.idm.oclc.org/c/chartres/), hosted by the Digital Research Library at the University of Pittsburgh, provides an online collection consisting of visual materials documenting the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres. The image collection contains over three thousand high-resolution images (3,000 pixels) of photographs, maps, and illustrations that can be browsed and searched. In addition, interactive diagrams link to images and detailed cataloguing records.Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts (www.kb.nl/manuscripts/index_nl.html) is a database of illuminated medieval manuscripts in the collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum. Casual visitors to the site can enjoy the guided tour (Highlights), while serious scholars will find the meticulous cataloguing very useful. Particularly helpful is the ability to browse by categories in Iconclass.\nRenaissance art: Universal Leonardo (www.universalleonardo.org/), directed by art historians Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace, constitutes a unique resource on Leonardo. Its coverage encompasses Leonardo da Vinci's works in all his fields of endeavor. In addition to images and detailed descriptions of Leonardo's paintings, manuscripts, drawings, and inventions, Universal Leonardo includes an interactive timeline showing thematic links amongst Leonardo's works; interactive games and activities; images of scientific analyses carried out on one of Leonardo's paintings; in-depth features; a bibliography; and links to related websites.\nBaroque art: Essential Vermeer (www.essentialvermeer.com/) is one of the best public art history websites. Established by the painter Jonathan Janson, Essential Vermeer includes over 3,000 images, 200 audio files, and 500 individual web pages. The Complete Interactive Vermeer Catalogue offers high-resolution images of all of Vermeer's paintings accompanied by thorough cataloguing records. The paintings can be viewed in a virtual gallery where they are hung to scale - an innovative and important feature for online galleries. In addition to in-depth information on Vermeer's life, paintings, and technique, the site includes interactive maps, a timeline, and extensive coverage on the cultural and artistic contexts of Vermeer's works.\nNineteenth-century art: Sponsored by the Library of Congress, The William Blake Archive (www.blakearchive.org) makes available to the public high-quality electronic reproductions of Blake's illuminated books, drawings, paintings, engravings, and manuscripts. With contributions from major museums and libraries, the images and texts are prepared with superb technical and scholarly standards. Powered by sophisticated technology, this combination of catalogue, database, and scholarly tools is a great resource for beginners as well as advanced researchers. The Rossetti Archive (www.rossettiarchive.org) is another project aiming for a similar integration of an artist's pictorial and textual production.\nTwentieth-century and contemporary art: The Database of Virtual Art (www.virtualart.at) is a pioneer in the documentation of the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art. Based on collaborative efforts by media artists, researchers, and institutions, it offers video documentation, technical data, interfaces, displays, and literature. One can search by work, literature, people, event, or institution with the help of a hierarchical thesaurus.Launched in spring 2008 at the Watzek Library, Lewis and Clark College, Access Ceramics (http://accessceramics.org/) is a growing collection of images of contemporary ceramics. The clear layout of this simply and elegantly designed site makes it one of the easiest art resources to use. One can browse, with drop-down lists, by fields such as artists, glazing/surface, material, object type, technique and temperature. The images and excellent cataloguing information are accessible through the site as well as Flickr.\nAsian art: Published by a professed Hiroshige enthusiast, the Woodblock Prints of Ando Hiroshige (www.hiroshige.org.uk/) is primarily useful for the images organized by subjects. Also very useful are scans (in html) of rare books on the artist. Text is minimal.The International Dunhuang Project (http://idp.bl.uk) is truly international in scope. Its database of paintings, artifacts, textiles, manuscripts, historical photographs, and maps includes contributions from collections in the UK, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and other countries. The website provides public access to high-resolution images and extensive cataloguing and contextual information about objects from Dunhuang, the oasis town on the edge of the Gobi desert in western China, and other archaeological sites along the Silk Road. In addition to detailed conservation and technical information, there is a wealth of material for teaching and learning about the Silk Road.\nIslamic art: Launched by the Museum with No Frontiers, a European Union project to provide art and architecture images and documentation online, Discover Islamic Art (www.discoverislamicart.org/) is a virtual museum that explores Islamic art and material culture in the Mediterranean region. The database, which has advanced search functions, contains images of artifacts, monuments, and historical sites from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Some of the objects have been little known or studied previously. There are useful materials for teachers and an overview of Islamic art in the Mediterranean.Saudi Aramco World, established to broaden knowledge of the cultures, history, and geography of the Arab and Muslim worlds, hosts virtual walking tours of the Alhambra (www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200604/alhambra/default.htm) and the Suleyman Mosque in Turkey (www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200605/suleymaniye/default.htm). Composed of spherical panoramic photographs, the virtual tours allow one to pan around the space, zoom in for details, and pass from one location to another in sequence.\nArt of the Americas: Developed at Reed College, Architecture, Restoration, and Imaging of the Maya Cities of Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labna (http://academic.reed.edu/uxmal/) aims to stimulate interests in those famous Maya sites through high-quality, detailed images of the monuments. In addition to photographs of the architecture and sculpture, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century drawings, prints, and photographs are included to allow comparisons of buildings before and after restoration. Useful texts on the cultural contexts complement the visual documentation.\nArchitecture: Artifice Inc., a 3D modeling software company with a focus on architecture, publishes the impressive Great Buildings Collection (www.greatbuildings.com/gbc.html), which features about a thousand buildings with photographic images, architectural drawings, integrated maps and timelines, 3D building models, commentaries, bibliographies, and web links. The database can be searched by categories such as period style, building type, date, climate, or country and is indexed by buildings, architects, and places. The entries are cross-linked with Architecture Week.While developed to support undergraduate education of architectural subjects at Columbia University, Real Virtual (www.learn.columbia.edu/ha/) is useful for anyone who is interested in architecture, art history, or archaeology. The site presents virtual panoramas and interactive plans of some of the most important architectural monuments from the Athenian acropolis to Fallingwater. An especially striking feature is the interactive version of Jacopo de Barbari's map of Venice drawn in 1500.\nPhotography: A joint project of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film and International Center of Photography, Photomuse (www.Photomuse.org) provides online access to the collections of the two organizations and resources in the history of photography. In addition to the searchable database, the \"Chronology\" section provides a detailed chronology of photographic history with cross-referenced timelines of politics and culture.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to identify a selection of websites for the study and enjoyment of the visual arts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - From the hundreds of offerings on the world wide web, the 24 public sites featured in this article are distinguished by the quality of their content, design, and ease of use.\nFindings: - The best websites are great tools for teachers, students, and interested individuals to explore and learn about the visual arts. Taking advantage of advancing technology, they offer experiences that go far beyond convenient delivery of traditional analog materials.\nOriginality/value: - Offers practical suggestions for public and academic librarians on the most useful and usable public websites devoted to the visual arts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Analysis of research trends and constructs in context to lean six sigma frameworks	[ "Six sigma", "Lean manufacturing", "Literature", "Hybrid systems", "Framework" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Motivation\n2. Research methodology: The time period for this study was taken as 2000-2017 and only Scopus indexed journal papers were included. Figure 1 represents stage-wise review procedure. First, authors tried to document the available LSS review papers. This was necessary to know the coverage and missing links in the review papers. It was also necessary to check whether a previously reported review study had really covered the framework and constructs-related requirement or not. After due verification on this requirements, authors proceeded as follows.\n3. Literature review: As outlined in the research methodology as shown in Figure 1, literature review and subsequent exploratory analysis were conducted in different stages. In Figure 1, one can easily notice how the screening of articles was carried out to identify 26 LSS frameworks. Authors also chose to include all the LSS literature review articles to capture the missing links in the existing literature review studies. In the next stage, the contributions of selected studies describing the LSS frameworks are presented to portray the existing developments in the LSS framework domain. Finally, the major weaknesses regarding inconsistencies in selected framework studies are reported to build the needs for future modifications in the existing frameworks.\n4. Analysis of LSS frameworks considering usage and research trends to explore inconsistency at stage 2: 4.1 Classification based on research requirements\n5. Constructs-based inconsistencies at stage 3: The constructs are considered as building block for any framework and can help in developing better frameworks and can also help in giving new directions to LSS research. But it is possible that there may exist some inconsistencies at the construct level.\n6. Conclusion, establishment of inconsistencies at three stages covering frameworks, research trends and constructs: In line with research objective and associated logical requirements about a framework, research trends; following a structured methodology authors conducted this study. To the best of authors' knowledge, no review study has ever reported inconsistencies in the existing LSS frameworks and guidance about new requirements of industry. In LSS research and application domain, several researchers and practitioners have proposed their own frameworks and several review studies are also available. But none of the studies guides about building blocks and offers an overall picture of forming framework from basics after understanding the strengths and weaknesses in the existing frameworks and research trends. Authors believe that this study will not only facilitate new research and applications in the LSS domain, but other areas will also be influenced. Mehrjerdi (2011) strongly recommend for this type of study, and state that modification and an overall understanding about inconsistencies in the existing frameworks will lead towards building of better and sector-specific frameworks.\n7. Implications for researchers and practitioners: For a hybrid solution like LSS, both framework and its constructs are important. After all, one requires both \"frame\" and the \"components within the frame\" then only one can do justice with the desired overall outcome expected from a hybrid solution like LSS. Therefore, developing a suitable framework requires contributions from both communities with a clear understanding about the framework and its building blocks. The researchers help in developing the theoretical foundations and methodological aspects of a framework, whereas the practitioners contribute towards its execution and practical applicability. They both complement and supplement to each other. As often the need arises to check whether the framework is working properly or requires modification. This alteration becomes easier if an overall picture is available. Similarly, a proper framework after incorporating necessary modifications, allows practitioners to execute the entire process smoothly. Therefore, for a hybrid solution like LSS, a proper framework is essential which could cover all aspects and facilitate smooth application. The study reports following contributions and implications:\n8. Limitations and future scope of the study: As mentioned earlier, authors attempted to expose inconsistencies at three stages. Although authors are providing sufficient details about the strengths and weaknesses of the frameworks and research trends and inconsistencies at the construct level but are not proposing any comprehensive and integrated framework, which emerges as a limitation of this study. A comprehensive framework not only facilitates implementation, but also guides about overall performance measurement requirements like efficiency, utilisation of machines (Pachpor et al., 2017), effectiveness, cycle time reduction and productivity. Similarly, authors tried to simplify the meaning of framework and constructs but still expect that due to a large number of constructs, researchers and practitioners may face some difficulties. As authors offer detailed picture but do not validate about the grouping of constructs. It definitely emerges as a limitation of this study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The literature of lean six sigma (LSS) is flooded with frameworks. But to date, there has been no attempt to expose the inconsistencies in the existing frameworks and associated research trends. The purpose of this paper is to critically review 26 LSS frameworks and highlight inconsistencies. The study also helps in analysing research trends and constructs of LSS frameworks, and facilitates new applications.\nDesign/methodology/approach: It uses Scopus database and finalises 26 frameworks in the LSS domain considering a timeframe from 2000 to 2017, using a structured literature review approach and involving domain experts. It uses a battery of systematic requirements-based questions to understand trends and covers building blocks/constructs also.\nFindings: It reveals inconsistencies at three different stages, namely, the framework stage, usage stage capturing existing research trends and construct stage. It also offers details at building block/construct level. Thus, it offers guidance in reducing inconsistencies and possible modifications in the existing frameworks. It not only exposes existing constructs and sub-constructs but also guides about the new upcoming changes in the business influencing the LSS domain. It also educates about the strengths and weaknesses of each framework.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study tries to reduce inconsistencies, but does not offer new generalised or sector-specific framework.\nPractical implications: This study will assist for modification/corrections in the existing frameworks by reducing inconsistencies and will encourage new frameworks to facilitate applications.\nOriginality/value: This is a unique study which offers frameworks-based review, portrays research trends and guides about constructs of a framework by exposing inconsistencies at each stage. It helps in reducing inconsistencies and offers guidance regarding modifications in the LSS framework considering upcoming challenges.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategic thinking in Benetton	[ "Strategic planning", "Strategic management", "Iran" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Bryson (1994) points out that strategic planning is no panacea. In his point-of-view, strategic planning is simply a set of concepts, procedures, and tools designed to help leaders, managers, and planners think, act, and learn strategically. Used in wise and skillful ways by a coalition of interested parties, it can help organizations focus on producing effective decisions and actions that create public value, further the organization's mission, meet organizational mandates, and satisfy key stakeholders. Mintzberg et al. (1998) note that: \"effective strategy making connects acting to thinking which in turn connects implementation to formulation. We think in order to act, to be sure, but we also act in order to think\" (p. 71) - and to learn, they might have added. Strategic planning is iterative, flexible, and action-oriented and that is often precisely what makes it so attractive to public and nonprofit leaders and managers (Bryson, 1994).As Mintzberg (1994, p. 252) notes, \"organizations function on the basis of commitment and mindset.\" Effective strategic thinking, acting, and learning seem to depend a great deal on intuition, creativity, and pattern recognition, none of which can be programmed although they may be recognized, facilitated, and encouraged (Mintzberg et al., 1998). Now, the question is that what is strategic thinking, and what are its attributes.\n2. Review of the literature: What is strategic thinking\n3. Research methodology: Research questions\n4. Analysis and results: Demographics and descriptive statistics\n5. Conclusion and recommendations: The findings of the research indicate that the relevant factors of strategic thinking are as follows:* Creativity and attention to the past, present and future.* Organic structure organization.* Environment analysis.* Conflict management.* Awareness of the situation.* Futuristic approach.* Intelligence.* Diversified mind pattern.* Accountability.* Organizational climate and coordination.* Systematic thinking.* Process approach.Strategic thinking ability is intrinsic to the mastery of strategic leadership. Strategic leadership requires capability in strategic planning and strategic thinking.If Benetton managers are willing to acquire acceptable market share in Iran, and lead the organization strategically, they should consider all the factors of strategic thinking with particular emphasis on: systematic thinking, accountability and conflict management.Managers with developed strategic thinking capability are better strategic managers and serve a useful function in their organization. Generally, due to the fact that they mostly are involved in strategy formulation, become advocates of strategic planning and the selected strategy; also they become committed to the strategy, can explain the reasons for the plan and subsequent adoption, foster commitment from other members of the organization and tend to increase the future orientation of the organization which is a benefit to overall strategic posture.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to identify the related factors of strategic thinking and their assessment (determining the gap between \"importance of the factors\", and \"present situation of the factors\") in Benetton Co. branches located in Iran.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper briefly reviews the literature related to strategic planning, and especially strategic thinking. Through the review of literature, some factors will be identified, and then presents statistical evidence to show their relevance and situation (the gap between present situation and optimum situation) in Benetton Co. branches located to Iran.\nFindings: - The findings of the research indicate that there are 12 relevant factors of strategic thinking; and difference between \"importance of the factors\", and the present situation of all 12 factors in Benetton, are meaningful.\nResearch limitations/implications: - More research needs to be conducted about the factors related to strategic thinking. Due to the fact that the research is limited to a specific company, the findings cannot be generalized. Also, it seems that relying on questionnaire can cause some limitations to the findings.\nPractical implications: - Although strategic planning and thinking are distinct, they are interrelated and complementary in terms of thought processes. If they sustain and support each other, effective strategic planning can be formulated and implemented.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides insights to different dimensions of strategic thinking and the amount of their presence in an international company working in a developing country; and the way it enhances the capacity of the company for implementation of strategic planning.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational justice, sickness absence and employee age	[ "Organizational justice", "Older workers", "Age groups", "Absenteeism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Sickness absence is costly for businesses, public sector organizations and taxpayers. The costs include the basic salary of the absent employee, payments for overtime work, and/or payments to replacement workers, as well as management costs, including line management and HR functions. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers (Lynn, 2011) estimates that 80 percent of all absenteeism is due to illness, and in the UK, sickness absences cost PS32bn annually, not including replacement costs and lost productivity. In Finland, the Ministry of Labor has estimated that sickness absences costs the Finnish governmental sector over 257m euro annually (Lehtonen, 2010). Although we could consider that older employees account for more of these absences than younger employees, research has found that older employees have lower overall levels of absenteeism. More specifically, according to meta-analytic evidence, age is strongly negatively related to measures of voluntary absence, such as absence frequency (Hackett, 1990; Martocchio, 1989), while there is a modest but significant positive association between age and sickness absence (Ng and Feldman, 2008).\nOrganizational justice as a psychosocial predictor of sickness absence: Previous research on employee perceptions of organizational justice has typically focused on organizational decision making (i.e. organizational foci) and the immediate supervisor (i.e. supervisory foci). It has also been found that the fairness experiences related to these foci have been distinguished both at the individual and aggregate levels (for a review, see Li and Cropanzano, 2009). Procedural justice, conceptualized as the fairness of procedures in organizational decision making, is rooted in discussions regarding the importance of control for individuals (Colquitt et al., 2005). Thibaut and Walker (1975) were the first to identify two forms of control as sources of procedural justice: decision control (control over outcomes) and process control (control over the factors that are used to make decisions on outcomes). Procedures can reduce uncertainty about outcomes (Lind and van den Boos, 2002) by promoting consistency, suppressing bias, and being accurate, correctable, representative and ethical (Leventhal, 1980). These elements imply that individuals should be able to express their own views and have the opportunity to attain some control over the decision-making process to experience a high level of procedural justice.\nAge-related differences in the effects of organizational justice on sickness absence: Generally, employees who remain with their employers until old age tend to miss work less often than their younger counterparts (Hackett, 1990; Martocchio, 1989; Ng and Feldman, 2008). Previous meta-analytic evidence suggests that age (not tenure) is negatively associated with avoidable absenteeism (Hackett, 1990) or both frequency of absenteeism and work hours lost, often used as measures of voluntary and involuntary absenteeism (Martocchio, 1989). Ng and Feldman (2008) distinguished three forms of absenteeism in their meta-analysis. Age was negatively (-0.26) related to objective measures of overall levels of absence, irrespective of the causes. Age was negatively related (-0.10) to objective measures of non-sickness-related absence, and a weak positive relationship was demonstrated between objective measures of sickness absence and age (0.02). The general inverse relationship between age and absenteeism can be explained by the person-environment fit perspective, which posits that people select environments compatible with their behavioral tendencies (Schneider, 1983). A poor fit between an individual's and an organization's values, goals and traits results in the individual's unwillingness to maintain his or her current work position (Hoffman and Woehr, 2006; Verquer et al., 2003). Thus, as employees age, they are likely to withdraw from unsatisfactory work conditions (through turnover or retirement) because they discover that these conditions are poor fits. There is overwhelming evidence that older employees are generally more satisfied with their work and more attached to their social environments (Rhodes, 1983).\nMethod: Sample and participants\nResults: The descriptive characteristics and intercorrelations of the study variables are shown in Table I. On average, employees were absent 1.48 short spells and 0.83 long spells per person year. The bivariate results indicate that age is negatively correlated with short spells (r=-0.20, p<0.01), but there is no significant relationship between age and long spells (r=0.00, NS). Both procedural (r=-0.06, p<0.01) and interactional justice (r=-0.06, p<0.01) are negatively correlated with short spells. Similarly, procedural justice (r=-0.07, p<0.01) and interactional justice (r=-0.09, p<0.01) are negatively correlated with long spells.\nDiscussion: This study explored whether the relationship between employee perceptions of procedural and interactional justice and their sickness absence differs by age. As hypothesized, older employees were more sensitive to procedural justice; long spells of sickness absence decreased more strongly among older employees than younger employees in relation to increasing levels of procedural justice. When older employees experienced higher levels of procedural justice, they were 12 percent less likely to be absent from work due to medically certified illnesses (i.e. long sickness absences). This result is aligned with the SOC model (Baltes and Baltes, 1990), which posits that selection, optimization and compensation are necessary to successfully handle developmental opportunities or losses of biological, mental and social resources.\nAcknowledgements: The research is funded by the Academy of Finland (projects 124271, 129262), the Finnish Work Environment Fund (project 103432) and the participating towns. The authors would like to extend their thanks to Kenneth S. Shultz for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to study age-related differences in how perceptions of two forms of organizational justice, i.e. procedural and interactional justice, are related to short (i.e. non-certified) spells and long (i.e. medically certified) spells of sickness absence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a study on a large sample of Finnish public sector employees (n=37,324), in which they matched employees' 2004 survey data with their records-based sick absences in 2005 and 2006.\nFindings: The results suggest that age moderates the association between perceptions of procedural justice and long sickness absences after controlling for gender, tenure, occupational group, work unit, job demands and health behaviors. When older employees experienced a high level of procedural justice, they were 12 percent less likely to miss work due to medically certified illnesses. Overall, older employees were less likely to take short, non-certified sickness absences from work. Finally, the results suggest that high-quality relationships with supervisors can prevent both short and long spells of sickness absence at all ages\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to the literature on age-related differences in the effects of psychosocial workplace conditions (organizational justice) on employee behavior (absenteeism).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Applying standards for leaders to the selection of secondary school principals	[ "Australia", "Secondary education", "Principals", "Leadership", "Performance appraisal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In this paper, we describe innovative research to report on the process of selecting senior secondary principals by the public educational authority in Western Australia. The process derives from a decade of collaborative research funded by two large commonwealth grants as well as two small local grants. We investigated the extent to which standards for school leaders can be applied in the process of selecting principals for promotion to senior secondary schools using performance-based assessment tasks. Specifically, this paper describes the development of performance-based tasks in the selection of senior secondary school principals over three years. The paper also focuses on the application of Rasch analysis to examine the construct validity and reliability for each of the tasks.\nBackground: We know that \"standards\" has been a dominant metaphor in educational reform for some decades. As well as standards for student performance, beginning teachers and experienced teachers in most jurisdictions internationally, there are also standards for school leaders' work. Perhaps, most well known are the National Standards for Headteachers (NSHT, 2006) in England and Wales and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for school leaders developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 1996) USA. Characteristically, the developers of such standards acknowledge the complexity of the performance described by the standards. For some time now, however, we have been critical of both the nature of standards and the uses to which they are frequently put.We have argued elsewhere that standards are frequently weakened by fragmentation into long list of duties that lend themselves to checklists, and by lack of attention to the essential qualities that characterise accomplished performances (Louden and Wildy, 1999a). Further, the standards are not always accompanied by psychometrically adequate assessments. In the USA, agencies responsible for professional standards have attended to the development of assessment against standards. For example, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS, 1989) use sophisticated processes for assessing standards for accomplished teachers. Similarly, the CCSSO (1996) has developed procedures for setting and assessing professional standards for school principals. The ISLLC assessment method is a pencil and paper test requiring problem solving in response to scenarios and to data-based decision-making tasks. Such methods have strong scoring rubrics based on established standards and have been subject to appropriate psychometric scrutiny (CCSSO, 1997).Against this background of robust assessment practices in the USA, principals are prepared for leadership positions by participating in any of the numerous principal preparation programs on offer in the USA. Several of these are delivered through professional principal associations such as the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP, 2006) and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP, 2002). Others such as the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE, 2005) deliver programs in partnership with state universities. Principal selection may then be a combination of merit selection and negotiation between educational authorities and parent organisations. The NASSP has a 20 years history of working with the assessment centre process to strengthen principal preparation and selection. The process increases the \"best fit\" factors in the placement and selection decisions for school leadership positions through performance-based activities (NASSP, 2002).In the UK, it has been mandatory since 2004 for all first time headteacher applicants to secure a place on the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) program prior to their first permanent substantive headship in the maintained sector. The NPQH is considered a benchmark qualification, underpinned by the NSHT, and takes up to 15 months to complete (National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), 2006). However, a study undertaken into headteacher recruitment on behalf of the National College for School Leadership by a consortium of the Hay Group, Cambridge University, Eastern Leadership Centre and NAHT is critical of aspects of headteacher selection. For example, selection involves many stages; long listing, which 50 percent of school governors consider unfair; interviews, which take between 1.5 and 2 days to conduct and require careful management to reduce bias; short-listing activities, which may include panel interview, candidate presentation, psychometric testing or parent/community panels; and the use of external assessment centres (NAHT, 2006).In both the USA and the UK, then it is customary for aspiring principals to undertake preparation programs and undergo complex selection processes both of which are grounded in standards frameworks. As late as the 1980s in all Australian public education systems, principals were selected for positions through a centrally administered bureaucratic and hierarchical system based on seniority (Blackmore and Barty, 2004). Since that time, selection based on merit has been introduced. The shift to merit selection corresponded with the decentralisation of authority to schools, regions or districts reflecting the general reform of public sector administration to emphasise devolution of responsibilities to local units, a reform undertaken by all jurisdictions across the country. However, what constitutes \"merit\" continues to be a matter of concern because those who judge the candidates are frequently the same set of people as those who articulate standards. Selection processes rely on resumes, written applications against selection criteria, referee reports and panel interviews. On the basis of their investigation of the declining supply of principals in Australia, Blackmore and her colleague argue that the selection processes adopted in Australia have adversely affected the image and understanding of educational leadership in this country. Those involved in making judgements in such merit selection systems generally regard them to be \"superficial and prone to error\" (p. 6) and to reward \"past reputation and investment in the job\" (p. 7). These authors characterise current selection practices as a \"reproduction\" model, serving to normalize principal identity and exclude those who did not fit the model. In addition to these cultural issues, there is evidence that panel interviews, as means of making judgements about candidates, generate considerably less than robust data. For example, 25 years ago Hunter and Hunter (1984) found that, despite training, the agreement among panel members was found to be typically close to 0.2, that is, not much different from random.In Australia aspiring principals learn to be principals \"on the job\" without any mandated formal preparation programs. Furthermore, standards for both leaders and teachers typically have been characterised by weak assessments or no assessments at all (Louden, 2000). One of a few exceptions is the level 3 competency standards developed for the Education Department of Western Australia (1997). By adopting assessment procedures more closely related to performance than the traditional public service process of resumes, interviews and referees' reports, this process broke new ground in the Australian context. Despite the innovative characteristics of this process, reviews of assessment practices against standards in Australia show that the process fails to distinguish between different levels of performance (Chadbourne and Ingvarson, 1998; Wallace et al., 1999; Jasman and Barrera, 1998). Our research over the past decade has attempted to address this omission, at least in relation to standards for school leaders in the Western Australian public education sector (Louden and Wildy, 1999b; Wildy, 2004; Wildy and Louden, 2000; Wildy and Pepper, 2005).\nThe Western Australian context: The research reported in this paper aimed to provide a more robust selection process using assessment tasks based explicitly on standards for leaders with the view to attract \"new blood\" into leadership positions in senior public secondary schools in Western Australia. Our dissatisfaction with long lists as substitutes for standards led to the application of narratives as an alternative approach to the generation and use of standards for school leaders. Our research was conducted throughout a decade in collaboration with the public education authority, professional associations and many hundreds of school principals (Louden and Wildy, 1999a, b; Wildy and Louden, 2000; Wildy, 2004; Wildy and Pepper, 2005). The research established that the quality of performance of school leaders is linked to personal attributes that shape the way leaders act, rather than to actions or duties. These personal attributes (fair, decisive, supportive, collaborative, flexible, tactful, innovative and persistent) are interrelated in complex ways often between conflicting demands such as decisiveness and collaboration, or tactfulness and persistence. Accomplished performance is characterised, not by displaying more of an attribute, but by balancing competing demands in particular contexts. Narrative accounts of leader performance can be rated and arrayed on continua showing variation in performance of the attributes. Previous publications describe examples of narratives, how they are developed, their ratings and how they are used to illustrate this variation as levels - that is, standards - of performance.This approach to standards for school leaders has been adopted and endorsed by the Western Australian public education system. Teachers and leaders access information about the standards framework through a leadership centre which offers professional development programs linked explicitly to the framework (www.det.wa.edu.au/education/lc/standards.html). Funded by a commonwealth grant, the development of performance-based assessments for the selection of principals was used in 13 different processes. Of these, three are reported in this paper.Selection-process design\nData analysis and findings: The Rasch measurement model was used to analyse the data in terms of construct validity and reliability for each of the tasks as well as overall performance. Rasch analysis provides evidence of the construct validity of the measures, that is, the extent to which the three tasks can be regarded as measuring a single construct. In this research, the construct is leadership for senior secondary principals. Using RUMM software (Andrich et al., 2000) the datasets for each year were analysed.The Rasch analysis of each dataset gives the measure of reliability (person separation index). The Rasch analysis generates person (candidate) locations and item (score given by a rater to a dimension of a task) locations. The candidate locations and item locations are shown in Figures 1-3 which indicate the relative spread of both candidates and items and allow for discussion of the extent to which the items are targeted to the candidates. Rasch analysis also provides rater profiles and a discussion on this topic is the subject of another paper. A display generated of candidates' performance over time is shown in Figure 4 and this is followed by discussion of the clustering of candidates and the relative level of performance of each group of candidates over time.Findings\nConclusion: The paper outlines the development and application of performance-based assessment tasks that are grounded in practice, linked to the standards framework and scored by trained raters using standards-based rubrics. These performance-based assessment tasks have high face validity because they are recognized by candidates to be every-day work for principals. Our performance-based assessment tasks also have high content validity because they are developed collaboratively with senior experienced principals and they represent what is considered important in the work of principals. Our analysis of the data gathered through the application of the Rasch measurement model gives us confidence that this selection process is robust. The performance-based tasks as described in this paper provide a sound basis on which to make judgements about the school leaders' ability to perform to a high standard in situations they are likely to confront in large secondary schools.We believe that this education authority would be wise to continue this selection process, using the data that are generated to give feedback to both candidates and raters. Feedback based on performance on such tasks is focused, context specific, recent and likely to help candidates in monitoring and improving their performance. Most importantly, the feedback is linked to the standards framework from which candidates can continue to monitor their own development, fostering professional responsibility rather than training candidates in dependency (Wallace and Wildy, 1995).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report innovative research aimed at ascertaining whether standards for school leaders could be applied to the process of selecting senior secondary school principals for appointment. Specifically, psychometrically robust measures of performance are sought that would sufficiently differentiate performance to support judgement about whether or not to appoint candidates in the public educational authority in Western Australia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Initially, the authors describe previous research in the application of standards to selection in education, followed by a brief review of selection practices undertaken in two international settings and the Western Australian educational setting. The authors then describe the innovative design of performance-based assessment tasks for the selection process including task and rubric development, rater training and data validation. The Rasch measurement model is used to analyse the datasets gathered during three iterations of selection process for the Western Australian education authority.\nFindings: - The Rasch analysis of each dataset provides evidence of construct validity and a robust measure of reliability. The person and item location distributions indicate the tasks were better targeted for the highest performing candidates in the second and third iterations and that fine-grained discrimination was evident across the candidate locations.\nOriginality/value: - The paper describes psychometrically robust measures of performance that would sufficiently differentiate performance to support judgement about whether or not to appoint candidates in the public educational authority in Western Australia. Specifically, the paper describes the development of performance-based tasks over three years and demonstrates the application of Rasch analysis to examine the psychometric properties of the assessment tasks.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Russia management, 1462-1606: a modernisation story?	[ "Modernisation", "Convergence/divergence theory", "Russia", "Muscovy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The West has, historically, had trouble comprehending both the Russian historical experience and its own relationship with Russia. At times - such as during both the Napoleonic War and the Cold War - Russia has been perceived as an European superpower, an economic and military giant. At other times, it has been viewed as a backward frontier region, more Asian than European. In recent years, it is the latter view that has predominated. Huntington (1996/2003, p. 140), for example, in his study, The Clash of Civilizations, declared that as \"a society and a culture\", Russia bears \"little resemblance\" to the West, historically lacking such \"distinctive features\" as \"separation of church and state, rule of law, social pluralism, social pluralism, representative bodies, individualism\". In a similar vein, the German historian, Schlogel (2008/2012, p. 7,) argues that even when the Soviet Union appeared \"to be the expression of omnipotent state power\" it disguised a precarious managerial reality. Constantly seeking to bridge the economic gap with the West, Schlogel (2008/2012, p. 7) observes, Russia's day-to-day management under Joseph Stalin was \"a mixture of crisis management, improvisation [...] of living from hand to mouth\". Significantly, the flawed, and ultimately failed, Soviet modernisation programme - in which state power both impelled and impeded economic activity - was hardly a unique episode in Russian history. Reflecting upon the modernisation campaigns of Russia's Tsarist regime in the mid-19th century, the noted Russian specialist, Gerschenkron (1965, p. 714) observed how the structures \"of a modern well-developed central government\" rested on \"the very un-Western nature of Russian serfdom\". The famed reforms of Peter the Great (reign 1682-1725) also involved a strengthening of the state vis-a-vis civil society, Moon (2006, p. 372) estimating that after the Petrine reforms a combination of taxes and feudal dues stripped the peasant household of \"around half the product of their labor\".\nRussian experience: convergence or divergence?: Traditionally, management and business history has been perceived through a largely American and British lens, as exemplified in the work of Chandler (1977, 1990), Wren and Bedeian (1972/2017) and Pollard (1965). When other national experiences have been explored it has typically been to emphasise national peculiarities and the way in which national practices developed along different lines from that found in the Anglosphere (Jammulamadaka, 2016; Cardow and Wilson, 2016). What is typically left aside in such discussions is the extent to which the societies being considered experienced either a process of convergense or divergence that made them like or unlile those found in Britain or the USA. Though this issue of convergence and divergence is currently not well explored in management history, the recent debate in economic history as to when, where and why Britain and its North American colonies departed from the norm and found elsewhere in the world is nevertheless highly significant for our understandings of management history (for key work in the convergence/divergence debate, Allen, 2003; Allen et al., 2011; Broadberry and Gupta, 2006; Parthasarathi, 1998; Pomeranz, 2000; Li and van Zanden, 2012; van Zanden, 2002; van Bavel and van Zanden, 2004. Also Jones, 2017, for summary of debate). For what the convergence/divergence debate brings to the fore are the managerial factors - and the supportive economic, institutional and cultural institutional structures and values behind those factors - that provide for sustainable wealth creation.\nFirst steps towards modernisation: Ivan III and Vasili III, 1462-1533: Located on the extreme eastern edge of Europe, both the historical direction and the geographical foci of Russian society were profoundly altered by the Mongol invasions, a catastrophe that destroyed the flourishing culture of Kiev Rus, forcing the wider Russian society to take refuge in the northern boreal forests. Not until Muscovy's victory over the Tartars at Kulikovo Field in 1480 was a precarious independence asserted. Even after this date, the various Tartar khanates continued to occupy the Ukrainian steppe and the Volga basin. Tartar raids into the Russian forest refuges also continued long after Kulikov, Moscow being sacked by Tartar raiders for the last time in 1571. Forced into the boreal forests, Russian society enjoyed both advantages and disadvantages over contemporaneous Western societies, the latter being more notable than the former. Among the advantages of Russian society in the boreal forests was a ready availability of land and a system of waterways that allowed for internal transport. Such was the availability of land where Russian peasants historically pursued a system of \"slash-and-burn\" agriculture, moving from one plot to another as soil fertility was lost. The surfeit of land, when combined with open and poorly demarked forests, also meant that the Russian peasantry had ready and free access to farmland, thereby avoiding the process of enserfment, that afficted their counterparts in Western and Central Europeduring European Middle Ages. Such benefits were, however, offset by a host of disadvantages. In the boreal forests, the podzol soils were thin, acidic and infertile. Slash and burn agriculture was more productive than the later three-field system (i.e. one where a third of the land was left fallow, a third in the process of field preparation and a third under crops), in that it typically delivered ten grains for each grain sown, but it was extremely laborious, requiring the labour of the entire community to uproot forested land in preparation for sowing. When in the 15th century adoption of three-field agriculture became the norm, the resultant yields were extraordinarily low. Growing seasons were short and winters severe, Milov (1992, pp. 37-39) estimating that in the non-chernozem regions (i.e. outside the \"black earth\" region to the south of forests) each grain seed that was sown typically returned two or three for consumption. By contrast, as Shaw (2006a, pp. 38-39) noted, in Western Europe, yields of six to one were the norm by the 16th century. In the forested heartlands, transport was only possible during two seasons of the year: summer, when the unpaved roads were dry and winter, when sleds could be used on the snow-covered roads and frozen rivers. By contrast, in both autumn and spring the roads became impossible bogs because of snowmelt and rain.\nConsolidation and disintegration, 1533-1606: The years between 1533 and 1606 - associated with the reigns of Ivan IV, better known as Ivan Grozny or Ivan the Terrible (1533-1585), Feodor I (1585-1598) and Boris Godunov (1598-1605) - were amongst the most significant and tumultuous periods in Russian history. In a magnified fashion, Muscovy witnessed a continuation of the process of change initiated under Ivan III and Vasili III: rigorous enforcement of the aristocracy's service obligations, a strengthening of centralised state power, an entrenchment of serfdom in both the society's rural and industrial spheres, a willingness to draw on foreign expertise and personnel and the direction of the society's efforts towards the cause of military expansion. Besides reinforcing the obligation of a landowner (boyar) to serve personally, the Code of service of 1555-1556 established a uniform order of service for the boyars (landowners) and those who received an allotment (pomest'e) for their service. Each was obliged to field a certain number of armed horsemen, depending on the amount of land that they had. Under Ivan Grozny - the first Grand Prince to declare himself Tsar (Emperor) of all Russia - the campaign to marshal all the resources of the society for state ends reached a new level of intensity. In lieu of the semi-feudal cavalry that had previously been the mainstay of Muscovy's armies, Ivan Grozny created a new semi-professional force built around musketeers - the streltsy. Although initially recruited from free townspeople and the rural population, the streltsy also included a heavy leavening of foreign mercenaries, most particularly at the officer level. Whereas Ivan III had primarily looked to Italy for foreign expertise, Ivan Grozny looked instead to Germany and Baltic for expertise and personnel - a trend that was followed by his Romanov successors. This shift is evident in the mid-16th century observations of von Herberstein (1549/2008, p. 245, 435), who in describing the Muscovite army declared them to be either \"Germans and Lithuanians\" or \"Lithuanians and all sorts of rabble\". An analysis of 123 specialists recruited by Hans Schlitte during the first half of Ivan Grozny's reign also indicates a tendency to recruit German speakers over other linguistic groups with the bulk of this group of specialist boasting a command of both German and Latin. As was the case previously, many of these foreign specialists were, directly or indirectly, recruited to serve the state's military needs. In addition to the gunsmiths and cannon casters, however, there were also a greater number of non-military specialists, including pharmacists, scientists, miners, jewellers and metallurgists (Solovyev, 1879/1989, p. 643). For a poorly populated and backward society, the recruitment of large number of foreign experts and mercenaries - when combined with the almost endless series of wars that Ivan Grozny undertook - placed immense burdens on all levels of society. The burden become most pronounced during the Oprichnina, a reign of state terror reinforced by arbitrariness and abuse of the Oprichniks who carried it out that lasted from 1565 to 1572 (Milov, 2006, p. 391). As Hellie (2006a) notes, under the Oprichnina, the state collected more taxes in one year than it had previously obtained in seven. It is probable that the feared embezzled even more. So heavy were the burdens that many landowners were driven from their holdings. Ultimately, this burden fell on the Russian peasantry. Once free, the peasantry now had to pay not only feudal dues and taxes but also \"quit-rents\" to their local pomeschik (i.e. aristocrat in state service) to work a few miserable plot of land (Hellie, 2006a). The inevitable result of this fiscal and social oppression was - given Muscovy's fluid borders - mass flight in the direction of either the Russian forests or the Ukrainian steppe. In describing the circumstances prevailing in Russia's towns and cities in 1588-1589 (i.e. three years after Ivan Grozny's death), an English visitor, Giles Fletcher, recorded that there was \"nothing that is greatly memorable save many ruins within their walls, which showeth the decrease of the Russian people under this government\" (Shaw, 2006a, pp. 303-304).\nDiscussion and conclusion: In considering Russian society as a whole, it is evident that we can ascertain paradoxical trends in terms of convergence and divergence with the West. In c.1400, Russia was autocracy not unlike Oriental powers such as the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic kingdoms of Central Asia and Ming China and unlike the societies of Western Europe, which were then experiencing the commercial and intellectual revolution we know as the Renaissance. In Western Europe, countries (and later the USA) became the world political and economic leaders owing to leading in modernisation. It was the lack of modernisation that gradually turned Asia into a vast colonial possession of Europe (Chernikova, 2014, p. 210). Russia could survive as a country and could become one of the world powers also because of modernisation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the convergence and divergence aspects of the Russian modernisation experience of c.1450-c.1600 and its role in both Russian history and management history.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study combines in-depth data collection from multiple sources such as Russian Chronicles, eyewitness accounts (mostly by foreigners) and papers in history and management. The applied methodology also includes an examination of Ivan III's modernisation initiative and its implementation in c.1450-c.1600. The analysis is conducted with an eye to understanding the extent to which Russian experiences converged or diverged from those found in Western Europe.\nFindings: Russian modernisation is usually associated with Peter the Great. Early initiatives, such as those that occurred in Russia between 1462 (the ascent of Ivan III) and 1606 (the Time of Troubles) are overlooked. This paper, however, argues that without these earlier modernisation efforts Russia would not have survived as a country. Given the central role that Russia has played in European and world history, and understanding of this period is key to comprehending the modern world and global systems of management.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper seeks to understand a decisive period in Russian history and Russian management, highlighting the extent to which Russian experiences both diverged and converged with those found in Western Europe.\nPractical implications: The paper helps us to understand both the successes and problems of Russian management since the 15th century.\nOriginality/value: To the best of author's knowledge, this study is the first to consider Russian modernisation during the period c.1400-c.1600 with an eye to current debates in convergence/divergence theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social capital in entrepreneurial family businesses: the role of trust	[ "China", "SME", "Family business", "Entrepreneurship", "Trust", "Social capital" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: What is social capital and how does it influence business operations are two questions that attract growing research interest. In the lack of a consensus on its definition, there is a general agreement on that social capital is a set of resources based on relationships and networks (Putnam, 1995) and are exploitable for business outcomes (Alder and Kwon, 2002). Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) identify three forms of social capital, namely: structural, cognitive, and relational. Each is of particular importance to business organisations and their performance (Arregle et al., 2007). In this paper, we focus on trust as a relational form of social capital (Pearson et al., 2008) to understand its effects on entrepreneurial family businesses.\nLiterature review: In this section, we first review existing literature on the concepts of social capital and trust. We then concentrate on the role of trust, as a relational form of social capital, in entrepreneurship and family business. Essentially, we consider trust as a relational form of social capital, and family business as an important institution for entrepreneurship. Drawing on this, our study attempts to provide empirical and conceptual links between trust, as social capital, and entrepreneurship within family businesses.\nContext of the study: For empirical explorations on the role of trust as social capital in entrepreneurial family businesses, we believe China provides a living \"laboratory\" where research objects are extensively available but surprisingly under-researched. In general, it is the unique institutional and cultural environments of China's private economy, as well as the entrepreneurial undertaking and the inter-generational nuances in Chinese family businesses that appeal to us as an ideal research setting.\nMethodology and methods: Focusing on the role of trust in the entrepreneurial processes of second-generation Chinese family businesses, this study sought to investigate a range of cognitive and behavioural activities. On the one hand, these activities are generally not well understood and inadequately studied, especially in the context of family businesses as \"the bulk of research conducted within business schools has ignored the family dimension of enterprises\" (Heck et al., 2008, p. 318). On the other hand, existing literature has not discovered how trust in family businesses promotes, or constrains, sustained entrepreneurship, particularly across generations. Neither a grounding theory nor promising evidence has been created about the interaction between trust and entrepreneurship in family businesses. Research on how trust influences entrepreneurial processes is nascent, and our knowledge about the evolution of trust and its effects on entrepreneurship in family businesses remains scarce. Needless to say, it is even scarcer in the Chinese context.\nFindings and discussion: Turning now to the findings, we compare the sources of trust, identify different patterns of trusting relationships, and examine their relevance to entrepreneurial processes in the eight second-generation Chinese family businesses. Discussion mainly focuses on the effects of trust on these processes, including a potential \"dark side\" of trust in family businesses. Table III provides a summary of emerging themes and relevant quotes from the interviews.\nConclusions: Both family business and entrepreneurship literatures have found trust an important construct. However, studies on the role of trust as a relational form of social capital in entrepreneurial family businesses are still nascent (e.g. Discua Cruz et al., 2013). In this study, our main purpose is to contribute to understanding the role of trust in entrepreneurial family businesses. To do this, we asked two questions exploring where trust originated in family businesses and what effects it had on entrepreneurial processes. In answering these questions, we adopted an inductive exploratory approach by focusing on second-generation Chinese family businesses. Our study confirmed that trust, in the entrepreneurial Chinese family businesses studied, is mainly constructed at the interpersonal level. In China's transition economy, organisational and institutional-level trust is still a novelty, and may only grow as the cultural and institutional environment gradually evolves.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insights to understanding trust as a relational form of social capital, and its effects on entrepreneurial processes, in small- and medium-sized family businesses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a qualitative case-study approach, with data from fieldwork interviews, observations, and secondary sources analysed by using interpretative methods.\nFindings: Although multiple types of trust exist concurrently in small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses, it is interpersonal trust on the basis of goodwill and competence that prevails, while contractual trust is weak and marginal. Three patterns of trusting relationships are identified, each of which has both positive and negative effects on entrepreneurship and innovation in family businesses. There is a potential \"dark side\" of trust, which incurs extra cost and commitment to small- and medium-sized family businesses in their entrepreneurial processes.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research with larger sample sizes is suggested to generalise the insights, by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. More empirical work is needed to further clarify the antecedents of trust as a social capital and the potential \"dark side\" of trust in small- and medium-sized family businesses, particularly across generations.\nPractical implications: Family business owner-managers should try to avoid relying on a single type of trust, which may incur extra costs to the entrepreneurial processes. They need to better understand why they trust certain actors in their business and social networks before assigning resources to specific business activities. Policy makers are suggested to recognise the \"benefits\" of the traditionally family-oriented values and that kinship-based trust is also a relational form of social capital and can produce entrepreneurial outcomes.\nOriginality/value: The paper critically reviews existing literature on social capital, trust, entrepreneurship, and family business at their point of intersection and identifies gaps and oversights. Drawing on case studies from China, the paper explores different patterns in which trust develops in second-generation small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses and their varying effects on entrepreneurship.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From measuring overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) to overall resource effectiveness (ORE)	[ "Performance measurement", "Overall equipment effectiveness", "OEE" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The information gathered from the performance evaluation of production processes and manufacturing systems lead directors and managers to take better decisions about how to manage and improve more effectively and efficiently their production systems (Garza-Reyes et al., 2010). To achieve this, it is necessary to establish appropriate metrics for measurement purposes (Nachiappan and Anantharaman, 2006). Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a performance measurement approach that has been increasingly used in industry not only for controlling and monitoring the equipment's performance but also as indicator and driver of process and performance improvements (Eldridge et al., 2005; Kumar et al., 2014). In this context, although OEE was originally designed to monitor and control performance, Dal et al. (2000) suggest that the role of OEE goes far beyond the task of just monitoring and controlling. This is because, according to Garza-Reyes et al. (2010), OEE prevents the sub-optimisation of individual machines or production lines, provides a systematic approach for defining performance targets, takes into account process improvement initiatives, and incorporates practical management tools and techniques to achieve a balanced view of process availability, performance and quality. Similarly, Bamber et al. (2003) remark that OEE is often used as a driver for improving the performance of a business by concentrating on quality, productivity and machine utilisation issues and hence aimed at reducing non-valued adding activities often inherent in manufacturing processes. For example, Kumar's et al. (2014) study in the automobile and machinery sector of India found that OEE can be used for performance improvement without the implementation of total productive maintenance (TPM). Mansour et al. (2013) argue, based on the results of their study in an oilfield in Lybia, that OEE can be a valuable method for the improvement of workover activities in this this industry. Dal et al. (2000) used OEE to measure the improvement of a process within a manufacturing environment. In this case, Dal et al. (2000) reported that OEE not only helped to measure the improvement in the area in which it was implemented but also that it enabled new levels of performance measurement to be introduced. Finally, Zuashkiani et al. (2011) mapped the dynamics of OEE as an approach to improve asset management practices.\n2. OEE: OEE was proposed by Nakajima (1988) as an approach to evaluate the progress achieved through the improvement initiatives carried out as part of his also proposed TPM philosophy. Nakajima (1988) defines OEE as a metric or measure for the evaluation of equipment effectiveness. Accordingly, OEE attempts to identify production losses and other indirect and \"hidden\" costs. These losses are formulated as a function of a number of mutually exclusive components (Huang et al., 2003), namely: availability (A), performance (P) and quality (Q). In essence, OEE is the result achieved by multiplying these three factors together as shown by the next equation:\n3. OEE and the scope of its measure of effectiveness: One of the reasons that have contributed to position OEE as an increasingly used measure of performance in manufacturing environments is its ability to integrate several factors of performance (i.e. availability, performance and quality) within a global and single measure. However, as it has been highlighted before, other factors can also significantly contribute to process performance. Suzuki (1999) mentions that the effectiveness of a plant's production not only depends on the effective use of its equipment, but also its materials, labour and methods. In addition, Oechsner et al. (2003) comment that OEE is an approach that works for individual isolated equipment, but that it is not sufficient to control single tools because no machine runs in isolation. According to Oechsner et al. (2003), machines performances depend on several factors such as environment, logistics, material flow, production system, etc.\n4. ORE: ORE is a manufacturing performance measurement system that has been developed with the objective of providing a more inclusive evaluation than OEE, of a machine or process performance. The main difference between ORE and the traditional OEE is that the first evaluates the overall performance of a machine or process based not only on its availability (A), performance (P) and quality (Q) but also in terms of three more elements that are material efficiency (M), process cost and material cost variations. These last elements are introduced and defined in the sections below. The integration of these three elements into the traditional overall effectiveness evaluation helps to expand the concept of this measure, and in this way, monitor other factors that can also have a considerable impact on the performance of a machine or process. Consequently, production or process managers may be able to acquire a deeper knowledge of their processes and based on that, take better decisions regarding their management and actions needed to improve them.\n5. Case Study 1 - ORE industrial application: This section presents the practical application of ORE through an industrial case study. The case study was conducted at a Park Home Manufacturer located in Northamptonshire, UK. Park homes are categorised as factory built homes as they are traditionally built in a factory and then transported to the site where they will sit (Garza-Reyes et al., 2012). Due to the factory control environment where park homes are manufactured and the labour intense nature of its production process, this product and its manufacturing process represented an ideal scenario to test the ORE measure and compare it with the measure that OEE would be able to provide in an environment with these characteristics.\n6. Case Study 2 - ORE simulation-based study: In order to further investigate the ORE measure and gain a deeper understanding of its characteristics by comparing it with OEE, a second case study centred on a simulation-based approach was conducted. In this case, discrete-event simulation was selected as the most suitable method for this second case study as it enabled the study of ORE under controlled and selected conditions, which was clearly not the situation in the previous case study. Additionally, conducting a second case study in a real manufacturing environment, similarly as it was done in Case Study 1, was not feasible due to it was expensive, time-consuming, unpractical and disruptive for the real manufacturing system taken as the basis for this study.\n7. Conclusion: Measurement is the initial and most basic step for achieving improvements in an organisation (Nachiappan and Anantharaman, 2006). This paper has presented the development, investigation and application, through two cases study, of ORE for the measure of manufacturing effectiveness. The consideration in the ORE approach of process cost variations, material cost variations and material efficiency may be able to make the overall effectiveness measure, on certain process, more complete and achievable than the measure obtained from the traditional OEE. In operational terms, these three factors were shown to be more significant measures of performance, for the type of processes studied, than the elements availability and quality, and hence OEE. In practical terms, the Case Study 1 revealed that the data required for the calculation of ORE are easily available and collectable, which may make this approach an attractive alternative to measure manufacturing performance.\nGlossary: MIMV material input monitoring value\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) provides a quantitative metric based on the elements availability, performance and quality for measuring the performance effectiveness of individual equipment or entire processes. Although these elements are important, other performance factors such as the efficient use of raw materials and the production environment (e.g. production system, logistics, labour, etc.) in which the equipment or process operates may also have a significant contribution to process performance. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative measure derived from OEE, overall resource effectiveness (ORE), which considers these factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reviews the OEE's background and explores its limitations. Then, it shows the conceptual and mathematical development of the ORE measure and the formulas used for its calculation. Empirical and simulation-based investigations and applications of ORE are carried out through two cases study for its validation.\nFindings: The results derived from both the empirical and simulation-based investigations demonstrate that OEE may not be an appropriate measure for some specific processes and that ORE may offer a more complete perspective on and information of key performance indicators.\nPractical implications: ORE can provide production managers with more complete information concerning the performance of their processes. This will allow them to take better decisions regarding the management and actions needed to improve their processes.\nOriginality/value: This paper presents a novel and alterative approach to measure the performance of manufacturing equipment and processes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Reducing avian influenza risk: a qualitative exploration of issues in Hong Kong	[ "Hong Kong", "Poultry", "Markets", "Attitudes" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Formerly an infection of sea and shore birds, avian influenza A H5N1 (AI) has adapted to other species; domestic chickens and other wild and domestic birds have now become primary hosts (Banks et al., 1998, 2001; Suarez, 2000; Peiris et al., 2001; Campitelli et al., 2002; Shortridge et al., 2003). Chickens are one of our key food animals and are raised globally.The first H5N1 outbreak in 1997 in Hong Kong, China (HKSAR) was linked to retail wet markets and sales of live poultry, quail, ducks, geese and chickens (Webster, 2004). Actions introduced were a cull - central slaughtering for all domestic fowl except chickens, chicken inoculation programs, monitoring of sentinels (unvaccinated birds which get sick first if virus is present) and twice-monthly market closures for cleaning. However, wet market live chicken sales were allowed to continue. The H5N1 epidemic that emerged in late 2003 in Vietnam has so far failed to penetrate HKSAR's domestic poultry flocks, though wild birds are frequently confirmed to have died from AI. Exposure to live poultry increases risk of AI virus transmission to humans (Alexander, 2003; Fielding et al., 2005).Live animal sales, maintained due to popular demand to some extent, are abundant across Asia, representing a serious health risk. Introduction of central slaughtering for poultry is an important public health strategy. Often, this is impractical due to development reasons but even where it is a practical solution; government reticence is widespread, due partly to anxiety about public opinion and economics. The HKSAR Government faced stiff public and commercial resistance to central slaughtering for chickens after suspending live chicken imports at the height of the first epidemic wave in Spring 2004, when surveys revealed significant population misunderstandings regarding AI protection (Fielding et al., 2005). The epidemic, initially brought under control in Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere, then re-emerged across China, Indonesia, Europe and Africa. The question arises, what population reactions are to be expected in response to policy initiatives and will they influence preventive strategies to minimize future epidemic risk?This paper describes a brief qualitative study of HKSAR adult perceptions of health risk from live poultry sales performed in 2002, before the onset of the SARS and current H5N1 epidemics, corresponding to the same point in the evolution of current H5N1 epidemics in Asia as in HKSAR. We present these data as a model for urban attitudes elsewhere in Asia where AI has been controlled and to inform policy for future epidemic control strategies across Asia.\nMethods: Data collection\nResults: Three risk themes emerged from the interview analyses:1. Absence of risk.2. Misunderstanding of mechanisms of transmission or risk.3. Opinions about central slaughtering.Absence of risk:\nDiscussion: The present AI epidemic requires governments to act decisively to minimize future outbreaks and spread to human populations. While most countries now have veterinary and public health systems monitoring both poultry and live bird flocks, there remains the possibility of infected birds passing viruses on by way of live retail outlets. Preventing the spread of AI to humans involves separating as much as is feasible humans, food animals and the viruses that threaten our own and our animals' health. There are a number of important actions that will help to do this and a reduction in public exposures to live poultry through wet market retail sales is one such step. The people we interviewed gave responses that are likely to reflect public attitudes in many other urban centres across Asia. As with the west, city dwellers often have little idea of the realities of food production and the only contact with live food for most city dwellers is through the traditional wet markets.Few of the people we interviewed felt that wet market sales of live poultry were a significant risk at that time, despite several previous AI outbreaks and accompanying deaths in Hong Kong in 1997 and 2001. Considerable misunderstanding existed about live poultry hazards. No respondents distinguished between bacterial meat contamination and respiratory infection either through airborne aerosols or particulates resulting, for example, from the flapping of bird wings when buyers inspect chickens. However, several felt that air quality was important and referred to ventilation concerns, referring to the dust and poor air quality in markets. Similarly, transmitting viruses by touching objects such as taps and door handles with contaminated hands (fomites) was not recognized. This is an important means of spreading influenzas and hand washing is therefore an important hygiene precaution, particularly among those with respiratory infections. Hand washing was not mentioned by any interviewees. We have recently reported persisting beliefs that cooking alone will protect against AI and these beliefs were present as early as 2002 (Fielding et al., 2005). We believe that, with highly publicized deaths in Asia and elsewhere attributed to eating uncooked fowl, the failure to acknowledge air or fomites transmission may prove a barrier to implementing effective policy measures.Many respondents felt there was nothing particularly new or worrying about avian flu despite related deaths. Optimistic attitudes like this are common with other types of food contamination (Burger et al., 1998). Health information is generally ignored when it challenges traditional food or eating habits (Burger et al., 1993 unless there are trustworthy and credible sources for such messages (Liu et al., 1998). Familiarity of the events, plausibility of the solutions and resistance to reductions in choice need to be overcome as part of public health efforts to control AI spread and other infectious diseases (Liu et al., 1998). However, while behavior can quickly change in the face of perceived threat, it rapidly reverts when the perceived threat declines. This was seen in response to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in Hong Kong during 2003 (Leung et al., 2005). If a threat, or warning of a threat occurs, and people survive it then this increases the likelihood that future occurrences of the same threat will be treated with less concern. This was recently seen in Japan where, following a major earthquake on the sea floor off Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, most people in coastal towns ignored the tsunami warning to leave the village and instead continued to go about their business as usual. Several recent Japanese earthquakes have failed to raise tsunami, but as the Indonesian tsunami demonstrated, when they do occur these can be catastrophic. This population indifference to the tsunami warnings in Hokkaido caused great consternation among those responsible for minimizing loss of life from tsunami.Belief that traditional food preparation is superior to supermarket food has been reported elsewhere (Burger et al., 1993; Liu et al., 1998). There is probably a lot of truth in the argument that frozen food lacks the texture and taste of fresh foods. Some respondents initially opposed central slaughtering over concerns about bacterial contamination or lack of freshness in pre-killed meat. Contamination of centrally slaughtered meats have been responsible for food poisoning on a number of occasions both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, where a few cases of typhoid and cholera occur annually, the most serious examples in the West being of E.Coli 0157 haemorrhagic colitis. It is therefore critical that robust food inspection standards are in place and implemented to maintain population confidence in the quality of the food supply. Most respondents objected to poor taste and compromised freshness of frozen chicken. Younger males and women particularly tended to insist there was a significant taste difference between pre-killed and immediately killed chicken, but others disputed this. There was also confusion between chilled and frozen meat, the latter being unpopular. Chilled foods are uncommon in Hong Kong due to cold chain difficulties in summer though this has not been a problem for other meats, such as pork. Those who distinguished between chilling and freezing felt there was no difference in taste between chilled and fresh chicken. Traditional Chinese belief is that frozen chicken is less nutritious than that freshly slaughtered before cooking (Koo, 1982). Freezing and then thawing chicken is thought to destroy cells, thereby reducing nutrition (Koo, 1982). Across SE Asia summer temperatures reach 30-40 degrees centigrade and meat quickly spoils. The lack of suitable cold chains for chilled and frozen produce remains a barrier. Addressing this must be a key element of any central strategy. Central slaughtering policies should ensure that freshly killed chilled poultry is available.Loss of employment and of traditional practices were also objections. There is consistent evidence that people fear a loss more than they desire an equivalent gain (Hobfoll et al., 2003; Kahneman et al., 1982). Given a gamble between losing a dollar and gaining a dollar, most people prefer to avoid the risk of the former than gamble on the latter (Hobfoll et al., 2003; Kahneman et al., 1982). However, when the risk is of disease, most respondents initially objecting to central slaughtering felt that, if no alternative existed, then they would accept central slaughtering. Some were wise in observing that people do get used to different rules after a short period of time. Evidence shows the most consistently effective way to improve the public's health has been through legislation, to which people eventually conform. It would appear that central slaughtering of chicken is acceptable to the public providing certain conditions are met.There was a considerable knowledge deficit about AI. Two years later we found that similar levels of misunderstanding persisted in the community regarding protection against AI (Fielding et al., 2005). An important component to strategy will be the provision of more targeted information that focuses on infection pathways, including aerosols and fomites, and preventive strategies, particularly handwashing. The current avian influenza epidemic presents a good opportunity to begin implementation of a staged policy to reduce direct retail sales of live animal across Asia as an important preventive step against future epidemics. The continuing escalation of deaths in Indonesia among people living in close proximity to infected poultry illustrate this all too well.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Avian influenza (AI) has prompted widespread poultry culls and retail changes. Traditional live poultry sales can increase risk for AI virus transmission. Attitudes and risk perceptions regarding these sales influence policy. The purpose of this paper is to report Hong Kong risk perceptions and attitudes regarding live poultry sales and central slaughtering illustrating population reactions to inform policy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 25 healthy Hong Kong adults completed grounded theory qualitative interviews regarding perceptions of live chicken sales and acceptability of central slaughtering. Taped interviews were transcribed and translated in to English and coded in parallel by the authors working independently, using grounded theory approaches.\nFindings: - The paper finds that hygiene efforts reflected confusion between bacterial contamination and influenza. Hand-transmission was not recognized as a transmission pathway. Opposition to central slaughtering was based on concerns about loss of freshness, flavor, traditions and employment, and meat safety. However, opponents supported policy if it reduced infectious disease risk. Supporters emphasized improved food hygiene. There was considerable scope for further educational efforts. Opposition focused on losses rather than gains, consistent with theory. Supporters emphasized health benefits. AI transmission routes were confused, indicating need for clearer information about personal protective practices.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper is a qualitative report and awaits confirmation using a quantitative exploration. The data identified a number of barriers to acceptance of a central slaughtering policy, many of which were based on incorrect or limited understanding. Education can help remedy this.\nOriginality/value: - The paper describes perceptions among Chinese people towards a public health initiative, revealing many objections are based on misunderstandings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using factor-cluster analysis to segment patrons of casual dining establishments in the United States	[ "Consumer behavior", "Segmentation", "Involvement", "Casual dining restaurants", "Factor-cluster analysis", "Push-pull motivation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Americans spend nearly $1.8 billion daily on dining outside the home, nearly half of which is spent in restaurants across the country, with an average family spending over $2,600 dining out in 2011 (National Restaurant Association (NRA), 2012). In a study conducted by the Pew Research center (2006), 66 percent of Americans admitted eating outside the home at least once a week, and a more recent study by the NRA (2012) says that most Americans purchase food from restaurants six times per week, suggesting a significant increase from just a few years before. With growing competition in the restaurant industry, it becomes crucial for restaurants to differentiate themselves from the competition in order to appeal to broader population segments (Baltazar, 2011).\n2. Literature review: 2.1. Push and pull motivators\n3. Need for the study: Because of the importance of dining out to the typical American consumer, it is important for casual dining restaurants to understand the motivations of their patrons. Moreover, the size of the industry warrants additional investigation into the diverse segments who frequently visit casual dining restaurant. As observed in the literature, customer segmentation through factor cluster analysis has yet to be looked at among casual restaurants. Additionally, little has been reported on customer motivation and, when coupled with the involvement construct, much insight can be obtained about the needs and wants of casual dining consumers. This study has been designed to address these identified gaps in the literature, exploring push and pull motivations and involvement levels through a factor-cluster segmentation method.\n4. Objectives: This study examines the use of dissimilar segmentation methods to achieve differentiation, allowing marketers to devise new target strategies. The specific objectives of this study were as follows:\n5. Methods: 5.1. Sample and data collection\n6. Results and discussion: 6.1. Demographics\n7. Conclusion: As an alternative to more commonly used segmentation types primarily based on demographic characteristics, factor-cluster analysis offers a segmentation strategy designed to subdivide marketing groups in terms of behavioral intentions. The use of factor-cluster analysis allows for marketers to group diners based on behavioral intentions and motives rather than solely on demographics, as most previous studies have done. Additionally, factor-cluster analysis has advantages over segmenting consumers using the involvement construct because it takes into consideration elements other than just how engaged an individual is in the dining process.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Focussing on behaviors and attitudes of casual dining patrons, the purpose of this paper is to use a factor-cluster approach to segment patrons into market groups and attempts to determine if differences exist in motivational factors among segments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Factor-cluster analysis is an alternative segmentation method to more traditionally used methods based on consumer demographics. Push and pull motivators were analyzed through factor analysis to determine important groupings. Then, to identify homogenous subgroups, k-means cluster analysis was conducted to segment 559 survey respondents based on factor importance.\nFindings: Three diverse groups were identified: Fraternizing Kitchen Fearfuls, Functional Feasters, and Foodie Fanatics. The various push and pull factors appeared to affect segments differently, with each cluster ascribing various importance levels to each of the factors used in the clustering approach.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations include the use of a convenience sample and on-campus sampling. Future research should use random sampling methods and obtain surveys from sites not associated with a college campus.\nPractical implications: Though not often used in hospitality research, factor-cluster analysis can be useful to segment diners based on behavioral intentions and attributes, allowing marketers to more accurately target these diverse consumer segments. Marketing implications for casual dining restaurants are suggested.\nOriginality/value: Using the involvement construct with push/pull motivators, this study groups respondents though factor-cluster analysis. Though used in tourism studies, factor-cluster analysis has yet to be studied in the context of casual dining restaurant patrons.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Time-cost relationships of building construction project in Korea	[ "Costs", "Construction industry", "Project management", "Time‐based management", "South Korea" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Time is always one of the most important criteria of successful project management. A realistic schedule is a critical success factor that has appeared in many publications focusing on research into success factors (Fortune and White, 2006). Many construction projects in Korea have faced various problems. In some projects, delay is one of the major problems (Acharya et al., 2006). Schedule delays can cause cost overrun. Lee (2008), studied 161 construction projects in Korea, including road, rail, airport and ports, and found that the total cost of overrun was $11,986 million. According to Lee (2008), one of the key causes of cost overrun was delays.Even though the time schedule in construction projects is a factor that depends heavily on the skill of the time estimator, applied technology, the financial plan and many other factors, many attempts to model construction durations have been realised. Bromilow (1969) first developed the equation T=KCB. This expression was used to assess the project time in terms of project cost. Here, T is the project's duration from the date of site possession to practical completion, C is the final cost of the project adjusted to constant labour and material prices, K is a constant describing the general level of time performance for a unit of C, and B is a constant describing how the time performance was affected by project size as measured by the cost. Application of Bromilow's time-cost model (the BTC model) in estimating and benchmarking the project duration has been vigorous. However, some studies have suggested that application of this model is unsuitable.The objective of this paper is to carry out an exploratory study to examine the BTC model in a Korean context. The data pool is comprised of 34 completed building construction projects. The study was done to establish a model derived from the original Bromilow time-cost relationship that can be used to predict project duration or to benchmark project performance. Furthermore, an effort was also made to determine whether a better fit relationship holds in Korea.\nLiterature review: A literature study was carried out to review the related research. Since Bromilow (1969), who first introduced the time-cost relationship, many studies have been performed for either building projects or civil engineering projects around the world. Bromilow and Henderson (1976), Bromilow et al. (1980, 1988), Sidwell (1984), Walker (1995), Ng et al. (2001) and Love et al. (2005) calibrated the BTC model in Australia. Kaka and Price (1991), in the UK, and Chan and Kumaraswamy (1995) and Chan (1999), in Hong Kong, investigated the application of BTC model. Elsewhere in the world, Chen and Huang (2006) studied in the model in Taiwan, Chan (2001) and Endut et al. (2006) examined it in Malaysia, Ogunsemi and Jagboro (2006) developed the model in Nigeria, and Hoffman et al. (2007) re-examined the relationship in the USA. Moreover, Le-Hoai et al. (2009) tried to fit empirical building project data for the BTC model in Vietnam.Bromilow (1969), Bromilow et al. (1980, 1988), Sidwell (1984) and Walker (1995) found cost to be a key determinant of time performance in Australia. Ng et al. (2001), after testting and refitting the BTC model with a new set of data, compared the findings with previous studies in Australia found that the length of unit construction time changed over time periods. They concluded that there was an improvement in construction speed over the three decades from Bromilow's (1969) study. Love et al. (2005) performed an analysis with a data pool of 161 building projects between project duration, project type, and procurement method, and indicated that cost was a poor predictor of time performance. These researchers also proposed an alternative model to that proposed by Bromilow (1969).Kaka and Price (1991) applied the time-cost relationship not only to building projects but also to civil projects and found that this relationship remained the same but the coefficients of the equation changed with the project type. Kumaraswamy and Chan (1995) conducted a survey for building, housing, and civil engineering projects in Hong Kong. From their findings, they postulated that both types of project can use the model introduced by Bromilow. Chan (1999), in a Hong Kong study, revealed that the time-cost relationship is a convenient tool for construction practitioners in either public or private projects. Chan (2001) conducted a similar study for public sector projects between the late 1980s and the early 1990s in Malaysia and introduced an applicable BTC model. In another study, Endut et al. (2006) showed that there was no evidence to suggest that all project parameters follow the BTC model. The data sample of Endut et al. (2006) was collected from projects implemented from 1994 to 2005.Ogunsemi and Jagboro (2006) confirmed that Bromilow's model was not suitable for the Nigerian situation, so they developed an improved model using a piecewise model to achieve better predictive abilities. Chen and Huang (2006) showed that only private-sector projects obey the original BTC model. In this study, local government project durations followed the form of the private sector equation but they employed the floor area factor instead of the construction cost. Hoffman et al. (2007) focused on facility projects funded by the Air Force and concluded that the BTC model was significant and explained a moderate portion of the variability within the data collected.It is obvious that the parameters of BTC model are not identical over time periods, markets, and project characteristics. The fitness of the relationship proposed by Bromilow changed from market to market. This argument was presented in a previous study by Ng et al. (2001). Nevertheless, application of the BTC model in estimating and benchmarking the project duration has been vigorous. It is likely to help construction managers and professionals in their field. It would be also useful to verify if such relationship exists in Korea.\nMethodology: Empirical data about the actual time and costs of completed building projects were collected. These data were processed using a computer software package called SPSS. Projects that had missing data were eliminated from the analysis. This study applied the fundamental BTC equation developed by Bromilow (1969). The BTC model, i.e. T=KCB, was been converted into a natural logarithmic form, i.e. ln T=ln K+B ln C.The number of working days and billions of Korean won (KRW) are the units of T and C, respectively. It should be noted that, in this paper, T is the actual time from date of site possession to completion and C is the final construction cost. The next step was to inspect other time-cost forms that could improve predictability.As the empirical cost data have different points of time, all costs must be adjusted to a common base of time. A Korean building cost index (BCI) was employed in this study for the cost constant factor. All values of cost were adjusted to a base of year 2000 (BCI=100). The coefficient of determination (R2) and the adjusted coefficient of determination (adjusted R2) are used to indicate the goodness of fit of the models derived from the empirical data. If R2=1, all the data fit to regression line, and if R2=0, no linear relationship exists between observed and predicted data. Adjusted R2 is a modification of R2 that adjusts the number of exploratory terms in a model. This coefficient is useful when the calculation is based on a sample, not on the entire population.A t-test was applied to identify the cases if there was significant difference between the observed and predicted values at the 5 per cent level and regression analysis between the observed and predicted durations were used to validate the proposed models.\nSample characteristics: Data about the time and cost of completed building projects were for analysis. Data from 34 building projects were received and analysed in this study. These projects were completed within eight years from 2001 to 2008. The unadjusted contract values of these projects ranged from KRW1.2bn to greater KRW100bn. The sample was categorised into several groups as shown in Table I. The majority of the projects were located in Busan and the rest were from other cities. Of 34 projects, in the project sector category, public sector projects comprised 53 per cent and private sector projects comprised 47 per cent. In the project type category, residential projects, commercial projects and \"others\" accounted for 38 per cent, 24 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively. Regarding the tendering method, 65 per cent of data were from open tendering while negotiated projects comprised 35 per cent.Levene's tests indicated the equality of variance of construction time in each classification (all p values >0.1), and so the precondition for the ANOVA test was satisfied. ANOVA tests for sector categories (F=4.330, p=0.046), project type (F=6.113, p=0.019) and tender method (F=8.708, p=0.001) groups, respectively, resulted in significant differences between construction duration means. It was concluded that time performance was significantly different between categories, so the analysis could be conducted separately on these categories.\nModel development: In this section, analyses of the time-cost model produced by Bromilow (1969) were performed between sectors, tendering methods and project types. Alternative time-cost relationship models to the original relationship developed by Bromilow were examined. The data sample was divided into categories relating to public sector, private sector, open tender, negotiated tender, residential project, commercial project, and others.BTC model\nValidation: The models in Table VI were then validated with a t-test to detect the significant differences between the observed and predicted values at the 5 per cent level. Table VII shows that the mean observed duration and mean predicted duration were very similar, with insignificant t-test results. The last two columns in Table VII contain the root mean square errors (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of each category. In addition, Table VIII shows the regression results between the observed and predicted durations. According to Table VIII, all values of R2 are high (larger than 0.75), the intercepts are very close to 0, and the slopes are close to 1. These results show that the equations in Table VI derived from empirical data are likely to predict the project duration in terms of project cost.\nLimitations: The data were limited to a small sample of 34 building projects, which might have influenced the model's predictability. Due to the limited size of the data pool, this study could not include other types of building projects. It may also have possibly caused the moderate explanation of variance in the \"Others\" project type (adjusted R2=0.499). This moderate explanation was considered reasonable given the nature of the projects, particularly in this case when buildings vary widely in design and purpose of use (Hoffman et al., 2007). Although the models proposed in Table VI could explain more than two thirds to three quarters of the variance in the construction time, the remaining variance could probably be explained by different relevant drivers of time performance that were not incorporated in this study. Also, this purpose of this study was exploratory; it was not intended to reject or replace detailed construction scheduling techniques, as stated in Hoffman et al. (2007).\nConclusion: Data collected from 34 building projects in Korea were used to fit the BTC relationship. The results showed that the original form proposed by Bromilow could be applied to Korean building projects. An investigation into other forms of regression to find a better fitting model indicated that the CUB model could be used to forecast the duration for public, private, open tender, residential, and commercial projects, while the SCU model was suitable to predict the duration of negotiated tender projects.The performance of models differed according to the project characteristics; however, all models produce good predictability, with at least 70 per cent of variance in construction time being explained. Despite some limitations, the study could possibly be of benefit to researchers and practitioners in the Korean construction industry. The results provide a reference tool in comparison with traditional methods. It is better to use this tool in the early stages of a project.It is obvious that the formats of regression model differed according to project types, additional researches could be conducted to examine deeper into this field through overcoming the limitations presented above. Moreover the incorporation of the other factors such as technology, site-related problems, and management-related problems would be promising in building a more practical tool.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Time is an important factor in any project, especially in construction projects. Although using detailed scheduling techniques is unavoidable, a model to predict or benchmark time performance has interested many researchers. For an exploratory purpose, this paper aims to investigate the time-cost relationship proposed by Bromilow with data from construction projects in Korea.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The data are collected from 34 historical building projects in Korea. Construction cost is adjusted using a building price index. Analysis is carried out on variety of project characteristics.\nFindings: - It is shown that a time-cost relationship is applicable to the Korean construction industry. Further analysis indicates that the original Bromilow time-cost model is not the best fit regression form, and alternative models are proposed.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The data are limited to a small sample of 34 building projects. This limitation arises because of the data collection approach, which is direct contact with historical project documents supplied by construction firms.\nOriginality/value: - Models from this study can serve as a reference tool for practitioners in the early stages of building projects in Korea. The results from this study are not intended to reject or replace detailed construction scheduling techniques.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How to transform the profitability of city law firms: part II	[ "Profit", "Legal profession", "Lawyers", "Value chain", "Careers", "Change management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe objective: The objective of these articles is to demonstrate in detail precisely how any city law firm can transform its profitability.In part I, we considered relevant concepts - change preference, paradigms and different approaches to creativity. In part II, we look at the business model, \"Us\" and \"Them\", alternative careers for lawyers, change management, culture change and conclude by considering the way forward.\nThe business model: The most powerful, respected and sometimes feared support department is the Finance Department. The business models generated by Finance Directors working closely with senior management are derived from the \"A\" brain, where there is complete compatibility with the internal client. Performance measurement targets are all left brain, whether billable hours, work-in-progress, debtor days and so on. Partners, to deploy a terrible pun, can be \"whipped\" into compliance. Finance initiatives are a priority, whilst HR initiatives are much less so and those that are most successful are all left brain, e.g. training (not development), new appraisal systems, assessment centres, performance management systems and the like.In the last five years or so, nearly all city law firms have focussed more and more on implementing a left-brain business model to increase profitability, without any recognition of the need to obtain a cultural competitive edge, which is the key way of achieving their goal. This reality is further explored in the section on culture change.Also, a continuing push to make money will, if ever there is a critical mass of more enlightened and hence more profitable firms, guarantee failure in the long-term. The underlying and, usually, subconscious \"value\" behind making money is greed. If greed becomes the dominant driver (usurping client service), then Andersen's fate beckons.For partners, there is the stress of meeting these targets and the knowledge that these days they will be \"let go\" if they consistently fail or be retired early - overcome by a sudden desire to spend more time with their families and do a little bit of consultancy. Before, many of these partners would have had a pivotal role in terms of sharing their vast experience and in coaching and mentoring - vital and increasingly neglected \"C\" brain activities.For associates, they are increasingly treated as robots. Loyalty takes time to erode but once gone cannot easily be recaptured. Turnover soars, an extraordinarily expensive reality, and the wage packet becomes king in the decision as to which law firm to move too. This drives up wage costs.Finally, focussing too much on the left side of the brain denies the ability to gain a competitive edge.One of the generic issues facing all law firms is the progressive commoditization of key service areas. Increasingly these days, assuming you are on the client panel and have been invited to bid for some business, the client will say: \"You are all the same on quality - what can you do on price?\"If this trend continues, then the prize will go, in Michael Porter's terminology, to the low cost producer (Porter, 1980).Everyone who works for the low cost producer is treated as a robot\n\"Us\" and \"them\": The extent of the divide between support staff and fee-earners varies amongst law firms and those, where it is least, have reaped the benefits. Before looking at the remedies, I will share the story of a female, who was appointed in the late 1990s from a prestigious accountancy firm into a city law firm in a key marketing role. She was attracted by the significantly higher salary. She was a highly qualified professional with boundless energy and enthusiasm.She left within the year.From her point of view, she found an organisation that was in the \"dark ages\" as regards marketing, partners who were the experts in marketing and didn't listen to her exposition of the latest marketing techniques and methodologies. As a result, she could not implement any significant change and left.From the partners' point of view, they encountered a very arrogant individual, who had no understanding or empathy with their industry, no respect for their formidable intellects and tried to force on them a whole load of totally impractical and unworkable solutions.Now to the remedies, recognising that some firms are already implementing some of them:Train as widely as is practical your partners in basic strategic concepts and methodologies. For example, Michael Porter's \"value chain analysis\" has been around for two decades (Porter, 1985). On the rare occasions I have mentioned it to Mr or Ms Average Partner, their eyes glaze over. Now, what Porter says is that, if you want to provide value to clients, there is a chain of activities from the front end (fee-earners) to the back-office. The chain is as strong as the weakest link and each part is equally important in generating the desired value. Recognition of that reality would start a necessary shift in attitude amongst fee-earners.For new entrants from outside the legal services industry on the support side (particularly HR and Marketing) provide basic training (over and above the induction programmes) to encourage respect for their client base, and to learn how to match their internal client's change preferences, e.g. prepare in advance for any meeting and ensure written or verbal communication has impeccable logic and is crisp, clear and to the point - save partners' time and gains their respect. Also, where a partner is low on People Focussed, don't try to develop a relationship and bore him or her silly with details of what you did that week-end! (See section on structured thinking in Eales-White (2003)).If development takes place, then ensure it is integrated, guaranteeing the creation of a mutual admiration society.Now that the functional departments have been around for 15 years plus, promote from within.Linking to the next section, provide real careers in any of the departments for those lawyers who want them.\nAlternative careers for lawyers: These days a lot of mid-level associates don't want to make partner (quality of life reasons mainly) but want to have careers, whether in the firm with whom they qualified or in the firm they have joined as lateral hires.Also, what I increasingly find amongst one- to three-year qualifieds, which is quite common amongst the young graduates of today, is that quite a few have drifted into the law as being the best thing they could think of at the time, and then they discover that it was the wrong choice after all.Now, many lawyers, who are competent and have not been counselled out because of the up or out regime, do have jobs that are not transaction based. They have moved (and this move is primarily female) into Know How, Marketing or HR but not with any sense of legitimacy or as a career option.Also, there are quite a number of pre-dominantly male associates, who have never made partner but still make a valuable contribution in deal making or transaction management. Again this is the exception and they suffer permanent stigma as having \"failed\".Any firm that follows the advice I am about to give will, in my view, guarantee it has a competitive edge in graduate recruitment as well as increasing their profitability. The suggestions are made in the form of a conversation at appraisal time with the partner, who is their line manager.The question posed by the partner is \"How would you like your career to develop?\"1. Well I have met all the performance criteria to stay on the fast track to partner. I am keen to continue along the path to partnership.Of course2. I have not a clear answer at this stage of my career. I do know that I am very interested in the business side of things. Would you be prepared to sponsor me to complete a distance learning MBA and then we can review things once I have obtained it?Of course3. We have agreed that I am unlikely to make partner but I am a valuable asset to the practice, as I make a lot of money for the firm with the big deals I co-ordinate. I would like to move onto the starting grade of the \"whatever it is called\" position.Of course(Note. Over five years ago now, I was front-ending a project to consider ways of reducing associate turnover. At the time, the particular firm was thinking of introducing such a position - it could be \"of counsel\" or \"partner\" (salaried with no prospect of equity) or \"senior manager\" or whatever title is deemed suitable. This possibility came up in conversation with a partner, who was a highly respected heavy-weight hitter and very left brained. He was totally in favour. He said to me; \"I have a senior associate who is just as good as a partner, but has never made it. He runs big deals and makes a fortune for us. I can't pay him more than the ceiling of PS90,000. We could afford to pay him PS200,000 a year and we would still make a fortune out of him\".In fact the majority of the partnership were in favour of introducing this position, but were overturned by the vociferous minority and, for that change at that time, it required unanimity.A key point is that this position should give room for financial progression (regular increases in pay if performance criteria met) and some flexibility in career, e.g. senior manager, followed by partner (salaried only)).4. I am just not cut out to be a transaction lawyer, but I have shown interest and ability in the know-how field and I would like to switch as soon as practical into the PSL career route.Of course5. Well, I have made a clear decision. I would like to spend next year continuing in my current role, obtain my professional qualification and then, once I have obtained it, be appointed to a middle management position in marketing/IT/personnel/finance.Of course.\nChange management: The change management paradigm prevailing in City Law Firms today is the innovative one, because most of the managing and senior partners have a clear preference for innovative thinking.A typical innovative paradigm consists of the following beliefs:Change is the only constant.The pace of change is accelerating.Innovative changes are required rapidly.Need \"can do\" innovative thinkers.The consequences of this innovative paradigm are:Too many change projects initiated.Many fall by the wayside.The rush to implementation creates high levels of inefficiency.Change weariness affects staff.Adaptive thinkers are branded \"resistors\" and are undervalued and their creative thinking skills are under-utilised.The adaptive change management paradigm would be along the lines of:Change in our industry is gradual.Change should build on the status quo.Change should be directed at improving efficiency.Now, as we all know, some city law firms are in severe decline, some have ceased to be and some have been \"involuntarily\" merged/taken over. In my opinion, one key reason is that they have followed or are following an adaptive paradigm. Indeed, I have evidence to support this view. The CEO/Managing Partner of one such firm had the change preference profile shown in Table I.As regards a helpful change management paradigm for all firms, I would re-define change to mean \"making and becoming different\" and follow these two explicit beliefs:1. Change should only be introduced if it helps the achievement of a key strategic goal or \"corporate challenge\".2. Change projects should be developed and the implementation managed by a team or teams containing a mix of adaptive and innovative thinkers.With regard to the second belief, clearly, at ground level, firms would want the appropriate bias of adaptive or innovative thinking. I would imagine that all firms would want their health and safety staff to have an adaptive bias and their marketers an innovative one!\nCulture change: In this penultimate section, I considerthe importance of culture;why culture change initiatives fail; andhow to change culture effectively.The importance of culture\nThe way forward: My recommendation would be to:1. Take all key decision takers off-site for a couple of days.2. Split them into groups of five or six.3. Use an external facilitator to manage the event and to build effective working groups rapidly at the start of the event.4. Allocate the different domains, e.g. change management, culture, structure, market strategy and so on to different groups to create the explicit paradigms.5. Present and discuss to achieve consensus.6. Allocate the explicit paradigms to different groups to flesh out the strategic intent(s), time-frame to success, how to measure success and the strategic actions required in the first year.7. Present and discuss to achieve consensus.Finally, I would conclude with the point that harnessing the power of explicit paradigms is necessary for all firms and vital for those going through a merger or acquisition.Typically, what happens now is:1. First, clear business synergies are identified to justify the merger.2. Then, once the merger has been agreed, focus switches to positioning and politics amongst the partners to maximise personal power and remuneration in the newly merged entity.3. Finally, once the merger has taken place, there is a drive to produce the desired synergies, focussing on the left-brain business model, resulting in an excessive and very damaging emphasis on cost reduction and hence head-count reduction.The result is that the desired business synergies take much longer to materialise (if they do at all) than originally planned. The reason for this is that rivers of blood flow as the dominant culture before the merger consumes the sub-dominant culture and ensures staff losses are mainly from the sub-dominant culture.OK, this is a worst-case scenario - but one to which many of those readers who have \"enjoyed\" the experience will, I believe, relate.By involving all key decision makers from both \"camps\" in creating the new recipe for success and the strategy to implement it, the pain from the past is avoided and the gain from the future delivered.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of parts I and II is to demonstrate in detail precisely how any city law firm can transform its profitability. Part II examines the business model, the \"us\" and \"them\" divide, alternative careers for lawyers, change management and culture change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Sets out how the left-brain business model limits the ability to transform profitability, pushes firms towards becoming a low cost producer and denies the ability to gain a competitive advantage; also sets out a range of strategies to reduce the \"us\" and \"them\" divide that currently exists; emphasises the need to provide a range of alternative careers for lawyers rather than continue with an \"up\" or \"out\" approach; demonstrates the dominance of the innovative change management paradigm, the negative consequences on effective change management and what could be a successful balanced change management paradigm; considers the importance of culture, why culture change initiatives fail and the damage caused by the lack of any explicit change management paradigm, and what could be a successful explicit paradigm that would transform profitability.\nFindings: - The left-brain business model denies the ability to transform profitability or to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Profitability and motivation of graduates joining law firms would increase if a range of alternative careers was provided. Developing and implementing a balanced change management paradigm would radically improve change management and profitability. Creating a cultural competitive edge through implementing an explicit, team-based cultural paradigm and focusing development on the core development competences of delegation and co-ordination would transform profitability.\nOriginality/value: - The value of part II is in enabling the reader to understand the complete range of strategies to transform city law firm profitability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of online informediaries for consumers: A dual perspective about price comparison and information mediation	[ "Online informediary", "Price dispersion", "Internet", "Price comparison", "Prices", "Consumers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The explosive growth of the e-commerce has brought many new business models and different shopping environments. The various online shopping applications have made it easier for consumers to obtain information for products and prices (Chu et al., 2005). However, the search cost of product information online results in some ignorable cognitive load to consumers (Klein and Ford, 2003; Jiang, 2002; Strader and Shaw, 1999). Given these facts, the emergence and growth of online informediaries such as Mysimon.com or Pricegrabber.com have given consumers an opportunity to obtain price quotes and gather product information from registered brick-and-mortar retailers and/or online retailers, so that consumer traffic is directed to particular retailers who join them (Chen et al., 2002; Nevins and Money, 2008). Online informediaries collect and display information on a variety of products and service characteristics and list the summary information on both price and product attributes (Bock et al., 2007; Shoniregun, 2004). Online informediaries across a wide range of consumer goods including electronics, fashion, sports equipment, and even travel often feature side-by-side comparisons of features and prices. Thus, the online informediary has a positive effect on consumer welfare from the perspective that it plays an important role as an aggregator between consumers and online retailers in the e-commerce. In order words, online informediaries are valuable tools to help online retailers analyze their competitors and check out fluctuations in prices. Before the emergence of online informediaries, the point of contact for gathering price and product information was a general online retailer; however, with the advent of online informediaries, the new point of contact is shifting to online informediaries (Koelsch, 1995).Unlike typical online retailers, online informediaries provide more unbiased information on products than do online retailers (Chu et al., 2005). The product information provided by the online informediary is considerably different from the present advertising product information provided by online retailers in that it is filtered through the information provided by online retailers. Thus, the product information provided by the online informediary is more product oriented, refined, and less advertising oriented than that provided by online retailers. Of particular significance is that, depending on the online informediary's capability, the quality of product information can be filtered in different ways (Animesh et al., 2010; Ramachandran et al., 2008). For instance, an online informediary with high capability for gathering information from online retailers will provide well-organized product-attribute information and enable consumers to understand product features easily. In contrast, unorganized or omitted product attributes may be because of the poor capability of an online informediary and may result in faulty attitude toward product.From the perspective of consumers, the main difference between online informediaries and conventional online e-retailers is that consumers can grasp the market price dispersion of a product easily from the online informediary. The price dispersion of a product originates from various types of price discrimination, distribution strategies, and cost structures in the online market (Bock et al., 2007; Ghose and Yao, 2011; Pan et al., 2004). Actually, in an online informediary, there are many price lists on each product given by various online e-retailers, and consumers can easily capture the price range and the product's lowest price. Starting from Stigler's study, many studies on price dispersion have focussed on the existence and persistence of price dispersion (Lach, 2002; Clay et al., 2001; Stigler, 1961). The general definition of price dispersion is, \"The distribution of prices of an item with the same measured characteristics across sellers, as indicated by measures such as range and standard deviation of prices\" (Pan et al., 2002; Clemons et al., 2002; Baylis and Perloff, 2002; Srivastava and Lurie, 2001). Pan et al.'s (2002) study found that online price dispersion is persistent, even after controlling for e-retailer heterogeneity. In addition, the price dispersion of products in an online market exists for various products and industry categories including the online travel market (Clemons et al., 2002). While many studies on price dispersion offer much to deliberate, what is missing from the literature is a discussion of how price dispersion affects consumers' buying behavior in the online shopping.Especially, we propose that involvement can moderate the effect of the price dispersion and quality of product information on consumers' attitude toward product. Various studies show that involvement has an important moderating effect on consumer information processing (Cacioppo et al., 1986; Petty et al., 1983; Chaiken, 1980) and that the same information can be processed in different ways depending on consumer involvement. The present study thus attempts to apply the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) from social psychology domain (Chaiken, 1980; Chaiken et al., 1989) to understand how involvement moderates the effect of the quality of product information and the level of price dispersion on attitude toward product in the online informediary. The authors believe that the quality of product information and its price dispersion can affect customer product attitude, and these effects can be moderated by consumer involvement.This paper attempts to apply HSM to online informediary users' information processing along with the price dispersion issue, and to gain insight into the ambiguity surrounding two kinds of information (i.e. both product and price information). Specifically, three major issues are investigated in this study: how does the online informediary play an informational role in consumer attitude formation?, when does the difference in customer reaction to price dispersion occur?, and why do these reactions occur? To focus on these, this study shows the underlying mechanism through which product information quality and price dispersion influence consumer product attitude. An understanding of the two kinds of information affecting consumer product attitude is important not only from the theoretical standpoint of understanding the formation of attitude toward a product featured by an online informediary, but it also has substantial practical implications for both online retailer and online informediary.\n2. Literature review and development of hypotheses: 2.1 The informational role of online informediaries on attitude toward product\n3. Research design and method: 3.1 Overview\n4. Research results: 4.1 Manipulation checks\n5. Discussion and implications: The purpose of this study is to understand how the quality of product information and the level of price dispersion of a product affect attitude toward product in the online informediary and how the theoretical framework employed in this study, a HSM, are consistent with our hypotheses. Further, we suggest that price dispersion can be treated as a novel heuristic cue in the context of online informediaries. Specifically, based on HSM, we find that consumers who have different level of involvement process this heuristic in the different way; the high level of price dispersion could have a negative heuristic cue for high-involvement consumers, whereas a positive heuristic cue for low-involvement consumers. Most research on price dispersion considered price dispersion as an outcome variable, thus we try to change of our perspective by using it as an exploratory variable (Clay et al., 2001; Baylis and Perloff, 2002; Pan et al., 2004; Ghose and Yao, 2011). Further, we attempt to broaden the domain of applications of the model by demonstrating price dispersion in the e-commerce context, which proffers indirect evidence on attitude toward product rather than the validity of product information. Finally, we found a moderator between the price dispersion and the quality of product information: involvement. This reasoning might give some food for thought supported by classical research in e-commerce (Barki and Hartwick, 1989, 1994).We also find that the underlying process for attitude toward product using price-perceived risk perception. Depending on consumers' involvement, their formation mechanism of attitude toward product engages different processes, passing through either financial risk or performance risk. We showed empirically that additional processing under the lack of critical information produces a different validation process. For high-involvement consumers, their additional heuristic processing can be revitalized via attributional inferences about price dispersion, and their heightened perceived performance risk decreases attitude toward product. On the other hand, low-involvement consumers mainly engage in heuristic processing when the high level of price dispersion causes a reduction in perceived financial risk. However, their additional processing through scrutinizing product information cannot be triggered in any circumstance.Our study has several practical implications. First, this study's major results emphasize the importance of properly managing online informediaries. Generally, online informediary produces revenue from either the commission on online retailer's sales or the banner advertising on its site. In this regard, one consumer having a favorable attitude toward product could generate more traffic of online informediary, and increase the total click through online retailer's site. While the sites are somewhat dominated by the biggest retailers, small retailers are also featured on online informediaries. In many ways, this levels the playing field, allowing smaller retailers to compete on price, and help online informediaries profits in several ways. As a consequence, the examining antecedent variables of consumers' attitude toward product have weight with online informediaries in terms of its profitability.Second, our results merit some discussion toward understanding how informediary users are affected by price dispersion. More specifically, for low-involvement consumers who just want to look around in online informediary, price dispersion decrease their perceived financial risk, and it means they are anchored in the lowest price they can buy. In contrast, high-involvement consumers who want to buy a product through online informediary perceive price dispersion as higher performance risk than financial risk, so they doubt the performance of product. Consumers' involvement can be recognized by checking previous visit history, purchase breakdown transaction. It can have an effect on the consumers' experience and behavior (Koufaris, 2002). To catch with both high and low involvement together, online informediary should manage the price sets of each product by their proper strategies. One candidate strategy for online informediary is managing the distribution of price such as skewness and minimum price. In other words, online informediary may filter some price set which induce high-involvement consumers' suspicion of being a low-quality out, or highlight the lowest price which increases low-involvement consumers' attitude toward product as managing the price sets provided by online retailers.Third, our finding also indicates that good quality of product information is positively related to attitude toward product. Since price dispersion and information quality provided by an online informediary are differently processed depending on consumer involvement, they can be used strategically as a new channel bridging consumers and online retailers. For example, online informediary could provide the suitable information formats in supporting various online shopping tasks. Previous study suggested that when there is a match between the information format (list vs matrix) and the shopping task (browsing vs searching) in the online shopping, consumers can search the information space more efficiently and have better recall of product information (Hong et al., 2004). Applying this study to our research, it is appropriate for online informediary in the way that the list format of product information better supports low-involvement consumers who mainly have browsing tasks, and the matrix format of product information facilitates high-involvement consumers who mainly engage in searching tasks.Finally, the empirical findings from this research suggest better strategic recommendations to participating online retailers. If online retailers sell products to consumers, then it may be worthwhile to participate online informediaries on a regular basis. Also they could track buying rate through online informediaries, and capture the level of competitions. To promote one retailer's sales via online informediary, one online retailer may adjust their price listings to fit in a reasonable price range at the informediaries' marketplace. For that reason, this study suggests that online informediaries are valuable tools to help online retailers analyze their competitiors and check out fluctuations in prices. Moreover, online retailers registered in online informediaries could participate to continual improvement in the quality of information. Recall that online informediaries' informational role - providing refined information - increases consumer attitude toward product, thus online retailers could monitor the product information to increase consumers' product attitude along with online informediaries. Online informediaries could compensate some commission on online retailer's sales for improving the product information, and this is a win-win situation all around. In addition, if online retailers want to sell the specialized products, they could increase sales by using some special online informediaries that focus on products such as books, perfume, and even wine. Specialist online informediaries (e.g. for perfumes; cheapperfumeexpert.com, for DVD; find-dvd.co.uk, and for wine; wine-searcher.com) enable online retailers to sell their products to the relatively purposeful consumers.Although this study considers a limited number of factors and one single product category, we believe that we explored an important new factor in the context of informediaries and when and how they affect consumer information processing. Because the purpose of this paper is primarily to investigate the role of the informediary in scope, we would not explore the effects of brand and previous eWOM issues (Park et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2011; Cheung et al., 2008; Steffes and Burgee, 2009). Future studies may explore further what other factors are involved in consumers' attitude toward product using online informediaries, and it will be necessary to generalize through other product categories.The present study has several limitations. First, online retailers' reputation was not considered. Since consumers are not always aware of the reputation of an online retailer and an online retailer's distribution of a product is hard to manipulate, the effect of retailers' reputations could be explained by additional experiments. Second, in this study, the quantity of product price sets was fixed to avoid other effects. It may be possible that the quantity of price sets provided by an informediary could indicate the popularity of a product. Further research considering this issue should be conducted. Third, we did not consider the number of online retailers that offer the product. It reflects the level of competition among retailers, thus could be another heuristic cue affecting consumers' product attitude. We simply expect that the more competition among online retailers, the better for the consumer in terms of opportunities to buy variously, however, we call for future research that examines minutely the level of competitions in the context of online informediary. Finally, involvement was manipulated by differing consumers' elaboration likelihood using different role-playing. Another factor such as consumers' expertise might affect their elaboration. From this point of view, consumers' expertise should be considered in future studies. In spite of these limitations, the result described in this study shows the effect of price dispersion in the online informediary along with several implications. Therefore, further study of online informediaries will be necessary to allow for generalizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to find the role of online informediaries on the perspective of price comparison and information aggregator. Specifically, the author wants to explain how the level of product involvement moderates the effect of price dispersion and product information quality on attitude toward product in online informediaries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The data for this study are obtained from a three-way factorial experimental research design. Data were collected from 258 college students who have an experience with an online informediary. Combining ANCOVA and regression analysis enables the study of attitude formation and yields encouraging results.\nFindings: - The study finds that high-involvement consumers focus on systematic cues (e.g. product attributes) in evaluating product quality. However, when they feel that their initial search yields insufficient results, causing them to perceive more product performance risk, they search for additional cues (e.g. price dispersion). Low-involvement consumers are mainly affected by price dispersion, which is a heuristic cue, and they evaluate the product more favorably under a high (vs low) level of price dispersion.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is one of the first to consider and empirically test a heuristic-systematic model for attitude toward product in online informediaries. It also uniquely tests the level of price dispersion to discern the important motivating factors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Personal characteristics, trust, conflict, and effectiveness in marketing/sales working relationships	[ "Channel relationships", "Marketing", "Sales", "Trust", "Conflict" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Cross-functional integration involves different work units interacting and exchanging work, resources, and assistance (Ruekert and Walker, 1987a). Importantly, repeated interactions between members of separate work units can lead to the development of \"cross-functional relationships\" (CFRs), which are crucial to the internal coordination and efficient operation of firms. Moreover, CFRs are integral to Porter's (1985) value chain, internal marketing (e.g. Ballantyne, 1997), market orientation (e.g. Kohli and Jaworski, 1990), and customer relationship management (Ryals and Payne, 2001; Winer, 2001). The performance of individual managers, work units, and the firm itself can therefore hinge on the effectiveness of a firm's CFRs. This topic is therefore of significant academic and managerial importance (Houston et al., 2001).Our paper focuses on individual-level factors that affect CFRs between marketing managers and sales managers. We do this because CFRs are established and enacted at the individual level (see Ruekert and Walker, 1987a). Also, while structural and bureaucratic methods of coordination can also affect CFRs, models emphasising these factors are likely to be \"undersocialised\", i.e. overstating the rational economic aspects, and understating the social aspects of these relationships (see Granovetter, 1985).Accordingly, the purpose of our research is to test a model of individual-level influences on the marketing/sales CFR. Specifically, we use two different forms of interpersonal conflict as dependent variables (dysfunctional conflict and functional conflict), along with a third dependent variable - perceived relationship effectiveness. Our predictor variables are also conceptualised and measured at the individual-level. These include two forms of interpersonal trust (cognition- and affect-based trust), the extent of the marketing manager's sales experience, the level of the marketing manager's formal education, and the degree of psychological distance between the marketing manager and the sales manager.In this study we examine the effectiveness of CFRs, and regard a CFR as effective if there is low dysfunctional conflict, high functional conflict, and high perceived relationship effectiveness. We chose these outcome variables for various reasons. First, the effectiveness of CFRs is known to be strongly positively related to hard outcomes such as new product success (e.g. Souder, 1981, 1988). Second, although dysfunctional conflict has received significant attention in the literature, and its detrimental effects are well known (Menon et al., 1996), a growing body of literature suggests that not all conflict is dysfunctional (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003; Jehn, 1995; Reid et al., 2004), and that under some circumstances, conflict can be beneficial (Amason, 1996). Understanding these forms of interpersonal conflict is therefore important when studying cross-functional team effectiveness (for a synthesis of current models of conflict, see Jehn, 1997).An important aspect of our model is that we treat the two trust dimensions as variables that mediate the effects of three personal characteristics on three dependent variables. We do this because of the growing recognition of the importance of trust in building effective relationships of all types, whether buyer/seller (e.g. Morgan and Hunt, 1994), or cross-functional (e.g. McAllister, 1995).The context of this research is marketing/sales CFRs, which we chose because it is among the most important of marketing's CFRs, but one of the least explored (Dewsnap and Jobber, 2000). Also, this CFR is vital because the sales function implements marketing's strategies at the operational level (Strahle et al., 1996). However, despite our narrow research context, we believe our findings are generalisable to other marketing CFRs (e.g. marketing/IT), and to non-marketing CFRs (e.g. manufacturing/purchasing).In developing our model, we draw on the interaction approach as our main theoretical framework. The interaction approach is based on exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and game theory (Axelrod, 1984) and focuses on understanding how factors such as interpersonal trust predict satisfaction, performance, and relationship continuity in various contexts, e.g. buyer-seller and channel relationships (see Anderson and Narus, 1990; Moorman et al., 1993; Morgan and Hunt, 1994), and cross-functional relationships (e.g., Moenaert et al., 1994; Ruekert and Walker, 1987a).We make four contributions to the literature with this study. First, the majority of previous studies examine conflict at higher levels of analysis, for example interdepartmental conflict (e.g. Barclay, 1991; Maltz and Kohli, 2000; Menon et al., 1996; Morgan and Piercy, 1998); however, we focus on interpersonal conflict. This distinction seems important because the antecedents and consequences of conflict at these two levels of analysis may differ.Second, existing studies of marketing relationships only tend to examine the dysfunctional form of conflict, ignoring the functional form. While the literature contains much theoretical discussion relating to functional conflict (e.g. Baron, 1991; Tjosvold, 1985), few studies have measured or modelled this construct. Although Menon et al. (1996) examined interdepartmental functional conflict, and other studies (e.g. Rawwas et al., 1997) have measured an individual's functional conflict and its effect on their satisfaction with a selling firm, we could locate no studies that have examined the antecedents and consequences of functional conflict exclusively at the individual level. Our study therefore adds to the scant evidence on this topic.Third, in contrast to most other studies examining interpersonal trust within CFRs, we treat trust as a bi-dimensional construct consisting of cognitive and affective components. This is important because there is good evidence that these two forms of trust are qualitatively different (e.g. McAllister, 1995).Fourth, with the exception of a recent study by Dawes and Massey (2005) examining the impact of structural, individual, and communication variables on dysfunctional conflict in the marketing/sales CFR, most of the literature on this CFR is anecdotal, conceptual, or normative. So by quantifying the amounts of interpersonal trust, dysfunctional and functional conflict, and perceived relationship effectiveness, we provide empirical findings to begin to fill this gap in the literature.Our paper is structured as follows. First, we present our conceptual framework, in which we define the key constructs and justify their inclusion in our model. Next we specify our structural model and develop our hypotheses. We then describe our research methods, and report the results of our empirical tests. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research, its limitations, and possible topics for future research.\nConceptual framework: Drawing on the interaction approach, our model, which is depicted in Figure 1, employs two interpersonal trust constructs, cognition- and affect-based trust, to explain functional conflict, dysfunctional conflict, and perceived relationship effectiveness. Our two trust constructs are in turn predicted by three personal characteristics of the focal marketing manager:1. the marketing manager's level of formal education;2. the marketing manager's sales experience; and3. the degree of psychological distance between the marketing manager and their counterpart sales manager.A review of the literature (e.g. Gilbert and Tang, 1998; Gill et al., 2005; Mayer et al., 1995) indicates that many personal characteristics could have been chosen as antecedents of trust. However, an important objective of our research was to build on the scant empirical literature in the specific area of the relationship between marketing and sales. Accordingly, the inclusion of the three independent variables in our study was largely based on the research by Dawes and Massey (2005) which had focused on explaining dysfunctional conflict in this relationship. More specifically, the research by Dawes and Massey (2005) directly linked four personal characteristics - level of formal education, the marketing manager's sales experience, marketing training, and psychological distance - to dysfunctional conflict. Here, however, we link three of these personal characteristics to trust. We omitted marketing training as Dawes and Massey (2005), along with research by Maltz and Kohli (2000), found that this variable did not help explain marketing's conflict with other functional units.\nDependent variables: Perceived relationship effectiveness\nExplanatory variables: Interpersonal trust\nHypotheses development: Effects of cognition-based trust and affect-based trust on perceived relationship effectiveness\nMethod: In order to provide a common general context for their responses, marketing managers were asked to focus on a specific, major cross-functional project in which both they and the sales manager, and staff from at least two other functional areas, were heavily involved during the previous 18 months. Most projects (55.7 per cent) related to new product development, while the remainder included: promotion and public relations (19.6 per cent), business development (10.3 per cent), internal review of strategy and structure (5.1 per cent), and miscellaneous projects (9.3 per cent). On average, the mean budget for the project was Aus$1.031 million. Moreover, the modal values for the number of functional units and number of people involved in the project were four and eight, respectively.Data collection\nResults: Descriptive findings\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\nLimitations and directions for future research: A major limitation is our reliance on cross-sectional data to draw inferences about CFRs which develop and are enacted over time. Future research could utilize a longitudinal research design to investigate these phenomena. Another limitation relates to our data consisting of self-reports from marketing managers. Ideally, data should be collected from both members of the dyad, and future research should therefore examine this CFR using data obtained from marketing managers and sales managers from the same firms.The measurement properties of functional conflict and psychological distance is another limitation, as the AVE for psychological distance was only 0.54, whereas for functional conflict it was only 0.57. While functional conflict is widely discussed in the management literature, and in some marketing literature, measures of this important construct are rare. To the best of our knowledge, the measures we used to capture this construct have been used only once in a previous academic study (Menon et al., 1996), and have therefore not had the benefit of repeated testing and refinement. Similarly, the \"psychological distance\" construct has not been widely used or tested in academic studies. Future research could therefore improve on our analysis by incorporating better measures of this construct.Another suggestion for future research relates to our choice of the antecedents to trust. We selected three personal characteristics which were based on Dawes and Massey's (2005) study of the marketing/sales CFR. However, future research on the marketing/sales CFR could draw on the wider literature on intra-organizational relationships. For example, such research could follow the suggestions of Gill et al. (2005) and examine the usefulness of constructs such as propensity to trust, and intentions to trust, as antecedents of cognition and affect-based trust. Moreover, it would be interesting to examine whether demographic characteristics (e.g. age, gender) affect the two forms of interpersonal trust. Such research would then build on the work of Gilbert and Tang (1998), who investigated the effects of various demographic characteristics on organizational trust.Finally, our sample consists of just 101 marketing managers and the response rate was only 25.2 per cent. Although these sampling characteristics compare favourably with other studies, future researchers should aim to obtain a larger sample size of marketing managers, plus a higher response rate, in order to have greater confidence in the generalizability of the research findings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The key objective of this research is to test how two trust dimensions (cognition-based trust and affect-based trust) mediate the effects of three personal characteristics (psychological distance, the marketing manager's sales experience, and the marketing manager's relative level of formal education) on the following outcome variables: dysfunctional conflict, functional conflict, and perceived relationship effectiveness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Drawing on the interaction approach, the paper develops a conceptual framework to better understand the nature of the working relationship between marketing managers and sales managers. In total, it develops and test 13 hypotheses. Partial least squares was used to assess the validity of the measures, and to estimate the structural model. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from 101 marketing managers in Australia.\nFindings: - The hypothesized model has high explanatory power and it was found that both trust dimensions strongly affected all three outcome variables. However, though both forms of trust were positively related to perceived relationship effectiveness, affect-based trust had the strongest impact on this outcome. The results also confirm that both cognition- and affect-based trust have negative effects on dysfunctional conflict, and strong positive effects on functional conflict. In addition to these new findings, the paper shows that while psychological distance has a strong negative impact on cognition-based trust, it has no impact on affect-based trust. Moreover, it was found that when marketing managers had greater levels of sales experience, it increased their affect-based trust but it had no impact on cognition-based trust. Finally, the marketing manager's relative level of formal education had no impact on either forms of trust.\nOriginality/value: - This is one of a handful of studies to employ a large-scale empirical approach to examine the neglected cross-functional relationship between marketing and sales. Also, it is one of the few studies to examine the effects of cognition-based trust and affect-based trust on performance outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Automated valuation models for real estate portfolios: A method for the value updates of the property assets	[ "Market value", "Real estate", "Mass appraisal", "Genetic algorithms", "Automated valuation model", "Market rent" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the last decade, an unpredictable volatility has involved the real estate market. A recent study of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Urban Land Institute (2015) reports that over 60 percent of the market operators consulted believe that, in many cases, the properties are overpriced compared to their real market value. Several operators, in particular, recognize the risk of a new real estate bubble (Ubs, 2016). According to these experts, after the numerous corrective actions in real estate sector following the economic crisis generated by the US subprime mortgages, in some key financial centers property values have hugely increased generating an unreasonable overvaluation, especially in relation to possible sudden changes in demand and/or interest rates.\n2. Aim: As regards the assessment of the market value of properties that compose real estate portfolios, in this research an automated valuation model is proposed and tested. The model is obtained through an innovative method called Evolutionary Polynomial Regression (EPR) that uses multi-objective genetic algorithms to search those model expressions that simultaneously maximize the accuracy of the data and the parsimony of the mathematical functions. In particular, the technique does not require the exogenous definition of the mathematical expression and the number of parameters that fit better the data collected, since it is the iterative process of the genetic algorithm that returns the best solution.\n3. Background: The potential of use of mass appraisal techniques is testified by the numerous applications in the reference literature (Pagourtzi et al., 2003).\n4. Case study: A sample of 122 office properties characterized by medium and large size located in the city of Milan (Italy) and sold in the period between 2004 and 2015 has been adopted for the experimentation of the method proposed.\n5. Method: The econometric method implemented is a hybrid data-driven technique, called EPR.\n6. Conclusions: The economic and financial events of recent years have determined a great ferment in the field of valuation theories and relative techniques, not only at the academic level, where new approaches to value creation have been deepened, but also at the operative level, due to the evident ambiguity and approximation of the results obtained through the traditional techniques. This phenomenon has involved, on the one hand, the need to define uniform and shared methodological and operative rules, to be collected and systematically presented in the International Valuation Standards; on the other hand, it has generated a higher sensitivity of the public opinion and the operators in the \"culture\" of the real estate market. The growing mobility of real estate investments--both for development and management projects--requires high professional skills capable to ensuring the \"fairness\" of the value estimated, on the basis of valid information for quality, quantity and relevance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: As regards the assessment of the market values of properties that compose real estate portfolios, the purpose of this paper is to propose and test an automated valuation model. In particular, the method defined allows for providing for objective, reliable and \"quick\" valuations of the assets in the phases of periodic reviews of the property values.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Aiming at both predictive and interpretative purposes, the method, based on multi-objective genetic algorithms to search those model expressions that simultaneously maximize the accuracy of the data and the parsimony of the mathematical functions, is applied to a sample data of office properties characterized by medium and large size, located in the city of Milan (Italy) and sold in the period between 2004 and 2015.\nFindings: The model obtained could be an integration of the canonical methodologies (market approach, income approach, cost approach) implemented in the assessment of the market values of properties, so as to provide an additional tool to verify the results. In particular, the inclusion of economic variables in the model is consistent with the need to reiterate the valuations, contextualizing them to the locational characteristics and to the current property cycle phase in the specific area.\nPractical implications: The model can be applied by all the operators involved in the periodic reviews of the values of property portfolios: from real estate funds' insiders, in order to monitor the values obtained through the canonical approaches, to the public institutions, such as the revenue agencies, in order to ensure the fair payment of the taxes through the updating values of the properties according to the actual and current market trends.\nOriginality/value: The method proposed can be a valid support for all public and private entities that hold significant property assets and that, for various reasons (periodic reviews of the balance sheets, sales, enhancement, investment, etc.), require cyclical updated values of the properties. The automated valuation model developed can be used for the assessment of \"comparison\" values with the estimates values obtained by other assessment techniques, in order to ensure a further monitoring tool of the results from the subjects involved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Foresight and "grand challenges" within research and innovation policies	[ "Foresight", "Grand challenges", "Research and innovation policy", "Research prioritization", "Forward planning", "Innovation", "Ireland" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Foresight methods have been used widely around the world to enable the research and innovation system to assess the implications of new technologies and wider socio-economic changes (Martin and Johnston, 1999; Rappert, 1999; Saritas et al., 2007; Georghiou and Cassingena-Harper, 2011). Such approaches are often built into prioritisation exercises, where national governments formulate strategic responses that take into account the existing and anticipated developments in the sciences and technology. Policy-makers and politicians are keen to find an answer to the challenging question of where they should be investing their resources to produce economic, environmental and social dividends.Economic competitiveness has been - and remains - a key objective of investment in research and innovation programmes. However, another factor has emerged in the European context, which has had an influence on the research and innovation agenda: the concept of \"grand challenges\" or \"grand societal challenges\". Foresight has long been used for social purposes. However, with the increasing acceptance of grand challenges, Foresight is expected to make a contribution to orienting innovation towards broader issues (Georghiou et al., 2011; Konnolaa et al., 2011). The provenance and scope of the grand challenges are discussed in the article, below; they are broadly understood in terms of themes such as energy, resources, health and security. There has not been a clear distinction between the terms \"grand challenges\" and \"grand societal challenges\", although \"societal\" has been used in some of the initiatives to emphasise the social scale and impact of the challenges (European Commission DG Research, 2010). This article will use \"grand challenges\" as the main term for these developments.This article presents some recent experience of how national research and innovation systems use futures to construct responses (such as new investment priorities) to emerging global challenges and opportunities. It relates the case of foresight or future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) used for research and innovation policy agenda-setting, conducted in Ireland. It describes the methodological approach taken by the project in identifying research implications of global drivers and trends, which combined analysis of global changes with a participatory process involving national stakeholders. The exercise was designed to assess the implications of global changes for research. A relatively novel aspect, which evolved during the course of the exercise, was the focus on translating future-oriented knowledge (from drivers and trends) into grand challenges for the national research and innovation system. Several issues are addressed that are relevant for those interested in foresight, research and innovation, and grand challenges. These include the means by which grand challenges are constructed or interpreted, how research and innovation systems respond to grand challenges, and re-conceiving or re-framing questions for the research and innovation system.The method used in the case study is to examine outputs from the foresight project conducted on global drivers and trends - and their (national) implications for research and enterprise. As one of the research consulting team that carried out the work on behalf of the lead organisation, I also draw on insights from the participatory events convened as part of the work programme. The article takes the structure that follows. The second section sets the scene, and briefly traces the provenance and meaning of grand challenges. Section 3 presents the methodology used in the Irish case study. The main results from the foresight exercise on global drivers, grand challenges and research responses are then presented in section 4. Finally, some conclusions and implications for research and practice are offered - particularly on how foresight addresses the \"challenge of grand challenges\" in research and innovation systems. Grand challenges refresh and re-cast some important questions for Foresight and research and innovation policies.\n2. Grand challenges - the emergence of a new frame of reference: In the public funding of research, there are often tensions between two basic principles:1. the intrinsic benefits of pure or \"blue skies\" research; and2. a more explicitly problem or impact-oriented approach.In the European Union - as in many other parts of the world - research, technology and innovation policies and programmes have adopted, to a large extent, an instrumental expectation - that investments will address particular problem areas and boost economic competitiveness. It could be argued that the main narrative of EU Research, Technological Development and Innovation (RTDI) programmes hitherto has focused on economic competitiveness in an increasingly globalised business environment. Although the focus on economic competitiveness is still important, it appears that there is now a new type of narrative - of grand (societal) challenges.The shift to a larger frame of reference could be attributed in part to the broader sustainability narrative, which has become stronger (broader and deeper) since the 1990s. Climate change and environmental consciousness have reinforced a concern with the global and holistic. In this framing, the grand challenges are a manifestation of the extent to which sustainable development has become increasingly embedded politically, in policy terms, and socially. In a more tangible sense, the European Union Sustainable Development Strategy (2006) - although not couched at the time in precisely the same language of \"grand challenges\" - set out a similar framework for addressing the critical themes in achieving a more sustainable EU and planet.The seven challenges identified by the EU's SD strategy are:1. climate change and clean energy;2. sustainable transport;3. sustainable consumption and production;4. conservation and management of natural resources;5. public health;6. social inclusion, demography and migration; and7. global poverty and sustainable development challenges.Within this general backdrop, there emerged a focus on \"grand challenges\" and within the European Union. Specifically, the issue identified was the effective marshalling of research, technological and innovation funds to support broad goals for Europe. The Lund Declaration of 2009[1] (the outcome of a conference on \"New Worlds - New Solutions\" held under the Swedish Presidency of the EU) crystallised several important aspects related to the mobilisation of scientific, technological and innovation knowledge geared towards large challenges. It calls on European institutions and Member States to focus European research on the major challenges facing our world.According to the Lund Declaration:European research must focus on the Grand Challenges of our time moving beyond current rigid thematic approaches. This calls for a new deal among European institutions and Member States, in which European and national instruments are well aligned and co-operation builds transparency and trust.Identifying and responding to Grand Challenges should involve stakeholders from both public and private sectors in transparent processes taking into account the global dimension.The Lund Declaration emphasises importance of problem solving - that the \"challenges must turn into sustainable solutions in areas such as global warming, tightening supplies of energy, water and food, ageing societies, public health, pandemics and security. It must tackle the overarching challenge of turning Europe into an eco-efficient economy\".The Lund Declaration followed the work of an Expert Group Report on the European Research Area, which emphasised that it needed to address a series of Grand Challenges (European Commission DG Research, 2008, p. 5). The same focus on grand challenges and the increasing shift towards addressing societal needs was identified in the first report of the European Research Area Board (European Commission DG Research, 2009). A further milestone in the explicit recognition of directing research and innovation resources towards grand challenges came with the publication of a report on the European Technology Platforms by DG Research (European Commission DG Research, 2010).In summary, over the last five years or so, an increasingly consensual view has emerged that Europe needs to direct its investment and support in RTDI towards addressing grand challenges- in areas such as energy, resources, demographic change, health and security.\n3. Irish foresight project on global drivers and their implications for research and innovation: context and methodology: 3.1 Introduction to the case study analysis\n4. Project results: from drivers and trends to grand challenges: 4.1 Catalogue of global drivers and trends - from the national context\n5. Conclusions: With the increasing recognition of the concept of grand challenges over recent years, the research community - amongst others - has been challenged to re-think the way in which it serves the broader needs of society. Some of the major themes frequently cited in this regard are climate change, energy, food and demographic changes. The Lund Declaration and other initiatives have provided high-level impetus for actors in the research and innovation system to take stock of the way in which they develop and implement their activities. Foresight initiatives play an important role in this process by challenging the research and innovation communities to consider the impacts of changes in conditions, resources and other factors over different time horizons.In the context of several European initiatives to promote approaches to dealing with grand challenges, this article introduces a country-level case study using a foresight approach to look at the implications of global drivers and trends for Ireland, particularly in terms of the challenges and opportunities that they presented. During the course of the exercise, the appointed research and consulting team was asked to translate the knowledge generated (global drivers and trends and their national implications) into a set of grand challenges for Ireland. Although this is not a final assessment of how the project has been used to inform research priorities, there are some important implications for foresight practice in RTDI and grand challenges.Assessing how the research and innovation systems can address grand challenges can be done through bottom-up approaches. Although it was not originally designed in this way, the foresight exercise undertaken in Ireland became a participatory, bottom-up process that assembled grand challenges by combining knowledge on drives and trends with national context and insights. The method described in this paper is but one example of how work on grand challenges could be refined and adapted at a national level. An alternative approach would be to begin by explicitly addressing the grand challenges as they have been broadly defined in several European initiatives and transpose them to the national context. One potential disadvantage of the latter approach is that it may limit discussions and neglect potentially important national RTDI issues. Part of the value of foresight in further work on RTDI policy in national contexts is to provide forward-looking assessments that are bottom-up, reflecting the implications and meaning of grand challenges for individual countries.5.1 Scale - the European versus the small country context\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper seeks to discuss how foresight is used to understand the implications of global changes for research and innovation policies. It aims to present a recent Irish case study that identified grand challenges in the national context, with their implications for research and innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The foresight project is described and provides knowledge and analysis for a broader, national research prioritisation exercise. The paper analyses the implementation of the Irish foresight exercise and the main outputs generated. It connects the results of the project with the literature on foresight, innovation and grand challenges.\nFindings: - The emergence of grand challenges within research and innovation policy discourse in Europe has refreshed key questions for foresight theory and practice. Although many grand challenges have relatively clear implications for research and innovation (investment), others do not. A bottom-up, participatory process produced a broader set of grand challenges.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The concept of grand challenges is still relatively new.\nPractical implications: - Not all research and innovation priorities are linked to grand challenges. National policies need to take account of grand challenges whilst continuing to support other research and innovation needs.\nOriginality/value: - The paper introduces a novel approach for identifying grand challenges and responses within the research and innovation system through a bottom-up process.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An ethnocentric perspective of foreign multi-brand retail in India	[ "Indian consumers", "Consumer ethnocentrism", "Foreign multi-brand retailers", "Future buying intention", "Negative attitude", "Organized retail" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As of 2017, out of the top 30 developing economies of the world, India is ranked the most attractive country in which to invest in organised retail (A.T. Kearney, 2017), up from its 2nd rank in 2016 (A.T. Kearney, 2016) and 15th rank in 2015 (A.T. Kearney, 2015). Though the emergence of modern trade in India is relatively new (Sengupta, 2008), \"India's huge market potential, fast growth, and improved ease of doing business\" (A.T. Kearney, 2016, p. 3) have made the country an attractive avenue for investment in the organised retail space. However, the effect of the entry of foreign multi-brand retailers (FMBRs; e.g. Walmart, Carrefour, and Tesco) is vigorously debated in India today, mainly due to a perception that these retailers might have an adverse impact on the livelihoods of the multitude of shop owners of small shops (Tandon, 2016). It is also important to note that the \"swadeshi\" (\"of one's own country\") movement, which encouraged the consumption of indigenous products and boycott of imports, was a cornerstone of India's freedom struggle and remains part of the Indian consciousness (Varman and Belk, 2009). Defined against India's history of colonisation, the embedded notion of swadeshi \"highlights the Indian people's favor of self-sufficiency and suspicion of Western interests\" (Fuchs and Glaab, 2010, p. 16). Thus, the swadeshi narrative, which came into existence at a particular historical juncture, continues to permeate the Indian consciousness even today (Chatterji, 2016; Varman and Belk, 2012), further legitimising the concerns of small Indian retailers. In essence, it is wrong to assume that FMBRs will necessarily enjoy easy success once they enter the emerging market. This paper explores the perception of Indian consumers towards FMBRs and the possible impacts such perceptions might have on future purchase behaviour with respect to these retailers once they launch operations in India.\nTheoretical development and hypotheses: This paper draws upon relevant literature examining the various determinants and outcomes of CET and formulates hypotheses that are empirically tested. The study considers the effect of two demographic variables - age and education level - on consumers' CETFR levels, and the impact of CETFR on FBIN through NATT. Figure 1 presents the conceptual model as envisioned in the hypothesis development process.\nMethods: Sampling and data collection\nFindings: Validation of scale adaptation (CETFR)\nDiscussion: Theoretical contribution\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the ethnocentric tendencies of Indian consumers towards foreign multi-brand retailers (FMBRs), and the influence that such ethnocentrism has on their attitudes towards, and future purchasing behaviour from, these international retailers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper used a mall intercept method with a randomised data collection process to secure data from 119 organised retail shoppers in a major metropolitan Indian city. The analysis was carried out using analysis of covariance, bootstrapping mediation, multiple regression analysis, and Johnson's relative weight analysis.\nFindings: Two main results are as follows: concern for livelihoods of small retailers and a perception that earnings of foreign retailers are unjust are revealed as the most significant drivers of negative attitude towards FMBRs, and although high ethnocentric customers have a strong negative attitude towards FMBRs, they are open to the idea of making future purchases of goods that are not available with small retailers, from the foreign retail outlets.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study sample is from a single metropolitan city, albeit one which serves as a miniature version of the Indian society. As a limitation, the results might not be generalisable to small, non-metropolitan Indian towns.\nPractical implications: These results provide valuable input regarding the marketing strategy and sustainability of foreign retailers planning to launch operations in India. For example, FMBRs should position themselves as not being in competition with existing small retail shops by offering a different array of products. Further, younger and more educated Indians are the least ethnocentric towards FMBRs, thus making them an attractive target segment.\nOriginality/value: Extant research has studied consumer ethnocentrism of Indian consumers towards foreign brands and products, but not towards FMBRs. This paper attempts to fill that research gap.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Consumers' mental model of food safety for fresh vegetables in Nairobi: A field experiment using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique	[ "Africa", "Food safety", "Consumer research", "Mental model", "Health", "ZMET" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Many studies have examined how consumers perceive aspects of food safety and how different product characteristics influence choice of food, or consumer view of food, in relation to its safety. However, few have focused on understanding the content of consumers' mental models in terms of the personal meaning underlying their feelings of involvement in relation to food safety. Such knowledge could help understand the subjective personal relevance of food safety as a concept. Mental models are broader than cognitive structures (beliefs) and include representations of attitudes, emotions, symbols, choices, goals, anticipated experiences, sensory experiences and social context in relation to how consumers perceive themselves (Christensen and Olson, 2002).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1. ZMET\n3. Methods and materials: 3.1. Recruitment and data collection\n4. Results: 4.1. Effects by treatments\n5. Discussion and conclusions: This study examined the cognitive and emotional content of mental models in relation to consumers' perception of food safety at traditional urban market outlets in a developing country context. The aim was to provide insights into the actual meaning representation of food safety. Traditional outlets, with typically poor hygiene and sanitation, represent a significant point of purchase for many urban and peri-urban consumers in developing countries. Understanding the meaning representation of food safety can provide input to interventions aimed at reducing food safety hazards, which could be crucial for the adaptation of local food systems to contribute to food security. For this reason, the ZMET method was applied to explore key drivers of consumer behaviour.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers' perception of food safety for vegetables at traditional urban market outlets in a developing country context and test whether curiosity-motivated information acquisition and personal control over choice of stimuli influence consumer involvement, resulting in more differentiated mental models.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) in standard and modified form was used to develop consumers' mental models for food safety.\nFindings: The cognitive content and structure of aggregated consumers' mental models were identified and mapped. The maps included negative and positive meanings, indicating a need to tackle the hygiene problems prevailing in most traditional markets. ZMET generated a more differentiated map when people were empowered with a camera to collect stimuli.\nResearch limitations/implications: Using ZMET to understand food safety perceptions avoids consumers being led in their responses, views and feelings about food safety.\nPractical implications: Policy, regulatory frameworks and marketing actions by value chain actors in the fresh vegetable subsector should give priority to tackling the hygiene problem prevalent in most traditional markets in developing countries.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides novel needs-driven theoretical and practical insights into the actual meaning representation of food safety, which actually drives consumer thoughts and behaviour. Making use of a camera in the collection of self-provided images for the ZMET interview led to higher levels of involvement and further differentiation of mental models.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Malaysian corporate tax rate and revenue: the application of Ibn Khaldun tax theory	[ "Malaysia", "Ibn Khaldun", "ARDL approach", "Corporate tax rate", "Laffer curve" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Malaysian Government's budget for 2014 stated that the corporate income tax rate in Malaysia would be reduced to 24 per cent in 2016 from the rate of 25 per cent that had prevailed since 2009. The reduction aimed at reducing the cost of doing business in Malaysia and in turn encouraging more investment in the country by attracting foreign investors. This was also in line with the policy of gradual reduction in corporate income tax rates that started in 1988.\nIbn Khaldun's theory on taxation - the Laffer curve: The Laffer curve, based on the economic theory developed by Arthur Laffer, depicts the relationship between the rates of taxes and the amount of tax revenue accruing to the government in a given economy. The term \"Laffer curve\" was coined by Jude Wanniski, an associate editor with The Wall Street Journal, in 1974 after a meeting with Arthur Laffer wherein issues related to USA's tax rates were discussed (Laffer, 2004). Arthur Laffer argued that \"there are always two tax rates that yield the same revenues\" (Wanniski, 1978). Thus, the curve is designed to depict two extreme ends when the level of tax revenue for the government will be zero. These are when the tax rates are 0 and 100 per cent. Therefore, the government must find an appropriate tax rate at which the level of tax revenue is at its maximum. This is called the optimal tax rate. While the actual shape of the curve is still a mystery (Irvin, 2013), it is generally believed to have an inverted U-shape with each tail end representing the two extreme ends.\nRelated literature: The negative relationship between tax rate and tax revenue has been well documented in the literature. For instance, Trabandt and Uhlig (2011) compared the tax structures of the USA, the European Union (EU-14) and individual European countries using the Laffer curve. Empirical evidence was documented for the relevance of the curve in understanding the tax structure and the possibility of its usefulness in the determination of optimal level of tax rates for these countries.\nMethodology and data: Time series data are highly recommended when it comes to investigating the effects of any change in tax rate. Laffer et al. (2012) noted, in agreement with Mankiw and Matthew (2006) and Matthews (2010), that selection of a meaningful time frame is critical, and ideally it would be one long enough for all effects of a tax change to work through the economy.\nEmpirical results and discussion: The examination of the unit root properties of the series is the first part of the empirical analysis. The traditional unit root tests - including the Said and Dickey (1984) or Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips and Perron (1988) or PP - were applied to examine the non-stationarity of the four series. The results which are reported in Table I reveal that the null of non-stationarity cannot be rejected when the variables are in level. However, the null hypothesis can be rejected once the series are in the first differences. Having ascertained that the variables are integrated of order equation (1), the cointegration test was performed.\nConclusion and policy implications: The positive relationship between corporate tax rate and corporate tax revenue and the determination of the optimal corporate tax rate show that the policy of gradual reduction in the corporate tax rate had a positive impact on the economic growth of Malaysia. It means that the lower corporate tax rate actually reduced the cost of doing business in the country. However, lowering the corporate tax rate further from the optimal level may also lead to decreases in corporate tax revenue. While this result has valuable policy implications, care must be taken in its generalization for a number of reasons. First, it should be noted that the policy was not implemented in isolation. Several other tax incentives were also given to corporate taxpayers, and therefore such incentives should be controlled for to have more insightful evaluation of the policy. Second and most important, there is a need to investigate whether the increased cash flow available to firms through the reduction in corporate tax rate adds value to the firms. It will be necessary to investigate whether the firms' stakeholders benefited from the increased cash flow or whether there was managerial diversion of firms' resources.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The present study aims to investigate the impact of the reduction of the corporate tax rate on corporate tax revenue. The study adopts the theory of taxation by Ibn Khaldun, depicted as the Laffer curve.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper analyses time series data for the period 1996 to 2014 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach.\nFindings: The paper finds that the corporate tax rate has a dual effect on corporate tax revenue over the study period. It shows an inverted U-shape relationship between the corporate tax rate and corporate tax revenue and reveals that the optimal tax rate is 25.5156 per cent. Inferentially, a positive relationship exists between the two variables prior to the optimal tax rate, and a negative relationship prevails afterwards. A further test of causality shows a long-run unidirectional causality between corporate tax rate and corporate tax revenue.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, it should be noted that the policy was not implemented in isolation. Several other tax incentives were given to corporate tax payers, and therefore, such incentives should be controlled for to have a more insightful evaluation of the policy. Second and most important, there is a need to investigate whether the increased cash flow available to firms as a result of the reduction in the corporate tax rate adds value to firms. It is also necessary to investigate whether firms' stakeholders benefited from the increased cash flow or was there managerial diversion of firms' resources.\nPractical implications: The policy of gradual reduction of the corporate tax rate in Malaysia is suspected to have a positive impact on the productivity of Malaysian companies, which has contributed to an increase in corporate tax revenue. It also has a positive impact on the economic growth of the country. It means that the lower corporate tax rate has actually reduced the cost of doing business in the country.\nOriginality/value: The benefit of increased corporate tax revenue needs to be investigated empirically for insightful policy evaluation. In Malaysia, however, such investigation is close to non-existent to the best knowledge of the researchers. Thus, the present study aims at investigating the impact of the policy of gradual reduction of the corporate tax rate on corporate tax revenue over an 18-year period from 1996 to 2014.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
System dynamics approach to analysing the cost factors effects on cost of quality	[ "Quality costs", "Modelling", "Business analysis", "Organizational processes" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Juran (Nanda, 2005) defines quality as \"fitness for use\"; it is also defined as \"conformance to requirement\" by Crosby (1979). According to the Deming's definition, \"Quality is uniformity with respect to a correct target\" (Deming, 1986). It is clear that cost is one of the main factors to achieve quality. The concept of quality was first introduced by Juran. He proposed that, \"there is a direct correlation between quality and profitability\" and advocated the measurement of costs on a periodic basis as a management control tool. Therefore, better quality results in lower costs and higher profitability (Kazaz et al., 2005).Nowadays, it is accepted that quality costs are the costs incurred in design, implementation, operation and maintenance of a quality management system; resources committed to continuous improvement; product and service failures; and all other necessary costs and non-value added activities required to achieve a quality product or service. Measuring and reporting these costs should be considered a critical issue for any manager who aims to achieve competitiveness in the market (Schiffauerova and Thomson, 2006a).Cost of quality (COQ hereafter) analysis links improvement actions with associated costs and customer expectations, and this is considered as the coupling of reduced costs and increased benefits for quality improvement. Therefore, a realistic estimate of COQ and improvement benefits - which is the tradeoff between the level of conformance and non-conformance costs - should be considered as an essential element of any quality initiative, and thus, a crucial issue for managers (Schiffauerova and Thomson, 2006b). So the achieved result from the quality cost analysis can be used in all aspects of the process.This study proposes a comprehensive framework for COQ analysis in which the system dynamic approach is constructed and the appropriate attributes are specified to provide guidance for COQ system evaluation. The cost factors are categorized into four groups, and an integrated analysis of cost of quality based on a usable system dynamics model is proposed to analyse the total cost of quality and achieve customer satisfaction. Causal loop diagram and Vensim software are also used to analyse these factors. To demonstrate the practical viability of the proposed method, an empirical case in Iran is described.\n2. Background and literature review: The definition and categories of quality costs may be given differently by various authors. They use the terms \"quality costs\", \"costs of quality\", \"eco-nomics of quality\", \"poor quality cost\", \"price of non-conformance\" or \"cost of poor quality\". According to Sower et al. (2007), while the cost of quality was originated by Shewart and others in the 1930's, the modern quality cost system was developed out of the work of Joseph Juran and others in the 1950's. In the 1960's, the American Society for Quality's (ASQ) - Quality Cost Committee - refined the technique and promoted its uses (Bottorff, 1997). In the 1970's and 1980's Philip Crosby's work helped to popularize the cost of quality (COQ) concept beyond the quality professions (Beecroft, 2001). According to Crosby, The only performance measurement is the cost of quality, which is the expense of non-conformance (Crosby, 1979). According to Crosby, \"quality is free\". What costs money is failure to do things right the first time. Juran (1951) agrees in his definition of quality costs as \"the sum of all costs that would disappear if there were no quality problems\". Juran and Crosby were also leaders in the movement to report quality information in dollar terms in order to attract the attention of top management. The objective of a COQ system is to find the level of quality that minimizes total COQ (Schiffauerova and Thomson, 2006b).To collect quality costs, a firm needs to adopt a framework to classify costs. The \"Feigenbaum\" classification system is almost universally accepted (Plunkett and Dale, 1988). Juran divided the failure costs into two other categories: internal failure and external failure (Juran and Gryna, 1970). Feigenbaum (1974) identified three cost categories: prevention, appraisal, and failure (cited in Plunkett and Dale, 1988).COQ is usually understood as the sum of conformance plus non-conformance costs, where cost of conformance is the price paid for prevention and appraisal (detection) of poor quality, and cost of non-conformance is the cost of poor quality caused by product and service failure (internal and external failure cost) (Schiffauerova and Thomson, 2006b).Two conceptual models are presented for the cost of conformance. Each model shows three curves: failure, prevention plus appraisal, and total cost. As pointed out, the first model depicted in Figure 1 represents the conditions that prevailed during much of the twentieth century. A major aspect of this model is the infinite costs required to attain perfection.Figure 2 represents what has been termed the right costs or par value model. The optimal quality has been shifted to the 100 per cent conformance level. In contrast to the older model, the total cost curve indicates less high conformance costs (Weheba and Elshennawy, 2004).The COQ system, which was developed has been formalized into four categories of costs (Campanella, 1990; Sower et al., 2007):1. Prevention costs are \"the costs of all activities specifically designed to prevent poor quality in products and services\". This is a proactive approach to defect prevention rather than defect correction and removes the idea of quality efforts essentially being reactive in efforts to \"put out fires\". Prevention expenses can be recovered many times over through reduced appraisal and failure costs.2. Appraisal costs are \"the costs associated with measuring, evaluating, and auditing products or services to assure conformance to quality standards and performance requirements\". Appraisal techniques are used for the verification and validation. These techniques help organization to increase in quality with lower cost.3. Internal failure costs are \"the costs resulting from products or services not conforming to requirements or customer/user needs (which) occur prior to delivery or shipment to the customer\".4. External failure costs are \"the costs resulting from products or services not conforming to requirements or customer/user needs (which) occur after delivery or shipment of the product, and during or after furnishing of a service to the customer\". External failure can include loss of failure business through customer dissatisfaction (Tsai, 1998; Kazaz et al., 2005).Some examples of quality costs in each COQ category are (Roden and Dale, 2001; Ramdeen et al., 2007; Ramudhin et al., 2008):1. Prevention costs: recruiting, quality audits, supplier assurance, quality training, marketing research, quality engineering, and equipment maintenance.2. Appraisal (detection) costs: quality audits, production control, process acceptance, product acceptance, prototype inspection, inspection of material, inspection of production, and continuous supplier verification.3. Internal failure costs: scrap, rework, retesting, re-inspection, design changes, failure analysis, downtime caused by defects, and downgrading caused by defects.4. External failure costs: product recall, customer service, product liability cost, complaint adjustment, warranty cost, discount due to defects, reputation loss cost, and lost sales.There are also correlations between the maturity of a quality system and the distribution of quality costs. Some studies have been conducted to determine the actual effectiveness of COQ systems and the degree of maturity, and total costs model relates the distribution quality costs to the maturity of the quality system, as shown in Table I (Sower et al., 2007)Measuring quality\n3. System dynamics: The concepts of system dynamics were developed in 1961 by Dr Jay W. Forester and were described in his book Industrial Dynamics. In this revolutionary book, Forester proposed scientifically modelling the complex behaviour of the business world using a unique simulation strategy. The term \"Industrial dynamics\" was renamed \"System dynamics\" to emphasize the use of this methodology in other fields besides business (Forrester, 1961). Coyle (1996) defines system dynamics as:System dynamics deals with the time dependent behaviour of managed systems with the aim of describing the system and understanding through qualitative and quantitative models, how information feedback governs its behaviour, and designing robust information feedback structures and control policies through simulation and optimization.Clark (1990) states, \"System dynamics is the study of processes through the use of system and how they can be modelled, explored, and explained\". System dynamics focuses on the feedback behaviour of variables within the closed loop of the system. All the variables inside the system, and some exogenous ones, influence each other's behaviour. When it is difficult to predict the behaviour of system's key variables and the system is relatively complex, System Dynamics can be used. Clark states, \"In their transient states, such systems are virtually impossible to solve mathematically, so they are usually simulated\". By analysing the relationships and feedback behaviour of the systems key elements, it is possible to understand the systems behaviour and influences.Causal loop diagram\n4. Proposed methodology: A quality cost study can reveals considerable information about the health of a quality system. It tells whether the system produces good quality at the right price. If not, it indicates where improvement opportunities exist. COQ has a direct effect on quality levels of products and customer satisfaction. But what is important is to consider in which area of costs to improve effectiveness in the organization.To analyse the components of quality cost, it is necessary to know how the four cost features are interrelated. For example, a quality control manager might want to know how much of an increase in appraisal costs is necessary to reduce the external failure costs by some amounts or how much an increase in prevention costs will reduce others. Such information is necessary when the quality control manager has to justify quality investments through cost-benefit analysis.Several tools such as Pareto, fishbone, histogram have been used in order to prioritise and analyse COQ, but these tools do not pay attention to the dynamic relations of the cost factors. Prevention, appraisal, internal and external failure costs affect one another, and investment on one of these components can change the other cost factors. Thus, a dynamics approach is needed to analyse the effect of cost factors and to determine the most appropriate cost assignment to achieve customer expected quality level. System dynamics uses causal loop diagram as a dynamic instrument in order to determine the relation of variables and to analyse the cost factors.The relations of cost factors, customer satisfaction, and quality level of product are shown in Figure 3. Costs of quality directly affect quality level of products and customer complaints, and these two factors have effect on customer satisfaction.Cost of quality has also direct effect on production unit cost and indirect effect on profitability. Figure 4 represents the details of different types of COQ.In Figure 5, cost factors are depicted. As shown, different types of costs dynamically affect other cost factors. For example, prevention and appraisal costs affect internal and external costs.\n5. Study of test case: This study was carried out in a small scale manufacturing industry, which is called Sabet Print Company. The quality cost elements have been identified under the categories of prevention, appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs. This list just acts as a guideline for quality costing. Most elements in such lists are not relevant to a particular industry, while many elements identified by practitioners are peculiar to an industry or a company. The required data were collected by using questionnaire technique, which was used to obtain an indication of the knowledge of quality cost within the industry. Departmental interviews were also carried out with the various staff of engineering, quality control department, marketing heads, etc. to find out which element(s) of quality cost occurred within each department. Finally, a departmental study was done to examine some of the cost elements in detail. The collected data are given in Table II.The information in Table II was submitted to Vensim Software and the problem was simulated. In Figure 6 the structure of costs component is presented.Confidence in system dynamics\n6. Results: According to Table II, which is used in the software, modelling is done for the coming years (until 2015). As shown in Figure 8, if the organization does not pay any cost or pay a little on prevention and appraisal costs, total cost of quality would be very high. It is obvious that not paying these costs is not logical and will have great effect on total cost of quality through failure costs. In contrast, increasing the prevention and appraisal costs will decrease the total COQ. As depicted in Figures 9(a) and 9(b), prevention costs have the most effect on total COQ than appraisal costs. Therefore, customer satisfaction and profitability can be attained through this methodology.According to Figure 9(c), both prevention and appraisal costs affect total cost of quality simultaneously more than the case where one just increases. If prevention costs gradually increase, but the appraisal costs do not changed (appraisal costs are equal to $10,000), failure costs and especially external failure costs decrease. This shows that the quality system attains the highest maturity level (see Table I).\n7. Conclusion: In this paper the cost factor was analysed in order to achieve the expected quality level of customer and a model was developed to show the effect of cost factors. To study the proposed methodology in a real case, an empirical study was also described to demonstrate the practical viability of the proposed method.Based on the effect of quality costs on the level of customer satisfaction, it has been proved that increasing prevention costs and decreasing external failure costs can directly improve the level of customer satisfaction. The result of this paper demonstrated that the effect of prevention costs in decreasing total quality cost is more than the effect of appraisal costs. The results of this research are compatible with the definitions of both Juran (1951) and Schiffauerova and Thomson (2006b).With the use of system dynamics it is determined that increasing both prevention and appraisal costs simultaneously will have more effect on decreasing failure costs and total quality cost. This framework is comprehensive because it considers all the factors and details. These factors are available in all industries; however, their amount and importance may differ. This study suggests that organizations consider COQ as an integrated approach and long-term process, and focus on the cost factors in order to improve customer satisfaction. This study can be very useful to organizations attempting to identify those characteristics that may provide an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and total cost of quality.\n8. Suggestions for further studies: For further research the following suggestions are given:* Evaluating more detailed cost factors in the model.* Since it is needed to calculate quality of costs, it is feasible to determine their relationship by probabilistic or regression methods without any need to data table.* It might be feasible to determine the most effective factor of failure costs on total costs of a firm.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for analysing the influence of costs of quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A model is designed by using a causal loop diagram and is analysed through a system dynamics approach. The model simulation is prepared by Vensim software.\nFindings: - Prevention and appraisal costs are the two effective cost factors. The model represented in this paper reveals that prevention costs have the most effect on total cost of quality and especially external failure costs. Hence, in order to achieve the customer expected quality level, prevention and appraisal costs should be considered.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Calculating and measuring non-conformance costs is very difficult in organizations and some errors and mistakes may happen.\nPractical implications: - A system dynamics approach can analyse and measure the amount of prevention cost effects on cost of quality in different organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The proposed methodology demonstrates the use of an innovative approach in developing a cost of quality concept and constructing a practical framework for system dynamics in a real case.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategic alignment of IT and human resources management in manufacturing SMEs: Empirical test of a mediation model	[ "SME", "Strategic alignment", "HRIS capabilities", "Strageic human resource management", "HR function performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the last two decades, manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been facing multiple management challenges in the face of globalization, including the strategic human resource management (SHRM) challenge (Lepak and Shaw, 2008; Mitchell, Obeidat and Bray, 2013; Pascual Ivars and Comeche Martinez, 2015; Wu et al., 2015). In the context of a \"talent war\" linked to an aging workforce and with the emergence of Web 2.0-based technology such as social media, the need to recruit, retain and develop human resources (HR) requires these firms to perform better in terms of SHRM (Huselid et al., 1997; Barney and Wright, 1998), and in particular to deploy and use information technology (IT) for this purpose (Olivas-Lujan et al., 2007). Furthermore, the IT-enabled management of HR, through the deployment and use of human resource information systems (HRIS) by firms, is meant to improve the performance of their HR function (DeSanctis, 1986; Maier et al., 2013) and allow it to play a more strategic role in the organization (Haines and Lafleur, 2008; Barrett and Oborn, 2013). We must thus question the potential effect of HRIS technology adoption and assimilation on the HR function's capacity to improve its performance (Parry, 2011; Iqbal et al., 2018), and thus better meet the strategic needs of manufacturing SMEs in this regard (Schalk et al., 2013). Noting that our research focus is on the HR function as the unit of analysis, the term \"HRIS\" is used throughout the paper rather than the more generic \"e-HRM,\" given that HRIS technology is meant to enable this most important functional area of the organization and HRIS applications are used by HR managers for SHRM purposes (Bondarouk and Ruel, 2012; Johnson et al., 2016).\n2. Conceptual framework: The conceptual framework of this study is primarily founded upon the RBV and especially upon a CBV with the concepts of organizational resources and competences that pertain to both SHRM and HRIS. Managers can create an economic rent for their firm by being more effective than their rivals at selecting HR and IT resources or by being more effective in deploying such resources (Makadok, 2001). As it applies to both the HR function and the IT function in the organization, the CBV thus focuses on the managers' role in selecting, developing, combining and deploying HR and IT resources rather than on the firm's positioning in its business environment (Colbert, 2004; Wade and Hulland, 2004). Organizational capabilities refer to the firm's \"capacity to deploy\" its resources and \"are based on developing, carrying, and exchanging information through the firm's human capital\" (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993, p. 35). These capabilities may be developed and hence observed both in functional areas (such as HR and IT) and at the corporate level (Grant, 1996).\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Given prior empirical studies on the complementarity between HR and IT resources (Aral and Weill, 2007; Khatri et al., 2010) and on the adoption and consequences of HRIS in SMEs (Bondarouk et al., 2017), the capability-based research model to be empirically validated in this study is presented in Figure 1. Aiming for both clarity and parsimony (Bacharach, 1989), this model is essentially founded upon Jiang, Lepak, Han, Hong, Kim and Winkler, 2012; Jiang, Lepak, Hu and Baer's (2012) mediation model-based meta-analysis of the effects of SHRM practices (in the form of HPWS) on proximal (human capital) and distal (voluntary turnover) strategic HR outcomes. Considering HRIS capabilities to be a mechanism that mediates the influence of SHRM on organizational outcomes, we thus aim to test the hypotheses that emanate from the research model.\n4. Research method: 4.1 Research design and sampling\n5. Results: The adoption rate for the HRIS applications and technologies used by the sampled manufacturing SMEs is presented in Table II.\n6. Contribution and implications: The necessity to complement non-IT resources, such as HR, with IT resources in order to maintain and improve the firm's competitive position is an idea that is conceptually and practically deep-seated in the body of IS literature that is founded upon the CBV. The present study has thus contributed to furthering our knowledge of the complementary effects of two types of strategic HR and IT capabilities upon the HR functional performance of manufacturing SMEs, namely HRIS capabilities and HPWS capabilities. This study's results suggest that the mediation approach taken here constitutes a viable theoretical alternative to the universalistic approach and to other strategic alignment perspectives such as the configurational approach to capture the complementary effect of IT resources and HR in order to understand the firm's choices in matters of SHRM and to explain the performance of its HR function (Delery and Doty, 1996; Delery, 1998).\n7. Limitations and conclusion: The results of this study must be interpreted with some caution due to its inherent limitations. Our research findings and conclusions should thus be considered in view of the relatively small sample size, response rate and the usual limitations associated with survey research. Given the nature of the sample, its representativeness in relation to all SMEs limits the scope of these results. Furthermore, while we have verified the absence of common method and non-response biases, there may yet be biases related to the perceptual nature of some of our data (Gerhart et al., 2000). While comparing the strategic HR and IT management of firms in the same industry (manufacturing in our case) should be viewed as a legitimate approach, we acknowledge that the sample's homogeneity also limits the generalizability of our findings to organizations in other sectors and industries, and especially in the services sector. The research model should also be extended in future research to include factual measures of HR functional performance (such as voluntary turnover) and organizational performance, as well as potential strategic determinants of HRIS other than HPWS capabilities (such as the SME's entrepreneurial, strategic and market orientations).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Within the manufacturing sector, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face specific challenges with regard to their strategic HRM capabilities. In this context, an emerging issue for both researchers and practitioners regards HR information systems (HRIS), i.e. the deployment of strategic IT capabilities to enable the firm's high-performance work system (HPWS) capabilities and thus improve the performance of its HR function. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by using a capability-based mediation perspective to study the strategic alignment of HR and IT.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey study of 206 manufacturing SMEs was realized and the data thus obtained was analyzed through structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Results confirm that the HRIS capabilities of SMEs influence the performance of the HR function through their strategic alignment with the HPWS capabilities of these enterprises.\nPractical implications: The results suggest that the manufacturing SMEs most active in developing their HRIS capabilities while developing their HPWS capabilities are most likely to develop a competitive advantage through the improved performance of their HR function. This is especially important in a time when firms of all sizes across the globe are waging a \"war for talent,\" and are enabled to do so by their strategic use of IT.\nOriginality/value: The results of the study constitute a valid basis for prediction and prescription with regards to the strategic alignment of human and IT resources.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Wisdom and narcissism as predictors of transformational leadership	[ "Transformational leadership", "Emotional intelligence", "Wisdom", "General mental ability", "Narcissism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Wisdom is an individual virtue that has been characterized as \"the pinnacle of insight into the human condition and about the means and ends of a good life\" (Baltes and Staudinger, 2000, p. 122). Wise people have been described as well-balanced, interpersonally competent, concerned with the well-being of themselves, others, and society, and as possessing superior knowledge, judgment, and advice-giving skills (Ardelt, 2004; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000; Sternberg, 1990). While wisdom is an ancient topic that has been discussed by philosophers and theologians for many centuries, behavioral researchers have become interested in wisdom only relatively recently, particularly in the context of increased research on lifespan development (Baltes and Smith, 1990; Clayton and Birren, 1980) and in relation to the emerging positive psychology movement (Peterson and Seligman, 2004; Schwartz and Sharpe, 2006).\nWisdom: We conceptualized wisdom in this study as a multidimensional construct in accordance with the Berlin wisdom paradigm (Baltes and Smith, 2008; Baltes and Staudinger, 1993, 2000; Gluck and Baltes, 2006; Mickler and Staudinger, 2008; Staudinger and Gluck, 2011). Paul B. Baltes and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin were among the first researchers to thoroughly define and operationalize wisdom as a psychological, individual difference construct, and the Berlin wisdom paradigm is probably the most well-known, best validated, and systematically researched theory of wisdom to date (Staudinger and Gluck, 2011). In fact, Ardelt (2004) referred to the paradigm as \"the unofficial gold standard in research on wisdom\" (p. 281). A number of alternative theoretical frameworks and measures for researching wisdom have been proposed in recent years (e.g. Ardelt, 2004; Greene and Brown, 2009; Grossmann et al., 2010; Jeste et al., 2010; Sternberg, 1998; Webster, 2007; Yang, 2008a, 2011); however, these approaches have been far less researched than the Berlin paradigm and some of them have been criticized for their sole reliance on self-report questionnaire methodology (Staudinger and Gluck, 2011). In contrast, the Berlin paradigm relies on a more objective interview and rating procedure to measure wisdom, in which participants are asked to \"think aloud\" about a difficult and challenging life problem. Their transcribed responses are subsequently rated on several wisdom dimensions by independent experts.\nTransformational leadership: Transformational leadership is a leadership style that involves leaders motivating their followers through idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass, 1985; Bass and Avolio, 1994). Briefly, idealized influence describes the degree to which the leader is confident, focusses on higher-order ideals, and acts as a role model. Inspirational motivation refers to the leader energizing followers by being optimistic and communicating a motivating vision. Intellectual stimulation involves the leader challenging followers to think in novel ways. Finally, individualized consideration describes leader enhancement of followers' personal and work-related development (Antonakis et al., 2003; Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). Consistent with previous research (Bass et al., 2003; Kearney and Gebert, 2009), we focussed in this study on overall transformational leadership as its dimensions have been shown to be highly positively interrelated and to form a higher-order construct that is meaningful to investigate (Avolio et al., 1999; Bass et al., 2003). Research on the validity of transformational leadership has shown that transformational leaders enhance followers' aspirations and align followers' goals with those of the organization (Bono and Judge, 2003). In turn, followers are motivated to perform above and beyond expectations (Podsakoff et al., 1990).\nTheory and development of hypotheses: A number of frameworks exist in the literature that have attempted to theoretically link wisdom and leadership (Bigelow, 1992; Jones, 2005; McKenna et al., 2009; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011; Rooney et al., 2010; Yang, 2008a). In an early review on the topic, Bigelow (1992) proposed that leaders may expand their wisdom by moving to longer term strategies, learning from experiences, expanding their practical and meta-knowledge, and gaining a sense of what is important in life. Jones (2005) discussed the relationship between wisdom and leadership based on the Innate to Intent theory. According to this theory, wisdom is an awareness of the true means and ends of human activity that guides leaders to make better decisions based on an improved knowledge of their values, priorities, and goals. More recently, Yang (2008a, b, 2011) defined wisdom as a process consisting of three components: cognitive integration, embodiment of ideas through action, and positive effects for self and others. Using a series of semi-structured interviews, Yang (2008b) found that wisdom manifested itself through striving for the common good, achieving and maintaining life satisfaction, personal development, effective problem solving, and resilience when facing adversity. In addition, Yang (2011) found that reports of wisdom often involved leadership behavior, which was operationalized as formal or informal transactional events that occur between a leader and their followers.\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: The descriptive statistics and correlations of the study variables are shown in Table I. The mean values of the five wisdom dimensions ranged from 2.00 to 3.47 on a seven-point scale, and the dimensions were not or moderately significantly intercorrelated. Rich procedural knowledge about life was positively and significantly related to emotional intelligence (r=0.23, p<0.05). Emotional intelligence was the only variable that had a significant bivariate correlation with colleague ratings of transformational leadership (r=0.31, p<0.01).\nDiscussion: Over the past two decades, developmental researchers have proposed that wisdom is an important asset in the construction of a good life and a valuable resource in the quest for excellence (Baltes and Smith, 2008; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000; Staudinger and Gluck, 2011). However, despite an increased interest in wisdom in the organizational literature and the suggestion that wisdom may contribute to outstanding leadership (e.g. McKenna et al., 2009; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011), no empirical study on the relationship between well-established measures of wisdom and leadership has so far been reported in the literature. This study addressed this issue by examining relationships between five dimensions of wisdom as conceptualized by the Berlin wisdom paradigm (Baltes and Staudinger, 2000) and transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). In addition, we proposed two hypotheses on relationships of narcissism with wisdom and transformational leadership.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Although leadership and organizational scholars have suggested that the virtue of wisdom may promote outstanding leadership behavior, this proposition has rarely been empirically tested. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between transformational leadership, narcissism, and five dimensions of wisdom as conceptualized by the well-established Berlin wisdom paradigm. General mental ability and emotional intelligence were considered relevant control variables.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Interview, test, and questionnaire data were obtained from 77 employees of a high school and from two or three colleagues of each employee. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression analyses.\nFindings: After controlling for general mental ability and emotional intelligence, narcissism and the wisdom dimension relativism of values and life priorities were negatively related to transformational leadership, and the wisdom dimension recognition and management of uncertainty was positively related to transformational leadership. The other three wisdom dimensions, rich factual knowledge about life, rich procedural knowledge about life, and lifespan contextualism, were not significantly related to transformational leadership.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations to be addressed in future studies include the cross-sectional design and the relatively small and specialized sample.\nPractical implications: Tentative implications for leadership training and development are outlined.\nOriginality/value: This multi-method and multi-source study represents the first empirical investigation that examines links between well-established wisdom and leadership constructs in the work context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Reducing information asymmetry with ICT: A critical review of loan price and quantity effects in Africa	[ "ICT", "Information asymmetry", "Financial access", "O55", "G20", "G29", "L96", "O40" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There have been very few papers that study information sharing for financial access. Most specifically, we are interested in studying the gains that can be made from information sharing in terms of enhanced access to financial services in the context of the African banking sector, where investments are increasingly needed in order for the continent to develop. When compared to the rest of the world, the African continent has more room for information and communication technology (henceforth ICT) penetration. Moreover, there are growing concerns that there is excess liquidity in African banking institutions, due primarily to the growing problems of information asymmetry in the sector. A substantial bulk of the current literature on African business emphasizes the need for more domestic private investment because, for the most part, the structural adjustment programs initiated over the past decades have failed to generate the much needed external finance (Tuomi, 2011; Rolfe and Woodward, 2004; Darley, 2012; Bartels et al., 2009).\n2. Stylized facts, background and theoretical underpinnings: 2.1 Stylized facts and background\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Empirical results: 4.1 Presentation of results\n5. Conclusion and future research directions: This study has investigated loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with ICT in a panel of 162 banks consisting of 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011. The empirical evidence is based on GMM and instrumental QR. The following trends are uncovered.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with information and communication technology (ICT), in a panel of 162 banks consisting of 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks in 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011. Misspecification errors associated with endogenous variables and unobserved heterogeneity in financial access are addressed with generalized method of moments and instrumental quantile regressions.\nFindings: The findings uncover several major themes. First, ICT when integrated with the role of public credit registries significantly lowered the price of loans and raised the quantity of loans. Second, while the net effects from the interaction of ICT with private credit bureaus (PCBs) do not improve financial access, the corresponding marginal effects show that ICT could complement the characteristics of PCBs to reduce loan prices and increase loan quantity, but only when certain thresholds of ICT are attained. The authors compute and discuss the policy implications of these ICT thresholds for banks with low, intermediate and high levels of financial access.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the few studies to assess how the growing ICT can be leveraged in order to reduce information asymmetry in the banking industry with the ultimate aim of improving financial access in a continent where lack of access to finance is a critical policy syndrome.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Interlending and document supply: a review of the recent literature: 84	[ "Open access", "Big deals", "Document supply", "Finch report" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nDocument supply: It is clear that document supply is under considerable threat and a substantial report on UK academics and researchers confirms the impact of greater access directly through library purchased electronic material and freely available material on the web - \"Freely available materials are seen to be having a real impact on access. Academic libraries collections are most likely to be seen as an important source for providing journal articles and books for research and teaching purposes, but following closely in second place are freely available materials online. When an item is not held in the library collection, the highest share of respondents report that they look for a freely available version online, while the second highest share gives up, both of which outrank using the library's interlending or document supply service. Disciplinary groupings differ noticeably in several cases in their access practices. Overall, a third of respondents report that they can almost always get satisfactory access to needed journal articles not immediately available through their institution.\" However, the report also notes that \"Roughly 3 out of 5 respondents indicated that they often or occasionally use library-provided inter-library loan or document delivery services to access journal articles and monographs\" (Housewright et al., 2013). It is not so easy to compare this with the equivalent US report so it will be interesting to read their further report that will compare these two, due to be published in the summer of 2013 - see the next Literature Review! The (UK) survey received 3,498 (7.9 per cent) replies which is pretty good for this sort of survey.\nUsage: This Literature Review has often commented upon the numerous studies that emphasise the increased journal usage that arises with the easy access to electronic journals but how little attention is paid to most journals being used little or not at all (typically well over 90 per cent of usage comes from 50 per cent of titles in a collection). Article level metrics provide the opportunity to dig deeper into this skewed phenomenon which is the justification for document supply. One can reasonably assume that article usage is skewed in a similar Pareto like distribution. A useful primer discusses article level metrics, and describes how they are deployed in various databases - PLOS, Scopus, Nature, HighWire, BioMedCentral (Tananbaum, 2013). Perhaps we will soon learn the proportion of articles published that are downloaded - I suspect even less than the proportion of titles that are unread which will make a further dent in the carapace of the Big Deals.\nPurchase on demand: Purchase on demand is now routine at many (mainly) US libraries and a further study confirms that, \"As with prior studies, library patrons were significantly better predictors of circulation than were librarians or approval plans. However, librarians proved to be significantly better predictors than were approval plans.\" The author notes that PDAs originating in an ILL request circulate twice as much as book vendor approval plans. A detailed and robust study that repays study and is freely available (Tyler et al., 2013)\nBig Deals: Big Deals continue to survive the criticism that they receive. However, the University of California and the California Digital Library has withdrawn from its license with Taylor & Francis after a careful assessment of the value for money being offered. It is interesting that T & F refused to compromise on price reductions. \"Converting our Taylor & Francis license to local campus subscriptions and eliminating many lower-value titles will save the Libraries nearly 45 per cent over our previously projected costs, with significantly higher savings at some campuses.\" (California Digital Library, 2013) The announcement also includes a link to the detailed analysis that they carried out. It is unfortunate that no details were given of the ILL service to be offered - perhaps no different from its existing but it will be interesting to see if there is any impact on the ILL service as a result of cancelling some hundreds of titles.\nOpen Access: The underlying trend towards open access (OA) continues apace - and this is before the UK Finch report has begun to bite; the US legislation FASTR may not succeed but the Obama directive on OA should see an impact by the end of 2013 and existing mandates are being toughened up.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the literature concerning interlending and document supply.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the reading of over 130 journals and related material.\nFindings: Some interesting findings on document supply including an important Outsell report on document suppliers and some research showing that whilst users expect and often make do with what is immediately available, nonetheless over half of the responders use document supply services. Some substantial pieces are reviewed on Big Deals including the dramatic growth in deposits as a result of toughening up the NIH mandate and some further articles on the UK Finch report on open access. The significant developments in Open Access are reflected once again in a lengthy section in this review.\nOriginality/value: The paper represents a useful resource for librarians and others concerned with interlending and document supply as well as such related matters as resource sharing and open access.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Entrepreneurial intention in the time of crisis: a field study	[ "Economic crisis", "Opportunity", "Entrepreneurial intention", "University students", "Necessity", "L26", "M13", "J24", "H52" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Entrepreneurship is an important source of economic growth (Audretsch et al., 2006; Mitra, 2008; Linan et al., 2011) and social change (Baumol, 1968). Entrepreneurial activities not only boost technological innovation, but they also provide employment opportunities and increase competitiveness (Zahra, 1999; Thurik and Wennekers, 2004). According to Romer (1994), entrepreneurial activities are important determinants of economic development in the long term. Moreover, the creation of new businesses could be particularly important during periods of economic recession because, when successful, it helps generating new jobs, spreading innovation and providing support to the local economy (Dana, 2004; Engle et al., 2010; Ahmed et al., 2010).\nLiterature review and hypotheses: Entrepreneurial intention\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: Preliminary analysis\nDiscussion: The most significant results of this work concern the perception of the economic crisis. First, while the perception of the economic crisis does not impact on the propensity toward entrepreneurship, it has a negative and highly significant impact on the likelihood to start a business. Second, when a distinction is made between opportunity- and necessity-based types, results show that while for the latter the crisis impacts only on the perceived likelihood to become an entrepreneur, for the former it affects both dimensions of entrepreneurship, i.e., both propensity and perceived likelihood. This suggests that the protracted outline of economic recession could undermine the entrepreneurial intention of opportunity-based entrepreneurs more severely that it does for necessity-based ones.\nConclusion: The aim of this paper was to better understand the factors that impact on young people's decisions to start a new business during periods of economic recession. These effects were tested considering two measures of entrepreneurial intention, namely, the propensity and the likelihood to start a venture. The study found that the perception of the crisis as a barrier to entrepreneurship negatively affects the students' entrepreneurial intentions and that this effect is stronger for opportunity- and necessity-based potential entrepreneurs. Moreover, neither family support nor economic institutions are perceived as relevant in sustaining entrepreneurial intentions. On the contrary, the university is considered as a key support entity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of a prolonged economic recession on the entrepreneurial intentions of young people (university students) distinguishing between propensity to start a new business (i.e. degree of interest in entrepreneurship) and perceived likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur (i.e. probability to start a business in the future). Furthermore this study verifies if the recession strengthens the orientation to exploit new market opportunities, or simply supports self-employment objectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Entrepreneurial intention was measured in terms of propensity to start a new business and perceived likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur. Psychosocial and economic variables were measured as well. Information was gathered through questionnaires distributed in both electronic and paper-and-pencil form to a sample of 3,684 Italian University students enrolled in 12 different faculties.\nFindings: First, this study found that while the perception of the economic crisis as an obstacle to new business creation does not impact on the propensity toward entrepreneurship, it has a negative and highly significant impact on the likelihood to start a business. Second, when a distinction is made between opportunity- and necessity-based types, results show that while for the latter the crisis impacts only on the perceived likelihood to become an entrepreneur, for the former it affects both dimensions of entrepreneurship, i.e., both propensity and perceived likelihood. Moreover, neither family support nor economic institutions are perceived as relevant in sustaining entrepreneurial intentions. On the contrary, the university is considered as a key support entity.\nResearch limitations/implications: Reliance on cross-sectional questionnaires instead of an experimental design imposes caution about the causal relationships between predictors and entrepreneurial intent.\nOriginality/value: The present paper is one of the few studies concerning the influence of rapid worsening of external economic context (severe recession) on the entrepreneurial intent.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Factors influencing people's continuous watching intention and consumption intention in live streaming: Evidence from China	[ "Interactivity", "Consumption intention", "Stimuli", "Live streaming", "Social status display" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Live streaming is now a new trend worldwide: with a live streaming app, anyone can broadcast anything, from eating, gaming to singing; and people can watch all kinds of live streams anytime and anywhere. Data shows that in 2017, 48 percent of internet users in the USA watched live streaming at least once a week (Kats, 2017). Based on the report published by China Internet Network Information Center, live streaming users in China reached 422m by 2017, accounting for more than half of China's whole internet population (CNNIC, 2018). At times, the number of viewers for a particular live stream can go beyond 1m during the broadcasts by popular streamers. Another remarkable fact of live streaming lies in the large revenue it can generate. The market size of live streaming in China was valued at US$3bn in 2016 which was an increase of 180 percent compared to 2015 (iResearch, 2017a). Goldman Sachs estimated that by 2020, China's live streaming market could expand to US$15bn (Cheng, 2017). The novel function embedded in live streaming- the consumption of virtual gifts- has led to the emergence of a new monetization model. Virtual gifts are digital pictographs such as virtual flowers or virtual yachts offered by live streaming platforms with the price ranging from RMB 0.10 (around US$1.45 Cents) to RMB 10,000 (around US$1,451). Viewers can purchase virtual gifts via online payments during the broadcast of a live stream to express their appreciation for the streamer. The virtual gifts received by the streamer can be converted into cash and the revenue is then split between the streamer and the platform. The consumption of virtual gifts contributes to the vast majority of live streaming revenues (The Economist, 2017). In China, popular streamers can potentially earn a lot. For example, it is reported that Yu Li, who came from a hardscrabble area in North China and used to fix trucks in a small city, now earns USD100,000 per month as a streamer (Rauhala, 2017).\n2. Live streaming: The world has witnessed the emergence of live streaming. The global live streaming market was predicted to expand from US$30.29bn in 2016 to US$70.05bn by 2021 (Research and Markets, 2016). Live streaming is particularly popular among the young generation. For example, in 2016, 63 percent of the US internet users aged between 18 and 34 watched live streaming (EMarketer, 2017). In China, more than three quarters of mobile live streaming users were below the age of 36 (Cheung, 2017).\n3. Theoretical framing: 3.1 Uses and gratification theory\n4. Qualitative exploration: There is limited consolidated research investigating the live streaming phenomenon in a systematic way. According to Venkatesh et al. (2016), when researchers try to holistically investigate a phenomenon that lacks systematic and conclusive studies, a mixed-methods research design should be applied. Therefore, a sequential mixed-methods research design is employed in this study. Following Furneaux and Wade (2011), this research started with an exploratory qualitative study and then a quantitative study was conducted to test the refined framework.\n5. Quantitative assessment of research model: 5.1 Methodology\n6. Discussion: There are several key findings based on the results. First, social status display is found to strongly motivate people to purchase virtual gifts in all types of live streaming. Streamers tend to show their gratitude toward those gift senders in front of other viewers. In such cases, the gift senders can show their social status to others and are likely to feel their self-esteem enhanced, as suggested by previous research (Ger and Belk, 1996; Solomon, 1983; Thruong et al., 2008). Moreover, demonstrating social status through the purchase of virtual gifts may grant gift senders with higher social power, which is consistent with prior studies arguing that conspicuous consumption is able to bring social compliance (Goldsmith et al., 1996). The results also imply that in the live streaming context, people tend to buy virtual gifts to show off their wealth no matter what type of live stream they are watching.\n7. Conclusion, implications and future research: This paper employs a mixed-methods research design to investigate factors that influence continuous watching and consumption intentions in live streaming. Based on the interview results, we categorize live streaming into three types (i.e. event, education and personal sharing). We also propose a theoretical framework with factors from two dimensions: interactivity and social status display from the social interaction dimension, and humor appeal and sex appeal from the entertainment dimension. The model is then tested quantitatively. Our results confirm that in general, continuous watching intention is affected by interactivity and humor appeal while consumption intention is influenced by social status display and sex appeal. The effects of these factors are found to vary across different types of live streaming.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors can affect people's continuous watching and consumption intentions in live streaming.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research conducted a mixed-methods study. The semi-structured interview was deployed to develop a research model and a live streaming typology. A survey was then used for quantitative assessment of the research model. Survey data were analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The results suggest that sex and humor appeals, social status display and interactivity play considerable roles in the viewer's behavioral intentions in live streaming and their effects vary across different live streaming types.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research is conducted in the Chinese context. Future research can test the research model in other cultural contexts. This study can also be extended by incorporating the roles of viewer gender and price sensitivity in the future.\nPractical implications: This study provides managerial insights into how live streaming platforms and streamers can improve their popularity and profitability.\nOriginality/value: The paper introduces a novel form of social media and a new business model. It illustrates what will affect people's behavioral intentions in such a new context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Understanding speculative investment behavior in the Bitcoin context from a dual-systems perspective	[ "Bitcoin", "Speculative investment behaviour", "Dual-systems perspective", "Subjective norm", "Bitcoin knowledge" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Bitcoin, the most prominent cryptocurrency, has attracted substantial public attention and been prominently addressed by media, venture capitalists and financial and governmental institutions. Proposed by Nakamoto (2008), Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that can be sent directly from one party to another without central authority or intermediaries. Although Bitcoin was originally defined as an alternative currency, it has also been viewed as a speculative asset because of its considerable user demand. With its price volatility and expected large return, Bitcoin increased in popularity and became known to the public (Blau, 2017).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Bitcoin\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Based on dual-systems theory, this study regards Bitcoin speculative investment behavior influenced by the outcome of the tug-of-war between the two systems. In this study, the reflexive system is represented as an impulse, and the reflective system is represented as self-control. The impulse can be either good or bad depending on the situation (Soror et al., 2015; Turel and Serenko, 2010), but when the impulse conflicts with already established goals, self-control needs to be engaged (Hofmann et al., 2009). Therefore, this study proposes a research model in which Bitcoin speculative investment behavior is influenced by the impulse and self-control simultaneously, which leads to negative consequences. The research model then hypothesizes that the effects of impulse and self-control differ depending on the subjective norm and Bitcoin knowledge (i.e. objective and subjective knowledge (SK)). Figure 1 shows the proposed model.\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Measurement\n5. Analysis and results: The partial least squares (PLS) method was adopted to examine the proposed model and its hypotheses. The PLS is recommended for predictive research models with an emphasis on theory development (Fornell and Bookstein, 1982). Given that the current study is an initial attempt to advance a theoretical model that investigates the cognitive decision-making process involved in Bitcoin speculative investment behavior, we chose PLS because of its appropriateness for exploratory science (Chin, 1998). Smart PLS version 3.00 was used to analyze the measurement and structural models.\n6. Discussions and implications: 6.1 Discussions of findings\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine users' decision-making mechanism of speculative investment behavior and its sequential consequences in the Bitcoin context from a dual-systems perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Original data were collected via a survey of 334 participants with experience in Bitcoin speculative investment. The partial least squares method was used to test the proposed model.\nFindings: Speculative investment behavior in the Bitcoin context is driven by strong impulse and weak self-control, leading to negative consequences. The extent of the imbalance between the two cognitive systems is greater with the subjective norm than without it, thus facilitating speculative investment behavior. Noteworthy differences in the impulse and self-control effects on Bitcoin speculative investment are found with differences in Bitcoin objective and subjective knowledge.\nOriginality/value: This study is the first attempt to empirically investigate users' decision-making mechanism used when speculating in Bitcoin.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Making of a team: role of it's leader. Shane Warne's Rajasthan Royals	[ "Team leadership", "Team diversity", "Team formation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 2008, Shane Warne was named the captain and coach of Rajasthan Royals, a cricket team in the Indian Premier League (IPL). From the captain of an inexperienced team, he went to become one of the iconic captains in the IPL. During that season, Rajasthan Royals went on to amass 13 wins out of 16 games (Table I), winning the IPL title in its inaugural year. It was an unexpected fairy-tale ending in the annals of the IPL history.\nConceptualizing teams: Teams today are everywhere. A collective does not become a team just because one chooses to call it so. What then is a team and how is it different from other forms of collective like the working group? Different conceptualisations have been rendered. For instance, (Babbington-Smith, 1979) defined team as, \"[...] a group in which individuals have a common aim and in which the jobs and skills of each member fit in those of others, as- to take a very mechanical and static analogy- in a jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together without distortion and together produce some overall pattern\". Still others like Katzenbach and Smith (1993) understood it as, \"[...] a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable\".\nThe background: rise of Twenty20 cricket (T20) in India: T20, is a short version of cricket, with 20 over per inning as compared to the usual 50 overs. Since, its launch, T20 has spread across the world with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) launching the IPL in 2007 after winning the T20 World Cup in 2007 at South Africa.\nTeam - Rajasthan Royals: Rajasthan Royals represented the Indian city of Jaipur and was comprised of 18 players; ten from India, three from Australia, three from Pakistan, one from South Africa and one from England. Right from the beginning it was considered the weakest of all teams with scanty chances of even competing with other teams. One of the main reasons for writing it off was that unlike other teams that had popular powerful International players, Rajasthan Royals was composed of many inexperienced players like Swapnil Asnodkar, Dinesh Salunkhe, and Siddharth Trivedi who were unknown in the international arena. The team had very few seasoned players like Graeme Smith, Shane Watson and Shane Warne. Shane Warne was named the captain and the coach of Rajasthan Royals.\nWarne as a captain of Rajasthan Royals: shaping a winning team: One of the most unique challenges of team based work is the role of a leader. It is unique mainly on the account that the leader's important role of directing the team is antithetical to collaborative team work (Morgeson et al., 2010). Many thus contend that leader in its traditional understanding as a power centre does not encourage team work (Carson et al., 2007). Still others believe that leader is an integral part of a team (Pearce and Conger, 2003) although the role and concept of a leadership in a team is that of, \"a dynamic interactive influence among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organisational goals or both\". This then provides an alternative to the individual leader action and highlights a holistic form of dispersion of responsibility and leadership within a team (Bolden, 2011). Still others believe that a leader of a team has various roles to play during the formative period of a team. For instance, Hackman (2002) believed that a leader of a team has various roles to play, that of an initiator of action, a model, a negotiator, and a coach. Each of these roles in reference to the case is illustrated in Table II.\nPostscript: The hard work put in by Warne, his team members and his support staff paid off with Rajasthan Royals winning the inaugural IPL in 2008. In the words of much respected journalist Sambit Bal, \"Every Rajasthan player you meet speaks about Warne's ability to inspire and visualise, his positive thinking, and his human touch. Warne hasn't so much imposed himself on the team as he has lifted it. In every match Rajasthan have found a new hero\" (Bal, 2008).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine a team sport and draw implications for organizational functioning. The case focuses on Rajasthan Royals which is a cricket team of the Indian Premier League. By using the sports context the case encourages critical thought on concepts like team formation, team leadership, team effectiveness and managing diversity in team.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study contains a descriptive account of building of a team and how leadership in team aided the process. The account is based on secondary sources of data reflecting multiple perspectives of the coach, players, and critics along with the reflective account of the leader.\nFindings: The concept of \"shared leadership\", various roles of a leader, importance of productive team culture, motivation, coaching, handling diversity and team effectiveness have been illustrated.\nResearch limitations/implications: The issues dealt in the case are similar to what the competing teams in organisations face today. The case helps draw insight into team formation and the role of a leader in forming a strong team.\nPractical implications: The case is designed to represent the challenges one can meet while building a team and in playing the role of a team leader. Through this case the perspective of \"leadership as a process\" is presented as against the oft accepted understanding of \"leadership as a person\". It also posits strategies that can be adopted to inculcate team identity, team commitment and lays the foundation of a productive work culture where teams can flourish. In doing so it gives an opportunity to critically understand and apply these concepts within an organisational scenario.\nSocial implications: It gives an example of a passionate leader who built a winning team and also empowered the individual team members.\nOriginality/value: The case study draws its strength from a sport and provides insight into the team building issues pertinent in organisations today. The case can be used in the classroom (to discuss topics like team building and leadership) as well as in training managers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Store format choice and shopping trip types	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Shopping", "Shop design", "Utility theory", "Europe" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Two prevalent trends can be observed in grocery retail markets, namely concentration and consolidation. The first trend describes the rising power of a few dominant retail chains, whereas the second one indicates the declining number of independent small retail enterprises and outlets (Colla, 2004; Gonzalez-Benito, 2001). These trends are reflected in the competition between (retail) store formats where a shift of market share from small sized store formats (<400 m2, i.e. small supermarkets) to larger scale formats (>800 m2, i.e. large supermarkets, hypermarkets and discounters) can be observed (ACNielsen, 2004; Popkowski-Leszczyc and Timmermans, 2001). Driving this shift in behaviour is the increasing use of multiple stores and formats since they offer different opportunities to satisfy bundles of wants and needs depending on the shopping occasion (e.g. Cummins et al., 2008; Findlay and Sparks, 2008; Teller, 2008; McGoldrick and Andre, 1997; Uncles and Hammond, 1995).van Kenhove et al. (1999) stress the importance of the (shopping) task definition and thereby also including shopping occasion (e.g. urgent purchase, large quantities or regular purchase) towards store choice by investigating the phenomenon in a do-it-yourself setting. Teller and Reutterer (2008) present empirical findings revealing the moderating effect of the shopping situation on consumers' evaluation of retail agglomeration attractiveness. Gehrt and Yan (2004) provide a more complex insight into the moderating effect of the shopping situation and focus on the preference of store- and non-store-based formats. Nevertheless, they do not particularly consider grocery specific formats. With respect to grocery shopping Kahn and Schmittlein (1989, 1992) indicate the impact of shopping occasion, in particular whether consumers make a major trip to stores or just a fill-in trip (defined by whether the total expenditure or size of groceries were above or below the average expenditure on groceries, respectively) on store choice. Finally, Walters and Jamil (2003) show that different trip types influence shopping behaviour in general. Although, the amount of literature regarding store format patronage has been growing in recent years (e.g. Teller et al., 2006; Gonzalez-Benito et al., 2005; Bhatnagar and Ratchford, 2004; Solgaard and Hansen, 2003; Messinger and Narasimhan, 1997) the moderating effect of the shopping occasion and/or shopping trip type has widely been neglected on this aggregated store perspective in the field of grocery retailing (Gehrt and Yan, 2004).Owing to the increasing relevance of inter-store-format competition and the identified research gap, this paper aims to identify the role of shopping occasions operationalised by different shopping trip types as a moderating variable on store format choice in a grocery retailing setting. Contextually, we focus on an aggregated store perspective where formats are understood as a representation of stores where (retail) marketing strategies and actions (e.g. location, product range, price level and atmospherics) are applied in a stereotypical, format specific way.The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: after these introductory remarks a conceptual framework and the analytical model is presented in more detail. Based on this a series of hypotheses are set up and the applied empirical research approach (survey, sample size and variables observed) is described. Consequently, results are reported followed by a discussion of the implications of the empirical findings and some remaining issues that could potentially stimulate future research endeavours are addressed.\n2 Conceptual framework and model description: In order to study store format choice behaviour with respect to different shopping occasions we apply a Random Utility Theory (RUT) approach. The basic assumption of RUT is that each consumer c=1, ... , C associates to each available store choice option o[?]{1, ... , O} out of a set of shopping alternatives a latent preference or utility before choosing the one which yields maximum utility (e.g. McFadden, 1973; Ben-Akiva and Lerman, 1985; Louviere et al., 2000). More specifically, under standard RUT assumptions the latent utility of store o to consumer c in a shopping situation s is assumed to consist of two components: Equation 1 Vocs is the deterministic (observable and explainable) component of utility consumer c associates with store o at shopping occasion s; eocs is the random (unexplainable) component of utility.The deterministic utility Vocs is represented as an indirect additive function Xocb' where Xoc is an [OxC,K] matrix of individual store specific attributes (in the present case K denotes an index set of store attributes as perceived by consumers) and b is a K-dimensional vector of utility parameters or part-worth utilities that represent consumers' trade-offs between store attributes or their sensitivities towards changes in attribute levels that are usually (but not necessarily) under the control of retail management. Hence, Voc specifies the composition rule that maps the observed multidimensional attribute vectors on a unidimensional overall utility of the form Voc=[?]k=1KbkcXokc.Each of these individual part-worth utilities bkc is represented as a weight that is linked to one specific store attribute k (Figure 1). Therefore, the weights denote the relative importance shoppers attach to the respective store attributes in their decision-making process. Although not explicitly included in the above generic formulation, potential moderating variables are the shopping situation or occasion, awareness of shopping alternatives and consumer background characteristics such as demographics, shopping motivation, life-style and personality factors, etc.Note that, suppression of the situation specific label s in the above notation implies that the focus is on perceived attribute values averaged over time, i.e. shopping occasions. However, as Kahn and Schmittlein (1989) and Walters and Jamil (2003) concluded in a more descriptive study, grocery-shopping behaviour may be different depending upon whether consumers are on a major trip to the store or just on a fill-in trip.Standard multi-attribute approaches to explaining store choice require that consumers are aware of all available shopping alternatives once they decide to shop. If this awareness condition is not warranted, i.e. a store is not included in an individual consumer's awareness set, the respondent will also be unable to quote neither valid nor reliable attribute ratings for that shopping alternative. The assumption that each consumer is aware of the total set of available shopping options in a trading area is unrealistic. Moreover, as discussed by Shocker et al. (1991) in detail, when studying consumer choice behaviour one can expect the \"universal set\" of available choice options to be decomposed into subsequent subsets (denoted as awareness and consideration sets) before the ultimate choice decision occurs. Roberts and Lattin (1991) provide empirical evidence that both size and composition of individual brand consideration sets are a functional trade-off between expected utility improvement and search costs. To account for awareness set heterogeneity across consumers, for each respondent an individual subset of outlets established in the trading area (denoted as Ac[?]O) needs to be determined. Consequently, individual choice sets are restricted to those alternatives in the utility formation process of the store choice model, which the respective respondent is aware of.Whereas the deterministic utility specifies the way, individuals are assumed to process information about (physical) store characteristics via introduction of the concept of weight, different assumptions about the distribution and structure of the random or error component of utility eocs lead to different choice models. If, for example, the errors are assumed independent across alternatives and identically distributed (IID) Gumbel random variates, we arrive at the well-known and widely applied multinomial logit (MNL) model (e.g. McFadden, 1973; Ben-Akiva and Lerman, 1985). For the MNL model it can be shown that the probability P(o,c,s) that an individual c chooses a particular store o at shopping situation s is proportional to the ratio of the respective store's (deterministic) utility Vocs and the sum of the utilities for all alternatives out of the consumer's awareness set Ac (e.g. Hensher and Johnson, 1981; Louviere and Woodworth, 1983; Meyer and Eagle, 1982). Thus, assuming IID errors choice probabilities can be derived by the following relationship: Equation 2 where m is a precision parameter that scales utility differences in general[1]. One of the most appealing properties of assuming IID-error variances is primarily of a computational nature. In contrast to the realistic assumptions[2] about the error term in the utility model (1) a closed-form expression for the choice probabilities allows a fast location of maximum likelihood (ML) estimates for the b parameters. The function L in equation (3) represents the probability (or likelihood) of getting our observed store choices given a set of certain parameters. Omitting situational effects for the moment and assuming independent observations, the construction of such a likelihood function L involves the joint probability P(o,c) of a store actually chosen by an individual consumer and can be written as follows (e.g. Fotheringham, 1988): Equation 3 Here, foc is defined as an indicator variable, such that foc=1 if outlet c is chosen and foc=0 otherwise. Usually, the properties of the joint probability function are such that it is easier to take the logarithm of the likelihood function LL, which needs to be minimised. The log-likelihood is only a function of the unknown parameter values captured by the deterministic utility expression Voc since both the observed perceptions of store characteristics Xoc and actual store choices foc are known. Therefore, it can be minimised with respect to the model's utility parameters.Probably, the most striking features of this model specification are the assumptions of \"independence of irrelevant alternatives\" (IAA) as well as the additive utility function being linear in parameters (however, attributes can enter as logarithms or powers as well as a variety of other forms to cover non-linear effects). The IIA property is equivalent to assuming that there is no correlation between the utilities of any two alternatives except due to the explanatory variables, i.e. the covariance structure of the error component is expected to be uncorrelated. This property is a direct consequence of the assumption of IID error variances (which posits that the utility ratio between two stores is independent of a change in the consumer's consideration set). Thus, the utility ratio of two stores remains unaffected if an alternative is added or withdrawn, which in both cases would result in an impact proportional to their current market (or choice) shares (e.g. Ben-Akiva and Lerman, 1985). There are numerous examples in the literature that the absence of any competitive market structure beyond share proportions is unrealistic (in a store choice context see, for example, Fotheringham, 1988)[3]. One potential source for violations of the IIA property are situational effects such as shopping occasion (Kahn and Schmittlein, 1989). In order to relax these strong assumptions associated with IID error terms in a way that is behaviourally enriching, computationally tractable and easy to implement, in the subsequent application two different choice variables are collected that differentiate whether a person is planning a major grocery shopping trip or just a fill-in trip and separate MNL choice models are estimated for each of them.\n3 Hypotheses: Based on the framework explained above two groups of hypotheses have been derived. They propose a relationship between the shopping occasion and store format choice whereby, store format attributes are expected to be predictive of the respective choices. These attributes represent the stereotypical application of (retail) marketing strategies and actions perceived by consumers. The moderating variable \"shopping occasion\" is operationalised by two types of shopping trips, namely a fill-in trip or a major trip. Table I characterises these two trip types in an idealised manner.Taking into account the basic characterisation of the most important store formats in grocery retailing (e.g. Berman and Evans, 2007; Gonzalez-Benito, 2001) it can be expected that attributes like store location, accessibility and assortment strongly influence the preference of consumers in dedicating their shares of spending for each of these two trip types (Solgaard and Hansen, 2003; Popkowski-Leszczyc and Timmermans, 2001; Bhatnagar and Ratchford, 2004). Large-scale retail formats in grocery retailing, like large supermarkets and hypermarkets, tend to be more appropriate to carry out a major trip. They offer a broad and deep assortment and are located in more peripheral areas often providing better parking facilities resulting in increased accessibility for consumers using cars (Berman and Evans, 2007; Gonzalez-Benito, 2001). We, therefore, set up H1a:H1a. Consumers' utility values are higher for large-scale retail formats compared to small retail formats when undertaking a major trip.In contrast small formats like small supermarkets, convenience stores or corner shops offer a broad to medium but narrow assortment and are located near consumers' homes. Thus, they are expected to be more capable of satisfying needs of a fill-in trip (Berman and Evans, 2007; Bhatnagar and Ratchford, 2004). This assumption leads to H1b:H1b. Consumers' utility values are higher for small retail formats compared to large-scale retail formats when undertaking a fill-in trip.Retail formats can be characterised by similarities in the types of outlets they occupy and the marketing strategy that they adopt. These similarities mean they are competing for a similar perceptual place in the consumer's mind. Subsequently, we focus on the relative impact of perceived store format attributes on format choice in the two types of shopping trip situations discussed. Table I suggests the expectation that consumers undertaking a fill-in trip seek convenience and service, i.e. store format characteristics that make the shopping trip easier and quicker to carry out (Bhatnagar and Ratchford, 2004; Tang et al., 2001; Baron et al., 2001). This quite obvious relationship between store format attributes and trip type leads to H2a:H2a. Service/convenience-related store format attributes have more impact on utility values compared to merchandise-related attributes when undertaking a fill-in trip.To the contrary, on a major trip consumers tend to look for one-stop or multi-purpose shopping possibilities to reduce their shopping endeavours (Teller, 2008; Tang et al., 2001; Gonzalez-Benito, 2001; Messinger and Narasimhan, 1997). Consumers, therefore, are assumed to look for more merchandise-related store format attributes which finally leads to H2b:H2b. Merchandise-related store format attributes have more impact on utility values compared to service/convenience-related attributes when undertaking a major trip.\n4 Empirical study: 4.1 Research design\n5 Results: 5.1 Store format preference and distinct shopping occasions (H1a/b)\n6 Conclusions: 6.1 Synopsis\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to identify store format attributes that impact on store format choice when consumers conduct fill-in or major trips to buy groceries. By doing so, we take into consideration that consumers patronise multiple (store based) formats depending on the shopping situation operationalised by the type of shopping trip.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper adopts the conceptual framework of random utility theory via application of a multinomial logit modelling framework. The analysis is based on a survey of 408 consumers representing households in a clearly defined central European retail area.\nFindings: - The results reveal a considerable moderating effect of the shopping situation on the relationship between perceived store format attributes and store format choice. Consumers' utilities are significantly higher for discount stores and hypermarkets when conducting major trips. To the contrary, supermarkets are preferred for fill-in trips in the focussed retail market. Merchandise-related attributes of store formats have a higher impact on the utility formation regarding major-trips, whereas service- and convenience-related attributes do so with regards to fill-in trips.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The findings can only be generalised to retail markets with similar characteristics to the one under study. It is highly concentrated, contains a considerable share of small size retail stores, it is urban and has clear cut boundaries due to its geographical location.\nOriginality/value: - This paper considers the fact that consumers patronise multiple store formats and investigates the moderating effect of the shopping situation - operationalised by different types of shopping trips - on store format choice.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
CSR disclosure: the more things change...?	[ "CSR disclosure", "Legitimacy theory", "Disclosure changes", "Ernst & Ernst", "Market valuation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure appears once again to be a topic of interest for mainstream accounting[1] researchers (Patten, 2013). For example, The Accounting Review (TAR) recently published research on auditing of sustainability reports (Simnett et al., 2009) and the impact of CSR reporting on firms' cost of capital (Dhaliwal et al., 2011). More recently, the journal included a forum on CSR research in accounting in its May 2012 issue. In the introduction to that forum, current TAR editor John Harry Evans III states \"the two forum archival studies document that shareholders have reason to care about CSR disclosures\" and also adds that the third contribution to the forum, Moser and Martin (2012), suggests that experimental research could \"offer new insight into understanding [...] why firms make the CSR disclosures that they do\" (Evans, 2012, p. 721)[2], Moser and Martin (2012, p. 798) also offer additional evidence of the renewed mainstream interest in CSR by noting the (at that time upcoming) conference on corporate accountability reporting hosted by the Harvard Business School in collaboration with Journal of Accounting and Economics (JAE) held in January of 2013.\nBackground: While our study is motivated by the recent CSR activity by mainstream accounting researchers, it is important to note that CSR-themed explorations are not new to the mainstream journals. Patten (2013) identifies that a number of papers related to CSR topics were published over the 1970s and early 1980s in journals including TAR (e.g. Anderson and Frankle, 1980; Buzby and Falk, 1979; Ramanathan, 1976; Spicer, 1978) and the Journal of Accounting Research (e.g. Ingram, 1978; Ingram and Frazier, 1980). He notes that while some of this early work consisted of papers exploring the expansion of the traditional role of accounting - including an attempt to establish a theoretical framework for corporate social reporting by Ramanathan (1976) - several empirical investigations appear to have been triggered by the changing social disclosure practices of US corporations over the 1970s. For example, Ingram (1978), using Ernst & Ernst (E&E) disclosure survey data, calculated monthly returns for portfolios differentiated on categories of CSR information provided in annual reports and found only weak evidence of a market value for CSR disclosure. Anderson and Frankle (1980) compared portfolios of annual report disclosers and non-disclosers and found that the former exhibited more positive abnormal returns than the latter, but only in the month prior to report issuance. However, after the early 1980s, CSR research disappeared from mainstream journals for more than a decade, and when it re-emerged in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, the focus was exclusively on environmental information and its potential valuation in the market (see, e.g. Barth and McNichols, 1994; Hughes, 2000; Clarkson et al., 2004).\nHypothesis development: For several years over the 1970s, the accounting firm of E&E compiled a survey of corporate CSR disclosure included by the Fortune 500 industrial firms in their annual reports. Certainly, one of the most important findings of these surveys was that the extent of CSR disclosure appeared to be growing over time but varied dramatically across firms. The last of the reports, E&E (1978) was based on disclosures in 1977 annual reports and contained detailed information on the areas of CSR disclosure for each of the surveyed companies. We rely on this source for disclosure data in the late 1970s and as we discuss in the methods and results section below, we hand compile disclosure data for a similar sample of US companies based on their 2010 annual reports, and where issued, stand-alone CSR reports[7]. Our concern in this investigation is to identify differences in CSR disclosure across the two periods relative to the breadth of the disclosure, the factors that explain differences in disclosure across firms, and the relationships, if any, of the disclosure to firm valuation. We separately provide our expectations for differences across these areas below.\nMethods and results: Sample identification\nConclusion: Motivated by both the increased attention CSR disclosure recently has received from the mainstream accounting research community and that group's failure to engage with prior CSR-themed research, we attempt in this study to identify if the practice today differs from that of the 1970s. Based on samples of industrial companies included in the 1977 and 2010 Fortune 500 listings, we find that the breadth of CSR disclosure had increased significantly. However, our analysis also indicates that the relationship among legitimacy factors to differences in CSR disclosure remains largely unchanged over time. Firm size continues to explain differences in environmental, social, and overall CSR information provision, and membership in ESI, although less powerfully associated with differences in 2010 than in 1977 using one of our two metrics, continues to be positively associated with differences in environmental disclosure. Further, and importantly, we document that CSR disclosure, in apparent contrast to the arguments of the more recent mainstream investigations, is not positively associated with differences in firm value.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure is receiving increased attention from the mainstream accounting research community. In general, this recently published research has failed to engage significantly with prior CSR-themed studies. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it examines whether more recent CSR reporting differs from that of the 1970s. Second, it investigates whether one of the major findings of prior CSR research - that disclosure appears to be largely a function of exposure to legitimacy factors - continues to hold in more recent reporting. Third, it examines whether, as argued within the more recent CSR-themed studies, disclosure is valued by market participants.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using Fortune 500 data from the late 1970s (from Ernst & Ernst, 1978) and a more recent sample (2010), the authors identify differences in CSR disclosure by computing adequate measures in terms of disclosure breadth and comparing them for any potential changes in the influence of legitimacy factors between 1977 and 2010. In the second stage of the analysis, the authors use a standard valuation model to compare the association between CSR and firm value between the two time periods.\nFindings: The authors first find that the breadth of CSR disclosure increased significantly, with respect to both environmental and social information provision. Second, the authors find that the relationship among legitimacy factors and CSR disclosure does not differ across the two time periods. However, the analysis focusing on environmental disclosure provides evidence that industry membership is less powerfully related to differences in reporting, but only for the weighted disclosure score. Finally, the results indicate that CSR disclosure, in apparent contrast to the arguments of the more recent mainstream investigations, is not positively valued by investors.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors explore changes in CSR disclosure only for industrial firms and as such the authors cannot generalize findings to companies in other industries. Similarly, the authors focus only on companies in the USA while different relationships may hold in other countries. Further, the disclosure metrics are limited by the availability of firm-specific information provided by Ernst & Ernst. Limitations aside, however, the findings appear to suggest that the failure of the new wave of CSR research in the mainstream accounting community to acknowledge and consider prior research into social and environmental accounting is potentially troublesome. Specifically, recent CSR disclosure research published in mainstream journals often lends credence to voluntary disclosure arguments that ignore previous contradictory findings and well-established alternative explanations for observed empirical relationships.\nPractical implications: This paper provides supporting evidence that the unquestioned acceptance by the new wave of CSR researchers that the disclosure is about informing investors as opposed to being a tool of legitimation and image enhancement makes it less likely that such disclosure will ever move meaningfully toward transparent accountability.\nOriginality/value: The study suggests that CSR disclosure, while used more extensively today than three decades ago, may still largely be driven by concerns with corporate legitimacy, and still fails to provide information that is relevant for assessing firm value. As such, the failure of the mainstream accounting community to acknowledge this possibility can only hinder the ultimate development of better accountability for all of the impacts of business.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of implementation fidelity in the Towards No Drug Abuse dissemination trial	[ "Translation", "Implementation", "Fidelity", "Prevention", "Drugs", "Drug addiction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Considerable advances have been made in the field of school-based substance abuse prevention in the last quarter century. There are now a number of research-based prevention programs that are ready for broad dissemination and implementation (Dusenbury et al., 2010). Despite this potential for wide-scale use, recent studies have shown that only a small percentage of prevention programs implemented in schools are research based (Hallfors et al., 2000; Ringwalt et al., 2011). Moreover, when research-based programs are implemented, a host of real-world conditions often compromise fidelity of implementation (Ennett et al., 2011). Further, poor implementation fidelity has been shown to dilute prevention program effects (Durlak and DuPre, 2008; Fixsen et al., 2005). Thus, in order to maximize the potential of research-based prevention programs to produce lasting public health impacts, it is important to understand the factors that influence fidelity and identify the conditions necessary for effective program utilization (Kam et al., 2003).To date, there has been relatively little research investigating the influence of contextual factors on the development and implementation of prevention programming in schools. While schools offer enormous opportunity to reach large numbers of adolescents in well-controlled environments, unique contextual factors embedded within the school structure are likely to impede program implementation (Chen, 1998; Domitrovich et al., 2008). Schools tend to be overburdened meeting academic and policy-related priorities. Many school systems are facing significant reductions in public funds, and some are experimenting with school reform measures and structural changes in an effort to cope with these crises. The complexity of school organizational structures can be a barrier to prevention program implementation, as implementation often requires approval and buy-in from multiple levels of decision makers including superintendents, principals, teachers, school boards, and community partners (Greenberg, 2010).Several recent conceptual frameworks propose that implementation of research-based programs takes place within many hierarchical levels (Chen, 1998; Durlak and DuPre, 2008; Wandersman et al., 2008). In Chen's (1998) model, program implementation is influenced by three levels of factors: characteristics of the program provider (e.g. experience and beliefs), the organizational context (e.g. administrator support and school climate), and the implementation system (e.g. staff training and infrastructure to coordinate implementation). At the core of program implementation are the teachers who deliver the programs. Fidelity of implementation has been found to increase when teachers are comfortable with the program and delivery method and have strong teaching skills, self-efficacy, enthusiasm, preparedness, and beliefs about the value and effectiveness of the program (Ringwalt et al., 2003; Rohrbach et al., 1993; Mihalic et al., 2008). Organizational characteristics are also central to understanding implementation fidelity, because administrators, teachers and students are embedded within the shared environment of the school and school district (Domitrovich et al., 2008). Implementation fidelity of prevention programs has been associated with various aspects of the school climate, such as capacity for change, openness to change, and positive communication between teachers and administrators (Beets et al., 2008; Ennett et al., 2003; Gittelsohn et al., 2003; Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2002; Kallestad and Olweus, 2003; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2009; Rohrbach et al., 2005). Additionally, when a program aligns with a school's policies, it is more likely to be implemented with quality (Kallestad and Olweus, 2003; Payne et al., 2006). Factors related to the structure of the school and surrounding community, such as school size and urbanicity, also have been associated with prevention program implementation, such that larger schools in more urban areas demonstrate higher levels of program use (Payne, 2009; Payne et al., 2006).In the conceptual models of Durlak and DuPre (2008) and Wandersman and colleagues (2008), prevention delivery systems (e.g. organizational capacity) and prevention support systems (e.g. training and technical assistance) need to be developed within and across organizations to ensure successful prevention program implementation. Research in school settings has shown that school principal support, encouragement, and monitoring of implementation increase fidelity of implementation (Gingiss et al., 2006; Kam et al., 2003; Ringwalt et al., 2003; Rohrbach et al., 1993). In regard to prevention support systems, there is considerable evidence that the provision of training increases implementation fidelity of research-based prevention programs (Blake et al., 2005; Ennett et al., 2003; Fagan et al., 2008; Gingiss et al., 2006; Hallfors and Godette, 2002; Ringwalt et al., 2003; Roberts-Gray et al., 2007; Rohrbach et al., 2010a). Also, there is some evidence that technical assistance (e.g. ongoing training or retraining, emotional support, consultation) leads to improved implementation of research-based interventions (Fagan et al., 2008; Gingiss et al., 2006; Roberts-Gray et al., 2007; Rohrbach et al., 2010a). Given the challenges associated with implementing the interactive teaching methods typical of prevention curricula, training is an essential tool for demonstrating and reinforcing the use of these methods in the context of prevention programs (Ennett et al., 2003).There is an urgent need for more studies on the contextual factors that impede and enhance implementation of research-based prevention programs under conditions common in schools. At present, we have a limited understanding of the range of factors that may potentially influence a school to adopt a research-based program and a teacher to implement it with fidelity, and which of these factors may be modifiable through training and other interventions. Although training appears to be essential in enhancing fidelity of program implementation (Durlak and DuPre, 2008), research on the relative effectiveness of various training models as well as the processes by which training work is largely lacking (Rohrbach et al., 2006). In the current study, we address some of these gaps in the literature by examining factors influencing the implementation fidelity of a research-based prevention program and exploring the effect of a training intervention on two modifiable factors that appear to be important predictors of implementation fidelity, teacher self-efficacy, and beliefs about the value of the program.The current study\nMethods: School selection and experimental design\nData analysis: All analyses were conducted using generalized mixed-linear modeling (Murray and Hannan 1990). Prior to conducting regression models, variables were standardized (mean=0, SD=1). Random effects adjusted for in the models included: school district, school, and teacher. b's and standard errors are reported. All analyses were conducted using SAS statistical package (SAS Institute Inc SAS/C Online Doc TM, 2000). We used two-tailed tests with significance set at p<0.10.To explore our first question of what contextual and provider-level factors were related to fidelity of implementation, the composite implementation fidelity score was regressed on each of the correlates independently as a fixed effect variable, controlling for the training condition of the school. Those variables that showed a statistically significant effect on implementation fidelity in the bivariate analyses at p<0.10 were included in the final multivariate model.To examine our second question of whether the training intervention had an effect on changes in teacher beliefs about the value of the program and self-efficacy, the data were averaged to the teacher level. Next, post-test teacher beliefs about the value of the program and self-efficacy were regressed on training condition as a fixed effect variable, controlling for the pre-test value of the respective index.Our third analysis examined whether holding positive beliefs about the value of the program prior to implementation moderated the effect of the comprehensive training on implementation fidelity (Aiken and West, 1991). First, we centered the baseline index of beliefs about the value of the program. Next, implementation fidelity was regressed on a two-way interaction: training conditionxbeliefs about the value of the program. Then, we took a median split of beliefs about the value of the program using PROC RANK (SAS Institute Inc SAS/C Online Doc TM, 2000). We ran two regression models where implementation fidelity was regressed on training condition: among teachers with fewer positive beliefs about the value of the program and among teachers with more positive beliefs about the value of the program. Finally, we re-ran these regression models controlling for self-efficacy, perceived positive school climate, urbanicity, and organizational capacity.Finally, we explored whether changes from baseline to posttest in teacher self-efficacy and beliefs about the value of the program mediated the effects of the training intervention on implementation fidelity, using mediation analysis with two steps of regressions (MacKinnon et al., 2007a). In the first step, each of the potential mediators (change in self-efficacy and change in beliefs) was regressed on the training condition and other covariates. In the second step, the outcome (implementation fidelity) was regressed on training condition, the potential mediators, and other covariates. The point estimates of the mediated effects were calculated as the multiplication of the two coefficients linking the training condition (X) to potential mediators (M), and linking the potential mediators to implementation fidelity (Y). The asymmetrical confidence interval for the mediated effect was then estimated in PRODCLIN (MacKinnon et al., 2007b), based on the distribution of the product method.\nResults: Relationships between contextual and provider-level factors and implementation fidelity\nDiscussion: Guided by several conceptual models (e.g. Chen, 1998; Domitrovich et al., 2008; Durlak and DuPre, 2008), the current study examined associations between multiple contextual and program provider-level factors and the implementation fidelity of a research-based substance abuse prevention program in a sample of high schools from around the USA We also explored whether a comprehensive training intervention, relative to a standard training workshop, had an effect on teachers' beliefs about the value of the program and self-efficacy to implement it, and if these changes in teacher self-efficacy and beliefs mediated the effect of the comprehensive training on implementation fidelity. We found that several contextual and provider-level factors were associated with implementation fidelity, and the comprehensive training significantly increased teachers' self-efficacy, which resulted in an increase in teachers' implementation fidelity.Consistent with previous research (Fagan et al., 2008; Mihalic et al., 2008; Thaker et al., 2008; Wiecha et al., 2004) and Chen's (1998) conceptual model, we found that school organizational capacity was related to higher levels of implementation fidelity. These findings suggest that implementation fidelity will be higher in schools where there is stability in school leadership and faculty and teachers are provided with the necessary resources and responsibility to teach substance abuse prevention programs. Another contextual variable that we assessed, urbanicity, was negatively associated with implementation fidelity. Future studies should investigate possible reasons why implementation fidelity of research-based programs might be lower in urban, relative to suburban and rural, environments. For example, teachers in urban schools may be more likely to adapt programs to better fit the perceived needs of their students (Ringwalt et al., 2003).Despite previous research showing a relationship between teacher characteristics, such as teaching experience and style, and implementation fidelity (Ringwalt et al., 2002; Rohrbach et al., 1993), we did not find support for these relationships. Surprisingly, teachers' favorable beliefs about the value of Project TND following the standard training workshop were negatively associated with implementation fidelity. This finding is inconsistent with previous studies that have shown when providers' beliefs are favorable toward the prevention program, implementation fidelity is higher (Beets et al., 2008; Kallestad and Olweus, 2003; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2009; Ringwalt et al., 2003). However, our findings are consistent with one published study that found that teachers' support for the research-based program was inversely associated with their use of the program's interactive teaching techniques during program implementation (Mihalic et al., 2008). Mihalic et al. (2008) hypothesized that teachers may have been motivated to teach the program, but lacked the skills necessary to implement the interactive teaching techniques required by the curriculum.We speculated an alternative explanation for the negative relationship between fidelity and beliefs about the value of TND. Possibly, less positive beliefs could indicate a more realistic perspective about the many competing influences on drug abuse and the challenges involved in implementing a multifaceted program like TND. Realism about this program may lead teachers to attempt to focus on implementing the program as written, rather than envisioning some type of adaptation or change (e.g. self-disclosing personal experiences during discussion or providing new media). Possibly, teachers more favorable to the program may not be in touch with the exacting nature of its delivery and may need the comprehensive training to help avoid reinventing material.To explore this hypothesis, we tested whether baseline beliefs about the value of the program were a modifier of the effect of the training condition on implementation fidelity. We found evidence for moderation, with the comprehensive training producing greater fidelity among teachers with more favorable beliefs about the value of the program at baseline and showing no effect on fidelity among teachers with less positive beliefs. Unfortunately, we do not know the reasons for teachers' beliefs about the value of TND prior to implementation, other than that they were also significantly correlated with their self-efficacy to implement it (r=0.58, p<0.0001). The results of the moderation analysis support the speculation suggested by Mihalic et al. (2008), or the idea of differential realism. Other explanations are possible, and additional research is needed.Our findings highlight the importance of offering teachers comprehensive training prior to program implementation in order to provide them with the necessary skills to channel their enthusiasm about the program into quality implementation. The results of the mediation model support these speculations. We tested a mediation model that examined whether increases in teacher self-efficacy and beliefs about the value of the program mediated the effect of the training intervention (comprehensive vs regular) on implementation fidelity. We found that the effect of the training on fidelity was mediated, in part, by an increase in self-efficacy. Our findings suggest that in order to improve implementation fidelity of research-based prevention programs in real-world school settings, teachers need to be provided with ongoing training, coaching, technical assistance, and support throughout the implementation phase. Additionally, it is important that these types of training methods focus on strengthening teachers' self-efficacy to implement the research-based program with high quality and fidelity.Limitations and strengths\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The current study aims to examine the influence of contextual and provider-level factors on the implementation fidelity of a research-based substance abuse prevention program. Also, it aims to investigate whether two provider-level factors, self-efficacy and beliefs about the value of the program, statistically moderate and mediate the effects of a provider training intervention on implementation fidelity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using generalized mixed-linear modeling, the authors examine relationships between program provider-, organizational, and community-level factors and implementation fidelity in a sample of 50 high school teachers from 43 high schools in eight states across the USA. Fidelity of implementation was assessed utilizing an observation procedure.\nFindings: - Implementation fidelity was negatively associated with the urbanicity of the community and the level of teachers' beliefs about the value of the program, and positively predicted by the organizational capacity of the school. Comprehensive training significantly increased teachers' self-efficacy, which resulted in an increase in implementation fidelity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - School-based prevention program implementation is influenced by a variety of contextual factors occurring at multiple ecological levels. Future effectiveness and dissemination studies need to account for the complex nature of schools in analyses of implementation fidelity and outcomes.\nPractical implications: - The authors' findings suggest that both provider- and organizational-level are influential in promoting implementation fidelity. Before implementation begins, as well as throughout the implementation process, training and ongoing technical assistance should be conducted to increase teachers' skills, self-efficacy, and comfort with prevention curricula.\nOriginality/value: - The present study is one of the few to examine contextual and provider-level correlates of implementation fidelity and use mediation analyses to explore whether provider-level factors mediate the effects of a provider training intervention on implementation fidelity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Facebook advertising's influence on intention-to-purchase and purchase amongst Millennials	[ "Social media", "South Africa", "Millennials", "Behavioural attitudes", "Facebook advertising", "Intention-to-purchase" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Technological innovation has grown at an unprecedented rate over the past couple of decades, especially in terms of online social media platforms. Accordingly, Millennials (born between 1982 and 1994) have been exposed to an explosion of online technological applications since their advent, as these have been incorporated into nearly every facet of their daily existence. In fact, this cohort has not experienced the world without digital interactive technology. Moreover, technology diversification drives universal homogeneity among Millennials, resulting in a hypothetical global cohort that purportedly displays analogous attitudes and behaviour (Lingelbach et al., 2012; Moore, 2012). Yet, many articles have characteristically concentrated on the social media attitudes and usage of Millennials who reside in developed countries with unhindered access to social media and information technology. Hence, Bolton et al. (2013) maintain that social media attitudes and usage may differ among Millennials from emerging countries when compared to their wealthier counterparts owing to technological infrastructure and different cultures. Nonetheless, Millennials' social media usage are of particular interest to organisations and managers' since it may provide an indication of how these consumers will behave in the future, as well as what their perceptions are towards their brands (Bolton et al., 2013). Consequently, this study aims to establish if Facebook advertising is effective at realising the top communication of effects pyramid objectives, intention-to-purchase and purchase (the behavioural attitude), among the Millennial cohort.\n2. Literature review: 2.1. Social media background\n3. Research objectives: Consequently, this empirical investigation seeks to expound upon the following research objectives: first, to determine whether advertising on Facebook has an influence on the behavioural attitudinal component of Millennials in an emerging country such as SA. As discussed in prior text, advertising achieves communication activities in a similar manner to a pyramid, by initially attaining lower hierarchy response marketing communication objectives such as awareness and knowledge. Thereafter, companies seek to attain and move consumers to higher hierarchical level objectives such as liking, preference and intention-to-purchase until the ultimate purchase. However, this model was based on traditional advertising, whereas this research focuses on new digital interactive media to determine consumers' behavioural attitudes as they pass the upper echelons of the aforementioned model. Consequently, this research is important for managers, since a majority of organisations have invested significant portions of their promotion budgets on Facebook marketing communications, and need to establish if advertising on Facebook has a positive impact on the aforementioned behavioural attitudes. This empirical study is also important for academics and researchers, since, as mandated by Bolton et al. (2013) and Okazaki and Taylor (2013), there is a dearth of social media advertising usage and attitude research among Millennials in emerging countries and, accordingly, this will contribute to attitude theory. Additionally, Facebook's growth has begun to reach saturation in many first-world countries; whereas it is steadily growing at an incremental rate in many emerging countries. Facebook use has grown by almost 40 per cent over the past year in SA (Wronski and Goldstruck, 2013). Furthermore, a number of studies have yielded divergent behavioural attitudinal responses. Bannister et al. (2013), Kodjamanis and Angelopoulos (2013), Maxwell (2013) and Persuad (2013) suggest that attitudes towards Facebook marketing communications were mainly negative or indifferent, whereas Chandra et al. (2012), Mir (2012), Leung et al. (2015) and Rohm et al. (2013) found a largely positive behavioural predisposition. Accordingly, the research questions (RQ) for the first objective are:\n4. Methodology: 4.1. Research design\n5. Results: The survey included 3,521 members of the Millennials cohort in the Western Cape. Facebook was accessed by a majority of respondents (64.5 per cent) via both PC and mobile device; over 60 per cent logged on to Facebook everyday; spent one (58.5 per cent) to two (22.8 per cent) hours per log on; and more than 72 per cent updated their profile at least of once a week. The sample included a slight majority of females (54.8 per cent); and the ethnic groups accurately portrayed the ethnicity of the Western Cape, including primarily black (35.2 per cent) and coloured (36.4 per cent) ethnic groups (Statistics SA, 2012). Table II offers a full overview of the usage characteristics and demographics of Millennials respondents that use Facebook.\n6. Discussion and implications: 6.1. Key findings\n7. Limitations and directions for future research: This investigation has some limitations and also lends itself to additional research. The inquiry did not take the various types of Facebook advertising into consideration; therefore, it is suggested that further research should be conducted to determine whether there was a difference in attitudinal effectiveness between the various advertising forms. Only the behavioural attitude and a single SNS was surveyed, whereas future studies could examine other attitude components, as well as other widely used SNS such as YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Cognitive and affective attitudes warrant further research, since consumers' first need to become aware and be informed of an organisation's products and develop favourable emotional bonds before they can progress to behavioural activities. Like this study, surveys, which constituted a cross-section of attitudes were previously used in cognitive and affective attitudinal research. Hence, a longitudinal approach would yield more complete results, as inferred by Kalampokis et al. (2013) and Schoen et al. (2013). This study utilised quantitative data, as have past inquiries on cognitive and affective attitudinal components, whereas qualitative research would provide greater insight into Millennials' attitudes. Future research could also take other countries into consideration, since a developing country with a diverse and rich culture such as SA, may differ from other developing nations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of behavioural attitudes towards the most popular social medium in the world, Facebook, amongst Millennials in South Africa (SA), and to determine whether various usage and demographic variables have an impact on intention-to-purchase and purchase perceptions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Quantitative research was conducted by means of a survey among a sample of over 3,500 respondents via self-administered structured questionnaires in SA. A generalised linear model was used to analyse the data.\nFindings: The results confirm that advertising on Facebook has a positive influence on the behavioural attitudes (intention-to-purchase and purchase) of Millennials who reside in SA. The usage characteristics, log on duration and profile update incidence, as well as the demographic influence of ethnic orientation also resulted in more favourable perceptions of Facebook advertising.\nResearch limitations/implications: Research on Facebook advertising was only conducted in SA, whereas other emerging countries warrant further investigation to establish if they share the slight positive sentiment towards intention-to-purchase and purchase. This inquiry only provides a \"snap shot\" of behavioural attitudes, usage and demographic factors towards social media advertising, whereas future research could consider the development of cognitive, affective and behavioural attitudes towards Facebook advertising by employing longitudinal and qualitative research designs.\nPractical implications: Organisations and managers should consider that their existing Facebook advertising strategies may only have a limited effect on intention-to-purchase and purchase in SA. However, certain usage characteristics, namely the more time spent logged on to Facebook and the greater frequency of profile update incidence, as well as the demographic variable, namely black and coloured Millennials, resulted in more favourable behavioural attitudes towards Facebook advertising. Hence, organisations and managers should be prepared to alter or adapt their Facebook advertising tactics accordingly when targeting the notoriously fickle Millennials.\nOriginality/value: This investigation found that Facebook advertising has a nominal positive influence on behavioural attitudes among Millennials, which is in congruence with the communications of the effect pyramid model that was established through traditional advertising research. This paper also makes a noteworthy contribution to attitudinal research in emerging countries where there is a dearth of research in social media advertising.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring differences between private and public organizations in business excellence models	[ "Multi-group analysis", "Quality management", "Importance-performance analysis", "Business excellence", "Private organization", "Public organization", "Quality award" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Sousa and Voss (2002) argued that research on quality management (QM) needs to understand the application of QM in different industries; in other words, more contingency research is needed. The use of management models that come from private sectors (e.g. QM) in public organizations has faced extensive criticism. Although public and private organizations have many similarities, there are also differences; for example, concerning the source of financial resources, ownership, and model of social control (Perry and Rainey, 1988; Hvidman and Andersen, 2014). Boyne (2002, p. 97) analyzed the differences between public and private organizations in terms of how they are run and concluded that the only differences were that \"public organizations are more bureaucratic, and public managers are less materialistic and have weaker organizational commitment than their private sector counterparts.\"\n2. Literature review and research hypotheses: 2.1 Validity of the business excellence models\n3. Research method: The data were extracted from the SIQ database. There were a total of 165 applicants between 1992 and 2014. For data analysis, we used the PLS-SEM method (Hair et al., 2012; Sarstedt et al., 2014). We chose this method because we were interested in the relationship between the independent and dependent constructs in the SIQ model, especially in terms of how well the independent constructs can predict the dependent ones. Had we been interested in testing model fit, we would have used the covariance-based SEM method (Bollen, 1989). The PLS-SEM approach also enabled us to test the paths' difference between the two groups and to identify key driver constructs for predicting endogenous constructs; in this case, business results and customer satisfaction.\n4. Results: 4.1 Current SIQ model assessment\n5. Discussion: 5.1 The paths in the excellence models for public and private organizations\n6. Conclusions: The present study aimed to explore the differences between public and private organizations in the paths of business excellence models and to identify the key drivers for creating business results and customer satisfaction. In line with previous research, we confirmed that leadership is a very strong predictor of human resource development, information and analysis, management of processes, and strategic planning. It is also the most important driver of business \"results.\" Unfortunately, most of the organizations did not score high with respect to this criterion. In general, it is difficult to explain or predict the variation in business \"results\" for private and public organizations. The performance of private organizations is almost always higher than that of public ones, in all criteria. However, the variation in private organizations' endogenous constructs is more difficult to explain or predict than that in public organizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between public and private organizations in the paths of business excellence models and to identify the key drivers for creating business results and customer satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The partial least squares structural equation modeling technique is used to compare the path coefficients and to identify the key driver constructs for creating business results.\nFindings: The variation in endogenous constructs is found to be more difficult to explain or predict for private organizations than for public organizations, despite the fact that the performance of private organizations is almost always higher than or equal to the performance of public ones in all criteria. The effect of \"leadership\" on \"management of processes\" is significantly higher in public organizations than in private ones. However, \"management of processes\" in public organizations does not seem to translate into \"results.\" The effect of \"strategic planning\" on creating business \"results\" is negative for public organizations and remains inconclusive, due to insufficient evidence, for private organizations.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results may not be generally applicable to other countries. However, they do support the move toward more tailor-made models for specific sectors.\nPractical implications: It is necessary to review the national business excellence model in order to fit specific sectors.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to investigate the differences between private and public organizations in the Swedish business excellence model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The value of the certifications of origin: a comparison between the Italian olive oil and wine markets	[ "Wine", "Olive oil", "Hedonic price", "Interval regression", "Certification of origin" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Geographical indications (GIs) for agricultural products and for processed food have been traditionally adopted in many European countries for about one century and even more. Based on the idea that the quality of some products is strictly linked to the place of origin, this kind of quality certification has been extensively used in the wine sector before all others. EU Reg. 2081/92 introduced a common framework among member states. However, up to nowadays wines have been ruled separately, basically following different national schemes for the certification of product origin. Only recently the European legislator is driving a merge between the different schemes with the aim to unify and simplify the rules (Reg. 1151/2012). Over time, the European law has been objected of not being fully effective and not appropriately targeted (Carbone et al., 2014; Deselnicu et al., 2013; London Economics, 2008). It is however out of question that it had the merit of giving a powerful impulse to the creation of many new protected designations of origin and protected geographical indications, overall contributing to raise a wide interest in the issue of product origin. In fact, the number of registered products has almost tripled since the first application of the EU Regulation and it is now above 1,200. As for the wines, summing up all the different national schemes the total number of GIs is well higher.\n2. The role of the place of origin as a quality clue for wine and olive oil: Wine and olive oil are both products with strong roots in the place of origin. This is true at a macro level if we think that two third of world exports of wine comes from Mediterranean European countries and that over 90 percent of world exports of olive oil comes from Mediterranean countries (Anania and Pupo D'Andrea, 2011; Carbone et al., 2015; London Economics, 2008). Furthermore, in consumers' minds all over the world, wine and olive oil are fully embedded in the culinary traditions, culture and image of the area as part of the Mediterranean diet (Wahrburg et al., 2002).\n3. Methodology: 3.1. The sources of data\n4. Results: 4.1. The olive oil sample: descriptive statistics\n5. Concluding remarks: The analysis presented in the paper shows that product origin and the relative certification schemes play a relevant role in the formation of prices in the higher segments of both wine and olive oil markets.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on high segments of the Italian olive oil and wine markets. The main goal is to compare the role and the effectiveness of the certification of origin in the creation of value in the two selected markets. Moreover, the authors investigate how different quality clues in the olive oil and wine sectors are related to prices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To meet the goal the authors estimate two separate hedonic price models where the price of the product is regressed over different quality clues some of which are sector specific and some are common to the two sectors. The models are estimated on data which come from two of the major Italian guides chosen for their well established reputation and for the richness of information.\nFindings: The results indicate that: product origin and the relative certification schemes play a relevant role in the formation of prices in both markets; while the olive oil price seems to be more sensitive to farm location than to the certification of origin, the opposite happens for the wines; the higher segments of the Italian olive oil market is increasingly sophisticated and follows the main tendencies established in the quality wine markets where many quality attributes are intensely active.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, it should be kept in mind that results for higher market segment may not hold for different segments where relevant quality clues may be different. Second, reader should be aware that comparability of the two samples is constrained by limited data availability for the olive oil sector compared to the wine sector.\nOriginality/value: This study represents one of the first attempts to compare the role of the certification of origin in the creation of value in the Italian agro-food markets.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Excellence models as complex management systems: An examination of the Shingo operational excellence model	[ "Systems thinking", "Continuous improvement", "Complex systems" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: on a treasure hunt: In what follows, the word enterprise is used in a very broad sense as substitutable for such other choices as business, company or organization without regard to whether the enterprise is a for profit one, a governmental entity, an NGO or a for benefit entity that seeks to \"do well by doing good\" (Sabeti, 2011). Enterprises are purpose-driven entities. Fulfilling enterprise purpose and vision should be intentional, rather than accidental--yet relatively few enterprises routinely improve and prosper year upon year. Translation of intention into fulfillment is challenging and the precise recipe for successful translation varies from organization to organization. Enterprises that succeed in this translation have typically mastered commonalities from which general models or maps--called \"X Excellence Models\"--can be derived and can provide general guidance to other organizations seeking sustained success. X variations including operational, business, performance, organizational or enterprise. The term operational is used herein. Among commonalities are cultivation of cultures of excellence that are founded on unity of purpose as to \"what the enterprise is all about.\" Complementary to this, a critical mass of the enterprise's human ecology must commit to a shared vision for the future of the enterprise and must understand the means, necessity and value of their contributions to advancing that vision. While unity of purpose and shared vision are critical to prolonged year-upon-year success, these must be supported by well-defined means by which the enterprise formulates and executes strategy that delivers results aligned with enterprise purpose and vision where strategy describes how the enterprise intends to create value for its varied stakeholders (Kaplan and Norton, 2015). The core motivation behind such models is that successful implementation will render the organization more sustainable, more resilient, more robust and will routinely deliver positive performance and impacts in areas critical to enterprise stakeholders. X Excellence Models view enterprises as complex adaptive systems where the overall enterprise architecture is a complex macroscopic collection of relatively similar and partially connected micro-structures. Such architectures are formed to render the enterprise more adaptive to environmental changes, thereby increasing macro-structural (enterprise) survivability.\nA treasure map: operational excellence modeling: Whether implicit or explicit, any venture to forecast a future scenario or result is modeling. The question is not whether to model, but whether to develop an explicit model as a means of forecasting and guiding future performance. The objective herein is to construct a useful operational excellence model. Model value should be determined only after reasonably approached implementation has provided the model with a fair opportunity to succeed or fail on its own merits, as measured by its results. Usefulness depends on various factors, among which is that reasonable application of the model must yield an enterprise performing at elevated levels in relevant domains over a prolonged period. Reasonable application intends:\nToward a model: enterprises and complex systems: Enterprises have many characteristics, including the characteristic of competing against one another. Selected rules of competitive engagement and characteristics include the following:\nBrick-by-brick: the best environmental domains: Environmental domains represent the enterprise's external context and are referred to as BEST domains (Edgeman, 2000). These exert significant influence on the enterprise since they define competitive, legal and other boundaries within which the enterprise operates. This context is in near continual flux and just as it defines boundaries--some of which are fixed and some of which are soft or permeable--it often has embedded un- or under-exploited opportunities as well as areas that may well be saturated. Trend-spotting (or futuring) relative to these domains can be a valuable activity with generation of sufficient and targeted foresight aiding timely and targeted change. Trend-spotting is key to effective strategy with strategic direction depending on enterprise goals and strategist mindset. Strategic direction may range from highly guarded or conservative to highly aggressive and from passive to highly active.\nBrick-by-brick: stakeholder constituencies and perspectives: Enterprises generate social benefits via active stakeholder interactions. While many stakeholders manifest at the enterprise perimeter, others, such as enterprise human ecology, are internal stakeholders. A single entity may simultaneously belong to several stakeholder segments, for example an individual may be employed by an automobile manufacturer, may be a customer of the company who owns a vehicle produced by the company, and may hold shares of company stock. Decisions made and actions taken by the company will affect such stakeholders in multiple and generally unequal ways relative to the stakeholder segment considered. For example, a car manufacturer may introduce a new model or a significant innovation that does not impact employee salary, but may increase customer costs in the form of, e.g., purchase price; and may drive up share value with the hypothetical individual described affected in a financially neutral way as an employee, in a financially negative way as a consumer and positively as a shareholder.\nBrick-by-brick: stakeholder mediating forces: Stakeholder mediating forces--hereafter referred to simply as mediating forces--refer to what stakeholders contribute to the enterprise (including access) or what elements, aspects or activities of the enterprise they deem objectionable. Mediating forces define issues requiring an enterprise response. These forces can be principle-based or intangible, or material and tangible. Tangible or material elements include physical resources such as infrastructure, commercial goods, or disposable goods and non-physical elements such as legal or contractual rights or limitations. Principle-based intangible mediating forces include personal and cultural ones such as interests, norms, concerns and values. Child-welfare concerns have led to labor legislation, interest in level competitive playing fields has fueled international anti-corruption enforcement, environmental stewardship values are behind carbon emissions limitations, and value for social equity is at the heart of many enterprise diversity efforts so that interests, norms, concerns and values stimulate enterprises to operate in socially responsible ways.\nBrick-by-brick: strategy and enterprise alignment: Communication is typically the \"shadow\" behind everything that occurs (or does not) in an enterprise. Organizational culture is comprised of the collection of behaviors driving these occurrences and non-occurrences. Strategic management requires strategy derivation and implementation, with implementation aided or hindered by the quality, quantity and timeliness of enterprise communication. Enterprise strategy is dynamic and involves content and process, planning and action, and is key to agility and to timely renewal of business models. Enterprise strategy is emergent: while much of it may be intentional in nature, other aspects develop as reactions to unanticipated side-effects of intentionally formed and deployed strategy. Strategic management should thoughtfully address the BEST environmental domains, mediating forces, and should identify and challenge constraints originating within the enterprise.\nBrick-by-brick: enterprise systems and processes: A process is a series of activities performed with the intention of bringing about a specific result or set of results. The activities are typically--though not always--pursued in a pre-determined sequence. Systems tend to involve multiple interacting processes that may be aligned or--counterproductively--working at cross-purposes with one another. Most processes of interest are performed repeatedly. Detailed process descriptions require study of activities, activity chain, supporting information systems, process controls and process development:\nBrick-by-brick: enterprise risk management: Driven by significant failures due to reasons that range from deep ethical breeches to natural disasters, risk management has grown significantly in importance since the 1990s. Some of these failures were so impactful that national governments enacted legislation aimed at increasing corporate transparency--especially with respect to risk exposure for their investors and other stakeholders. Perhaps the most high-profile example of such legislation came in the USA with the 2002 passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires chief executives and financial directors to provide specific statements addressing risk in their annual reports, with a second example provided by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Acharya et al., 2011), parts of which deal--for example--use of conflict minerals in an enterprise's products or by members of its supply chain. Enterprises are especially required to disclose all significant risks to the well-being of the enterprise, including risks that were previously considered to be outside their span of responsibilities. Four significant systems that comprise risk management (Waters, 2007) are cited below and represented as interior to the enterprise in Figure 1:\nBrick-by-brick: enterprise advancement means: Enterprise advancement or development commonly involves a paradox: that both stability and change are required (Farjoun, 2010), though in the case of micro-changes flexibility may prove a more apt term. As part of this paradox the enterprise experiences changing mixtures of certainty and uncertainty of tradition and innovation. Successful enterprises routinely navigate such flux. Three means of enterprise advancement are innovation, optimization and renewal with the latter two of these not always readily distinguishable. In larger enterprises, multiple advancement modes often co-exist, though not always harmoniously so.\nBrick-on-brick: an assembled complex systems management model: We have now identified the primary components of our complex systems management model, one possible assemblage of which appears in Figure 1 where BEST environmental domain forces largely beyond enterprise control appear on the perimeter. Stakeholders mostly impacting the enterprise appear on the left side in Figure 1 whereas stakeholders mostly impacted by the enterprise appear on the right side. Stakeholders identified at the bottom in Figure 1 tend to interact with the enterprise in less tangible ways.\nPrinciples and insights of the Shingo model: Focus now turns to the Shingo operational excellence modelTM (SOEM) against the criteria of which enterprises applying for the Shingo Prize are assessed. The Shingo Prize was established in 1988 with the endorsement of lean manufacturing and quality authority Shigeo Shingo (1909-1990). The SOEM is founded on three insights of enterprise excellence that give rise to ten guiding principles (Shingo Institute, 2018). SOEM guiding principles in are divided into four interrelated categories: cultural enablers, continuous improvement, enterprise alignment and results cited in Table I in both their current and possible future forms. These are elaborated at www.shingo.org/model. The three insights of enterprise excellence are provided below:\nConclusion: the Shingo Model as a complex management systems model: Culture and communication are the shadows behind much that does and does not occur in an enterprise. Although culture may be regarded as the way that the enterprise does things, culture is also why the enterprise does what it does and how it opts to do so. While enterprise culture may be tangibly expressed in terms of, for example, formal codes of conduct, it is also rife with intangible elements. Resulting from this perspective is that principles, processes, systems, and activities, vision, strategy more are all embedded in enterprise culture. The enterprise, though, is part of a much larger picture, interacting with its stakeholders and functioning within the larger ecology represented by the BEST environmental domains. In this context, guiding principles saturate culture, purpose, vision, strategy, objectives, processes formed to realize these and the specific activities that generate results. These ideas are portrayed in Figures 3 and 4.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: When appropriately implemented, excellence models such as the Shingo operational excellence model (SOEM), Baldrige performance excellence model and EFQM business excellence model aid enterprise quests for sustained superior results across varied dimensions. Evidence supporting this statement abounds in the literature and in practice. The models, however, tend to be driven by experience, rather than grounded in theory. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretical underpinnings for such models, with the SOEM used for illustrative purposes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Management theory, systems theory and excellence modeling are integrated to yield a complex management systems based operational excellence model. Correspondence of this model with the SOEM is explored. Key elements considered include contextual factors external to the enterprise, diverse stakeholders, mediating forces, enterprise culture and representative enterprise processes.\nFindings: Understanding the theoretical underpinnings of excellence models--their elements and the interactions and synergies of these elements--enables more sure adaptation of such models to specific enterprise contexts, and more sure course corrections whenever corrections are needed.\nOriginality/value: Many excellence models exist, their usefulness largely validated by anecdotal or empirical evidence. Such validation is important, but falls short of theoretically grounding these models. The approach taken herein serves to unify theory, empirical evidence and anecdotes, thus placing excellence models on more solid ground.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Relationship between onboarding experience and turnover intention: intervening role of locus of control and self-efficacy	[ "Turnover intention", "Locus of control", "Self-efficacy", "Onboarding experience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Employee turnover is a serious issue that all organizations have to deal with. According to Hay group study in 2013[1], the employee turnover ratio is hovering around 21.2 percent world over due to fast growing economy throwing increasing job opportunities. It was found to be highest in India with a figure of 26.9 percent. Major reasons were job dissatisfaction in their present company with 55 percent of Indian employees expressing concerns about their compensation not being fair and the benefits given to them not meeting their needs (48 percent). One in every three employees expressed concern over ability to achieve his/her career objectives with current employers (37 percent); as a result, he/she is concerned about opportunities for learning and development (39 percent) and supervisory coaching for his/her own development (36 percent). According to another study by Hay group[2], there is an acute deficit of \"impactful leaders\" in the manufacturing sector in India and 73 percent business leaders are perceived to be creating a \"de-motivating work environment.\" In a nutshell, confidence in leadership, career development opportunities, autonomy, conducive work environment are the main reasons why employees would like to stay in a company. Further, Ulrich et al. (1991) found that the decrease in turnover led to increase in organizational performance and a reduction in costs associated with losses of firm-and job-specific knowledge, hiring, and retraining of replacement employees. It also significantly reduces the associated indirect costs such as lower new employee productivity, additional time needed by managers in support of new employees, and diminished productivity of established employees as they serve as mentors to new employees (Cascio, 2000). According to Aberdeen group (Tarquinio, 2006), 90 percent of employees make their decision to stay at a company within the first six months or early employment.\nTheoretical framework: OE experience through the perspective of the SRT\nMethodology: Sample description\nData analysis: Entire data were first tested with the diagnostic test for regression such as assumption of constant variance, existence of outliers, and normality (Eckstein et al., 2015; Cleveland and Devlin, 1988; Ruppert et al., 2003). We used plots of residuals by predicted values, plot of residuals, and statistics of skewness and kurtosis. The maximum absolute values of skewness and kurtosis of the indicators in the data sets were found to be 0.53 and 0.87, respectively. These values are well within the limits recommended by past research (skewness <2, kurtosis <7) (Curran et al., 1996). Hence, no significant deviations from the assumptions of regression can be concluded.\nDiscussion: In this research, OE has been looked in the perspective of social resource theory. Turnover and TI of newcomers have been serious concern, especially in India, and the study concludes that satisfaction with the social resources as indicated by OE determines TI of newcomers. Better the OE lower will be the TI. The study also indicates that individuals' core self-psychological-evaluation construct, locus of control determines process as well as effectiveness of newcomers to draw social resources from the OEs. Higher level of both internal and external (chance) locus of control will indicate better OE. Individuals with higher internal locus of control have significantly higher motivation-based self-efficacy, which lead them to have better OE, whereas individuals with higher external locus of control have higher affective self-efficacy (or perceived coping capability during stress) which act as mediator to have better OE. So, it is important for organizations to be aware of each newcomer's psychological resources such as locus of control to customize the onboarding process design. So, psychometric test of newcomers should form part of individuals pre-joining requirement. Further, affective efficacy has been observed to moderate the impact of OE with TI. Newcomers with low perceived coping efficacy under stress will have decreased TI with the increase in perceived OE (Jones, 1986). But newcomers with higher perceived ability to cope under stress are expected to have higher intention to leave with the increase in satisfaction with OE. The reason may be individuals with higher self-efficacy are more equipped with psychological capital such as courage and confidence to proactively take a decision of job-switchover with better opportunity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find industry wise differences in relationship between onboarding experience (OE) and turnover intention (TI). An attempt has been made to find the intervening role of psychological variables such as locus of control and self-efficacy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online questionnaire was administered to 596 newcomers in five industrial sectors: fast-moving consumer goods, information technology (IT), pharmaceuticals, automobile manufacturing, and hospitality. The questionnaire measured the constructs of locus of control, self-efficacy, perceived OE, and TI.\nFindings: Inverse relationship was found between perceived OE and TI. There is a significant positive relationship between motivation-based self-efficacy and TI which is mediated through OE. Affective self-efficacy moderates the impact of OE on TI, such that for individuals with low efficacy the inverse relationship between OE and TI is strong, but for individuals with high self-efficacy the relationship between the two variables is direct. The OE in automobile manufacturing industries is significantly higher than other industries. TI is significantly higher in IT and hospitality industries. Exploratory factor analysis of the instrument on OE led to extraction of four factors. Based on socialization resource theory, they were termed as orientation, socialization, task characteristics and leadership. Aspects of socialization and leadership are most significant factors in determining TI across industrial sectors, whereas in case of the hospitality and automobile manufacturing sector it was found that better the task characteristics higher is the chance of TI.\nOriginality/value: There are limited studies linking various aspects of OE with TI across industries, especially in the Indian context. So, this will be the unique contribution of this research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Web-based marketing communication to develop brand image and brand equity of higher educational institutions: A structural equation modelling approach	[ "Marketing strategy", "Communication", "Brand image", "Education", "Brand equity", "World Wide Web", "Web-based marketing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Despite its early involvement with traditional consumer goods only, branding has currently grown to become a core part of services and non-profit organizations as well. Taking its distinct features (intangibility, variability, inseparability, for instance) into consideration, it is argued that brand image can play a crucial role for any service industry in building strong brand equity (Endo et al., 2018). A review of the literature suggests that similar to other service organizations, higher education institutions are also heading toward brand-building activities to ensure their long term superior position over competitors. History and tradition are no longer the sole reasons to attain and retain the positive image and customer-based brand equity. Hence, use of marketing communication tools in a comprehensive manner is an indispensable strategy for every marketer (Seric, 2017). Many of these institutions adopt various promotional tools such as advertising, public relations, online communication and direct marketing to create their respective distinct images. While many studies focus on the use of conventional communication for this purpose, a comprehensive review of the literature does not show a strong presence of strategic coordination of Internet-based marketing communication in creating a brand image of higher education service toward overall consumer brand equity. Malaysia also aspires to become one of the best educational service providers in the world (www.moe.com). It is to be noted that positive brand equity is a fundamental indicator that shows the effectiveness of each used communication tool (Raji et al., 2018). Before the use of each marketing communication technique, one needs to confirm its projected value.\n2. Literature review: In the following sections literatures on brand equity and brand image about online marketing communication are cited to formulate the hypotheses to be tested in the subsequent sections.\n3. Methodology: Because the purpose of this study is to configure the relationship between Internet marketing communication and brand image and brand equity of Malaysian HE institutions, 370 local and international students were selected from various HE institutions. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select the respondents from public and private universities of various states of Malaysia. The questionnaire is attached in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 gives the distribution of collected samples.\n4. Data analysis: 4.1 Factor analysis\n5. Findings of the study: In line with contemporary literature, the study reveals positive relationships between brand image and brand equity, search engine and brand image, social media and brand image. However, the relationship between online display and brand image is not found to be significant.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Internet-based marketing communication has been an important element for organizations to build brand image and brand equity. Higher education is not an exception. However, configuring the right mix in the age of social networking sites and various online displays and constantly changing algorithm in search engine optimization have become major challenges today. Hence, the purpose of this study is to configure integrated online marketing communication for the development of brand image and brand equity for higher educational institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is quantitative in nature. A responsive group of 370 students was chosen from different educational institutions in Malaysia via stratified random sampling techniques. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used for interpreting the data. To test the derived hypotheses, structural equation modelling was used.\nFindings: In line with contemporary literature, the study revealed positive relationships between brand image and brand equity, between search engine and brand image and between social media and brand image. The relationship between online display and brand image was not found significant.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research can be done considering both online and conventional marketing communications for the same purpose. This approach can also be used for private and public institutions separately, considering their differences in nature.\nPractical implications: Because history and tradition are no more a single tool to attain and retain the positive image and customer-based brand equity, this study can help higher educational institutions to configure integrated online communication for their target groups, such as students and industry, in the age of the internet.\nOriginality/value: This study generates a comprehensive understanding of the impact of Web-based marketing communication to develop brand image and brand equity of higher educational institutions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The recontextualization of commercialization: the shifting discourse of an R&D unit	[ "Work organization", "Sociology of work", "Research and development", "Scientists" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Within advanced economies, especially the Anglo-American world, we have witnessed a significant social restructuring of the nature of professions and professionalism (Friedson, 2001). Professionals have come under increasing pressure to embrace commercial values and be concerned with \"the bottom-line\" (Hanlon, 1998). A considerable amount has been written about the commercialization, commoditization and managerialization of professional groups (see for example Abbott, 1988; Evetts, 2002; Friedson, 1994; Perkin, 1989; Sklair, 2001). This body of work has encompassed the study of a wide range of knowledge workers, including among others: lawyers (Abel, 2004; Goreily, 1994); accountants (Anderson-Gough et al., 2000); doctors (Brazier et al., 1993); engineers (Randle, 1996); and teachers (Causer and Jones, 1996). However, contributions which consider the everyday, lived experience of research and development (R&D) professionals are far more scarce (some notable exceptions being: Chiesa et al., 2004; Henry et al., 1995; Keller, 1992; Tijssen, 2004).\nBackground and approach: The research presented in this paper formed part of a wider study within the R&D unit of a UK-based multinational oil company (subsequently referred to as Oil Co) which was undertaken as doctoral research by one of the authors. The data were gathered over a 12-month period and the analysis focused on two R&D technology groups concerned with producing \"liquid hydrocarbon solutions\".The data collection process was ethnographic in orientation based upon a combination of informal in situ conversations, formal interviews, the analysis of secondary data sources and non-participant observation. In all, 41 semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and staff. These interviews were tape-recorded and they were typically of between 60 and 90 minutes duration. A wide range of documentary sources were examined, including: newsletters, websites, emails, internal reports and previous research projects conducted on the site. In addition to observing informal conversations, the fieldwork also involved attending various meetings and presentations.Of the 41 interviews, 30 were semi-structured with individuals from three groups within Oil Co (i.e. the Fuels Business Group, the Lubricants Business Group and the Research and Innovation Group). In addition, 11 unstructured interviews were undertaken, i.e. five interviews with members of Fuels Group (including one individual from the Human Resources Department and one from the Information Storing Department) and six follow-up interviews in the final stages of the research (i.e. four in fuels and two in lubricants). In sum, the representatives of the following groups were formally interviewed:* two members of the Research and Innovation Group;* two Resource Managers (from Fuels) and the two Innovation Managers (from Fuels and Lubricants);* ten current Innovation Team members (from Fuels) including four pilot interviews;* nine PhD scientists from Fuels and five from Lubricants* others (engineers, scientists, lab-technicians): five from Fuels and four from Lubricants; and* two pre-students (one being Innovation Team member, both from Fuels).Although 41 interviews were undertaken, the interviews that were particularly pertinent to the current study were those undertaken with scientists and technicians. The focal point of interest during the 12 months of fieldwork was the process of structural change in Oil Co which led to the R&D unit being transformed from a scientifically oriented \"Research Centre\" to a commercially oriented \"Innovation Park\". These tangible changes were accompanied by a significant shift in the R&D discourse. It became apparent from interview responses, observations and documentary sources that there was a process of recontextualization in play in which a commercial discourse was superimposed in an R&D context.Here recontextualization is used in a particular discursive sense. According to Bernstein (1990, 1996), a specific discourse that circulates in one particular community is \"recontextualized\" when translated to another. In his original work, Bernstein considered the recontextualization of practical discourses into educational settings to produce pedagogic discourses that offered leverage for educationalists. Similarly, Thomas (2003) has looked at the way in which management knowledge generated in an academic context is transferred and translated into a management practitioner context. Others have also considered the recontextualizing role of discourse in relation to professional and organizational boundaries (e.g. Linell, 1998; Sarangi, 1998; Scheuer, 2001). Given that the process of recontextualization involves a sophisticated discursive shift in which a discourse generated in one context produces different meanings and consequences when imposed in an alternative context, we believe it offers a meaningful way of interrogating the imposition of a commercial discourse in an R&D setting.\nRecontextualization: from R&D laboratory to innovation park: The etymological shift from being an \"R&D laboratory\" to being an \"innovation park\", during the fieldwork phase of the research, represented more than simply a change of name. The actual status of the R&D unit also changed. Instead of continuing to operate as an integral part of the parent company, the transition to \"innovation park\" involved the R&D function becoming an R&D and technical services company in its own right. This meant that the R&D laboratories operated as independent technical consultancies that had clearly articulated commercial objectives. Moreover, the basis of the relationship with Oil Co changed, with the parent company positioning itself as a customer. The newly formed R&D company was also encouraged to generate new business and find other clients. These substantial structural changes aided the establishment of the new commercial order and the concomitant emergence of a discourse of commercialization supported this turn with rhetoric around concepts such as flexible structures, high trust relationships, team work and robust financial systems (Adler, 2001; Gibbons et al., 1994).Before discussing the results of the fieldwork in detail, it may be helpful to provide a brief overview of the findings. Table I provides a summary of the changes which occurred within the R&D unit. The issues raised in Table I will be discussed further in the subsequent sections of the paper.Becoming customer driven\nDiscussion and conclusions: The insights provided above highlight the changing nature of R&D work within a large multinational oil company. Moreover, this work demonstrates how a commercial discourse, which emanates from the realms of marketing and finance, becomes recontextualized in an R&D context. It can be regarded as recontextualized insofar as the prevailing commercial discourse comes to have different meanings in the life world of R&D professionals who see their professional identities being reformulated and their working practices being reconstituted.Although R&D professionals were cognisant of, and uncomfortable with, the changing nature of R&D arrangements in Oil Co, there is nevertheless little evidence of a hegemonic struggle concerning the privileging of a commercializing discourse and the marginalization of a scientific discourse. There are perhaps three main reasons for this notable absence of workplace resistance. First, the movement to a commercialized R&D unit has been a fairly covert process of erosion in which the everyday language has slowly shifted (e.g. from a research-driven focus to a customer-driven focus) and this has been accompanied by the gradual and phased introduction of new processes and practices (for example: the formalization of team working; the new \"Time and Delivery\" scheme; and training courses in management skills). So, in effect, the discourse of commercialization unfolds through a process of osmosis with no clearly punctuated, or disproportionately significant, points at which substantial dissatisfaction, and as a result meaningful resistance, manifests itself.The second reason for the absence of resistance concerns the differing orientations and interests of key stakeholders. In the responses of R&D professionals presented earlier, it is apparent that long-serving R&D employees have a more traditional scientific focus (i.e. they construct their identities around being \"scientist-researchers\") than newer recruits. Given a comparatively limited period of exposure, it is not entirely surprising that newer employees are less attuned and sensitized to the extent and general trajectory of change that has occurred in Oil Co and the manner in which a scientific discourse has been displaced by a commercial one.Beyond this, new and recent recruits are also more inclined to implicitly embrace commercialization by seeking to develop business skills through the training courses available at Oil Co and the \"open-resource\" career development scheme. This predisposition is also evident in terms of career aspirations, where as one respondent indicated earlier, a high turnover of young graduates in R&D can be attributed to \"attractive opportunities over in sales and marketing\". The net effect of the contrasting positions of the long-serving, generally older, R&D employees (i.e. more aligned to a scientific discourse) and the newer, generally younger, R&D employees (i.e. more committed to a commercial discourse) is that the potential for resistance is reduced. Moreover, as the \"old guard\" researcher-scientists retire they are replaced with younger commercially oriented employees. This process of succession leads to a gradual change in the composition of stakeholders and the balance of power insofar as it reinforces the privileging of a commercialization discourse and minimizes the scope for resistance.The third, and final, reason for the absence of resistance is more macro in nature. It relates to the wider political hegemony (Boje, 1995), and the colonizing and commodifying effects, of the meta-discourse of capitalism where the pursuit of profits by corporations is presented as natural, legitimate and irresistible (Deetz, 1992, 1995). In effect, the commercialization of R&D represents a microcosm of corporate capitalism. Hence, for R&D professionals to challenge the commercializing discourse in Oil Co requires them to go beyond engaging in an institutional struggle and enter into a social struggle requiring them to \"swim-against-the-tide\" of capitalism. In this regard, the story of the recontextualization of commercialization at Oil Co is not simply a localized account of a corporate change initiative. It can also be read as a moment in the discursive recontextualization of capitalism itself.Opens in a new window.Table I.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of the introduction of a commerical discourse within a scientific context (i.e. a research and development (R&D) setting). It explores the reconstitution of professional identities, becoming customer focused and changing time orientations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Drawing upon the concept of recontextualization as a discursive framework for analysis, extensive fieldwork was undertaken in a multinational oil company involving informal conversations, formal interviews with R&D staff (n = 41), secondary data analysis and non-participant observation.\nFindings: - The major finding is that the commercialization of R&D operations was resented, but not resisted, by established R&D scientists. The reasons for the absence of resistance are discussed.\nOriginality/value: - This work contributes to the understanding of the recontextualization of discourse in professional settings. It also offers insights into the colonizing and commodifying effects of the commercialization discourse.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Potentials facilitators of workplace learning in a TPS based company	[ "Teamwork", "Empowering leadership", "Workplace learning", "Lean organization", "Toyota production system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, questions about workplace learning, education and competence development have been given increased importance. There is a widespread belief among decision makers, management and researchers that learning is essential for productivity, innovation and in achieving sustainable competitive advantage (Tynjala, 2008; Lundvall and Archibugi, 2001; Eskelinen et al., 1998). This development reflects an extensive belief in the importance of creating a work climate that enables workplace learning for enhancing productivity, innovation and competitiveness (Tidd, 2001).\nKey characteristics of the TPS: The TPS is the basis for much of the production movement that has dominated manufacturing trends for the last ten years (Lander and Liker, 2007; Liker, 2004). Here, it should be noted that much of the literature regarding TPS often describes the positive aspects of these production systems, and little attention is paid to discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the system (Mehri, 2006). In this paper the purpose is neither to promote nor to disapprove the system, instead we try to contribute to a more differentiated discussion about the organizational aspects of the system. Here, it is not possible to make a thorough description of this system; instead some key characteristics of TPS and its relations to workplace learning are presented.\nThe learning potential of TPS: In the area of workplace learning, there are many different definitions but the majority encompasses aspects that involves that the organization is continually transforming itself to better collect, manage and use knowledge for corporate success (Marquardt, 1996a). Workplace learning can be stimulated by the improvement of conditions for informal learning and the practices of formal training and instruction in work settings (Engestrom and Kerosuo, 2007; Watkins, 1995).\nPotentials facilitators of workplace learning in TPS: As mentioned before, it is essential to understand the practices and principles that make up workplace learning in a TPS-based organization. It is also important to provide relevant predictor data that enable the applicability of workplace learning in organizations (Griego et al., 2000). From the perspective of workplace learning, our interest is directed toward work conditions, since they provide more or less beneficial fundamentals for developing competence in carrying out stipulated work task, and in mastering change. Employees who learn to be proactive at work can be part of change and developmental activities, which in turn can provide a new opportunity for learning qualitatively new tasks, such learning is essential for both enterprises and for the individual's long-term employability (Lantz, 2011). In a more general context, there are several ways of categorizing predictors. Ellstrom (2001), concludes that the learning potential of a certain job can be described as a function of different groups of factors that can be related to the organization of the work. Leadership, teamwork, innovative climate are examples of these kinds of factors.\nMethod: The company Scania\nResults: Sample characteristics\nDiscussion: As described earlier, questions about workplace learning and competence development have been given increased importance and there is an extensive belief among decision makers and researchers that learning and competence development are essential aspects for productivity, innovation and in achieving sustainable competitive advantage (Tynjala, 2008; Lundvall and Archibugi, 2001; Eskelinen et al., 1998). This development reflects an extensive belief in the importance of creating a work climate that enables workplace learning for enhancing productivity, innovation and competitiveness (Tidd, 2001).\nConclusion: In this study the aim was to analyze the role of empowering leadership, teamwork, innovative climate as potentials facilitators of workplace learning in this specific context. In the TPS literature there are several descriptions and stories about the characteristics of the system. Some enhance all the positive aspects regarding the system while other is focussing on the negative aspects of the system (Mehri, 2006). We can see that the concept of learning often is taken for granted, and no attempt is made to clarify or distinguish among different kinds of learning or discuss what organizational aspects that contributes to workplace learning. From our point of view it is important to question these \"stories\" about the TPS and try to contribute to a more differentiated discussion about the organizational aspects of the system. As researchers we need to further examine the key aspects of the TPS.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In line with the growing emphasis on workplace learning, there has been a tendency to abandon traditional Tayloristic models of work organization in favor of more humanistic, flexible and integrated work systems. This study focusses on facilitators of learning in a company that is based on the principles of Toyota production system (TPS). In this paper, the authors are focussing on one central aspect of the TPS, that is, workplace learning. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of empowering leadership, teamwork, innovative climate as facilitators of learning in this specific context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Questionnaires (focussing on workplace learning, empowering leadership, teamwork and innovative climate) were distributed to 643 factory workers in the company Scania in Sweden. A total of 487 persons answered the questionnaire, which amounted to a response rate of 76 percent.\nFindings: The result indicates that empowering leadership was the best predictor, followed by teamwork and innovative climate.\nOriginality/value: From this study, the authors can conclude that the already known predictors of learning can also be applied in a TPS setting. The key features in the TPS company constitute a foundation for learning.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Time well spent? Differing perceptions of breaks at work	[ "Gender differences", "Perceived and actual time", "Timelessness", "Workplace behavior" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: Among the slew of apps that can be downloaded to our devices, many of them purport to help us to be more organized. Some of them organize emails or enable greater functionality in person-to-person communications; some help us identify tasks and move them across virtual boards until they are complete; some remind us to do things at a certain time or place. Many of these are used every day, with some being effective for certain people, and others helping another type of person. In the end, it seems to come down to what suits an individual.\nAll work and no play?: In truth, the pomodoro technique makes a lot of sense in a world with an increasing number of distractions and interruptions from the devices themselves, and at least downloading the app stops you from accessing Facebook or playing Crossy Road. For the 25 minutes you are engaged, you should feel the benefits of \"deep thinking\", which is often a lost art these days. However, what about those five minute breaks - if you are at work, what do you do with that time?\nThrough the looking glass: The main thrust of the study is to assess what the perceived and actual times are that we spend on non-work activities while at work. The authors started with two main theories:\nMars and Venus: So how do the findings compare to the theories laid out at the start? In terms of the differences in actual and perceived time spent on non-work activities, Ferreira and Esteves found that employees thought they spent a lot more time using the bathroom than they actually did, but they felt they spent less time smoking and drinking coffee than they did in reality. In fact, employees estimated they spent almost half the time on smoking and drinking breaks than they actually did.\nPractical application: The results of the study could probably have been predicted by many an employer, however perhaps not the subtleties in what was under- and over-represented in employees' perceptions, nor in the gender differences. What human resource (HR) managers can take away from this is that, for instance, the cost to a company of a smoker can be almost US$6,000 a year in direct and indirect costs, and that while the provision of good coffee may be desirable to give people a lift, the net effect could be negative if they spent more time than they thought on coffee breaks. Supplying free espresso rather than filter coffee - with shorter drinking times for the same caffeine \"hit\" - could make more sense, even if the coffee is more expensive. To mitigate the negative effects of these behaviors, developing self-awareness training for these traits should help firms support this behavior, and would pay for itself almost immediately given the potential savings involved for each individual.\nComment: The article \"Perceptions of time at work: why the clock ticks differently for men and women when they are not working at work\" by Ferreira and Esteves (2016) does more than simply confirm one or two prejudices that may be held by careworn HR executives. It offers detailed insights into the qualia of perceptions and misperceptions, and how they differ between genders. Understanding these differences can prompt adoption of effective procedures that can ultimately add significantly to the bottom line.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: Among the slew of apps that can be downloaded to our devices, many of them purport to help us to be more organized. Some of them organize emails or enable greater functionality in person-to-person communications; some help us identify tasks and move them across virtual boards until they are complete; some remind us to do things at a certain time or place. Many of these are used every day, with some being effective for certain people, and others helping another type of person. In the end, it seems to come down to what suits an individual.\nPractical implications: This study provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Hygienic design of a unit for supercritical fluid drying - case study	[ "Failure modes and effects analysis", "Hygienic design", "Supercritical fluid drying" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Carbon dioxide (CO2) at high pressures (7.0-30.0 MPa) or in supercritical phase (above 31oC, 7.3 MPa) is considered as a novel non-thermal technology (Ferrentino, Balzan, Dorigato, Pegoretti and Spilimbergo, 2012). High-pressure treatments are recognized by the food industry as viable alternatives to traditional pasteurization/sterilization/drying processes in the preservation of natural flavors and nutrients of foods (Ferrentino, Balzan and Spilimbergo, 2012). Use of supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) in food processing became an attractive alternative preservation technology due to several advantages such as: meeting market requirements for food with minimal heat treatment; producing food with high nutritional and sensory quality; and achieving high microbial reduction (Damar and Balaban, 2006).\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Hygiene design evaluation\n3. Results and discussion: 3.1 Hygiene design evaluation results\n4. Conclusion: This research indicates the potential of using FMEA as a complimentary method of analyzing risks related to hygienic design. This kind of evaluation revealed two types of nonconformities, in terms of resolving the issues. The first type is related to those nonconformities that require some efforts regarding document management or validation of sanitary procedures. The second type consists of nonconformities that occur as a result of design failures. Considering that the primary aim of hygienic equipment and overall food factory design is to set up effective barriers to microbial and other contamination, the discovered failures are important points of attention for the equipment manufacturers and food companies. Food factories should be constructed as a series of barriers that aim to limit the entrance of contaminants and to rely as least as possible on downstream food protection options (packaging, cold chain, heat treatment at the household, etc.). Moreover, when the hygienic design has inherent technological requirements that do not allow full hygienic design, their placement within the factory must be carefully planned. The interface between preservation/decontamination operations in which scCO2 equipment falls and high-risk areas should be done in such a way that chances for air (or any other) contamination of the final product are kept at minimum as the foods produced will not undergo any additional inactivation treatment prior to their use, and moreover during their shelf-life they will rely on packaging to prevent moisture absorption that can result in microbial instability of the product. Future research should focus on a product-based hazard analysis to determine hazards that arise using this type of equipment and this drying technology.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the hygienic design of a scalable unit for supercritical carbon dioxide drying of food.\nDesign/methodology/approach: For the purpose of this study, a checklist has been developed, covering requirements from sanitary standards and industry-tailored guidelines. Beyond hygienic design, failure mode and effects analysis of the results were performed to assess the potential food safety risks that may arise from failures to hygienic design requirements.\nFindings: The overall score of the hygienic design was 46 percent. This kind of evaluation revealed two types of nonconformities. The first type was related to inadequate sanitary procedures. The second type was associated to design failures.\nResearch limitations/implications: The highest risk was designated to problems related to cleaning and sanitation followed by risks associated with the formation of dead zones and biofilms.\nPractical implications: This study provides valuable insight to engineers and food technologists on hygienic design issues.\nOriginality/value: Application of a similar methodology was used for evaluating hygienic design of other non-thermal food technologies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies: Taking multiple perspectives seriously	[ "Accountability", "Pluralism", "Agonistic democracy", "Dialogic accountings" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Ecological (un)sustainability and social (in)justices are overarching themes in what has been called the critical (interdisciplinary) perspectives on accounting project (Roslender and Dillard, 2003; Broadbent and Laughlin, 2013). Their study can assume many hues and tints; employing various perspectives, theories, methods and methodologies across many issues and circumstances. The articles appearing here fall within this eclectic remit. This paper reviews and situates them within developments in contemporary political theory and critical policy analysis. The aim is to advance the project characterized by the question: how can accounting, accountants and accountability regimes better facilitate democracy by serving the needs of pluralistic communities given inequalities among the various constituencies?\n2. Articles in the AAAJ special issue: All the articles cover governance practices and/or issues of democratic participation, and their implications for accounting. However, they approach these issues - explicitly or implicitly -differently.\n3. Governance practices, democratic participation and accounting: The call for papers invited submissions that developed more enabling forms of accounting but critically engaged with issues of democracy and pluralism (i.e. that address challenges of developing accounting theory and practice that take multiple perspectives seriously). Here we consider how these eclectic studies engage with emerging research taking an agonistic perspective on democracy and pluralism. The discussion is presented around three themes: first, challenges to achieving critical, pluralistic engagement in and through mainstream institutions; second, taking multiple perspectives seriously through decentred understandings of governance and democracy; and finally, the value of an agonistic ethos of engagement.\n4. Towards facilitating democracy - future research possibilities: A primary aim of this AAAJ special issue has been to consider how accounting might be democratized and contribute to other democratization projects aimed at, for example, promoting stakeholder-accountability and ecologically sustainable societies. Collectively, the articles consider the benefits and challenges of plurality, conflict and contingency in accounting theory and practice. Following from these studies, our previous work and the foregoing discussion, critical agonistic accounting can further these ends theoretically and practically. The purpose is to broaden out and open up dialogue and debate within an agonistic ethos of engagement. In doing so, we raise questions that hopefully will stimulate imaginative inquiries into how accounting, accountants and accountability regimes can better facilitate democracy, and meet the needs of pluralistic communities, bearing in mind inequalities amongst the various constituents.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize work in the emerging field of how accounting and accountability can be reoriented to better promote pluralistic democracy which recognizes and addresses differentials in power, beliefs and desires of constituencies. An agenda for future research and engagement is outlined, drawing on this and insights from other papers in this special issue of the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) aimed at taking multiple perspectives seriously.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reviews and synthesizes the central themes associated with accounting, accountants and accountability regimes in pluralistic societies, especially with respect to the research studies in this AAAJ special issue, and it identifies possibilities for future research and engagement.\nFindings: Three central themes are identified: the challenges of achieving critical, pluralistic engagement in and through mainstream institutions; the possibilities of taking multiple perspectives seriously through decentred understandings of governance and democracy; and the value of an agonistic ethos of engagement in accounting. The articles in this issue contribute to these themes, albeit differently, and in combination with the extant social science literature reviewed here, open up pathways for future research and engagement.\nPractical implications: This work seeks to encourage the development of pluralistic accounting and accountability systems drawing on conceptual and practice-based resources across disciplines and by considering the standpoints of diverse interested constituencies, including academics, policymakers, business leaders and social movements.\nOriginality/value: How accounting can reflect and enact pluralistic democracy, not least to involve civil society, and how problems related to power differentials and seemingly incompatible aims can be addressed has been largely neglected. This issue provides empirical, practical and theoretical material to advance further work in the area.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mindfulness in organizations (Part 2): a practitioners' guide to applying mindfulness-based approaches in leadership development, workplace wellbeing and coaching	[ "Leadership development", "Wisdom", "Mindfulness at work", "Wellbeing at work", "Mindfulness coaching" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizations today are confronted by challenges brought by globalization, growing cultural differences in the workforce, enhanced connectivity and a constant drive for efficiency. In the last paper (Passmore, 2019), we discussed these forces for change and the potential for mindfulness as a tool to help both employees and organizations to be better able to manage the challenges of \"the modern age.\"\nWhat is mindfulness?: The term mindfulness is derived from a translation of the term \"Sati.\" Sati combines aspects of \"awareness,\" \"attention\" and \"remembering,\" which are combined with \"non-judgement,\" \"acceptance,\" \"kindness\" and \"friendliness\" to oneself and others.\nMindfulness in practice: The previous paper (Passmore, 2019) reviewed the research literature and explored mindfulness as an intervention in both health and organizational settings. In the following section, we explore the application of mindfulness in leadership development, coaching and decision making.\nEvaluation: As discussed above, the evaluation of organizational interventions is more difficult than in many other contexts such as health. Many organizations are relying on low cost and easy to execute evaluation methods, such as participant evaluation, while leaving quantitative measures with pre- and post-questionnaires to academics. Writers have however noted the multiple levels that evaluation can usefully occur (Kirkpatrick, 1979; Dessinger and Moseley, 2006; Warr et al., 1970; Passmore and Veliz, 2012), but the application of more structured and quantitative measures is rare. This is a result of HR practitioners and managers lacking the time and skill, while academics often lack access to organizations at a senior level, is to enable evaluation to become an integrated part of any intervention from the design stage.\nWords of caution: The number of studies in workplace settings comparing mindfulness with a comparable intervention remains small. We are some way from understanding the benefits of mindfulness for organizations. While there remains considerable discussion in organizations about the value of mindfulness, and the proliferation of mindfulness books from \"mindfulness colouring\" to \"mindfulness at work,\" few offer practical steps which consultants and trainers can take to integrate mindful-informed interventions into existing organizational development.\nFuture directions for research and practice: In returning to the three areas of leadership wisdom, wellbeing, and coaching research collaborations between organizations and consultants could begin to build evidence. We might suggest three avenues for future research collaborations. First, in leadership development, a study that examined the impact of a mindfulness leadership on the development of leaders effectiveness, as rated by the team, through 360 evaluations would be a worthwhile study to undertake, and provide evidence to support the value claims being made of mindful leaders.\nConclusion: In spite of these words of caution, mindfulness appears to be the current flavor of choice for organizations seeking novel and innovative interventions. Our experiencing of integrating mindfulness concepts into existing development practices has received positive responses at an experiential level, but for mindfulness to demonstrate its true value, practitioners and academics need to collaborate and design robust evaluations that allow the science to catch up with the claims of practitioners.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of mindfulness in organizational development and provide a useful guide for practitioners in their work as managers, consultants and coaches.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper offers practical applications of mindfulness in organizations, specifically its use in leadership development, organizational wellbeing and coaching.\nFindings: The paper notes a variety of ways in which mindfulness can be applied. While it recognizes that the research into the application of mindfulness at work is under developed, it suggests that through applied organizational research our understanding of its value to employees and organizations can be enhanced.\nPractical implications: The paper provides insights drawn from practice that can be applied by HR practitioners or consultants addressing modern organizational challenges from workplace stress to developing leaders with greater situational awareness and empathy.\nOriginality/value: The paper is distinctive in providing a strong practitioners focus and from broadening the inquiry from the individual toward considering organizational benefits that may be obtained from workplace mindfulness programs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How appropriate are two established concepts from higher education for solving complex real-world problems? A comparison of the Harvard and the ETH case study approach	[ "Case studies", "Learning", "Higher education", "Problem solving", "Sustainable development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Our aim in this paper is to analyze the role of case methods as a means to help students in higher education understand the challenges involved in working on complex problems such as sustainable development. We begin by outlining the requirements for an adequate educational system at university level and raise questions about the appropriateness of traditional education systems. We then differentiate case study types and discuss the case method's potential as a vehicle for developing the competences needed for solving complex problems. We focus on a comparison between the Harvard case study approach (i.e. written case study) and the ETH case study approach (i.e. transdisciplinary cases study) in order to ask how these two educational concepts prepare students for dealing with complex real-world problems. Our review takes development trends in European and US university systems into account by analyzing the status quo and asking what promising future developments with regard to the educational systems. Finally, we discuss how this approach can become a guiding framework for a sustainable educational concept and the potential forms of application in universities and also in further education.\n2 Complex real-world problems call for innovative forms of education: Complexity is a persistent characteristic of contemporary life. This is especially true for social systems in which stakeholders both influence and are influenced by the system. Since, complexity is not an objective parameter, it is necessary to inquire into the nature and the peculiarities of complex systems. Complex problems are distinguished by the fact that neither the target state of the problem-solving process nor the system's initial state can be described precisely (see Scholz and Tietje's (2002, pp. 26-7) definition of ill-defined problem). Complex problems are also characterized by the sheer number of interacting elements and subsystems and the dynamic character of the system that together produce changing patterns and structures, as well as changing intensities over time. Accordingly, the particulars of a given system are often unknown or inaccessible.Complex problems can also be understood by way of contrast with simple problems in which both the initial and target states of the system are well known. Simple systems are comprised of a small number of elements with few opportunities for interaction and are characterized by patterns that are stable over time. Consequently, simple problems can often be solved by applying rote thinking without any specific or at most relatively simple methods. Solutions to complex problems, on the other hand, require creative, flexible, and often unusual and not (totally) approved treatments that draw on a broad understanding of the system and holistic thinking.Complicated problems are an intermediate state. But they involve more elements and greater interaction among these elements than simple problems. Like simple problems, however, both the initial and target states can be described and they involve patterns that are relatively stable over time. Complicated problem demand more sophisticated methods than simple problem, but, unlike complex problems, still have a deterministic nature.It is important to recognize that these differences were already apparent in the influential calls for a renewal of education made during the second and third decade of the twentieth century. Most criticism was aimed at the monotony, one-sidedness, lack of independence, lack of application and experience, lack of personal responsibility and flexibility, and inappropriate learning environments that characterized traditional education (Dewey, 1958, 1963; Montessori, 1964, 1967; Freinet, 1975, 1993; Kerschensteiner, 1954, 1961). This critical perspective on education also provided the starting point for Dewey to rethink education by giving attention to experience and reflection, democracy and community, and to environments for learning. \"First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect\" became the leading paradigm for Montessori with strong emphasis on self-determination and self-realization together with decentering the teacher as the \"keeper\" of the environment. Within the new European education movement Freinet gave specific attention to the pedagogy of work, co-operative learning, enquiry-based learning, the so-called natural method, and centers of interest. Kerschensteiner focused on his concept of an \"Arbeitsschule\" in contrast to the traditional \"Buchschule.\"These examples of innovation suggest non-mainstream approaches and alternative forms of education (which certainly have to be seen based on a sound reasoning). From whatever perspective considered, these concepts can provide for an important impetus for future developments in education.2.1 Complex problems call for transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity\n3 Case methods: \"A case is not a case ... \": The expressions \"case,\" \"case method,\" and \"case study\" stand for different working processes and contents and varying expectations about outcomes and qualities of the process (Scholz and Tietje, 2002; Yin, 1986, 1993; Ronstadt, 1993; Stake, 1995; Abbott, 1992; Hamel et al., 1993; Barnes et al., 1994): on the one hand, \"case\" is used for anything containing practical implications. In other approaches it refers to considered processes with a well-prepared tool box of methods for dealing with complex problems. To provide a clear basis for our investigation of case study concepts, we start with a categorization of various case study types and then cross over to a critical assessment of case study approaches.3.1 Categorization of case studies\n4 A comparison of the Harvard case study approach and the ETH case study approach: As we discussed above, case studies constitute a broad field comprised of distinct approaches. We turn now to a comparison of two case study approaches that provide a real teaching concept. This focuses emphasizes the case study as a process of attaining competence and highlights questions about how students should be guided through the learning process. Consequently, case study methods that focus on descriptive scenarios in a practical context without considering how students gain competence are not included in our comparison.We focus on two case study approaches that are well developed with respect to these issues:1. The Harvard case method is the most famous and most widespread case approach in the academic world. It centers on the development of written cases and their use for discussion in a classroom setting.2. The ETH case method is relatively new by comparison. It employs a methodologically sophisticated approach to involve students directly with demanding real-world issues. The students are guided by their teachers in a practice setting in which they act together with concerned stakeholders to analyze and develop future scenarios for the case under consideration.These approaches employ different meanings of \"case\" that illustrate two extremes of the potential of case studies:1. The Harvard case method employs written cases prepared by faculty and case writers. The expression \"case\" connotes the extensive description of a given situation in a certain system and the need for someone to act in that situation. The cases do not include descriptions of potential processes of problem solving and usually stop at that point where action by the students is supposed to begin (Towl, 1969, p. 63).2. The ETH case method is organized around a system of investigation of the case that proceeds without a prior effort to describe the case or write it down. A central feature of the method is that the students develop the case themselves through a sequence of working steps that they undertake under the supervision of teachers and researchers.4.1 Harvard case study approach ( = written case study)\n5 Conclusion and further possibilities for the application of written and transdisciplinary case studies: The different fields in which the case study method has been applied comprise the areas of public policy and administration, community sociology, management studies, branches of psychology and medicine, particularly neuropsychology, educational sciences, planning sciences, civil engineering, and environmental studies (Scholz and Tietje, 2002, p. 4; Yin, 1986, pp. 10, 13). These fields share an orientation to complex problems. In fields where simple and complicated problems dominate, the case study approach is less appropriate. Here, the initial and target states of the system can be estimated and deterministic procedures will lead to solutions. Reproductive thinking is of more value and less creativity and innovativeness are required. In such arenas the transdisciplinary case study approach, in particular, would go too far.The potential research focus is another distinctive feature with respect to written and transdisciplinary case studies. The case study has to be seen from different angles: The case study as a teaching tool, the case study as the case study for ethnographies and participant observation and also the case study as a research tool (Yin, 1986, p. 11). The last aspect in particular is often overlooked that mainly characterizes the transdisciplinary case study method. In this context the case study is applied throughout all phases of research from problem definition, research design, data collection, data analysis, and composition and reporting (Yin, 1986). When the research focus is understood as the objective to develop answers and new solutions relevant to an yet unsolved problem, it becomes obvious that the research focus is only characteristic of transdisciplinary case studies concerned with contemporary phenomena, as opposed to the historical orientation taken in written case studies.Concerning the previous experiences made with the Harvard and the ETH case study approach, the worldwide diffusion of the Harvard case study in higher education, especially in the management field, must be mentioned. The ETH case study is a relatively new approach that offers a promising strategy for education preparing students for the demands of dealing with complex real-world problems. An interesting basis for that is the \"International Transdisciplinarity Net\" (ITdNet) on case study teaching initiated by the ETH in 2002. This network consists of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Chalmers and Gothenburg University in Sweden, the University of Graz in Austria, the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg in Austria, the University of Luneburg in Germany, the MIT in the USA, and the Politecnico di Milano in Italy and brings together scholars from these different universities applying the transdisciplinary case study approach developed at the ETH (for detailed information and participating members see also www.fallstudie.ethz.ch/itdnet). As an example, the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz in Austria is one of these universities conducting such case studies in the fields of regional and urban development and is continuously working on the further development of this approach (Posch et al., 2005).As shown above, both the written and the transdisciplinary case method are characterized by the commitment to teach students based on \"real people's real problems\" (Barnes et al., 1994, p. 3). Nevertheless, as shown before the character of the two methods differ in important respects. The question is not which approach is better, but which approach is appropriate method given the particular teaching objectives. The complexity is higher with the transdisciplinary case method. It requires an \"in-house\" ability to organize and coach students in working on a real-world problem together with the \"real\" stakeholders concerned. The professional and social competences and resources to support this process are both needed. The written case study offers the potential to essentially outsource the preparation of the case, minimizing the demands on competence and resources to the organization of interaction in the classroom. The written case method may also be regarded as a useful preliminary stage to the transdisciplinary case study method that provides a way to sequentially introduce students to the demands of case-based learning.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The main focus of this paper is to discuss appropriate forms of higher education for building up students' competence for working on complex real-world problems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Within this paper the Harvard approach is accurately compared with the ETH approach by discussing theoretical and practical implications as well.\nFindings: - It is argued that the Harvard case study approach is a sensible approach to bridging the gap between the academic and the practical world, but it has important limits in preparing students to cope with complex real-world problems. In some important respects, the ETH case study approach goes further by exposing students directly to the multi-faceted and complex character of real-world problems.\nPractical implications: - The ETH approach puts additional demands on students and teachers to bridge the gap between university and society with a high degree of responsibility. Consequently, a combination of both the Harvard and the ETH approach might be interesting.\nOriginality/value: - The comparison of the Harvard case study approach with the ETH case study approach is novel. The discussion of educational together with practical implications provides insight to the peculiarities of each single approach together with an orientation for their implementation within higher education. Guidance is given to universities who are deciding what educational means have to be implemented in order to prepare their students for the task of solving complex real-world problems in an inter but also transdisciplinary manner.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leveraging Malaysian diaspora for cluster development initiatives	[ "Malaysian diaspora", "Industrial clusters", "Multimedia super corridor", "Brain circulation", "Alumni network", "Malaysia", "Economic development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The far reaching concerns of phenomenon of globalization also manifested itself with the mobility of skilled workers, entrepreneurs and professionals among nations (Chang, 2006; Saxenian, 2006; Xiang, 2006; Aneesh, 2006). This mobility historically had been unidirectional flow of high-skilled labor from developing to developed economies. However, at the present time, it has become reversible phenomenon and the flow of high-skilled labor have become progressively multi-faceted and multidirectional (Saxenian, 2006). In the face of the obvious argument of potential negative effects of skilled worker's mobility on the home country, the \"brain circulation\" thesis claims the benefits of mobility for both home and host country and it is viewed as brain circulation contributes to international development. As the seminal work of Saxenian and colleagues claims that high-skilled migrants transfer skills and resources from firms in a mature industry cluster to firms in an emerging industry cluster (Saxenian and Hsu, 2001; Saxenian, 2005; Saxenian, 2006). Saxenian's (2000a) study in Silicon Valley on high-tech start-up firms between 1980 and 1998 described that 25 percent of the senior executives were Chinese and Indian immigrants. Consequently, Taiwan (China) enjoyed the competitive edge of having skilled workers who were returnees of Silicon Valley. Therefore, 40 percent of startup companies in industrial park in Hschinchu, Taiwan were led by the returned emigrants. Through this study for the first time, the role of ethnic professional communities for providing the capital, promotional skills, identification of potential markets and marketing intelligence for startups was established. \"Brain circulation\" theory as an alternative to \"Brain drain\" was offered for mitigating the effects of brain drain by inspiring the emigrants to participate in the economic development of the home country. Mobilizing diaspora resources for the economic development is therefore recommended as a helpful approach for all developing countries. A large number of East Asian economies have benefited from the diaspora employed in the large North American and European clusters. The diaspora acquired valuable skills, developed contacts and financial wealth. Cluster development in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan owes to the contribution of overseas Chinese (Kutchiki and Tsuji, 2005).In fact, the response to counterbalance the repercussions of brain drain phenomenon to the host countries, in the form of policy intervention, has evolved in three distinct eras. The first era is dominated by the thesis of Harry Johnson and Don Patinkin who dedicated to the \"physical movement traits\" of the phenomenon and advised the policies recommending measures for physical return of the migrants to their country of birth (Adams, 1968; Bhagwati and Partington, 1976). To neutralize the effects of emigration, countries have implemented various restrictive, incentive and compensatory policies, although not proven effective in curtailing the flow (Kapur and McHale, 2005; Solimano, 2002). The phenomenon lurked in the shades until 1990s when mass movement of skilled labors from developing countries to the developed countries occurred. Researchers recognized that past policies for return of expatriate skilled workers were proven impractical and idealistic therefore, more real and rational choice for the host countries could be resulting leverage on the expertise and financial capital of skilled emigrants. Consequently, the second era was led by the literature of professional networks and diasporas, commonly known as brain circulation networks (Saxenian, 2000b; Kuznetsov, 2005) The literature emphasized the role of expatriate investors, consultants, mentors and entrepreneurs. There is a popular interpretation (Tung, 2008; Teferra, 2004; Balaz et al., 2004), that diaspora is one of the most important factor stimulating brain circulation as well as economic development. Various successful Diasporas of China, India, Taiwan, and Scotland were exemplified in this literature (Kuznetsov, 2005). In the same vein Kuznetsov and Sabel (2008) have highlighted the significance of developing and refining the core notion of networks and diasporas, such as open migration chains. Third generation literature is focused on the role of home country institutions and diasporas, alumni networks, venture capital networks and transnational diaspora networks (Avnimelech and Teubal, 2004; Saxenian, 2005; Kuznetsov, 2005). Kapur and McHale (2005) argue that rich countries should deliberate on investing in the capacity building programs in developing countries, which have inadequate financial resources and lack of vision.\nMalaysian Government Programs: In order to enhance the economic development, several countries have implemented strategies to develop and leverage talent (OECD, 2002; Kapur and McHale, 2005; Solimano, 2002). In the same context Malaysian government in order to attract talented Malaysians living abroad and foreigners, introduced two programs, namely, the Returning Scientists Program and the Returning Malaysian Experts Program administered by MOSTI and MOHR.Scheme administered by MOSTI, targeted skilled Malaysians residing abroad and foreign scientists for selected R&D fields. Target group was attracted by the gorgeous remuneration package including education for children. On the other hand Scheme administered by MOHR targeted Skilled Malaysians residing abroad for wide range of fields of expertise including science and technology. Major incentives in MOHR administered scheme were; income repatriation within two years is exempted from income tax; all personal belongings, including two cars are given import duty exemption; and Spouse of Malaysians and children who are not Malaysians will be given Permanent Resident Status within six months (Thiruchelvam et al., 2003)A comprehensive review on these programs concluded that both programs were ineffective and could not develop and implement significant initiatives to contact Malaysian diaspora. MOSTI implemented the programs ineffectively with ad hoc mindset without designated formation to attract foreign scientist. Diaspora who intends to take part in ventures or intends to return back to the country face variety of obstacles broadly categorized as professional and personal factors. For example, intellectual environment in the country, customized compensation packages and fringe benefits, research infrastructure and immigration policies. The review recommends that the brain gain programs should be rationalized and strengthened through fresh initiatives like supportive immigration policies, lucrative financial incentives, responsive administrative procedures and other work related and non-work related incentives. The review endorsed the importance of national research infrastructure and overall research environment in order to entice the diaspora as well as other talent (Thiruchelvam and Ahmad, 2008).\nStructural factors influencing brain-circulation: evidence from Malaysian clusters: Similarly, Chen (2008) advised that four key structural factors must be considered before adopting brain-circulation policy panacea. These factors are:1. industrial arrangement in home and host countries;2. trust, learning and entrepreneurship;3. the status of financial infrastructure for startups; and4. the role of the state.In the following lines, the relevance of these four factors in the context of Malaysian industrial cluster is examined.Industrial arrangement: networked vs non-networked\nMalaysian diaspora: In spite of production of thousands of engineers each year, according to Pacific Bridge Inc, Malaysian engineers and technical workers are finding better opportunities especially in Singapore, China and the Middle East, therefore causing a severe shortage in Malaysia. In the same way, a survey by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS), reported that majority (34 percent) of the audit staff is hired from Malaysia. (www.channelnewsasia.com/cpasingapore/topchallenge.htm). State officials of Penang reported that a multibillion-dollar foreign investment was lost due to the lack of experienced electrical and electronic engineers (The New Straits Times, November 10, 2009). According to Gooch (2010), the World Bank cautioned that Malaysia's inability to become a high income economy mainly attributes to the lack of human capital. According to Winters et al. (2007) approximately 785,000 Malaysians are lodging outside Malaysia, with estimated two out of every three are likely to be professionals. Almost 40 percent are residing in Singapore, 30 percent in member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and 20 percent in ASEAN countries. According to Pacific Bridge Inc, a reputed human resource consulting firm, Malaysian skilled labor is attractive mainly due to professional qualification and polyglotism. Kohilan Pillay, Malaysia's, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister indicated that roughly 300,000 Malaysians emigrated between March 2008 and August 2009, double the amount of emigration in 2007 (Lim and Kulasagaran, 2010). Table II describes the level of Diaspora engagement based on country conditions and characteristics of the Diaspora.For the countries like Malaysia, Kuznetsov (2005) suggested that expatriates can become important agents for stimulating knowledge-intensive ventures and initiatives. It is recommended that taping small diaspora initially and strong institutional support to policy makers can help leverage the expatriates. For example, in Armenia only 200 dedicated expatriates developed a critical mass sufficient to motivate all actors in the country to internationalize. Therefore, it is not the size of the diaspora what matters, it is the how disciplined, committed and visionary the members are, that matters for example, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in India is a classic example of disciplined and committed network (Sahay, 2007).\nRecommendation to cluster organizations: An extensive review of literature on Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, China, India, Israel, Taiwan, Mexico, and Armenia's diaspora programs suggest that actors in developing and transition economies must have the willingness and capacity to attain new knowledge to enhance their learning in order to compete in the world economy. This learning can be facilitated by searching the scattered sources of knowledge like untapped Malaysian diaspora. This review recommends that cluster management should take independent initiatives to identify, contact and entice Malaysian diaspora for training, knowledge sharing and investment. A humble start by the cluster organization can be taken in the form of following two initiatives.Develop virtual, relationship based networks with the diaspora\nConclusion: It is evident that success of Diaspora program in China, Taiwan and India does not guarantee that imitation of these programs will result a success anywhere else. In fact every country has different combination of structural factors and diaspora history, consequently, transfer of skills and organizational resources embedded in mature clusters to emergent clusters might prove harmful. Saxenian herself is cautious of the direct application of Chinese, Taiwanese and Indian unique cases to other countries (Saxenian, 2005). Review of the Brain gain programs practiced in Malaysia reveal that those programs did not show the expected results. Therefore a well thought, customized diaspora program must be developed. It is suggested that initially the cluster organizations of mature clusters like Penang E&E clusters or policy led clusters like MSC should take cluster initiatives of contacting and leveraging the Malaysian Diaspora through virtual and Alumni networking.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - A large number of East Asian economies have benefited from the diaspora employed in the large North American and European clusters. The diaspora acquired valuable skills, developed contacts and financial wealth. Much has been written about the professional and personal obstacles of brain circulation but scant work has been done to highlight the structural factors influencing brain circulation as well as diaspora strategies in the Malaysian context. This article aims to review the brain circulation theory and pertinent literature on Malaysian clusters and to highlight the structural factors inhibiting diaspora and flow of talent to Malaysia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This is a discussion paper on the issues surrounding diaspora strategies.\nFindings: - On the basis of the review of successful diaspora of China, India, Korea and Taiwan, cluster organizations should take independent initiatives to contact the diaspora networks abroad in order to leverage their skills, contacts and finances through alumni and virtual networks.\nPractical implication: - Successful diaspora programs in China, Taiwan and India do not guarantee that imitation of those programs will result in success elsewhere.\nOriginality/value: - The article reviews the pertinent literature and highlights the structural factors inhibiting diaspora and flow of talent to Malaysia.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaborative strategic decision making in school districts	[ "Decision making", "Leadership", "Schools", "Strategic planning", "Qualitative methods", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: When faced with accountability pressures stemming from inadequate student performance in specific areas, superintendents are inclined to react. This multiple case study analyzes how three superintendents involved various stakeholders in formulating strategic educational decisions and how choices they made affected decision outcomes. The superintendents searched for remedies to address poor student achievement and initiated complex interactions among stakeholders in their school districts.We use the term strategic educational decision making to mean setting a direction for the school district that affects a large number of students. Similar to Eacott (2008), we believe strategic decisions establish a blueprint for action. Superintendents, principals, and other leaders engage in strategic decision making when they establish broad goals supported by a plan, or strategy, to achieve the goals. This paper focuses on the processes school districts engaged in to create strategic decisions, with speculation about those decisions' implications for implementation. The case studies presented here have superintendents at the core of the strategic decision making process; thus, a few words about the governance structure of US school districts, and superintendents' roles within that structure, may be helpful.In the USA, schools are governed by local school boards that operate under state law. The federal nature of the US government and the lack of any constitutionally-based national role in education means that states vary in how their school districts are organized. California and Virginia are similar, however, in that their rural districts tend to be very small (as few as a few hundred students) while their urban and suburban districts are quite large, ranging up to more than 150,000 students. Despite the differences among school districts, all superintendents are hired by local school boards on limited contracts typically of one to five years. Keeping their school boards involved and informed, superintendents are responsible for strategic decision making as well as the day-to-day operations of their school districts. They organize the central office, determine how the central office relates to school sites, and make personnel recommendations to the school board. Many superintendents, particularly in the smaller districts represented in this paper, foster close working relationships with school site principals as a means of collaboration and control. As long as a majority of the school board approves of the superintendent's performance, he or she has broad discretion to determine how decisions will be made.\n2. Research problem: The purpose of this research is to learn how the three participating districts resemble one another in their strategic decision making and how unique choices superintendents made shape differences in decision outcomes. Although some aspects of similarities and differences are revealed in previously published individual case studies (Brazer and Peters, 2007; Brazer and Ross, 2006; Rich and Brazer, 2007), bringing the three together in this article allows for more comprehensive comparison and contrast. Studying the kinds of similarities and differences revealed in these three cases helps to explain why merely involving multiple stakeholders in decision making does not necessarily lead to better decisions, greater commitment to implementation, or distributed leadership - although it could.2.1 Significance\n3. Conceptual framework: The conceptual framework that supports this study derives from the dual propositions that multiple stakeholders exercise influence within webs arranged around superintendents (Brazer and Keller, 2006) and that superintendents frame the challenge of working effectively with multiple stakeholders in specific ways (Bolman and Deal, 2008). In these three cases, superintendents deliberately created the stakeholder webs within which they worked because they invited participants to serve on committees with the specific purpose of addressing an instructional challenge. Motivation for addressing an aspect of student achievement in all three districts derived from accountability pressure.Figure 1 displays a general model of the stakeholder webs within which the three superintendents worked. Dashed lines indicate that the district and its decision-making committee have permeable boundaries that allow for communication and influence in multiple directions. Stakeholders may span boundaries because of multiple roles; for example, school board members are part of the district and simultaneously in the community; while principals and teachers, in contrast, serve on the committee yet identify most closely with their school sites.Depending on the dynamics of any given committee, superintendents will make choices about how to work with their committees that can be described using Bolman and Deal's (2008) four frames - structural, human resources, political, or symbolic. Superintendents' decisions, the ways they allowed themselves to be influenced, and the ways they influenced others can all be viewed through these frames. In this study, each superintendent displayed a dominant tendency best described by one or two of the frames. Figure 2 has stakeholder considerations (Brazer and Keller, 2006) at its core and shows possible outcomes resulting from use of each frame individually.In this study, the stakeholder webs consisted of relatively small groups of constituents with multiple perspectives. Much of the literature on small group operations tends to present a somewhat idealized view of how assemblages of individuals function. Groups that work well bring together members with complementary skills and knowledge, have clear and specific goals, and provide development opportunities for members (Hackman and Walton, 1986). Instead of being seen as goal driven, groups can also be seen as motivated to complete a task within a certain time frame, without much consideration for the quality of the final outcome (Gersick, 1989, Cohen et al., 1972). Newton and Sackney (2005) present a more subtle model that includes social construction of knowledge, affective influences, and the role of values in decision making. Stakeholder webs are closer to this latter model because they account for the interplay among decision participants as all strive to influence the ultimate decision. Superintendents' management of stakeholder webs and their choices as viewed through the organizational frames they use, combine to provide a perspective from which to study strategic decision making in educational settings. These concepts are used to interpret case study data presented after the methodology section and to help make sense of decision-making events.\n4. Methodology: This study employs qualitative methods to learn how superintendents involve multiple stakeholders in strategic decision making and how their choices affect decision outcomes. Data collection was carried out through participant observation, interviews, and minimal document analysis.4.1 Data collection\n5. Findings: three cases of strategic decision making: The two research questions for this study focus on superintendent involvement of multiple stakeholders and specific choices superintendents made in the decision making process. The research questions are answered by examining various aspects of the strategic decision making experiences in all three participating districts. To explain superintendents' work with multiple stakeholders, we pay particular attention to accountability pressure, committees as a response to accountability pressure, and outside facilitation. We then examine superintendents' specific and sometimes unique choices by focusing on problem diagnosis, the role of the superintendent on the committee he or she established, and which frames help explain how superintendents and their committees agreed upon their ultimate strategic decisions.Each participating school district followed a somewhat different path to its strategic decision, as laid out in Figure 3. The figure may be a helpful reference as the reader proceeds through the specific findings presented below. After presenting a brief explanation of legislation with a direct impact on school districts and background descriptions for each participating district, we discuss the process of arriving at a strategic educational decision.5.1 Federal legislation\n6. Conclusions: The Barloma, Piedmont, and Salmon Run school districts succeeded in making strategic decisions that appeared at the time to be wise ones. Variation in how the districts arrived at those decisions demonstrates that superintendents' choices regarding how to involve multiple stakeholders in decision making led to different strategic outcomes that may have implementation consequences. In this final section, we explore major similarities and differences among these cases, speculate about implementation challenges, reflect on lost opportunities, and suggest avenues for future research and theory development.6.1 Similar tactics for involving multiple stakeholders\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The dual purpose of this paper is to determine how superintendents in US school districts work with stakeholders in the decision-making process and to learn how different choices superintendents make affect decision outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This multiple case study of three school districts employs qualitative methodology to address specific research questions. Interview and observation data are analyzed using data codes applied to text through NVivo8.\nFindings: - The paper finds that superintendents respond to accountability pressure by working with committees in different ways, yet all three tend to achieve the strategic decision outcomes they favor. Despite superintendents' substantial efforts to engage in collaborative strategic decision making, collaboration virtually ends once the decision is made and these districts shift into implementation.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The multiple case study approach employed here is useful for understanding the details of strategic decision making, but the results are specific to the school districts studied. Rather than generalizing from these school districts, researchers could generalize to them based on the degree to which they are typical.\nPractical implications: - Empirical results reported here fill in gaps in the education leadership literature regarding how decisions are made. The tendency of committees to engage in collaborative processes for their own decision making and to issue directives to the wider school district likely places implementation at risk.\nOriginality/value: - Very few studies of decision making address the process from a real-time perspective, and the handful that do were not conducted in educational settings. This article examines school district decision making as it occurs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Critical tactics for implementing Porter's generic strategies	[ "Management strategy", "Influence", "Product differentiation", "Leadership" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Since the early 1980s, Michael Porter's strategic typology has been one of the most widely accepted methods of discussing, categorizing, and selecting company strategies. Porter's novel idea that strategies can be classified into generic types (differentiation, cost leadership, focus or combination) has been the basis for much of the strategy research and practice in the past quarter century. Porter contends that by implementing one of these strategies, a company will have a competitive advantage and earn above average industry returns.\nThe research study: This section briefly explains the research study, methodology and results. A survey containing twenty-five common tactics that organizations use when implementing strategies was developed. Seven-point scales were designed so respondents could provide quantifiable information on how extensively their organizations used each of these practices. Respondents were asked to estimate how frequently the various tactics are used by their organization. Table I shows eight samples of the tactical questions.Participants were also asked to compare the overall performance of their organization to that of their competitors over the past three years, considering key performance measures such as growth in revenue, assets, net income, and market share. A pre-existing scale used extensively in prior research was selected for this purpose, allowing comparisons to be made between organizations representing a variety of industries. Respondents were asked to compare the performance of their organization to their competitors over the most recent three years and select a category that summarized their performance relative the competition in their industry. The scale that was used is shown in Table II.A total of 226 employees from a variety of organizations agreed to participate in the study by completing the survey. For inclusion in the study, it was determined a respondent must have at least six months employment at the organization to have adequate organizational knowledge to accurately complete the questionnaire. Post administration interviews with the respondents reinforced these criteria and respondents with a minimum of six months work experience reported no difficulty in answering the survey questions. Five respondents were eliminated because they had less than six months prior work experience, resulting in a final sample size of 221 with a 97 percent response rate. Respondents had an average of four years work experience, with the time employed ranging from six months to 27 years. The organizations included in the sample had a mean number of 1,467 employees with a range from three to 57,000 employees. A total of 62 percent were service organizations, 28 percent were manufacturing and 10 percent were in the government/non-profit sector. Of the organizations, 17 percent were unionized.After the data was collected, we used a popular statistical technique, a factor analysis, to analyze their responses. A factor analysis determines which items in a survey naturally group together into discernable factors. The factor analysis determined that the list of tactics naturally separated into four distinct groups. These groups appeared to conceptually represent each of Porter's generic strategies (see Table III). The table summarizes the tactics which factored into each strategy.To determine if any of these tactics were significantly related to organizational performance, we employed another commonly used statistical technique, a regression analysis, to check for statistically significant relationships between variables. A regression equation for each of the four generic strategies, which included the representative tactics as independent variables and overall organizational performance as the dependent variable, was computed. Organizations scoring above the mean for use of each generic strategy were included in the regression analysis for each respective strategy. As a result, ten tactics were identified as statistically significant predictors of organizational performance. These ten tactics are denoted with an asterisk in Table III.These practices are considered keys to strategy implementation because they were significantly associated with higher levels of overall organizational performance. This is not to imply that the other tactics are not important. With any strategy, it is important to implement an entire set of practices that help define a unique strategy. The practices that we identified as critical were the ones that appeared to be the most significantly related to organizational performance. They are the ones that differentiated the high performers from the average performers. As such, they should be carefully and thoughtfully focused on by organizations attempting to implement a specific strategy.In the following sections, we further discuss each of the four generic strategies and their respective key practices. Our original research was conducted with the understanding that individuals and their companies would not be identified, in order to increase the response rate to our survey. To aid the practicing manager in a fuller understanding of the critical tactics, we conducted further research to uncover examples from publicly available sources to illustrate the effective implementation of the significant tactics. These illustrative examples are also presented in the following sections to bring these practices to life.\nThe generic strategies: Differentiation strategy\nConclusion: Porter's generic strategies are the widely accepted pool of options for any organization to pursue to achieve success and longevity. Participants in an industry may be successful following any of these generic strategies as long as they stick closely to the strategy and do not move toward a \"stuck in the middle\" position of trying to be all things to all customers (i.e. offering quality one-of-a-kind products at low costs). Porter's strategies are a continuum with low cost at one end and differentiation at the other. Firms pursuing a narrow set of customers still must pick one end of the continuum in the focus strategy.Current strategy research, however, has offered little direction for managers charged with implementing these strategies. These ubiquitous strategies may seem self explanatory, yet further guidance is needed. Based on our study of more than two hundred organizations, a number of tactics are necessary to follow a given generic strategy. A handful of these tactics appear to be even more critical because they are linked to improved organizational performance. Thus this study has served to highlight and prioritize critical tactics for implementation. The examples provided in this article from familiar companies and industries serve to illustrate the implementation of these critical tactics. We hope that this article has helped to bridge the gap between strategic academic theory and practice.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To identify and cite examples of critical tactics for implementing Porter's generic strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey of over 200 organizations was conducted to determine their relative use of tactics and organizational performance. Factor analysis and regression analyses were used to identify tactics that were strongly related to organizational performance. Examples of implementation are presented to illustrate use of the critical tactics.\nFindings: - A list of ten tactics were identified as significantly related with the generic strategies and higher levels of organizational performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As is typical with survey research, the convenience sample of organizations used in this survey may or may not be representative of all organizations. Also, when using regression analysis it is important to keep in mind that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Therefore we are not certain that the significant tactics caused the higher levels of organizational performance.\nPractical implications: - Managers will gain the knowledge of how to better tailor their strategy implementation to more effectively implement whatever generic strategy they attempt to use. Managers should pay particular attention to the critical tactics associated with their generic strategy.\nOriginality/value: - This article is a practitioner-oriented translation of an academic research study. The value of the current article is to share our findings with a more practitioner-oriented community and present the implications of our findings to managers and decision-makers in a less technical format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge management infrastructures and organizational intelligence in Iranian research centers	[ "Knowledge management", "Organizational intelligence", "Comparative evaluation", "Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies", "Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology", "Knowledge management infrastructures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As an old belief, \"knowledge is power\" could be replaced by \"sharing knowledge is power\" in the current information societies in which knowledge-based decisions and activities are of utmost importance (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Ahmad, 2014; De Angelis, 2016) and organizations are becoming more knowledge intensive (Wong, 2005). As a result, knowledge can now be viewed as a strategic asset for organizations in comparison with tangible elements. In such a subtle state, knowledge management is an attempt to manage knowledge (skills, merits, and insight) of employees and managers which is internal and external as well (Trisnanty and Handayani, 2013; Patil and Kant, 2014). Knowledge management has emerged as an approach to incorporate emerging requirements of the modern organizations (Gold et al., 2001; Chang and Chuang, 2011; Williams, 2015) in which ever-changing capabilities and competitive intelligence are of pressing concerns.\n2. Problem statement: It is discussed in the related literature that OI depends on a structured network of expert analyzers who offer their technical skill, knowledge, and personal experiences to support the sense-making and decision-making processes (De Angelis, 2013; Moshabaki Esfahani and Mir, 2014) and it is why the two concepts are related together. Although important in nature, the two concepts are potentially appropriate for further investigation. The main reason for conducting the current research was to fill the existed gap in the literature by a case study. The study could shed some lights for understanding the fact that the gap should be taken into consideration by researchers in the field.\n3. Literature review: There exist a research gap between the two subject areas of knowledge management and OI in the literature (Moshabaki Esfahani and Mir, 2014). In a research effort to model the relationship between the two concepts, De Angelis (2013) conducted a study. This study developed a KM-OI model with empirical tests, using structure equation modeling (SEM), with nine hypotheses (Nunnally, 1978). The study showed the importance of KM and OI for public administration and that the KM-OI model is useful to identify influential factors that must be taken into consideration to improve the processes of creation (KM) and application of knowledge (OI). The findings showed the importance of a structure, which allows information to flow effectively, supports programs of competencies development, and that defines the roles and responsibilities in constructing and applying for KM programs and so on.\n4. Objectives and hypotheses: The main objective of this study was to investigate comparatively the infrastructures of knowledge management and its relationship with OI in IRIIST and IHCS. In this regard, determining the components related to the two variables and the level of their influence on each other will be closely investigated. By reviewing the related literature and the mentioned relationship that existed between the two concepts, some hypotheses could be investigated. The research seeks to explore the following hypotheses:\n5. Methodology: Since this study aims to determine the possible relationships among the components of the infrastructure of knowledge management and of the OI, the study is applied in terms of its objective and is descriptive and correlational in terms of data collection and particularly is based on SEM. The population of this study consists of 139 and 380 cases of employees and faculty members in IRIIST and IHCS, respectively. Using the formula of stratified random sampling, 65 participants (33 males and 32 females) in IRIIST and 110 participants (47 males and 63 females) in IHCS filled in the questionnaires. Details and statistics of questionnaires collected from the two institutes have separately been given in Table III based on faculty member, employees, level of education and gender.\n6. Research findings: In this study, in order to analyze the model, SEM with partial least squares (PLS) approach has been used. The algorithm consists of two main steps, including investigating the fit of the model and testing the hypotheses of the study (Wetzels et al., 2009). The first part, i.e. the fit of the model is done in three sections: fitting measurement models, fitting the structural model and fitting the overall model.\n7. Discussion: The results of this study are consistent with the results of similar studies such as the study by De Angelis and Despres (2012) in terms of the significant impact of the infrastructures of knowledge management on OI. Although in most conducted studies, the general concept of knowledge management has been noted, its significant correlation with OI has been confirmed. In confirming the results of similar studies, the results of this study reflect the impact of knowledge management and its infrastructure on the OI and finally the achievement of organizational objectives.\n8. Conclusion: The research showed the importance of the two variables of KMI and OI and also their close relationship and correlation. Specifically, the enhanced infrastructures of knowledge management would remarkably predict the OI of IRIIST and IHCS and thus the mission and goal of the upper organizations. It appears after the research that organizational structure and culture first include important components of KMI that should be prioritized in both institutes, and then the other components should be considered. Moreover, from the components of OI, spirit and appetite for change are more important and should attract a special attention. In general, it can be said that if OI assists in adapting to changes in line with decision making, learning and quick and correct use of various creativity and skills and providing solutions required for the improvement of organizational performance, improving its important predictors such as the infrastructures of knowledge management is necessary. The existence of such infrastructures will not only have additional values such as OI but also potentially support the organization for the suitable use and share of organizational knowledge to fulfill organizational objectives in the contemporary knowledge-based world. In such circumstances, leading organizations such as institutes and universities within the country including the two investigated institutes are required to provide appropriate conditions for the operation of such inter-organizational capabilities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible relationship between knowledge management infrastructures (KMI) and organizational intelligence (OI) in two country-wide research centers dependent to Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, namely, Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IRIIST) and Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is a survey in a descriptive manner. Using two validated questionnaires related to KMI and OI, the research was conducted among 175 faculty members and staffs of the two research centers. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) procedures, collected data were then analyzed by software SPSS and partial least squares.\nFindings: Factor analysis showed a high factor loading related to the two main variables and all of the items indicated goodness of fit (GoF) related to the questions. The variance-mean ratio between two variables was higher than 0.5 indicating a high convergent validity. R2 for OI showed fitness of SEM. The GoF for IRIIST was 0.642 lower than IHCS with 0.645. Also, path analysis indicated a significant relationship between two variables by 95 percent degree of confidence accepting the two research hypothesis.\nOriginality/value: By comparison, KMI was more correlated with OI in IHCS than IRIIST. KMI in IRIIST predicted OI by 0.826 percent while in the IHCS by 0.848 percent.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identification and analysis of employee branding typology using fuzzy c-means clustering	[ "Typology", "Psychological contract", "Brand knowledge", "Fuzzy c-means", "Employee brand", "Employee branding" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The reputation of any service organisation depends on the interaction of its employees with customers. The image projected by the employees during the interaction determines the success of the organisation (Miles and Mangold, 2004). Thus, it becomes essential for any organisation to analyse the image reflected by employees. The image of the brand projected by employees to customers is known as employee brand (EB) (Miles et al., 2011). Positioning the desired image in the minds of employees gives the organisation advantage over its competitors. Employees reflect the image positioned in their minds to customers while delivering the service, which in turn seeds and enhances a favourable service brand image among consumers.\n2. Employee branding: \"EB\" is the brand image presented to the customers and other organisational stakeholders by employees (Miles et al., 2011). Employees who are responsible for executing the brand promise (Harris and De Chernatony, 2001) are obligated to deliver consistent service to achieve and maintain the desired identity, image (Vallaster and De Chernatony, 2005) and reputation of the organisation (Fitzgerald, 1988). Any failure in delivering the promised service to customers by employees will result in negative perception of customers about the quality of the service brand (Sharma et al., 2015). To avoid negative consequences and to obtain competitive advantage, the desired brand image and the associated brand promise must be elaborated to the employees.\n3. Typology of employee branding: Typology categorises employees of organisations into four types based on the levels of their knowledge of the desired brand (KDB) and PC (Mangold and Miles, 2007). Employees who have high KDB and perceive that the PC has been upheld fall in the \"all-star\" type of EB. Employees with high knowledge and perception of violation in terms of upholding PC are categorised as \"injured reserves\". Employees being satisfied in terms of upholding PC but having low KDB are positioned in \"rookies\" category. Employee with low KDB and perceive violation of PC fall in \"strike-out kings\" type of EB. Organisation having all employees in all-stars type is known as \"all-star\" brand. Every organisation must strive to achieve this position to enjoy the competitive advantage as the all-star employees always deliver a desirable EB. The two vital factors, namely, KDB and PC that create four types of EB are explained below.\n4. The four types: The nature of the four types of EB, classified based on employees' level of KDBI and PC as proposed by the typology, is discussed in the following sections.\n5. FCM clustering: Pattern in a data set is assessed by the unsupervised learning method, clustering and by grouping the samples that are similar to form clusters. Samples of one cluster are different from the samples of other clusters. Fuzzy clustering is one of the popular methods used in cluster analysis. FCM clustering is regarded as the best method for fuzzy clustering. Many researchers have contributed to the development of extensions of FCM algorithm for enhancing its performance. Fuzzy index parameter, objective function, optimal number and size of clusters and validity function are factors that are vital in FCM. This section discusses the literature addressing these factors.\n6. Research methodology: The objective of this research is to identify optimum number of clusters of EB and its types in Air India. Employees of this organisation working in international and national terminals in Chennai airport were surveyed. These employees work in various departments of Air India such as commercial/traffic, transport, ground support, engineering and operations who are engaged in customer-centric activities. Data were collected using questionnaire from 342 employees at the airport. The questionnaire consisted of KDBI and PC scales which were adopted from Miles et al. (2011) and other demographic details of employees. KDBI and PC scales were five-point Likert scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Some responses were excluded from data analysis as the data furnished by these respondents were incomplete. A total of 294 responses were finalised for data analysis. The demographic details of the employees are given in Table I.\n7. Results: The main objective of applying FCM is to find the optimum number of clusters of EB. As suggested in the employee branding typology by Mangold and Miles (2007), the clusters are formed on the basis of KDB and PC of employees. This study utilises the KDB and PC data collected through the questionnaire as inputs in FCM to identify the optimum cluster number.\n8. EB type: In addition to identifying the optimum number of clusters, this study also attempts to identify the type of each cluster. The typology of employee branding (Mangold and Miles, 2007) proposed four types based on the level of KDBI and PC of employees. The mean scores of these variables are considered to analyse if the KDBI and PC are high and low. As the data are collected using a five-point Likert scale, the mean score above 3 is considered high and 3 and below 3 is considered low. The mean scores for each cluster are shown in Table III.\n9. Conclusion and implications: The objective of this study is to analyse the typology of employee branding in Air India, Chennai division, and identify the optimum types of EB in the organisation. This typology was a conceptual proposition which is empirically substantiated in this study by applying FCM.\n10. Limitations and recommendations for future research: This study has limitations in terms of generalisation of results, sample and results of the approaches used. The sample is limited to the employees of Air India, Chennai division. This cannot be generalised to employees of other organisations. Future research can focus on surveying the employees from other aviation companies and compare the results of each company. This survey can be extended to other industries in future. Another limitation is that this study is cross-sectional that elaborates the current scenario. Longitudinal study must be conducted in future that would explain any changes in the EB when the suggested implications are implemented in the organisation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the typology of employee branding in an airline company using fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering to improve the quality of employee brand (EB).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from employees of Air India, Chennai division, using a questionnaire and analysed using FCM to find the optimum cluster number. The nature of each cluster was analysed to know its type.\nFindings: The results prove the presence of four types of EB, namely, all-stars, injured reserves, rookies and strike-out kings in the aviation company. It is proven that employees in all-star have high level of knowledge of the desired brand (KDB) and psychological contract (PC), those in injured reserves have high KDB and low PC, rookies have low KDB and high PC and strike-out kings have low KDB and PC.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results of this study are limited to the Air India employees. This study contributes to employee branding by empirically substantiating the proposed typology using FCM. It proposes the need to analyse organisations individually before comparisons.\nPractical implications: The management must focus on the quality of training and development programmes to enhance the position of rookies and strike-out kings. It must also receive regular feedback from injured reserves and strike-out kings to evaluate their perception of PC.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper to empirically prove the typology of employee branding and to implement FCM in clustering employees for enhancing the EB's quality.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing digital transformation through hybrid business models	[ "Innovation", "Business model innovation", "Value Creation", "Digitalization", "Hybridization", "Network effects", "Hybrid business model" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nDigitalization as a driver of innovation: Digitalization is not just a temporary phenomenon but a multifaceted development that is already dominating numerous sectors. The automotive industry, the software industry, and most recently, the betting industry are just a few examples of sectors that this technological change is shaping. The resulting digital interconnection of people and companies is accelerating a wide range of processes and thereby increasing efficiency.\nHybrid business models as a gateway to a changing world: The process of hybridization combines different elements of two basic business models into one hybrid model. These new complex combinations of products, services, cost structures and distribution channels eventually lead to a competitive advantage in the emerging digitalized markets. It is not about simple product or service innovations, but rather complex combinations of those. A hybrid business model can perfectly serve these combinations and adapt to the increasing expectations due to digitalization (Brown, 2008). However, this development is not limited to the betting industry but is beneficial for other industries as well. Hybridizing their existing business models helps companies of any industry to remain competitive in a changing world.\nThe betting industry and Paddy Power Betfair: \"The only sure thing about luck is that it will change\" - this well-known nineteenth-century quote from the writer and poet Bret Harte seems more valid today than ever before. The betting industry is flourishing and its revenue continues to rise. In 2016, the worldwide gross gaming revenues in the global gaming market amounted to EUR324bn, a figure expected to rise to EUR363bn by 2021. At the same time, gross gaming revenues in the global online gaming market are expected to rise from EUR40bn to EUR55bn over the same period (Statista, 2017). It is therefore beyond question that people are still striving for luck, but as digitalization leaves its mark on the industry, the business model behind the game with luck is challenged.\nSuccessful business model hybridization in the digital age: Enhancing value propositions\nHow managers can make hybridization a success: Hybridization of a business model is a potential recipe for success for many companies in the digital age but it is not enough to add a digital component to traditional elements and simply integrate the different components into one other. Rather, managers need to realize that the most promising potential of a business model hybridization is the efficient use of arising network effects. If in the course of hybridizing their business models, companies focus on closely linking these business model areas, network effects can be exploited. As a result, hybridization can make an even greater contribution to the size of the customer network and to the breadth of the offering, to liquidity and ultimately, to customer benefit. A key here is the relationship between the size of a network and the success of betting exchanges. Attracting users via both analog and digital channels increases the number of users. Attracting more users signifies a higher need for a more diverse portfolio, and the larger the offer, the more likely it is that users will find the preferred match/bet. Network effects also contribute to sufficient liquidity on the betting market. If the customer network is extended by a closer connection of the different value propositions and distribution channels of both markets, betting exchanges can gain an advantage from the liquidity of bookmakers (Koning and van Velzen, 2009).\nConclusion: By hybridizing its business model, Betfair not only expanded existing customer value propositions but also introduced new ways of co-creating value with customers. Simultaneously, the hybridization positively affects a company's revenue model, and how it evolves in new ways to capture value (Vargo and Lush, 2008). These high levels of value creation for the customer in combination with value capture for the company make the hybridized business model of Paddy Power Betfair a profitable business model. To effectively hybridize and innovate a company's business model, the two key points are successful value creation and value capture. Innovating a company's business model by hybridizing elements of existing business models is one crucial way of generating new value for customers. The simultaneous capture of part of this surplus value allows companies to achieve sustainable and successful business models and thereby gain a competitive advantage (Matzler et al., 2013).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine how hybrid business models can help companies to survive in a constantly evolving digital world. The hybridization of business models is a promising approach to innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors discuss the key elements of a successful business model hybridization along the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). In particular, the elements of value propositions, customer segments, channels and a company's cost structures demonstrate the individual steps toward a hybridized business model. Using Paddy Power Betfair as an example, the authors showcase how the concept of a hybrid business model can be successfully implemented in practice.\nFindings: By hybridizing its business model, Betfair not only expanded existing customer value propositions but also introduced new ways of co-creating value with customers. Simultaneously, the hybridization positively affects a company's revenue model, hence evolving in new ways of capturing value.\nOriginality/value: To effectively hybridize and thus innovate a company's business model, the two key factors are successful value creation and value capture. By hybridizing elements of existing business models, new value for customers can be generated. Companies capturing this additional value may achieve sustainable and successful business models and thereby gain a competitive advantage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Impact of social media on small businesses	[ "Social media", "Websites", "Marketing", "Tourism", "Small business", "Economic development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Internet technology and social media are known to have substantial impacts on the operations and success of businesses (Bennett, 2012). The major reason for this is that \"online communication offers the prospect of replacing physical proximity with virtual interaction and even intimacy as evidenced by the popularity of websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn\" (Barnes et al., 2012, p. 688). Social media refers to \"content distributed through social interactions. These media utilize various firms that offer services or tools to help consumers and firms build connections\" (Grewal and Levy, 2013, p. 82). Social media is an important tool for all businesses because it allows businesses to communicate with, listen to, and learn from their customers in a way they have never been able to do before (Grewal and Levy, 2013; Smith et al., 2011).\n2. Literature: Consumers have been using internet technologies in increasing numbers and more intensively, which presents opportunities for businesses to reach and connect with more people using websites and social media sites (Armstrong and Hagel, 1996; Jung et al., 2013). Consumers use these technologies primarily for networking, relationship development, and deepening their relationships (Chung and Buhalis, 2008). Web sites and social media are considered interactive media (Sahay et al., 1998), because they let businesses move from simply providing one-sided information to letting consumers engage and interact with the content (Doolin et al., 2002).\n3. Research methodology: We structured our research as a case study. Case study research is an empirical inquiry that \"investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used\" (Yin, 1984, p. 23).\n4. Results: 4.1. Survey results\n5. Discussion: What do the results tell us? We tried to meet several research objectives at different stages in this case study:\n6. Conclusion: This research project attempted to address the challenge of using the web and social media effectively with a focus on website and social media promotion. Our sample consisted of small businesses in the mountains of Maine. We constructed a web portal to identify businesses for the study. We surveyed 26 businesses about their marketing strategy, perceptions, and limitations. Finally we interviewed five managers/owners in depth. The study led to several significant findings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role and economic impact that the internet, specifically websites and social media, have on small businesses. It aims to investigate the benefits available from the use of the internet and social media sites for small businesses that operate in underserved regions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research utilizes a case study methodology based on two surveys and semi-structured interviews with the owners or managers of five small companies in the western mountain region of Maine, a region described as underserved by the state departments of tourism and economic development - generally economically depressed, where the businesses are often struggling to survive.\nFindings: Benefits from the use of websites and social media sites include an increase in awareness and inquiries, enhanced relationships with customers, an increase in the number of new customers, enhanced ability to reach customers on a global scale, and co-promotion of local businesses that enhance the image of small businesses in the region.\nResearch limitations/implications: The small number of firms from a specific region in the USA limits generalizations from this study's findings. However, the findings offer preliminary insights for future studies on the use of the internet and social media sites for small businesses.\nPractical implications: The research provides evidence of potential advantages of utilizing web pages and social media sites for small businesses in underserved locations. The findings show that a web presence integrated with meaningful and sustained social media promotion can have a positive impact on business success in terms of increased traffic, awareness and revenues. This study has the potential to shed light on how internet technologies and social media can help struggling small businesses to communicate cost effectively with customers on a global scale, opening new opportunities for sales and growth.\nSocial implications: By exploring the value of social media to small businesses, the authors hope to contribute to enhancement of the quality of life in small business and society as a whole.\nOriginality/value: This paper is among the few reports on how small businesses learn about, utilize, and benefit from the web pages and social media sites.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge discovery in sociological databases: An application on general society survey dataset	[ "Data management", "Data mining", "Crowdsourced big data and analytics", "Knowledge discovery" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The General Society Survey (GSS) aims at examining the socio-economic status and structure of contemporary society, as well as the living condition and public opinions of the individual subjects (Davis and Smith, 1991). The surveys are conducted annually by non-profit professional institutes (e.g. research center in the university). The process of conducting GSS include designing sociological survey forms with a systematic set of questions; distributing the forms to social subgroups or social individuals; authenticating and integrating the survey feedbacks as tabular data set; release the data set to public. As the GSS is usually conducted with a big amount of profession effect and is funded by the government, the GSS data set is regarded as one of the authoritative source for making data-driven policies. That is, by analyzing the GSS data set, practitioners in government and other social organizations can have a better understanding regarding the status and demands of the social groups to be served, so that rational policies can be made accordingly.\n2. Comprehensive big data management and mining approach: As a kind of authoritative survey data set that is designed with a lot of professional effort, the GSS data sets obtain the following characteristics:\n3. Data management phase: 3.1 Attribute pre-processing\n4. Data analytics phase: 4.1 Association analysis\n5. Experimental evaluation: 5.1 Experimental data set\n6. Conclusions: In this paper, we propose a comprehensive data management and analytic approach for General Society Survey data set based on a set of data mining algorithms. The approach can explore hidden patterns from the data set, which can be interpreted as knowledges for data driven policy-making purpose. To best of our knowledge, our work is the first work which proposed a data-mining based comprehensive data analytic approach for Society Survey data set. By implementing our approach, constructive knowledges regarding the key to social individuals' life happiness were extracted from the CGSS data set. It can be seen from results that the knowledges generated by different types of analysis mutually authenticate each other. As a future work, we plan to further improve the performance of our CBDMM approach by adding knowledge visualization function and integrating more data mining algorithms into it.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The General Society Survey(GSS) is a kind of government-funded survey which aims at examining the Socio-economic status, quality of life, and structure of contemporary society. GSS data set is regarded as one of the authoritative source for the government and organization practitioners to make data-driven policies. The previous analytic approaches for GSS data set are designed by combining expert knowledges and simple statistics. By utilizing the emerging data mining algorithms, we proposed a comprehensive data management and data mining approach for GSS data sets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach are designed to be operated in a two-phase manner: a data management phase which can improve the quality of GSS data by performing attribute pre-processing and filter-based attribute selection; a data mining phase which can extract hidden knowledge from the data set by performing data mining analysis including prediction analysis, classification analysis, association analysis and clustering analysis.\nFindings: According to experimental evaluation results, the paper have the following findings: Performing attribute selection on GSS data set can increase the performance of both classification analysis and clustering analysis; all the data mining analysis can effectively extract hidden knowledge from the GSS data set; the knowledge generated by different data mining analysis can somehow cross-validate each other.\nOriginality/value: By leveraging the power of data mining techniques, the proposed approach can explore knowledge in a fine-grained manner with minimum human interference. Experiments on Chinese General Social Survey data set are conducted at the end to evaluate the performance of our approach.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Playful interfaces to the archive and the embodied experience of data	[ "Libraries", "Archives", "Linguistics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Librarians and archivists have long recognised that different interfaces are needed for the diverse kinds of audiences that engage with an archive (Miller, 1942; Stevens, 1950; Tagliacozzo and Kochen, 1970; Bates, 1977; Efthimiadis, 1990). This paper describes how immersive technologies such as mixed reality, together with ubiquitous computing, open up new possibilities for creating such interfaces, and discusses two examples of playful, immersive archival interfaces the authors have created. An example of the differing needs and expectations of different users can be seen by comparing scholars conducting a targeted study to users who want a \"big picture\" overview of an archive's holdings. Researchers trying to answer a specific research question need a complex, flexible search interface, or a way to export the data they need into a form they can input into their preferred software. They will generally be willing to dig around in a database or catalogue to find exactly what they need, even if it is not apparent on first glance, or requires several hours of their time. Users who are simply curious about the holdings of the archive, on the other hand, will have less patience for complex interfaces or hidden information. Users on a mobile device or with low bandwidth will not want to have to download large files in order to explore, for example, audio or video holdings. Users less familiar with the content of the archive may not be interested in searching, sorting or filtering by key terms that may, on the other hand, be essential to domain experts. These different needs mean that multiple different \"ways in\" to the archive's holding may be necessary for the different stakeholder communities.\n2. Design framework: The use of virtual interfaces to a library or archive is something that has long been anticipated. Poulter (1993) describes a virtual reproduction of library or archive shelves for users to digitally browse among. Some libraries have even created such virtual spaces in platforms such as Second Life (see Chow et al., 2010; Riha, 2010). More recently, it has become relatively common for archives to experiment with laying out documents and images before a user in a virtual space (see Lugmayr et al., 2016 or the numerous examples described in Whitelaw, 2015). In all of these cases, however, the intent appears to be to connect the user to a simulated archive experience, either through virtual shelves and stacks, or by simultaneously displaying large collections of primarily visual and textual materials on a kind of virtual table or wall. An alternative approach would be to background the archive's mediating role, and attempt to connect the user more directly with the data in an experience that more closely approximates either the environment from which the data originate, or the research environment in which the data are typically analysed. These are the approaches taken in the case studies discussed in this paper. This is particularly effective in the case where the archival holdings, as in one of these case studies, consist of audio recordings rather than visual or textual information. The example described here is potentially the first VR experience to use spatialized audio as an interface for information discovery and retrieval.\n3. Description of the visualisations: The two visualisations discussed here are intended as a 3D exploration of linguistic time and space, using data from two different major linguistic archives. The first is a geographically anchored walkthrough of the data held in the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). PARADISEC is a digital archive holding data primarily generated from linguistic fieldwork in the Pacific, and more recently, other small languages around the world (Thieberger and Barwick, 2012). It contains audio, video and text data, some of which has been digitised and some of which was born digital. The text data take the form of research notebooks, word lists and even draft manuscripts of publications.\n4. Different degrees of immersion: Display of these visualisations via a VR headset such as the Cardboard or HTC Vive is the most straightforward sort of immersion. The viewer is embodied in the midst of the data, and simple movements from everyday life (looking around, moving forward or backward) translate directly into the virtual space. There is no direction of gaze or movement that takes the user out of the visualisation. The movement itself is currently controlled via direction of gaze (on the Cardboard), controller buttons (on the Oculus) or a combination of actual walking for small movements and \"teleporting\" or simulating flight via a controller or hand gesture (on the HTC Vive) for large movements.\n5. Considerations for immersive interfaces: 5.1 Dissemination\n6. Conclusions: Both of the projects discussed have experimented with new technologies that facilitate access to archival data visualised in virtual environments with an eye to audiences and accessibility. A potential implication of cultural institutions moving towards these kinds of immersive exploration and discovery interfaces in the future is that it risks making the collections more accessible to some users at the expense of others (e.g. those who do not have the access to infrastructure required). Working across the spectrum of different hardware and software solutions, however, has enabled these projects to experiment with possibilities of design, immersion, structure and specialisation of data, in a way that informs dissemination on more accessible technologies (e.g. Google Cardboard). It is vital to be working critically and engaging in these spaces in order to bring to them the voice of the humanitarian scholar and open up these spaces for more diverse usage.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the possibility for the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector to employ playful, immersive discovery interfaces for their collections and raise awareness of some of the considerations that go into the decision to use such technology and the creation of the interfaces.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a case study approach using the methodology of research through design. The paper introduces two examples of immersive interfaces to archival data created by the authors, using these as a springboard for discussing the different kinds of embodied experiences that users have with different kinds of immersion, for example, the exploration of the archive on a flat screen, a data \"cave\" or arena, or virtual reality.\nFindings: The role of such interfaces in communicating with the audience of an archive is considered, for example, in allowing users to detect structure in data, particularly in understanding the role of geographic or other spatial elements in a collection, and in shifting the locus of knowledge production from individual to community. It is argued that these different experiences draw on different metaphors in terms of users' prior experience with more well-known technologies, for example, \"a performance\" vs \"a tool\" vs \"a background to a conversation\".\nOriginality/value: The two example interfaces discussed here are original creations by the authors of this paper. They are the first uses of mixed reality for interfacing with the archives in question. One is the first mixed reality interface to an audio archive. The discussion has implications for the future of interfaces to galleries, archives, libraries and museums more generally.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Celebrating Joan Acker's contribution to theorising gender and organisation	[ "Gendered organizations", "Inequality regimes", "Intersectionality", "Gender", "Organizational structures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: It is 21 years since Joan Acker (1990) published her influential and inspiring work \"Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations\", where she discussed the feature of the gender subtext in organisation and the notion of the ideal worker (Acker, 1990, 1992) to explain gender discrimination in the workplace. This is a special edition to celebrate the scholarly contribution that Joan Acker has made to theorising around power dynamics and the legitimisation of inequalities such as gender. Joan gracefully agreed to not only contribute an article on contemporary issues in inequality and discrimination but also she reviewed each paper and responded to their comments and critique of her work, using this review as a process of reflection to help develop her thinking about her theoretical framework of a gender subset, organisational logic, the exclusive notion of an ideal worker and the importance of recognising \"inequality regimes\" when considering organisational processes. This latter concept about the mutual production of processes of inequality based on perceived differences such as gender, race or socio-economic class related factors (Acker, 2006) sees her work resonate with more recent feminist academic thinking about intersectionality.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this editorial is to present a series of articles in this special invited issue that celebrate Joan Acker's theories of gendered organisations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This editorial presents articles that utilise Joan Acker's notions of gendered organisations, the gender subtext in organisations, the ideal worker, and inequality regimes to help explain gender discrimination in organisation. It is a celebration of Joan's theorising in relation to this topic and also includes Joan's own thinking about the development of her ideas as theorised by the authors in different organisational and empirical contexts.\nFindings: - The paper reveals that the articles illustrate the value of Acker's original thinking, how the original concepts have evolved to theorise and explain the intersectionality of current discriminatory practices.\nOriginality/value: - This paper presents a celebration of Joan Acker's work and an introduction to the special issue.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Epistemic foundation of bibliographic classification in early China: A Ru classicist perspective	[ "Knowledge organization", "Epistemology", "Traditional Chinese bibliographic classification", "Classification", "China" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This research originates from a theoretical stance that situates knowledge organization in its social context. In viewing bibliography as an instrumentality of social communication, Margaret E. Egan (1955) posited: \"The study of bibliographic organisation is [...] the study of the channels through which recorded knowledge flows, set against the background of evolving social and intellectual organisation which determines where, how, and by whom that knowledge can be made effective in action\" (pp. 20-1). Andersen and Skouvig (2006) more recently argue that knowledge organization is not only a series of socially and culturally situated activities, but also a contributing factor in shaping society. This socio-epistemological way of theorization rejects the simplistic conception of bibliographic tools as neutral and objective and capable of being studied in isolation. Holding this philosophical position, the study reported in this paper conducts its examination of a 2,000-year-old structure of knowledge in a carefully constructed framework consisting of personal, social, political, technological, and historical contexts.The chosen object of the study is the classificatory structure applied in the Seven Epitomes (Qilue), China's first documented library catalogue, which is said to have influenced Chinese bibliography and bibliographic classification for two millennia[1]. I will refer to the Seven Epitomes as \"the catalogue\" from time to time throughout this paper. Due to the scheme's old age and a lack of systematic research in the past, the project is necessarily complex and requires multiple years to complete. This paper limits its scope to the epistemic issues relating to the target scheme.Bibliographic classifications of today predominantly take an analytic approach that is rooted in ancient Greek epistemology. This analytic approach begins with identification of individual concepts and their properties. Concepts are placed into categories according to their shared properties, and categories are further aggregated into larger categories according to their shared properties. Even in China since the early twentieth century, commonly used bibliographic classifications have all been modeled on Western-styled classification of science, faithfully following the same analytic approach to knowledge organization. Devoid of this approach, traditional Chinese classifications, including the particular one in the Seven Epitomes, seem foreign to present-day students of classification trained in Western thought. Questions of an epistemological nature then arise: what is the fundamental approach to organizing knowledge in traditional Chinese classification? Is the Chinese classification inferior because of its lack of analysis? If so or if not, why? Does the Chinese approach remain useful in the current and future information environments, or does it belong only in history? The study reported here sets out to address the first of these questions by focusing on theoretical aspects of the classification in the Seven Epitomes - the scheme that initiated this tradition - and by contextualizing the inquiry within a socio-epistemological framework. It is hoped that the findings from the study will shed light on the other three questions, paving the way for future research.The remainder of the paper comprises six major sections. First, I provide some background information about the Seven Epitomes and summarize the literature that treats the catalogue's classification as a subject. Second, I discuss challenges in the study and detail the research methods, which are grounded in the multifaceted social and historical framework mentioned above. The next two sections describe the concepts of knowledge and knowing in early China, deduced from authoritative writings about Chinese philosophy, and explain how these concepts relate to knowledge structure in the target classification based on a rigorous analysis within the given theoretical framework. The final section further discusses some classificatory concepts absent from the target classification in light of the study findings.\n2. Background of the Seven Epitomes and related literature: 2.1 The Seven Epitomes and its classification\n3. Data sources and analytical framework: The Seven Epitomes presents challenges to researchers in two respects:1. data sources; and2. interpretation.Because it no longer exists, the catalogue itself has a deterrent effect on researchers. The majority of those interested in early bibliographic classification have studied, instead, the substitute of the catalogue - the Han Treatise (Fu Rongxian, 2007). Regardless of the fact that these two bibliographic tools closely resemble each other, the classification needs to be properly examined as an intellectual work of its original creator, Liu Xin. The unique importance of the Seven Epitomes began to be recognized in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). According to Deng Junjie (Preface in Liu Xin, 2008), ten reconstructed versions of the catalogue that are all based predominantly on the Han Treatise appeared in the Qing dynasty. Each reconstruction includes quotes of the catalogue from other historical sources that seem to have been removed by Ban Gu. Additional adjustments of a few entries are made in consultation of the notes in the Han Treatise. Among the ten reconstructions, the one by Yao Zhenzong is widely considered the best. The current study uses the 2008 reissue of this version (Liu Xin, 2008) as the primary data source.Issues concerning interpretation of the Seven Epitomes have persisted in Chinese classification research. First of all, the above-mentioned imperfection of the primary source itself and the scarcity of other surviving texts from the related time periods render interpretation extremely difficult. Second, the Chinese scholarship tradition that esteems personal opinions has continued, and present-day writers have been slow in adopting new research methods and fresh perspectives. Further, research on early bibliographic classification sometimes fails to consider evidence in an appropriate context possibly due to a mistaken impression of the Chinese intellectual history being uniform and unchanging since Han times. My proposal to overcome these predicaments is to conduct the study with rigorous analytic methods situated within a multifaceted framework informed by the socio-epistemological stance mentioned above.Besides the catalogue itself, the framework consists of four other categories of textual data: biographical information about Liu Xin, and intellectual, political, and technological history through the time when the catalogue was completed. Because of the study's focus on epistemology, the first two categories are especially crucial. The classificationist's scholarship and worldview, as well as the intellectual landscape and development of and before his time, have important relevance. Numbers three and four are not common variables in previous classification research. Considering that the Seven Epitomes was one of the end products of a government collation project and the catalogue of the dynastic library, the political history of the time matters. Aspects of technology, such as the writing system and technology's social standing, have a significant connection to epistemology and thus occupy a special place in classification research.Due to the age of the catalogue, all data require extra care. I take several measures to strengthen data analysis. One of them is to give primacy to the surviving text of the catalogue, treating any other data source contradicting it in terms of the catalogue's creation, contents, or structure with scrutiny. This also means that a close reading of the catalogue's text is imperative. A second method is to appropriately contextualise ancient texts, including the catalogue itself, with the assistance of the framework to avoid historically and culturally faulty inferences. Lastly, I verify contextual information with multiple and independent sources, a research technique known as triangulation (Taylor and Bogdan, 1998).\n4. Knowledge and knowing: This section briefly discusses knowledge and knowing as conceived by classicists before the Common Era. For the purpose of the paper, only aspects directly related to knowledge structuring are included. This summary is unavoidably oversimplified and purposefully favoring a classicist standpoint, for classicism dominates in much of the intellectual history, especially reflected in bibliographic classification, during the time of interest to this study. It needs to be stressed that the Chinese were not incapable of other ways of thinking, as demonstrated in the writings of, for instance, the Mohists (Graham, 1989). Rather, the Han dynastic authority and mainstream intellects deliberately shunned other intellectual tendencies and methods. Mote (1989) maintains that the underdevelopment of other paradigms of thought in China reflects a choice.In the following subsections, citations are provided in a special pattern. One work by a native Chinese speaker and another, most likely in English, by a non-native speaker are both given where citations are due and whenever it is possible and necessary to do so. As language and thought are closely related (Kovecses, 2006), I feel compelled to include philosophical works from native Chinese speakers who know the language the best. Respected sinologists who are not native Chinese speakers have also contributed a wealth of knowledge about early China. They often apply a comparative method that is more accessible to present-day researchers trained in Western-styled thought. I have profited from this combination and believe that others will, too.4.1 What is knowledge?\n5. Epistemological approach to knowledge structure: With a detailed reading of its own text, this section examines the epistemological approach underlying the knowledge structure of the Seven Epitomes. Those described in the previous section as knowledge and knowing in the classicist conception guide the following analysis. In all, seven principles that have influenced Liu Xin's scheme are identified.5.1 Imperial library collection as literary warrant\n6. Concepts absent from the classification: The previous section detailed principles in the catalogue's classification that connect directly to a predominant classicist epistemology. In this section, I will highlight several central concepts in recent classifications that are absent from the catalogue.6.1 Discreteness and mutual exclusivity\n7. Conclusion: As intended, the study mainly centered on addressing the first question raised in the Introduction about the fundamental approach to organizing knowledge in the Seven Epitomes. It is my conviction that the catalogue's classification results from a serious effort made by a famed scholar whose design must be seen as thoughtful, albeit subjective. The findings of the study confirmed to a significant degree that Liu Xin is not naive or injudicious and that the categorization and structure of the classification have an epistemological basis.Knowledge does not exist in a vacuum. Knowledge products, including tools invented for organizing knowledge, are by nature socially produced to serve particular societal needs. With such a premise, the study examined the epistemic foundation of an ancient Chinese catalogue, the Seven Epitomes, in its own cultural and historical context with the use of a multidimensional framework. It began with a summary of the classicist epistemology in early China, highlighting specific viewpoints of classicist thought in the Former Han dynasty. Guided by the classicist conceptions of knowledge and knowing at the time, the study then carefully analyzed the text and structure of the catalogue and discovered seven principles contributing to the epistemic foundation of the catalogue's classification:1. the Han imperial library collection imposed as the literary warrant;2. government functions considered for structuring texts;3. classicist morality determining the main classificatory structure;4. knowledge perceived and organized as a unity;5. objects, rather than subjects, of concern affecting categories at the main class level;6. correlative thinking connecting all text categories to a supreme knowledge embodied by the Six Classics; and7. classicist moral values resulting in both vertical and horizontal hierarchies among categories as well as texts.The study also found little, if any, trace of logical procedures in the catalogue's organizational plan. Throughout the catalogue and its structure, neither concepts nor categories were defined by their characteristics or properties discretely, rendering mutual exclusivity irrelevant. Understandably, the conception of disciplinarity as manifested in studies of discrete concepts and categories in aggregation, as well as their characteristics, was completely absent from the target classification.The current study has an undeniable limitation due to its primary focus on the main class level without a thorough examination of subclasses. A key reason for slighting subclasses is the difficulties involved in the task. For one thing, there are 38 subclasses as opposed to only six main classes. Several subclasses, such as the five under the Epitome of Lyrics and Rhapsodies, have no introductions and some other subclasses, such as eight out of the ten in the last two epitomes, contain titles that are no longer extant. Research into subclasses no doubt will require extensive examinations of supplemental materials, including substantial findings in the past few decades from decoding newly excavated texts that are believed to resemble many lost texts enumerated in the Seven Epitomes. It is thus conceivable that each main class plus its subclasses fits into an independent study of its own.So, is the Chinese classificatory approach inferior or superior to the analytical one customary in classifications familiar to us today? Does it have realistic application in future information systems? The study reported above purposefully left these important questions to future inquiry. I propose to evaluate the effectiveness of the Chinese approach in view of its intended objectives and to investigate how this approach as a whole or its individual features affect information retrieval in real settings. Without a doubt, part of the approach (e.g. the authoritarian attitude towards morality) may have no or limited appeal to today's audiences. Some of the principles (e.g. holistic and correlative thinking), on the other hand, may provide alternative ways of organizing information that support diverse information seeking not well served by current systems.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to understand the epistemic foundation of the classification applied in the first Chinese library catalogue, the Seven Epitomes (Qilue).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Originating from a theoretical stance that situates knowledge organization in its social context, the study applies a multifaceted framework pertaining to five categories of textual data: the Seven Epitomes; biographical information about the classificationist Liu Xin; and the relevant intellectual, political, and technological history.\nFindings: - The study discovers seven principles contributing to the epistemic foundation of the catalogue's classification: the Han imperial library collection imposed as the literary warrant; government functions considered for structuring texts; classicist morality determining the main classificatory structure; knowledge perceived and organized as a unity; objects, rather than subjects, of concern affecting categories at the main class level; correlative thinking connecting all text categories to a supreme knowledge embodied by the Six Classics; and classicist moral values resulting in both vertical and horizontal hierarchies among categories as well as texts.\nResearch limitations/implications: - A major limitation of the study is its focus on the main classes, with limited attention to subclasses. Future research can extend the analysis to examine subclasses of the same scheme. Findings from these studies may lead to a comparison between the epistemic approach in the target classification and the analytic one common in today's bibliographic classification.\nOriginality/value: - The study is the first to examine in depth the epistemic foundation of traditional Chinese bibliographic classification, anchoring the classification in its appropriate social and historical context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Self-efficacy and work engagement: test of a chain model	[ "Work engagement", "Work-life balance", "Work psychology", "Human resource management", "Self-efficacy", "Role demands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The current research is built on concepts of positive psychology in the workplace to investigate factors that enable employees to flourish at work. Specifically, it focusses on work engagement, which has been associated with various workplace indicators such as job satisfaction, involvement, reduced burnout (Bakker et al., 2008) and job performance (Xanthopoulou et al., 2009). Defined as \"a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind\" (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74), work engagement has also emerged as an influential variable in determining organisational success - not only does it influences employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity, it also predicts customer satisfaction, firm reputation and overall stakeholder value (Demerouti and Cropanzano, 2010). However, research on work engagement remains nascent. While numerous scholars have examined the construct along with work-related antecedents and outcomes (e.g. Christian et al., 2011), few have investigated the relationships among work engagement, work-family constructs and psychosocial resources. Thus, the purpose of the current research is to provide greater understanding of the relationships among self-efficacy (psychosocial resource), work and family demands and work-life balance (work-family constructs), and work engagement.\n2. Theoretical foundations and development of hypotheses: 2.1 COR theory\n3. Method: 3.1 Participants and procedure\n4. Results: 4.1 Sample group analysis\n5. Discussion: The primary aim of this research was to investigate the roles of self-efficacy and work-life balance in assisting employees to overcome work and family demands, to achieve work engagement. The hypothesised chain mediation model was based on social cognitive theory and COR theory. However, while full mediation was supported, the relationship between family demand and work engagement became insignificant when a path linking self-efficacy to work-life balance was included. The findings indicate two possibilities: work and family demands account for some, but not all, of the relationship between self-efficacy and work-life balance; or as explained in a number of prior studies (e.g. Kossek et al., 2011), work remains central in people's lives such that family demand has a comparatively weaker influence on work-life balance than work demand. In prioritising work responsibilities, employees may sacrifice their family and personal roles in the process (Kossek et al., 2011). The findings could also indicate that employees are less likely to be affected by demands stemming from the family domain, which further emphasises the need to look beyond objective measures of work-life balance, as employees are unlikely to view both domains equally in the first place.\n6. Conclusion: This research was conducted to explore the underlying relationship linking self-efficacy to work-life balance and ultimately work engagement. Specifically, the hypothesised chain model was grounded in social cognitive theory and COR theory, both of which demonstrated that self-efficacious employees are capable of achieving work-life balance and experiencing work engagement despite the presence of work and family demands. The findings emphasised the importance of self-efficacy as a personal resource that positively affects the way employees perceive role demands. Such positive perceptions, in turn, give rise to causal chain-like synergistic effects, which ultimately contribute to employees' work-life balance and work engagement.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating roles of work and family demands and work-life balance on the relationship between self-efficacy (to regulate work and life) and work engagement. Specifically, it seeks to explain how self-efficacy influences employees' thought patterns and emotional reactions, which in turn enable them to cope with work and family demands, and ultimately achieve work-life balance and work engagement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Structural equation modelling (SEM) of survey data obtained from a heterogeneous sample of 1,010 Australian employees is used to test the hypothesised chain mediation model.\nFindings: The SEM results support the hypothesised model. Self-efficacy was significantly and negatively related to work and family demands, which in turn were negatively associated with work-life balance. Work-life balance, in turn, enabled employees to be engaged in their work.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings support the key tenets of social cognitive theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory and demonstrate how self-efficacy can lead to work-life balance and engagement despite the presence of role demands. Study limitations (e.g. cross-sectional research design) and future research directions are discussed.\nOriginality/value: This study incorporates COR theory with social cognitive theory to improve understanding of how self-efficacy enhances work-life balance and work engagement through a self-fulfilling cycle in which employees achieve what they believe they can accomplish, and in the process, build other skills and personal resources to manage work and family challenges.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mobile learning in nursing education: catering for students and teachers' needs	[ "Learning and teaching", "Mobile learning", "User needs", "Nursing education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Mobile learning has been playing an increasingly crucial role in education, allowing learning to take place beyond geographical barriers and time constraints. It supports learners who are studying \"on the move\" to access learning materials in various contexts, with different cultural and environmental cues necessary for understanding the learning contents (Evans, 2008; Koole, 2009). It also facilitates social interaction among learners and teachers through mobile applications such as text messaging or student response tools (Uzunboylu and Ozdamli, 2011).\nLiterature review: Mobile learning in nursing education\nResearch method: Using a qualitative approach, this study aims to collect and analyse the views and suggestions of the students and teacher in a nursing course on the design and implementation of mobile learning. Apple iPad mini was proposed as the device for mobile learning, with a mobile app developed specially for supporting learning and teaching in a nursing course covering the concepts and skills related to health assessment.\nFindings: The students' and teacher's responses are presented below, following the FRAME model.\nDiscussion: The effectiveness of mobile learning in nursing education following the FRAME model\nConclusion: In summary, this paper has presented the views and expectations of students and their teacher on the practice of mobile learning, and evaluated the strengths and limitations of mobile technologies in supporting nursing education. The findings showed that the aspects of device usability, interaction learning, and social technology as suggested in the FRAME model were partly fulfilled. Despite the potential of using mobile technologies in nursing education, attention should be paid to the perceptual differences between students and the teacher on the nature and functions of mobile learning. For a university preparing for the delivery of mobile learning, this possible gap has to be bridged to ensure that what is provided fits the needs of both user groups, so that they are more ready and willing to engage in mobile learning.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implementation of mobile learning in a nursing course at The Open University of Hong Kong, and identify the potentials of, and constraints on, introducing mobile technologies in the instructional design of nursing education. The paper also considers the pedagogical implications of the expansion of mobile learning in the field of nursing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research adopts a qualitative approach to obtain the students' and teacher's experiences, opinions, and expectations on mobile learning. Two focus groups with 20 student participants were conducted and an in-depth interview with the course teacher was arranged. The Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) model was used as the research framework to support data collection and analysis.\nFindings: The aspects of device usability, interaction learning, and social technology as suggested in the FRAME model were partly fulfilled in the study. Mobile technology enhanced the portability and accessibility of learning information, and networking tools facilitated interaction among students and between students and the teacher. However, the readability of text was limited due to constraints on the user interface and screen size, and concerns over the reliability of learning content were also raised, given the abundance of unfiltered online information. The difficulty in updating the content of multimedia materials and sourcing videos of an appropriate level, together with the problem of device networking, also limited the usefulness of mobile learning. Attention should also be paid to the perceptual differences between students and the teacher on the nature and functions of mobile learning.\nOriginality/value: This empirical study provides a detailed evaluation of the delivery of mobile learning in a nursing course. The findings reveal the strengths and limitations of using mobile technologies to support the nursing education.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A-REIT rights issues	[ "Costs of raising capital", "Rights issues", "Equity capital", "Underwriting", "A‐REITs", "Australia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Australian real estate investment trusts (A-REITs) are important investment vehicles that manage around $150 billion in property assets (PIR, 2011) and account for over 6 percent of the market capitalization of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) as at March 2012 (FinAnalysis, 2012). In comparison to unlisted wholesale property funds, unlisted retail property funds and property syndicates, A-REITs have a higher value of assets under management by far (about double that of the wholesale funds and triple that of the retail funds) (PIR, 2011). Major institutions and superannuation funds (such as ING, Vanguard, Colonial First State, La Salle Investment Management, AMP and Morgan Stanley) have substantial monies invested in A-REITs. At Westfield Group alone, Australia's largest REIT capitalized at over $20 billion at 27 March 2012, all institutions (including mutual funds) accounted for over 83 percent of the share register (SNL, 2012).Since A-REITs operate as trusts however, they must distribute all of their profits to their unit holder beneficiaries. As a consequence, these A-REITs cannot rely on internally generated funds to grow their assets under management or to repay loans and consequently they often raise secondary equity capital by way of rights issues. Raising this secondary capital is not, however, without its costs. To the authors knowledge, this is the first paper to empirically examine potential influencing factors on the discounts and underwriting fees associated with rights issues.The purpose of this paper is to investigate two major costs incurred by A-REITs seeking to raise secondary equity capital by way of rights issues. Smith (1977), Eckbo and Masulis (1992), Armitage (2000) and Chen and Wu (2002) all explain the impact of issue costs on net proceeds raised for industrial companies. The first cost examined is the direct cost of underwriting these rights issues. The direct costs incurred by the company include legal costs, accounting costs, printing costs and underwriting costs but largest of these, by far, is the underwriting cost. The second cost is the indirect cost of the discount offered to subscribers to encourage them to exercise their right to buy more shares in the listed entity. The indirect cost incurred as a consequence of the rights issue is generally identified as the offer price discount to the current market share price and often represents a substantial cost of equity capital raising (Lee et al., 1996; Ritter, 1987; Kooli and Suret, 2003).By way of further background, PIR (2011) reports that assets under management for the A-REIT sector (as measured by the S&P/ASX 200 A-REIT index) grew from around $80 billion in 2003 to over $200 billion in 2008 and 2009. Leverage on the other hand, was around 40 percent in 2003 and grew to 50 percent into by 2009. The global financial crisis (GFC) period forced the A-REIT sector to reduce leverage levels, which in turn reduced assets under management. This study finds that all the rights issues capital raising done during the GFC period was used to repay debt. Dimovski (2011) identifies that while Westfield was fortunate enough to raise over $3 billion by rights issue before the GFC, others like GPT and Stockland had to raise $2.8 billion and $1.8, respectively, during 2008 and 2009.Rights issues are a common method available to REITs that seek to raise additional equity capital in Australia but they are not common in the USA. (The other method is the private placement of equity capital to a few, often institutional investors. Private placements can often be arranged in a few days, but are limited to raising no more than 15 percent of the issued capital in any one year. The private placements can also dilute the proportional ownership of the existing owners. Private placements were often used however at the onset of the GFC to raise some equity quickly). In Australia, a renounceable rights issue describes where a listed entity offers existing shareholders or unit holders the right to buy new shares or units on a pro rata basis to their current share or unit holding. Shareholders then have three options available to them. First, they can accept the right to buy the additional shares or units, second, they can renounce (sell) their right to buy those shares or units, or third, they can let the right expire. Taking up the right and purchasing the pro rated shares or units ensures shareholders maintain their proportional stake in the listed entity, however renouncing the right or letting it expire dilutes the existing shareholder's proportional stake. A non-renounceable or entitlement rights issue allows the shareholder to either buy more shares in the entity or to let the right to buy expire.This study investigates 62 A-REIT rights issues from January 2001 to June 2009. Underwriting fees averaged 2.9 percent of gross proceeds raised and the offer price was discounted on average 9.5 percent from the current market share price. This study reports that the rights issue costs are substantially than those reported in industrial and mining company studies around the world.Importantly, this study finds that the standard deviation of daily returns for the past 250 days appears to significantly influence the discount. This high volatility was particularly evident with issues in 2008 and 2009, during the GFC, which were significantly discounted so as to repay loans and strengthen balance sheets. The standard deviation of daily returns for the past 250 days also appears to significantly influence the underwriting fee.The remainder of this paper is as follows. The next section reviews relevant rights issue capital raising literature. Section 3 describes the data and presents the models and results. Section 4 makes some concluding comments.\n2 Related literature: This section contains two parts. The first part focuses on the previous literature investigating the underwriting costs of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) including rights issues and factors previously found to influence these costs. The second part addresses the indirect cost of the discount offered to subscribers to the new shares available as a result of these rights issues and factors found to influence this indirect cost.Underwriting costs in seasoned equity issues literature\n3 Data, models and results: All A-REIT rights issue prospectuses issued during the period January 2001 to June 2009 were collected from the FinAnalysis database. In addition, relevant annual reports and Appendix 3B \"New issue announcements\" to the ASX were collected using FinAnalysis and SNL Real Estate. The prospectuses and Appendix 3Bs provided the underwriting fee information. In addition, the gross proceeds, prospectus date, percentage underwritten, the percentage held by the top 20 shareholders, new for existing share ratio, market capitalization, the renouceability or otherwise of the rights and the offer price of the rights issues were obtained from the these documents. FinAnalysis and SNL Real Estate were also used to collect the daily closing share price and the daily trading volumes data for each entity.Table I provides some of the A-REIT rights issue characteristics. In brief, during the 2001 to mid-2009 period a total of over A$20 billion of new equity capital was raised by the 62 A-REIT rights issues which is around three times that raised through A-REIT IPOs during the same period. Panel A shows a fairly steady number of rights issues in each calendar year except for the tight credit periods of 2002 and 2008. Underwriters were used in 58 of the 62 issues while eight of the 62 offered a renounceable rights issue. Nearly five in ten offered stapled securities. Stapled securities are securities that are bound together and cannot be traded separately (bought or sold on the stock exchange). These securities are normally a unit in a trust and a share in a company. Many A-REITs specifically identified the purpose for which the funds were raised and this is identified in the prospectus. As expected 15 out of 15 in 2008 and 2009 raised equity through the rights issues to repay loans. Interestingly in 2007 five of the 12 rights issuers raised equity to repay loans while seven intended purchasing new properties with the proceeds.Panel B reports the continuous variable characteristics and shows the average offer price discount from the current market price was around 9.5 percent (median 7.7 percent) while the range of this discount was 47.8 percent to a premium of 15.5 percent. The underwriting fees averaged around 2.9 percent (median 2.8 percent). The average proceeds raised were A$354.2 million while the proceeds ranged from A$1.63 million to A$3.032 billion by the Westfield Group. The average percentage of stock held by the top 20 shareholders was 63.8 percent while this percentage holding ranged from 16 to 89.2 percent. The percentage underwritten averaged 93 percent but ranged from 0 to 100 percent. The standard deviation of daily returns for 250 days before the rights issue averaged 2.5 percent but ranged from 0.8 to 8.9 percent while the new for existing ratio averaged 0.458 for 1 and ranged from 0.7 new shares for every existing share to one new share for every one existing share.Analysis of the variables that may influence the percentage underwriter fee (PERCUFEE) of rights issues is conducted using the following regression model: Equation 1 Most of these variables have been previously used in industrial company studies and were explained in the related literature section. A summary description of these variables is also provided in Table II. Three additional variables are included in this model because they are intuitively appealing. They are POST2007, STAPLED and RENOUNCEABLE and explained now.The GFC and 2008-2009\n4 Conclusion: This paper adds to the international literature investigating the underwriting costs and share price discounts of A-REIT equity rights issues by investigating such issues during 2001-2009. The mean percentage underwriting cost of these issues amounted to 2.9 percent of gross proceeds with the mean discount of 9.5 percent - this is far lower than that found by Owen and Suchard (2008) with Australian industrial and mining company rights issue underwriting costs at 4.0 percent and gross discounts of 19 percent (and these latter means relate to rights issues well before the GFC). These lower underwriting and indirect costs suggest a substantially lower cost of equity capital raising for A-REITs compared to industrial and mining companies. The average underwriting costs of the rights issues are also lower than the average underwriting costs of A-REIT and J-REIT IPOs. This is consistent with the thoughts of Corwin (2003).The paper also adds to the international literature investigating potential influencing factors on the underwriting costs of these equity rights issues. The results identify the standard deviation of returns for the last 250 days as an important influence on the underwriting cost. Clearly the larger the standard deviation of returns the larger the percentage underwriting cost. So for A-REITs seeking to minimise their underwriting cost they must also minimise the share price volatility, which in turn influences the volatility of daily returns.The issuer risk is also found to influence the discount. The lower REITs can keep their share price volatility and hence their standard deviation of daily returns the lower the direct and indirect costs they incur.What is interesting is that most of the characteristics/variables that have been found useful to consider in influencing the underwriting fee and the discount in much of the previous literature, do not appear to be statistically significant in influencing such rights issue costs for A-REITs. Dimovski (2011) identified that the volatility of daily returns for A-REITs during the GFC period (2008-2009) was 2.5 times what it was before this period. This major increase in volatility may be why previous industrial company research, including Owen and Suchard (2008) utilising 1993-2001 data, did not identify the volatility of daily returns as a significant explanatory variable, but this study does.One variable in particular that is not significant in influencing percentage underwriting costs in this A-REIT sector study is the size of the capital raising. Interestingly, Bairagi and Dimovski (2012) report that the underwriting fees for US REIT SEOs are also not statistically significantly influenced by the size of the capital raising. It could be that REITs are generally expected to seek large amounts of seasoned equity capital from underwriters and investors.With regard factors influencing the discount in rights issues, Owen and Suchard (2008) find a significant positive relationship with relative issue size and a significant negative relationship with ownership concentration but such relationships are not found in this A-REIT study. As suggested before, A-REITs, because of their existing size, may well be expected to raise large sums through rights issues while the industrial and mining companies studied by Owen and Suchard (2008) appear to have a large variability in the size of capital raising. It is interesting that the degree of ownership concentration (percentage shareholding of top 20 shareholders) amongst these industrial and mining companies studied by Owen and Suchard (2008) and the A-REIT study here are broadly similar with respect their averages and standard deviations. It may be because the Owen and Suchard (2008) study used older, pre GFC lower volatility data, that ownership concentration declared itself as influential.The findings of this study of Australian REIT rights issues concurs with the findings of the Bairagi and Dimovski (2012) study on US REIT SEOs in that the level of share price volatility is important in influencing underwriting fees. Future research exploring explanatory characteristics in other REIT jurisdictions may help to determine if such findings apply more generally to the entire REIT sector.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This is the first REIT paper to seek to empirically examine potential influencing factors on the discounts and underwriting fees of Australian REIT rights issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using a methodology similar to Owen and Suchard, and Armitage, a sample of 62 A-REIT rights issues during 2001-2009 is analyzed. A variety of potential factors influencing discounts and underwriting fees are explored.\nFindings: - Over A$20 billion was raised by A-REIT rights issues during 2001-2009 (this around three times that raised through A-REIT initial public offerings during the same period). The mean offer price was discounted around 9.5 percent from the current market price and underwriting fees averaged 2.9 percent of gross proceeds raised - both substantially less than for industrial rights issues. The standard deviation of daily returns for the past year appears to influence the percentage discount offered to subscribers. This volatility was particularly noticeable in 2008 and 2009, during the global financial crisis, where new issues were discounted substantially so as to raise equity to repay debt. This historical risk variable appears paramount in determining the discounts to subscribers and fees to underwriters.\nPractical implications: - A-REITs seeking to minimize the discounts offered to subscribers and to minimize their underwriting costs with rights issue equity capital raisings must first minimize their share price volatility.\nOriginality/value: - This paper adds to the international costs of capital raising literature of REITs by examining such costs with A-REIT rights issues and is the first paper to examine factors influencing these costs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identifying the pivotal role of participation strategies and information technology application for supply chain excellence	[ "Supply chain management", "Communication technologies", "Customer satisfaction", "Organizational performance", "Manufacturing industries", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Supply chain management is the integration of key business processes among a network of interdependent suppliers, manufacturers, distribution centers, and retailers. The supply chain management enables firms to enhance the flow of goods, services, and information from the original suppliers to the final customers, to reduce system-wide costs and maintain required service levels (Simchi-Levi et al., 2000). Immediate supplier and customer participation activities have thus played an important role in the development of effective supply chain management strategies (Tracey et al., 1999; Tracey and Tan, 2001; Winser, 2003). This implies that in the process of establishing their strategy firms can focus on not only the traditional aspects of product, market, location, and competitive ability; but a broader approach involving supply chain participants and manufacturing personnel. The involvement of there two groups is needed to ensure that customers will be more satisfied in an environment of rapidly changing requirements.Many studies have emphasized the partial relationships among SCPS, information technology application (ITA), manufacturing participation strategy (MPS), customer satisfaction (CS), and organizational performance (OP) (Narasimhan and Kim, 2001; Kuei et al., 2001; Lin et al., 2003; Choy et al., 2003; Soliman and Youssef, 2003; Droge et al., 2004; Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2004; Chen et al., 2004; Kannan and Tan, 2005). However, a structural framework for these constructs is seldom found. For example, Chen et al. (2004) utilized a structural equation model approach to examine the links among strategic purchasing, supply management, and firm performance. Kannan and Tan (2005) exploited correlation analysis approach to discuss that linkages and impact of JIT, TQM, and SCM on business performance. Droge et al. (2004) examined the effects of integration practices reaching across firm boundaries to involve suppliers and customers on time-based performance and on overall firm performance (financial and market share). However, none of the above studies considered these aspects, such as manufacturing factors, ITA issues, and OP. Kuei et al. (2001) presented an empirical study of the relationship between supply chain management and OP, and some papers have explored the relationship between information systems and supply management performance (Narasimhan and Kim, 2001; Lin et al., 2003; Coronado, 2003; Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2004; Helo and Szekely, 2005).In spite of the recent research focus, one area of SCPS that has not been adequately addressed is the direct and indirect influence of ITA, and MPS on CS and OP. Synthesis of previous studies finds that an integrative model for combining SCPS, ITA, and MPS, CS, and OP, still missing. Therefore, the study first identifies how researchers and practitioners, based on the literature, define and operationalize SCPS, ITA, MPS, CS, and OP. Second we propose a conceptual structural equation model to link the direct and indirect impact of SCPS, ITA, and MPS on CS and OP. Finally, this research surveys 109 senior managers from the top 800 manufacturing firms in Taiwan and the data collected are used to test the relationships expressed in the proposed structural equation model.\nResearch constructs: This section reviews the literature to identify relevant practices comprising each operation strategy and operationalizes the supply chain participation stategy (SCPS), ITA, MPS, CS, and OP.Supply chain participation strategy\nResearch model and hypotheses: The research model is shown in Figure 1. The relevant hypotheses of the model are presented below.The relationship between supply chain participation strategy and other dimensions\nSurvey methodology: Sampling\nDiscussion: Based on the results (shown in Figure 2), discussion is conducted below. Firstly, SCPS has a direct influence on MPS (H2) and a positive, though marginal, effect on CS (H3) and OP (H4). The results also indicate that managers believe that it would be beneficial in enhancing the companies' CS and OP if related suppliers were involved in assisting policy making that relates to activities such as development, design and manufacture of the enterprise's products (Vonderembse and Tracey, 1999; Vickery et al., 2003). However, it is more important to apply strategies to improve strategic efficiency. This can be achieved through the participation of manufacturing-related personnel in the process; thus, allowing the key intelligence/knowledge offered by the suppliers to be absorbed and internalized. Only through this method can companies acquire strategic benefits that allow them to promote CS and OP.Accordingly, the application of supply chain participation can in the meantime activate the means to advance enterprises' internal operations and also emphasize the need to involve related personnel in other enterprises, such as manufacturing or distributing individuals, in the strategy-making process. Through these considerations, enterprises can efficiently integrate outer resources to respond to customers' needs more rapidly and advance CS so that organizational goals and competitive superiority can be achieved.Second, the results indicated that the application of information technology significantly affect MPS (H5) and has a positive, though marginal, effect on CS (H6) and OP (H7). Similarly, as for the results of the H6 and H7, many researchers have indicated that there is a positive relationship between the application of information technology and CS (Fillipini and Raffo, 1991; Karimi et al., 2001; Nahm and Ishikawa, 2004) and OP (Tallon et al., 2000; Narasimhan and Kim, 2001; Sanders and Premus, 2002; Tippins and Sohi, 2003).Furthermore, our study points out that in order to allow the application of information technology to have a substantial effect, the company needs to know how to employ its technological resources, such as EDI, ERP, the internet and others. There resources will assist executives in several tasks that include: executing all types of functional activities, collecting important information for policy making, and providing references for the enterprise's policy arrangements and supply chain execution. Hence, the key task in enhancing CS and OP is the application of information technology. This will allow the internal manufacturing-related personnel to have a better grasp of the information in assisting the enterprise in making the correct policies (Tallon et al., 2000; Tracey and Tan, 2001; Choi and Haiwook, 2003; Meyer, 2001).Third, MPS significantly affects CS and OP (H8 and H9), with this result conforming to the findings of Tracey et al. (1999) and Ward et al. (1998). They argue that a company's market holding rate and sales ability are both improved by the active participation of key manufacturing personnel who participate in the investment of strategic development concerning specific manufacturing capabilities and the involvement of all its employees in the day-to-day affairs of the enterprise.Fourth, the same as many other studies (Madu et al., 1996; Hajjat, 2002; Su et al., 2001; Chein et al., 2003; Choy et al., 2003), Our research shows that CS significantly promotes OP (H10). Thus, enterprises should make efforts to improve their CS to increase their profits.Finally, as shown in Figure 2, although the effect of SCPS on ITA (i.e. H1) is not significant, under P<0.05 significant level, it is significant under P<0.1 level. The result reveals that SCPS appear to have a marginally direct effect on ITA. As Huang and Mak's (2001) argued, information technology has been widely adopted in various businesses and industries, and further it has become the infrastructure and essential element of business management and operations; therefore from the manager's point of view the correlation between SCPS and ITA, unconsciously becomes of less importance. The result is that it is generally accepted by managers that SCPS does appear to have a positive, though marginal effect, on ITA.\nConclusions: This study's results are opposed to or ignored by prior studies. The results imply that MPS planning plays a pivotal role in achieving OP. This demonstrates the strategic importance of integrating manufacturing (operations) with suppliers and customers in a supply chain system. The MPS proves to be critical in linking external market requirements with internal considerations, such as organizational and technological resources, capacities and competitiveness. In order to enhance a company's CS and OP, it is imperative for the executives to be engaged in business strategy planning, which is a method that is used for planning the supply chain system.Several results are similar to those in prior studies, which demonstrated that there is positive relationship between SCPS and the application of information technology on CS as well as OP. For example, an effective SCM depends upon the personnel who can participate in policy-making process (Winser, 2003; Vickery et al., 2003; Prahinski and Benton, 2004) as well as the effective application of IT to establish competitive superiority (Narasimhan and Kim, 2001; Sanders and Premus, 2002; Scheepers, 2003; Williamson et al., 2004). It implies that information technology serves as a major driving factor for influencing the performance of a supply chain; moreover, the participation of key personnel contributes significantly to enhancing the quality in policy-making in supply chain management activities. Therefore, concerning the success of the implementation of the supply chain systems, whether firms are capable of applying IT to obtain the necessary information and whether appropriate personnel for participating in policy-making are available will serve as two critical keys to success.Even though the present empirical results largely support the current model, this study has several limitations. Firstly, since the empirical data were provided by individual informants, the existence of possible biases cannot be discounted. Second, the facilitating factors of SCPS employed in this study, particularly the internally aligned factors, are by no means exhaustive, even if they have been identified as critical ones in the literature available. Finally, the current data were collected in Taiwan, and the distribution of the scale of the firms surveyed may be quite different from that in other countries. Thus, it should not be assumed that the present results represent the wider case. However, it may be a useful reference for the firms located in other countries whose circumstances are similar to those in Taiwan.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To propose a conceptual structural equation model to demonstrate the direct and indirect impact of supply chain participation strategy (SCPS), information technology application (ITA), manufacturing participation strategy (MPS) on customer satisfaction (CS) and organizational performance (OP) from a strategic perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An empirical study is conducted through surveys of 109 senior managers from the top 800 manufacturing firms in Taiwan and the data collected are used to test the relationships expressed in the proposed structural equation model.\nFindings: - MPS planning plays a pivotal role in achieving OP in implementing the supply chain system. This demonstrates the strategic importance of integrating manufacturing (operations) with suppliers and customers in a supply chain system.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The current data were collected in Taiwan, and the distribution of the scale of the firms surveyed may be quite different from that in other countries. But it can be useful for managers' reference, especially for those whose firms are located in other countries where the circumstances are similar to those in Taiwan.\nPractical implications: - This application of conceptual structural equation model is a very useful source of information and a notice for managers to achieve greater success in implementing the supply chain systems.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides a useful conceptual structural equation model and points out a critical pivotal variable for managers to implement SCM more effectively to enhance the competitive advantage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Patient safety culture in maternity units: a review	[ "Review", "Patient safety culture", "Obstetrics", "Maternity", "Patient safety climate" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Number 3.1 aims to reduce the global Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by the year 2030 (United Nations, 2015). Despite a decline since 1990, MMR in 2015 was above 200 for every 100,000 live births - equivalent to 303,000 mothers dying owing to pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications (World Health Organization, 2015). This mismatch between target and MMR current level requires healthcare providers to invest in new strategies to improve maternity service quality and safety. Strategies have been applied and found to improve quality and patient safety, e.g. checklists, reminders, hand hygiene, training and medication reconciliation (Shekelle et al., 2013). However, these strategies will not produce expected improvements without an environment that encourages, reminds and motivates staff toward improving patient safety. This environment has been called patient safety culture or patient safety climate (PSC). Developing PSC is a pre-requisite for successful patient safety improvement initiatives (Weaver et al., 2013).\nMethods: Our aim was to review studies that examined MCU PSC. Our specific objectives were to: describe different reasons for examining PSC; report different designs and tools that have been used to examine PSC; and identify gaps in the literature. For Booth et al. (2012), a narrative review is where the literature is reviewed comprehensively and systematically allowing reviewers to descriptively summarize different study designs using summary table. It identifies gaps and to a lesser extent commonalities (Lucas et al., 2007). All 28 studies were quality assessed.\nFindings: A total of 5,630 articles were retrieved across eight databases. After removing duplicates, 4,535 articles remained. Article title and abstract were scanned for eligibility; 100 articles were included for full text review, and 28 studies were selected. Figure 1 summarizes the search strategy and selection process using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statements (Moher et al., 2009; Liberati et al., 2009).\nDiscussion: Studies included in this review demonstrate that examining PSC in MCU is feasible. Studies show that it is possible to examine PSC in a single MCU, in comparison with other departments within a hospital or in comparison with other MCUs in other hospitals. However, assessing PSC in MCU with other departments in a hospital has a limited use (Fujita et al., 2014). Hospital wide assessment does not consider the interdepartmental variations, and thus, does not provide any guidance on the strategy appropriateness to a specific department or unit.\nLimitations: Our review has limitations. First, publications were screened by a single reviewer, which may increase bias in selecting the related studies. Second, it is possible that where results were inconclusive or were negative, researchers may have not published their studies, or they were not accepted for publication. This introduces a potential threat for publication bias. Third, gray literature was not considered. Conclusions drawn from this review, therefore, may be biased. Despite these limitations, we believe that our conclusions are valid because attempts were made to ensure the review's comprehensiveness via eight databases.\nConclusions: Improving maternity services is an international priority. Improving PSC is linked with a significant effect on patient outcomes. We summarized the international efforts for examining MCU PSC. It is a step toward improving MCU safety. Examining PSC either in MCU alone or in combination with other departments is feasible. Additionally, evaluating PSC level can act as a tool to evaluate intervention effects both on PSC and patient outcomes. The lessons learned from the limitations need to be considered before executing any PSC study. Additionally, quantitative studies permit PSC results generalizability and comparability while qualitative studies are useful to explain variations in results. Importantly, the intervention number and duration varied greatly and both extremes had a significant improvement in PSC. Therefore, selecting an evidenced-based strategy specific to MCU is an essential step to increase success. Finally, we call for future research on: how soon PSC should be reexamined after an intervention; reporting the interventions costs that aim to improve MCU PSC; and assessing PSC studies costs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to summarize studies that have examined patient safety culture in maternity units and describe the different purposes, study designs and tools reported in these studies while highlighting gaps in the literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Peer-reviewed studies, published in English during 1961-2016 across eight electronic databases, were subjected to a narrative literature review.\nFindings: Among 100 articles considered, 28 met the inclusion criteria. The main purposes for studying PSC were: assessing intervention effects on PSC (n=17), and assessing PSC level (n=7). Patient safety culture was mostly assessed quantitatively using validated questionnaires (n=23). The Safety Attitude Questionnaire was the most commonly used questionnaire (n=17). Interventions varied from a single action lasting five weeks to a more comprehensive four year package. The time between baseline and follow-up assessment varied from 6 to 24 months. No study reported measurement or intervention costs, and none incorporated the patient's voice in assessing PSC.\nPractical implications: Assessing PSC in maternity units is feasible using validated questionnaires. Interventions to enhance PSC have not been rigorously evaluated. Future studies should report PSC measurement costs, adopt more rigorous evaluation designs and find ways to incorporate the patient's voice.\nOriginality/value: This review summarized studies examining PSC in a highly important area and highlighted main limitations that future studies should consider.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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