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Stock return and financial performance as moderation variable in influence of good corporate governance towards corporate value
|
[
"Stock return",
"Financial performance",
"Good corporate governance",
"Corporate value"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The objective of this study is to evaluate how much influence good corporate governance (GCG) has on corporate value, as well as moderating effect of stock return and financial performance on the influence of GCG on corporate value. Goal of every company is to increase the amount of money shareholders receive. Maximum corporate value will result in increasing profit for shareholders (Husnan, 2012). Agency problem is an obstacle in achieving the goal. Agency problem is derived from separation between corporate ownership and corporate management. Professional managers who do not have any share or very little share in company are the ones responsible for running majority of large companies. As a result, these managers feel they have authority to run companies without taking shareholder's interest into account. They are not foreign to ask for high salary and certain facilities.\n2. Conceptual framework and hypothesis building: Agency theory is applied in work contract that will regulate proportion of rights and obligations of each party while still taking into account the overall benefit. A work contract is a set of rules governing profit-sharing mechanisms, whether in the form of profits, returns or risks approved by principals and agents. It works optimally if the contract is fair, that is, it is able to keep balance between the principal and the agent that mathematically shows the optimal implementation of the agent's obligations and granting of satisfactory special incentives/rewards from the principal to the agent. Basis of the agency theory is the proper design of contracts to align the principal and the agent's interests when conflict of interest or agency problem occurs (Scott et al., 1997).\n3. Design, methods and approach: Research is a planned and systematic process to solve particular issues or answer a set of research questions. This study was an explanatory study. The unit of analysis was the companies listed in LQ45 in Indonesian Stock Exchange and the sources of data were ICMD, annual report and financial reports of the companies. Indonesian Stock Exchange was selected as the setting of the study since Indonesian Stock Exchange is one of trading places for various types of companies in Indonesia; it provides complete information on company's financial data and stock price.\n4. Analysis result and discussion: Influence of GCG toward corporate value\n5. Limitation, suggestion and recommendation: Limitation of the study\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how much influence good corporate governance (GCG) has on corporate value, as well as moderating effect of stock return and financial performance on the influence of GCG on corporate value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was an explanatory study. The unit of analysis was the companies listed in LQ45 in Indonesian Stock Exchange and the sources of data were ICMD, annual report and financial reports of the companies. Indonesian Stock Exchange was selected as the setting of the study since Indonesian Stock Exchange is one of trading places for various types of companies in Indonesia, and it provides complete information on company's financial data and stock price. The population was 84 companies listed in LQ45 in Indonesian Stock Exchange between 2010 and 2016.\nFindings: The higher GCG, independent commissioners proportion, institutional managerial and public ownerships resulted in higher corporate value. MBE and PER stock return is a moderating variable in the influence of GCG on corporate value. Financial performance is moderating variable in the influence of GCG on corporate value.\nOriginality/value: Based on the previous studies, it may be concluded that there is a gap between the influence of GCG on corporate value and the influence of stock return on financial performance, and moderating variable is needed to evaluate the influence of GCG on company performance, more particularly stock return and financial performance. This discrepancy creates opportunity for conducting an in-depth study on those variables. Its novelty is correlation between stock return and financial performance as moderation. Previous studies used these as mediating variables. This study is going to generate different finding as it is conducted in different setting (country where this study is conducted), type of industry, research period and using different method of analysis.\n",
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BPM capability development - a matter of contingencies
|
[
"Contingency theory",
"Capability development",
"Case study",
"Dynamic capabilities",
"Business process management",
"Maturity model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Business process management (BPM) research has a long tradition in the information systems (IS) discipline (Trkman, 2010) and is a key priority of practitioners (Gartner, Inc., 2010; McKinsey, 2008). The concept of business processes as well as the approaches to their management and improvement have been studied from a multitude of perspectives, including such diverse concepts as total quality management (TQM) or business process reengineering (BPR). BPM is valued as a means to gain and sustain competitive advantage (Broadbent et al., 1999). It can be considered as a specific capability dedicated to process improvements and, more broadly, to organizational change (Teece et al., 1997; Trkman, 2010).\n2 Theoretical background: 2.1 Business process management\n3 Research methodology: In this study, we employ methods of qualitative IS research to address our research objectives. Qualitative research has a long tradition in the field of IS (Kern and Willcocks, 2002; Mingers, 2003; Remenyi and Williams, 1996) and is especially suitable when the research area is still emerging (Bandara et al., 2005; Yin, 2003) and not controllable by the investigators (Yin, 2003). Our field of BPM capability development is such an area (Rosemann, 2010). In the following, we summarize the case study setting and discuss the process of data collection and analysis.\n4 Findings: In the following, the status quo of SAVINGS' BPM capabilities is described according to the six core elements of BPM (Rosemann and Vom Brocke, 2010):\n5 Discussion: 5.1 Implications\n6 Conclusion: In this paper, we challenged the dominant maturity model perspective on BPM development and suggested an alternative approach that highlights the importance of internal and external contingencies. We conceptualized BPM as a dynamic capability which implies that BPM capability should be developed in a way that it a fit with the organizational environment is achieved. Based on this understanding we argued that existing BPM capability development models fail at including organizational characteristics and external factors. Existing BPM capability maturity models have been based on the implicit notion that drivers of capability development are inherent to the concept of BPM per se. We presented a qualitative case study that challenges this assumption. Our empirical findings underpinned our perspective that striving for the most sophisticated BPM capability (according to existing maturity models) will not necessarily leads to an environment-BPM-fit. Instead, when determining the right level of BPM capability, contingency factors like environmental variables or organizational characteristics have to be taken into account. We propose that organizations do not need to develop on the prescribed paths that are sketched by existing maturity models but should rather aim at a continuous (re-)alignment with their environment.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: Business process management (BPM) is a key concept in information systems (IS) research that helps to connect business strategy with the use of technology in an organization. Contemporary BPM research is no longer only about methods, procedures, or tools for managing or modeling processes but about assessing and developing BPM capability in organizations. For this purpose, a vast collection of maturity models has been designed by practitioners and scholars alike. Such models are used to assess the status quo and benchmark it against other organizations, and, most important, to guide the development of BPM capability. With this study, the paper challenges the maturity model perspective of such development models.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, methods of qualitative IS research are employed to address the research objectives.\nFindings: The paper shows that maturity model-based guidance would be inadequate. Instead, other concept-external factors resulting from organizational and environmental characteristics appear to be important indicators. The theory discussion introduces alternative takes on BPM capability development, lays out implications for BPM practice, and presents potentially fruitful paths for future research in the area of BPM capability development.\nOriginality/value: This paper challenges the current perspectives and contributes a new direction for conceptualizing BPM capability development.\n",
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Exploring servitization in China: Challenges of aligning motivation, opportunity and ability in coordinating an external service partner network
|
[
"China",
"Servitization",
"MOA",
"Service network"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Servitization as a means of competitiveness is widely discussed in the extant literature in the context of, and by reference to, developed economies (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988; Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Baines et al., 2009). For many western manufacturers, services now constitute an important part of their business. For the most part, the provision of advanced services and solutions is suggested as an effective means by which to respond to competitors from emerging economies in home markets (Neely, 2007). The literature largely seems, however, to ignore the opportunities that emerging and global markets may present for the provision of services, with few notable exceptions (e.g. Kucza and Gebauer, 2011; Vandermerwe and Chadwick, 1989; Demeter and Szasz, 2013; Szasz and Demeter, 2015). As a result, understanding the global perspective in terms of service is considered a research priority (Ostrom et al., 2015).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Servitization in China\n3. Research methodology: Given that we wished to consider servitization in an under-explored empirical context, an exploratory qualitative case study approach was selected as the most appropriate research methodology. Access to a large Danish manufacturer of capital equipment was secured. The company has a global presence, spanning four continents and operating in many different markets. China was deemed to be the second home market for the company, where it sought to grow its market share. As part of that growth strategy, the service business was specifically marked as an important area for attention. As such, the company and its approach made it a logical choice for an in-depth case study with embedded cases, displaying, as it did, a number of unique qualities and demonstrating characteristics of a revelatory case (Yin, 2009; Siggelkow, 2007).\n4. Case description and context: EngCo is a large Danish manufacturer of capital equipment. It is known for delivering solutions to customers across an array of industries. At the time of the study, EngCo had, globally, approximately 18,000 employees.\n5. Findings: In this section, the findings from the analysis process are presented in light of our research questions. We first address the MOA framework by reference to the different actors in the study - that is, EngCo HQ (the parent company, hereafter referred to as HQ), EngCo China (the Chinese subsidiary) and the ASPN. The challenges in expanding service provision are then presented.\n6. Discussion and conclusion: In this in-depth exploratory study, we illustrate the complexities and challenges of attempting to advance services and solutions in an emerging market like China. The point of departure for this study was the limited insight in the existing literature into the supply network considerations. This study explored the servitization efforts of EngCo in China by adopting the MOA framework. Using this framework, we contribute to previous studies that have touched upon cultural differences (Gebauer et al., 2007) and the lack of capabilities for delivering services within a country the size of China (cf. Kowalkowski et al., 2011). Similar to these studies, we find that both cultural differences and China's geographical characteristics impact servitization. Specifically, we find that EngCo is conscious of the need for relational bonds with customers, which is achievable through local external partners that possess local customer knowledge. However, offering advanced services and solutions requires investment in developing the abilities of external partners, which involves significant risk on the part of EngCo.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: Previous research has predominately focused on the servitization strategies of western manufacturers in advanced economies, neglecting the potential for servitization in those which are emerging, such as China. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the external service partner network of a European manufacturer providing services in China, in order to develop a better understanding of the resulting and associated challenges.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An in-depth case study approach was used to examine the parent company, its subsidiary in China and the related service partner network. Data collection involved all three actors and took place in Denmark and China.\nFindings: The findings suggest that motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) need not only be mutually reinforcing for the organization attempting to move toward services but also aligned between organizational units, as well as with the service partner network. Furthermore, the findings suggest that while service partners are typically closer to the market, they may not be able to deliver the higher value-added services requiring customization.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study is limited to a single manufacturer attempting servitization in China. Future studies may consider other case firms in other markets.\nPractical implications: The MOA framework provides a basis for understanding the managerial challenges of aligning and coordinating the MOA elements amongst different actors.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes by exploring servitization in an emerging market through the MOA framework in order to better understand the challenges and complexities. Servitization is found to be a dynamic phenomenon which should be understood as a movement that is also dependent on an external service partner possessing the necessary capabilities. In turn, this requires understanding the MOAs of all actors in a network and how they may be influenced in order for the MOA elements to be mutually reinforcing.\n",
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Using simulation to evaluate a blood supply network in the Canadian maritime provinces
|
[
"Canada",
"Modelling",
"Simulation",
"Blood",
"Supply chain management",
"Blood supply chain",
"Facilities location",
"Logistics",
"Simulation modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Background: Canadian Blood Services is a not-for-profit, charitable organization whose mission is to manage the supply of blood and blood products in Canada. It operates in all Canadian provinces and territories, except for the Province of Quebec, which maintains a separate blood agency. Canadian Blood Services provided approximately 850,000 units of red blood cells (RBCs) and 110,000 apheresis platelet (PLT) doses to Canadian hospitals in 2009/2010 (Canadian Blood Services, 2011). The budget for its operations totalled $1B ($CAN) in 2009/2010, of which approximately 50 per cent was related to collection, production, testing, and distribution of transfusable products (RBCs, plasma, and PLTs).For the past several years, the organization has been implementing a strategy to standardize processes and workflows and, as part of this process, is amalgamating a number of production and testing centres. The focus of this study is on the production, distribution and support functions for the blood supply chain in Maritime region of Atlantic Canada. The Maritime network currently consists of joint production and distribution centres in Saint John, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Once consolidation is complete production facilities will be centralized in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (Dartmouth is a sister city to Halifax). Product testing will be consolidated at national facilities in the Toronto, Ontario area (approximately two hours away by air). The consolidation of production at Dartmouth will necessitate changes in the transport network used to supply hospitals in the region, specifically facilities in the province of New Brunswick.At present, the distribution centre in Saint John services 20 hospitals in New Brunswick, whose demand ranges from less than 100 units of PLTs and RBCs per annum to 8,000 units per annum at the regional tertiary care facility. The current distribution network uses ground-based services originating from Saint John. An overnight commercial courier service is used for routine, scheduled deliveries and a commercial bus parcel express service is employed for ad hoc (typically same day) deliveries. In the event of an emergency delivery, taxis or a police relay may be employed. The proposed logistics infrastructure, once consolidation of production activities at the Dartmouth facility has occurred, will use both ground transportation and air deliveries for select hospitals in northeast and northwest New Brunswick to deliver blood and blood products. The plan envisions that some New Brunswick hospitals will continue to be supported from the Saint John facility, which will function as a stockholding unit (SHU), while others will be supported directly from the Dartmouth facility. Transport of raw and finished products between Dartmouth and Saint John is assumed, for the purposes of this study, to be provided by a ground transport service.A number of stakeholders, including physician groups and the government of New Brunswick have expressed concern about the timeliness of deliveries from Dartmouth to Saint John or from Dartmouth to hospitals in the northeast and northwest of the province; weather, it is argued may delay deliveries and thus decrease service levels to customers who presently rely on Saint John for stock. Debate over the consolidation of services in New Brunswick has received considerable attention in the popular press (CanadaEast.com, 2011).This paper describes the results of a simulation-based set of experiments to evaluate and compare expected service levels for hospital customers supported through Saint John under the \"current\" and \"to be\" distribution networks. The objective of the study is to determine whether customer service levels will be adversely affected by consolidation of production in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.\n2. Literature review: There is a substantial literature describing the application of operational research techniques to blood management. This literature, which dates from the 1960s, has historically focused on inventory management or hospital blood policies (Belien and Force, 2011) See Nahmias (1982) for a review of perishable inventory theory as applied to blood products. See also, Rabinowitz (1973), Dumas and Rabinowitz (1977), or Perera et al. (2009) for representative models of blood bank management and cross-match policies. Less study, however, appears to have been devoted to issues of blood supply-chain management (Belien and Force, 2011).Pierskalla (2005) notes the importance of planning across the entire blood supply chain. In a 2005 survey, Pierskalla lays out a variety of supply-chain applications for operations research including demand forecasting, inventory management, distribution network design and layout, and vehicle routing. Network design is described in the context of determining the optimal number and size of regional blood centres (production centres), community blood centres (distribution sites), and hospital blood banks (demand points). Pierskalla describes logistics applications from the perspective of a system in which a fleet of dedicated delivery vehicles must visit a set of known demand points.There are also a number of papers focusing on facility location problems in blood supply chains. Daskin et al. (2002), for example, describe a non-linear integer programming method for locating and sizing PLT distribution facilities within a network to minimize the costs of operations. Their model assumes the expansion of a two-level hierarchy (supplier and hospital) to a three-level system (supplier, distribution centre, and hospital) to allow for risk pooling amongst hospitals. The model minimizes the fixed costs of operating distribution centres as well as the variable costs associated with transportation and safety stock, using a set of heuristics to solve a p-median type problem. Sahin et al. (2007) similarly describe a hierarchical set of models to configure the network design of the Turkish Red Crescent's blood service. Their suite of models includes a p-median formulation to identify a set of regional blood centres that minimizes the total weighted distance between supply points and demand points. Once the regional centres are defined, a set-covering model is used to determine the minimum number of blood stations needed to meet service standards. A third model is used to allocate mobile delivery vans to service regions.Denesiuk et al. (2006) provide a practical example of supply-chain integration. They describe the design and implementation of a transportation process to redistribute near-outdate RBCs from four remote hospitals in northern Alberta to a larger regional facility and report lower overall system outdate rates after implementing a transhipment policy. There is, in addition, an established literature in operations research discussing the theoretical benefits of transhipping (see e.g. Cohen et al., 1979)).There is a smaller literature focusing on the operational management of blood supply chains. Rytila and Spens (2006) use a simulation approach to model the supply chain within a hospital transfusion service in Finland. The simulation model is used to test a set of inventory and product management policies with the intent of minimizing outdating and backorder costs while retaining high levels of product availability. Ghandforoush and Sen (2010) describe a prototype decision support system for coordinating the collection of PLTs across a network of potential supply points. Katsaliaki and Brailsford (2007) use simulation to model the entire blood supply chain. Describing the blood supply chain as complex, they suggest simulation as a method for dealing with stochastic supply and demand. Their model includes a range of blood products (red cells, plasma, and PLTs) flowing between a supply centre and a single, medium-sized hospital. Larger networks can be simulated, but a distributed computing environment is required.It can be concluded that there is a substantial operations research literature on blood. The vast majority of work in this area has focused on broad issues of inventory management. There is a smaller literature on the design of blood supply networks primarily discussing the location of facilities. There are in addition a number of models focusing on the operational aspects of managing blood supply chains, but these models are not easily scaled, nor are their results generalizable. We could find no examples in the literature dealing specifically with the issues of relocating production facilities within a blood supply chain network.\n3. Model: A simulation model focusing on the Saint John facility was constructed in Rockwell Arena Version 13. The simulation was designed to model the \"current\" situation where collections are processed at Saint John as well as the \"to be\" situation where collections are to be processed at the Dartmouth facility and are assumed to be delivered to Saint John via ground transport. The simulation model was designed to reproduce processes of inventory management at the Saint John site (collections, end labelling, and distribution) and to represent order arrivals, order backlogs, and order completion and dispatch. An MS-Access database was paired with the simulation model to reproduce the functions of the internal Canadian Blood Service database and to track the physical location and status of all units in the simulation model. By using a database to track product information, rather than entities or matrices in the model, the complexity of the modelling efforts can be substantially reduced and thus run-times improved, with the result that the model is easier to scale.Since the purpose of the simulation was to determine the ability of the distribution network to respond to customer demands, the scope of the model was limited to the Saint John site. In the \"current\" state model, it is assumed that products are collected, produced, and end labelled in Saint John. Orders are assumed to arrive from consumer sites, are filled, dispatched to hospitals and then exit the system. In our model the outbound transport of products from the Saint John site to customers is not simulated, since we assume no changes in the transportation network emanating from Saint John between the \"current state\" and the \"to be\" state. In the \"to be\" state model we assume that products arrive to the SHU in Saint John from the regional production centre in Dartmouth daily and are distributed from the SHU using the same ground-based modes of transport currently in place. Although it is believed that, in the future, some facilities in New Brunswick will be supported directly from Dartmouth facility using either ground or air-based delivery services, for the purposes of this paper we ignore this element, since the exact number and location of facilities to be supported out of Dartmouth had not been determined at the time the analysis was completed. A separate, physical test of air-based deliveries to facilities in the northeast and northwest of the province was under taken to evaluate the feasibility of an air charter delivery system emanating from Dartmouth, but this aspect of the study is outside of the scope of the paper.3.1 Process description and modelling assumptions\n4. Model verification and validation: 4.1 Verification\n5. Experiments and results: Three sets of experiments were conducted as part of the analysis to compare the operational performance of the \"to be\" state. The first test involved a comparison of the \"to be\" state model against the \"current\" state model. The second test was designed to evaluate the performance of the \"to be\" state model under the assumption of decreased inventory levels at the Saint John SHU. The third test evaluated the performance of the \"to be\" state under the assumption of both decreasing inventory levels at the Saint John SHU and an increased volume of catastrophic failures within the distribution network.Comparison of the \"current\" state against the \"to be\" state\n6. Conclusion: Canadian Blood Services has proposed a plan to consolidate the production and support functions for the Maritime region in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Once consolidated, blood products for New Brunswick hospitals will be distributed from the new Dartmouth production facility either directly from Dartmouth or via a SHU located in Saint John.Because a number of stakeholders have expressed concern about the timeliness of deliveries under the proposed system, a simulation study of the facilities in Saint John was built. The model was verified and validated against data derived from operations during the fiscal year 2009/2010. The model was compared against the existing system using the volume of products demanded and shipped, the age of products when shipped, and the volume of outdates at the Saint John facility.After validating against current operating conditions, the simulation model was revised to simulate the operations of the Saint John facility under the assumption that production activities would be centralized in Dartmouth. The \"to be\" model was verified by comparing output for the model against aggregate production statistics that were not expected to change post-consolidation.A set of experiments was then conducted using the \"to be\" state model. In the first set of experiments, the performance of the \"to be\" state model was compared to the \"current\" state model as measured by the number of expected outdates and the time required to fill a customer order. The results of this test suggest that the \"to be\" network model will perform as well as, or better (a=0.05), than the \"current\" network.Experiments were also run on the \"to be\" state model to determine the minimum stock level needed. The results to the inventory experiments suggest that a minimum of five to six days of RBC inventory is necessary to deal with day-to-day fluctuations in demand at the SHU; current holdings at Saint John are typically in the range of eight to nine days of available RBC inventory.The final set of experiments evaluated the impact of road closures and weather on expected customer service. To simulate the impact of road closures outside of the transit delay recorded by the existing ground transport service, the \"to be\" model was revised to include additional road closures of a similar duration and frequency to those observed during the period between 2005 and 2009. Tests were conducted with up to three additional road closures per annum and three different inventory levels. No statistically significant difference in the time to fill an order (a=0.05) was observed in the experiments.We conclude, therefore, that there is no reason to assume that relocation of production activities within this network will necessarily lead to a decrease in customer service, given the specific operational assumptions used in the analysis. Moreover, we note that this result is robust with respect to reductions in inventory and up to three closures per annum of the road linking the production facility and the SHU. We note, finally, that the results suggest that blood centre operations can be faithfully represented via a simulation model.\nPost script: The work described in this paper was part of a two-year study to analyse the impact of the \"to-be\" network on customers in the Province of New Brunswick in order to address stakeholder concerns. In January of 2012, major stakeholder groups in New Brunswick withdrew their objections and announced a decision to continue their relationship with Canadian Blood Services, subject to a monitoring process to address any issues that arise during consolidation and to ensure a smooth transition to the new production and distribution environment (Government of New Brunswick, 2012).\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact on customer service of amalgamating two production/distribution facilities in a blood distribution network, located in the Maritime region of Canada, into a single production facility and a satellite distribution facility.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Simulation models of the existing distribution network and the future distribution network were built. Experiments were conducted, using the two models, to compare the performance of each.\nFindings: - Results indicate that there is no evidence to suggest a decrease in customer service resulting from the consolidation of the two facilities. Furthermore, results indicate that this conclusion is robust with respect to lower inventory levels at the satellite and up to three road closures per annum.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The results are based on specific operational assumptions regarding the number of hospitals supplied by the satellite facility and the methods used to transport blood products between locations.\nSocial implications: - The results of this study have important implications for how vital blood products are distributed to patients in the Maritime provinces of Canada.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is a case study describing a unique application of simulation methods to an important area of application. It will be of interest to readers interested in the management of blood supply chains and to researchers applying simulation methods.\n",
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Managing future and emergent strategy decay in the commercial aerospace industry
|
[
"Aerospace industry",
"Emergent strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Firm's strategic choices are aging at an accelerating rate (Stewart and Hamel, 2000). Environment serving organizations' competitive postures are being eroded through strategic decay. As a result instilling strategic resilience is now businesses' highest priority (Hamel and Valikangas, 2005). Real time issue management systems designed to identify strategy decay, guide subsequent strategic response, and manage organizational behavior are essential in achieving long-term strategic resilience. The commercial aerospace industry has and continues to face significant strategy decay. The process of strategic management will be explored in the context of how one company in the aerospace aluminium supply chain has used resilience to carve-out competitive advantage.\nStrategy formulation: Firms undertake strategy formulation to improve competitive posture. Preferred future competitive postures are built upon through the successes of the firm's strategic content intended to advance four basic business constituencies:1. Customer. Achieve market differentiation creating value through new products and services, or business models that capture and occupy a greater space in the value chain (Porter, 1986).2. Process. Manage product and technology lifecycles deploying advanced manufacturing techniques designed to drive best in class quality and lowest cost position (Ansoff and McDonnell, 1990a, b).3. Employee. Invest in improving internal resources capabilities collecting strategic opportunities (Mintzberg and McHugh, 1985).4. Financial. Fund strategic discovery processes identifying a large number of initiatives designed to achieve market. Fund and launch highest impact initiatives that the resource base can support (Pickard, 2002).Strategy formulation represents the organizations greatest opportunity to investigate improving its competitive position at the lowest cost. Many organizations abandon the formulation process after moving on to strategy deployment, returning to formulation on a multi-year or annual basis (Kaplan and Norton, 2005).\nStrategy deployment: Organizations' greatest challenges reside in the complexity of strategy deployment. Strategies typically do not fail for deficiency in strategic content, they fail because the organization resists or is slow to understand and adopt its new initiatives. The transformation of strategy from the formulation to deployment stage requires the firm to overcome organizational behaviors that would decrease the velocity of implementation diminishing the impact of strategy on competitive posture. As proposed: Equation 1 Organizational surveillance and implementation delays contribute to the underperformance of strategies in high turbulence environments. Figure 1 illustrates the organization's adoption delays, shown above the strategic flow, and surveillance and system delays illustrated below. These delays reduce the velocity of strategic work and expose the firm to external forces that advance strategic decay.\nStrategy decay: Strategy decay is the erosion of the firm's strategic capacity from a variety of environmental and competitive forces (Hamel and Valikangas, 2005). Strategic decay is continuously at work to diminish the firm's current and future preferred competitive postures. Hamel cites four areas of strategic decay:1. Replication factor. Competition's ability to imitate the firm's strategies.2. Supplantation factor. Represented by product, technology, or market discontinuities rendering the firm's strategies irrelevant.3. Exhaustion factor. A measure of future diminishing returns from currently employed strategies.4. Evisceration factor. Where margins deteriorate as customers gain bargaining power or change preferences.Strategic decay's negative impact on competitive posture can be qualified as the summation of the strategic discontinuities and the velocity of change within the firm's environment: Equation 2\nStrategic resilience: In highly turbulent environments surveillance of the 4 strategic decay forces is critical. Future profitability and viability is at risk as businesses' strategies are eroded through decay. The interactions between competitive posture, strategy, and decay are illustrated in Figure 2.Organizations' must overcome the forces of decay and realize the capacity for continuous reconstruction or strategic resilience (Hamel and Valikangas, 2005). To accomplish this, the firm must continuously monitor its strategic initiatives testing their relevance and measuring their velocity against the strategic discontinuity and velocity of change within the environment. Managing resilience can be defined as a continuous process that assures the firm's strategic content and velocity of implementation is great enough to overcome the negative effect of strategic discontinuity and the velocity of change: Equation 3\nAerospace supply chain strategy 1980-1990: North America dominated the global aerospace industry after the Second World War. From 1980 to 1990, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas delivered 87 percent of all commercial aircraft (see Figure 3). Airbus, a consortium of European countries, was not viewed as a threat as it struggled to develop aircraft and only began to penetrate the market in the late 1980s.The aerospace aluminium industry evolved from the facilities built to supply the defense industry during the Second World War in the 1940s. Alcoa, Kaiser, and International Light Metals (ILM) operated seven large integrated facilities supplying the North American aerospace market. The collective supply chain strategy was formulated to protect the North American market share by creating significant barriers of entry for new competitors.Aluminium industry strategies included:* on-going massive plant capital investments;* geographic proximity to customer base; and* intensive industry certification and quality systems requirements.These strategies proved successful for the aluminium supply chain in the 1980s. As deliveries climbed from 402 aircraft in 1980 to 632 in 1990, Alcoa, Kaiser, and ILM expanded capacity anticipating 8 to 10 percent annual growth concentrated in North America.\nAerospace supply chain trauma of the 1990s: Boeing and McDonnell Douglas delivered 1,702 aircraft between 1990 and 1992. Airbus, having delivered only 415 planes, was still not seen as a threat or significant opportunity to the North American aluminium supply chain. Fueled by 138 percent growth in aerospace aluminium consumption from 1980 to 1992, Alcoa, Kaiser, and ILM continued strategic investment in North American capacity (see Figure 4).Strategic decay began to erode the aluminium supply chain's competitive posture as the global economy slowed in 1992. As airline industry profitability stalled deliveries were cancelled. This marked the beginning of a highly turbulent period of strategic discontinuity within the raw materials supply chain.Alcoa Kaiser, and ILM faced an excess-inventory crisis, deteriorating pricing, and a market where capacity dramatically outpaced demand. As the aerospace aluminium requirement fell from 65 million pounds in 1992 to 37 million pounds in 1996: Alcoa closed its Vernon facility, and reduced its workforce at Layefette, Indiana and Davenport, Iowa; Kaiser closed McCook, Illinois, would sell its Ravenswood, West Virginia facility, and reduced its workforce at Trentwood, Washington; ILM closed its southern California operation and ceased to exist.\nGeographic demand shift accelerates strategic decay: The North American aerospace aluminium industry had not strategically prepared for the 1992 downturn or did it anticipate the subsequent geographic shift in supply as Airbus increased market share. A total of 22 million pounds of production tonnage would shift to Europe as Airbus tripled its output between 1996 and 2000 (see Figures 4 and 5).\nUAC breaks down barriers and enters market: Universal Alloy Corporation, (UAC), entered the aerospace aluminium extrusions market during the 1992 through 1996 industry trauma. Boeing, faced with a reduced vendor base after multiple facility closures, engaged UAC to enter and grow its market share. Out of this strategic discontinuity, UAC grew from a 5 percent to a 40 percent aluminium extrusion market share by 2000. UAC's strategy of investing in production assets during the 1992 through 1996 down cycle positioned its capacity for dimes on the dollar.\nHow did strategic management fail prior to the 1992 trauma?: Alcoa, Kaiser, and ILM profited from the low turbulence environment prior to 1992. Management utilized historical and extrapolative forecasting methods to develop future three to five year strategic plans updated annually in what they believed to be a stable environment. The industries management capability and strategic aggressiveness did not adapt itself to the strategic discontinuities and velocity of change set into motion in 1992.Ansoff and Sullivan's (1993) Strategic Success Paradigm predicts a loss of competitive position and posture when environmental turbulence exceeds management's capability and its strategic aggressiveness. The industry's long-standing strategic initiatives in 1992 failed due to unanticipated future strategy decay in the following areas:* Replication eroded Alcoa, Kaiser, and ILM's strategic distinctiveness and competitive posture as new competition appeared from focused extruders (UAC).* Supplantation superseded the industry's strategies as supply discontinuities created by the entry of Airbus geographically shifted the manufacturing base.* Exhaustion led to the obsolescence of the large integrated mills, their high cost structure, and inability to flex capacity to match market requirements.* Evisceration of Alcoa's extrusion market occurred as Boeing's increased UAC's commercial participation.\nCreating and sustaining resilience: The environmental turbulence of today presents the need for a Chief Strategy Officer or even an Office of Strategy Management (Kaplan and Norton, 2005). Achieving strategic resilience requires continuous environmental surveillance and management of internal organizational behaviors. A Real Time Strategic Management System designed to monitor the firm's internal and external environment will call for dedicated strategic resources. As such, strategy will become the next critical support function in the executive suite.Ansoff and McDonnell (1990a, b) cite three Real Time Strategy Management System components: Strategic Issue Management (SIM), Weak Signal Detection, and Surprise and Emergent Change management. SIM is the instrument for managing the organizations strategic work between strategy formulation cycles and is vital to entrenching strategic resilience. The SIM would:* assess the firm's and competitor's changing competitive postures;* continuously measure the organization's strategic initiatives, content, and implementation velocity;* quantify the impact of decay's external strategic discontinuities and the velocity of change;* manage internal adoption and eliminate or reduce delays associated with the translation of strategy from formulation to deployment and deployment to operating plans; and* support management capability improving the organization's resource base.A Weak Signal Detection System provides a continuous flow of information to the strategy formulation process. Surveillance of future opportunities and threats across the four components of strategic decay affords the organization time to assess the appropriate strategic response and its urgency. The Weak Signal System attempts to eliminate environmental surveillance filters that will reject or delay the assimilation of critical strategic information.The Surprise and Emergent Management System must prepare and organize the systems required to formulate and deploy actionable operating strategies when the firm is in crisis. Strategic surprise can be expressed in the terms of strategic decay possessing infinite velocity. As expressed below, emergent change overwhelms the firm's strategic content and implementation velocity immediately threatening the firm's competitive posture and potential future viability: Equation 4 The Real Time Strategic Management System illustrated in Figure 6 provides the required channels into the organization's resource base, strategy formulation, deployment processes, and operating plans needed to disseminate and promote immediate strategic thinking and response.\n9/11 - UAC faces emergent strategy decay: Weak signals were present in the aerospace industry during 1999 and 2000 suggesting a slow down in commercial aircraft sales. In spite of Boeing's substantial order backlog, the industry's memory of previous downturns and the subsequent trauma for the unprepared impelled some firms to anticipate and prepare for future strategy decay. UAC detecting weak signals of future strategy decay in 2000 deployed a graduated strategic response in anticipation of future higher environmental turbulence.The Surprise events of 9/11 resulted in an acceleration of strategy decay. Emergent Decay created the immediate need within both organizations to adapt and redeploy its management capability, organizational responsiveness, and strategic investment. As UAC re-evaluated its management structure in November 2001 to increase organizational responsiveness, a Strategic Issue Management System (SIM) was implemented at the executive level to capture critical issues as related to expanding market share, protecting market pricing, and reducing manufacturing costs.UAC completed three strategy formulation and deployment cycles in the 18 months following 9/11 benefiting from the SIM's flow of strategic information.(11/01) UAC's first strategic response cycle included the following initiatives:* redeploy personnel across non-aerospace markets to develop new customers;* adapt cost accounting reporting to manage product mix and pricing at order entry to achieve desired margins and overhead coverage; and* reorganize internal support staffs around the operating and sales structure.(2/02) UAC SIM System's continuous environmental surveillance detected a fringe competitor's financial instability as non-aerospace customers seek delivery reliability.(3/02) UAC's second strategic response:* UAC retools presses to accommodate fringe competitor's work statement; and* UAC develops plan to attempt to purchase key assets from fringe competitor that could be fully deployed within the aerospace market during the next upturn.(8/02) UAC begins negotiation for purchase of 16,000 ton extrusion press from fringe competitor.(10/02) SIM System detects pending financial failure of competitor and withdraws asset purchase offer.(2/03) UAC's third strategic response:* prepare legal stalking horse position to acquire press assets out of competitor's bankruptcy;* develop potential customer base and aerospace sales model for future press acquisition;* bridge capability integrating new customer orders into current press resources; and* sell non-operating assets to finance press purchase and installation.UAC successfully leveraged the impact of strategic decay within the aluminium aerospace industry from 1992 through 2000 to increase its market share. UAC quickly re-adapted its management capability and strategic aggressiveness as the aerospace industry reeled from the impact of 9/11. As supply chain requirements disappeared, UAC developed new markets and laid the foundation to acquire complementary press assets to enhance its future aerospace competitive posture. UAC increased productivity measurements and returned to profitability within nine months of 9/11 demonstrating strategic resilience through commitment to continuous environmental surveillance, persistent validation of the firm's strategic content and velocity, and an unrelenting pursuit to identify areas for future strategy decay.\nSustaining resilience into the future?: Aerospace aluminium suppliers' current strategies have focused on the development of high strength patented alloys. These \"boutique metals\" have been engineered into new airframe structures to carve-out and lock-up market share for the patent producer. Alcoa and UAC have enjoyed greater margins through this strategy and created a greater barrier to entry for new competitors.Recognizing that the increasing boutique aluminium prices were the result vendor consolidation, Boeing selected composites as the basis for its future airframe structures. The fuel efficient 787, to be launched in 2008, has leveraged composite technology to reduce the aluminium content in each aircraft to 20 percent of its weight. Compared to all previous Boeing models averaging 80 percent aluminium content by weight, this technology shift will have a dramatic impact. Figure 4 illustrates the potential decline in aerospace aluminium usage assuming the 787 is commercially successful and leads to a composite redesign of the oldest and largest selling Boeing aircraft the 737.One of Boeing's largest customers, Southwest Airlines, has formally requested of Boeing a fuel-efficient redesign of the 737. This request may be the trigger for future strategy decay precipitating significant industry change. The aluminium industry may again fall victim to decay's supplantation and evisceration.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to depict the increasing level of environmental turbulence in the aerospace aluminium industry utilizing a case study to highlight success strategies. The paper examines the impact of the environmental turbulence of September 11, 2001 on the commercial aerospace industry and how a firm successfully re-adapted its corporate strategies in response to the discontinuity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The objectives of this paper were addressed through an examination of firms' strategy formulation and deployment methods. Furthermore, the incidence of strategic decay coupled with resilience of firms in the aerospace industry is discussed with reference to the September 11, 2001 event in the United States.\nFindings: - Aerospace aluminium suppliers have mainly concentrated their efforts in the development of high strength patented alloys in order to defend market share. The aircraft manufactures namely Airbus and Boeing are in the process of shifting to composite materials in order to achieve significant weight reductions coupled with greater fuel efficiency.\nOriginality/value: - The work highlights how a company can use strategic resilience to adapt to the dynamic environment of an oligopic market dominated by Airbus and Boeing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
SMED for quick changeover in manufacturing industry - a case study
|
[
"Operations management",
"Industrial performance",
"Small enterprise",
"Setup times",
"Single Minute Exchange of Die"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Achieving \"manufacturing excellence\" is essential for survival and economic growth of any country in this age of globalization. The \"industrial age\" of the last century has given way to the \"information age\" which in manufacturing terms enhances capability and reduces product cycle times (CTs). The development of new technology, sophisticated high-production systems and assembly lines has ushered in a new era in manufacturing. Competition, productivity and profitability are the buzz words associated with this technological turbulence. High technology costs are to be justified with higher rates of productivity and flexibility. Productivity can be enhanced by exercising economy at all levels of the organization, thereby controlling the quantity of resource inputs as well as by increasing outputs with the same or reduced levels of inputs. Setup time is one of the vital parameters used in any manufacturing industry and is a form of necessary input to every machine or workstation. Because setups are a collection of sequence-dependent changeover activities which are carried out before starting the production of any product, productive time for a machine can be increased by reducing its setup time (Singh and Khanduja, 2010). New management philosophies demand that product lead times (both development and manufacturing times) are kept as small as possible. On the other hand, product customization has increased, thereby increasing the number of parts in a product family (Joshi and Nair, 2012) According to Pannesi (1995), shorter setups bring the following impacts to any type of production system:\nIntroduction to the industry and SMED-basic technique for setup reduction: Introduction to the industry\nLiterature review: Literature review is classified into two categories, namely literature related to the concept of SMED and literature related to case studies.\nMethodology adopted and case study setting: The critical areas were identified by reviewing the present changeover procedure of machines of various shops (Machine and Forging shop). In forging shop, forging press was recognized for reducing changeover time due to its high setup time. The activities associated with the setup of forging machine were noted from production reports. After the rationalization of activities, the conversion of internal activities into external activities was done. A comparison of results and achievements before and after SMED implementation has been made to measure the effectiveness of SMED for reducing setup time. Critical area associated with setup time was identified by study of all the machines which were present in various shops of industry. Forging shop and machine shop were two main shops of industry. The forging shop contains forging presses and trimming presses. CNC, vertical machining center and special purpose machine were present in the machine shop of the industry. The setup time of tool change of forging shop and machine shop was noted down from production reports of a day as given below. Stop watch technique has been used for measuring setup time.\nImprovement in OEE and cost benefit analysis: Improvement in OEE\nResults of quick changeover using SMED and implications: The SMED, a process-based innovation, originally involves the separation and conversion of internal setup operations into external ones. Although very important in increasing productivity, SMED experiences are not very widespread in Indian sub-continent. Modern industries demand flexible processes and quick changeovers. In the long run, low volume and high variety product manufacturing and fast changeover play an important role in maximizing the capability of our equipment. With increasing demand for more product variants and shorter delivery time from customers, it is necessary to have short lead time in production. But until recently the setup times were not measured and worse still were considered as productive hours. As a consequence, there was a lack of awareness and motivation amongst operational personnel to reduce setup times and knowledge of SMED was limited to a small group of individuals.\nConclusions and scope of future work: To achieve \"manufacturing excellence,\" SMEs must exploit all available decision-support systems to supplement production planning for greater productivity. Since levels of productivity and profitability ought to be the major indices for sustainability in today's dynamic and competitive environment, techniques like SMED offer a great potential to reduce product CT and so aid competitiveness. SMED plays a vital role in improving the performance of manufacturing industry. Nowadays, the market is increasingly demanding more customized products, thus causing the manufacturers under pressure to reduction the product cost in order to survive in the highly competitive market. So firms must be capable of producing a large variety of products in small time and consequently must provide for much more frequent die changes to reduce set up time. Targets of an increased productivity, operational availability and better overall efficiency of the production line are the most important goals for almost all manufacturing companies. In order to compete with competitive world, firms have to find a way to reduce setup time, eliminate both wastefulness and non-value added activities and convert idle setup time into regular production time. Setups determine downtime, capacity, product quality and, to some extent, costs. To achieve these goals, manufacturers need to work on streamlining their operations by the application of lean production techniques such as SMED. High setup time may lead to less production rate and less productivity. In forging shop, forging press was selected for reduction in setup time. The setup time of forging press reduced from 209.36 to 167.09 min. The significant increase in production to 70956 pieces annually and increase in profit of Rs 1,809,378 annually have been identified in the case study. The advance lean manufacturing tool value stream mapping and Lean Six Sigma can also applied with SMED in order to reduce setup time.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to uncover the significance of SMED in manufacturing environments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper gives setup instructions and guidelines to prepare the standardized setup procedure without ignoring actual constraints in production environment. It uses a case study in a small-scale manufacturing unit of northern India to generate an integrated setup reduction approach, utilizing Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)-based industrial engineering tools to achieve faster setups. It describes the feasibility of quick changeovers in small enterprises based on an \"SMED\" approach. Finally, the paper carries out empirical analysis of the financial/non-financial benefits incurred from setup reductions.\nFindings: Setup activities are a vital part of the production lead time of any product and so affect overall product cost. Industrial engineering techniques have been used to analyze the existing procedure of setups. A SMED approach can help eliminate unwanted activities, externalize the internal activities, if possible, and reduce them by simplification or standardization.\nOriginality/value: The paper demonstrates the practical application of SMED showing how it can bring real breakthroughs in reducing setup time in small-scale manufacturing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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A theoretical and econometric evaluation of corporate governance and capital structure in JSE-listed companies
|
[
"GMM",
"Corporate governance",
"Agency theory",
"Information asymmetry",
"Capital structure",
"Managerial opportunism",
"Audit committee",
"JSE",
"Leverage",
"G30",
"G32",
"G34"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The recent public criticism of the external auditors KPMG for their lack of due diligence (Davies, 2018) has brought renewed interest in the corporate governance arena. Such focus is reminiscent of the prior high-profile corruption scandals (Enron, World-Com, Parmalat, and Royal Ahold) that criticised corporate governance and demanded a reform of legislation on all fronts (Soltani, 2014). Accordingly, there has been a continual revision of the corporate-governance practices over the past two decades in South Africa (SA) as evidenced by the development of King I to King IV report on corporate governance (King Committee, 2016). However, there has been an absence of research establishing the compliance of these governance mechanisms. Particularly in the light of the current exposure of external auditor inefficiencies in companies which forms part of the governance role of the audit committee. For that reason, the main objective of this study is to investigate whether Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed companies comply with the corporate-governance practices as incorporated in King III. Accordingly, the following three objectives were identified, firstly to examine the underpinning theories of corporate governance and capital structure as shown in the literature review and develop hypotheses. Secondly, to determine the compliance with corporate-governance practices in the JSE-listed companies as illustrated in the descriptive statistics. Thirdly, to examine the role of corporate-governance in determining the capital structure of firms as presented in the generalised method of moments (GMM) results. This article is presented as follows: Section 2 presents the literature review, Section 3 details the research methodology, Section 4 highlights the results, Section 5 draws the conclusions, Section 6 offers recommendations and Section 7 lists out the study's limitations.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Theoretical examination of corporate-governance and capital-structure theories\n3. Research methodology: The endogeneity issue between corporate-governance variables and leverage led to this study's selection of GMM estimation, specifically first difference generalised method of moments (FD-GMM) (Arellano and Bond, 1991) and the systems GMM (SYS-GMM) (Arellano and Bover, 1995; Blundell and Bond, 1998). This study used descriptive statistics and a panel data analysis involving two dimensions, namely, cross-sectional and time-series data (Hsiao, 2003). Wintoki et al. (2012) posit that the GMM estimator has at least three advantages in comparison to the customary OLS or fixed-effects estimator, namely:\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Descriptive analysis and discussion\n5. Conclusion: The study uniquely explored the compliance with corporate governance in JSE-listed companies for the entire King III adoption period, which provides empirical evidence from an emerging market perspective. The two vital constructs, namely, leverage and corporate governance, explored in this paper will assist the policy-makers in the decision-making under this strained economy. For instance, the firm specific results of this study revealed an inverse relationship between leverage and firm age as well as ROS. This implies that the need for leverage decreases as companies become increasingly mature (firm age) and profitable (ROS) due to their industry stability and the sufficiency of internal financing. However, management has a preference for debt financing when the size of the firm increases.\n6. Recommendations: The findings of this study recommend that the governing board, along with management, should carefully consider the capital-structure policy of the company with due regard to the risk appetite of the company. Any financing decisions should be made in adherence to the capital-structure policy. It is recommended that future research should establish whether companies have a formal capital-structure policy.\n7. Limitations: There may be other corporate-governance variables that have a relationship with leverage.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: A vital resource for attracting investments and boosting economic growth is compliance with corporate-governance practices. To achieve firm growth, businesses often rely on leverage as a source of finance, which has tax-saving benefits but could attract financial distress costs. In this context, this study aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance and the use of debt financing in Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used a six-year period to examine 713 annual reports in an unbalanced panel of 130 JSE-listed companies from 2011 to 2016. The empirical econometric methodology used was the two-step difference generalised method of moments estimation model, which is robust in controlling endogeneity and potential bi-directional causality between leverage and corporate governance.\nFindings: This study illustrated that corporate governance practices and firm-specific variables such as profitability, firm size and firm age have a significant influence on the capital structure decisions of JSE-listed firms. This study found support for four out of the six hypotheses. CEO duality and director ownership are positively correlated with leverage, whereas audit committee independence and board size are negatively correlated with leverage. This study also found contraventions of board independence, audit committee independence and CEO duality. The technology sector was the least compliant, with only 40 per cent of their boards being independent. The consumer-services sector had the maximum presence of CEO duality (7 per cent). The industrial sector had the highest average director ownership (18 per cent). The heath-care sector had 28 per cent of their audit committees in contravention of the independence rule.\nPractical implications: A useful analysis of the theoretical frameworks used by academic writers are provided. This study revealed the governance practices contravened by the relevant sectors, as well as the associations between corporate governance and leverage.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to the literature on capital structure and corporate governance by an emerging economy such as South Africa (SA) which has not been explored. This study's results have key implications for policy-makers, practitioners, investors and regulatory authorities. This study informs these constituencies about a set of governance attributes that are catalysts and/or inhibitors of leverage.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Earthquake safety elements in traditional Koti Banal architecture of Uttarakhand, India
|
[
"Earthquakes",
"Structural engineering",
"Architecture",
"India"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe hazard prone terrain: Subduction of the Indian Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate and its consequent collision with the same after the consumption of the intervening oceanic crust resulted in the evolution of the Himalayan mountain belt. The plate collision has rendered the terrain highly fragile and prone to mass wastage. The north- northeastward drift of the Indian Plate has not yet seized and ongoing built up of strain due to this movement is responsible for frequent seismic tremors in the region.Entire Himalayan terrain is recognized as being highly vulnerable to earthquakes (Bilham et al., 2001; Feldl and Bilham, 2006) and in the past the region has been jolted by four Great Earthquakes (Magnitude > 8 on Richter Scale); 1897 Shillong Earthquake, 1905 Kangara Earthquake, 1934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake and 1950 Assam Earthquake apart from Kumaun Earthquake of 1720 and Garhwal Earthquake of 1803 (Thakur, 2006). Regions between the rupture zones of the Great Earthquakes are recognised as seismic gaps that are interpreted to have accumulated potential slip for generating future Great Earthquakes. Entire State of Uttarakhand falls in the seismic gap of 1934 Bihar -Nepal Earthquake and 1905 Kangara Earthquake and is categorized as falling in Zone IV and V of the Earthquake Risk Map of India (Vulnerability Atlas of India, 1997). This region has been identified as a potential site for a future catastrophic earthquake (Bilham et al., 2001). The region has also witnessed seismic events of lesser magnitude (1991 Uttarkashi Earthquake, 1999 Chamoli Earthquake) and unplanned growth, concentration of population and infrastructure, negligence of construction norms, abrupt change in construction material without appropriate technical interventions and lack of awareness as also trained manpower further enhance seismic vulnerability of the region.\nEarthquake safety and traditional construction practices: Human response to emerging exigencies has resulted in fine tuning of resource management practices as also life support strategy, so as to protect the interests of the human communities. Based upon experience, experimentation, accumulated knowledge and ingenuity human populations around the globe have thus evolved innovative practices for ensuring survival against all odds and survival and supremacy of the relatively unspecialized species testifies this fact.Communities residing in areas often affected by earthquakes were quick to grasp the fundamental premise of earthquake safety that states structural safety to be the key to avoiding loss of human lives in a seismogenic event. This fundamental understanding led to the evolution of innovative practices for minimizing human losses emanating from structural collapse. Dhajji-dewari and Taq are the famous indigenous construction styles of Kashmir that utilize locally available stone and timber in a particular manner to achieve desired levels of seismic safety. Quetta bond is another example of human quest to reduce earthquake induced losses.The State of Uttarakhand falls in seismically highly sensitive zone and has witnessed devastating earthquakes in 1720 (Kumaun Earthquake) and 1803 (Garhwal Earthquake). Despite often experiencing earthquakes (Chalak in Kumaoni; the local parlance) multistoreyed houses are common in the region and it is not be easy for one to locate a single storeyed traditional house in the region even today, except for cattle sheds (channi in Kumaoni; the local parlance). There exist unique words for identifying as many as four different floors in the two local dialects of the region; Kumaoni (ground floor, goth; first floor, chaak; second floor, paan; third floor, chaj) and Garhwali (ground floor, kholi; first floor, manjua; second floor, baund; third floor, baraur). Unless often required a unique term cannot be introduced in any language. This clearly point towards common occurrence of multistoreyed houses in the region.The zeal to avert earthquake induced losses, by utilizing accumulated knowledge of generations and experimenting with locally available building material, paved way for the evolution of a unique architectural style that exhibits structural evolution trends whereby dry stone masonry, as also stone - lime/mud/clay mortar masonry was judiciously used with abundantly available wood to provide appropriate strength and flexibility to the structures.In Yamuna and Bhagirathi valleys of the Garhwal region four to five storeyed traditional structures can still be observed (identified as Chaukhat; four storeyed or Panchapura; five storeyed). These age old structures must have witnessed many earthquakes and in the absence of the elements of earthquake safety these would have long been razed to ground.Though not suited to the climatic conditions, cement based construction practices are fast getting popular in the region. High social status attached to the new type of construction together with increasing difficulty in mustering traditional building material have contributed to its popularity. As has been indicated (Rautela et al., 2007) demand is forcing untrained/inadequately trained masons to take up cement based construction works which adds to the seismic vulnerability of the region.Survival of the traditional structures over generations in the earthquake prone terrain is suggestive of incorporation of elements of earthquake safety in these. In depth investigation of these buildings have the potential of unfolding hitherto unknown facts about this particular construction style and innovating upon traditional practices one can evolve a better suited construction dictum for the region.Rajgarhi area, to the north of Barkot across river Yamuna in Uttarkahi district of Uttarakhand (Figure 1) has a large number of intact multistoreyed traditional structures (Plate 1) in a number of villages (Dakhiyatgaon, Guna, Koti Banal, Dharali) in close proximity. This area was therefore selected for detailed investigations. A structured questionnaire was prepared to assess the perception of the masses towards structural safety related aspects as also their tradition. Detailed field investigation was resorted to for assessing the structural safety related aspects of this construction style.\nPerception of the masses: Traditional practices of resource management reflect the community's resolve to safeguard its interests and these often draw strength for their continuation from religio-magical rites that are imbibed deep in popular belief. Continuation of these practices over generations indicate benefits drawn by the community by acting upon these. Insight into the popular belief and practices of the masses are therefore perceived to be the tools for assessing the strength of their traditional knowledge base.The respondents\nField observations: Ornate multistoreyed houses with abundant use of wooden beams are characteristic of Rajgarhi area. Similarity in the architectural principles and structural details suggest their possible evolution under one single architectural school that is designated Koti Banal Architecture after the most magnificent of these structures at that village. Locally available building material; long thick wooden logs, stones and slates are judiciously used for the construction of these structures. The height of these structures varies between 7 and 12 meters above the platform and these are mostly four (Caukhat) and five (Panchapura) storeyed.Raised platform\nStructural safety aspects: The architecture of the structures being investigated is woven around judicious use of wood. As a structural material, wood offers distinct advantage in earthquake performance over other materials; wood is strong yet lightweight, hence ground accelerations are unable to generate as much energy in wood buildings as in other buildings. As an added advantage, wood-frame systems flex more than other materials, thus absorbing and dissipating energy.Koti Banal architecture: salient structural features\nAge of the structures: Time of construction of the traditional buildings is important for assessing the archeological relevance of these structures as also for correlating the architectural style with other contemporary styles. Radiocarbon dating of the wood samples collected from the panels used in the buildings was resorted to at Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotny, Lucknow. The Koti Banal structure (Plate 2) was dated to be 880 +-90 years before present while the one at Guna (that shows introduction of aberrations into the original style) was dated to be 728 +-60 years before present.The detailing of the structures suggests that the ones designing the structures had fairly good idea of the forces likely to act upon the structure during an earthquake event. The radiocarbon dates bring forth an important fact that the principles of earthquake safety had evolved in the region as early as 1,000 years ago. Seismic performance of these structures has been tested by Kumaun Earthquake of 1720 and Garhwal Earthquake of 1803 that are considered to be highly damaging and this earthquake safety conscious school of architecture might well have started after the earthquake of 1100AD that is believed to have devastated large tracts across India.Evolution of any tradition is a long process that includes testing of certain features and evolving the same on lines observed to be working. At the same time certain time tested features are replaced to suite convenience and emerging needs without seriously dwelling upon their impact. It was interesting to note that the multistoreyed structure at Guna though built using similar architectural style is more occupant friendly with the roofs being sufficiently high. This structure however digresses from seismic safety norms and does not provide for shear walls. Koti Banal architecture did not cater for the comfort of the inhabitants and was totally utilitarian. This might be the reason for the introduction of aberrations in the original style as early as 728 +-60 years before present as is evident from the dating of Guna structure.\nConclusion: The study suggests that the people inhabiting the area had developed an elaborate system for constructing multistoreyed structures in the seismically vulnerable region. Appropriate site was first selected for the proposed construction for which the services of the traditionally recognized persons were resorted to. It seems that some persons could assess and comment upon the bearing capacity of soil by examining soil texture, moisture content and the other related features based upon their experience and accumulated knowledge. Elements of this age old traditional practice need to be studied, documented, innovated and propagated (with necessary improvements where necessary) so as to evolve a readily available, easy and cost effective tool for assessing site suitability.There existed tradition of erecting structures over an elaborate, solid and raised stone platform that reduced overturning effect in these particularly high structures. The construction style is quite distinct and a large number of structures in the region are built on similar fashion that is indicative of evolution of this particular school of architecture in the region. This is termed Koti Banal architecture after the most magnificent representative of this school.The Koti Banal architecture attained its zenith around 880+-90 years ago as is evident from the dating of the Koti Banal masterpiece. The main constituents of Koti Banal architectural style include:* simple layout of the structure;* construction on elaborate, solid and raised platform;* judicious use of locally available building material* incorporation of wooden beams all through the height of the building at regular intervals;* small openings; and* sheer walls.Seismic performance of these structures has been verified by Kumaun Earthquake of 1720 and Garhwal Earthquake of 1803 and this earthquake safety conscious school of architecture might well have started after the earthquake of 1100AD that is believed to have devastated large tracts across India. The Koti Banal architecture however did not cater for the comfort of the inhabitants and was totally utilitarian. This was perhaps the reason for the introduction of aberrations in the original style as early as 728 +-60 years before present as is evident from the dating of Gona structure. The Koti Banal architecture needs to be studied and documented in much more detail. Intricacies of this age old construction style have the potential of unfolding a new line of construction that might be better suited even in present ground realities of the region.It is observed that many old structures of Koti Banal style are being put to disuse and are deteriorating fast due to the lack of maintenance. People are even demolishing these old structures voluntarily so as to use the disassembled building material for the construction of new and modern dwellings. Masses therefore need to be made aware and educated on the issue of protecting these heritage structures. This would also provide researchers with an opportunity of studying this majestic architectural style of Uttarakhand in detail.It is observed that the traditional masons that had mastered the art of stone - wood construction are fast switching over to cement based construction due to the lack of patronage. Since they are not propagating intricacies of the traditional construction practices, basic elements of the traditional construction style would soon be lost. It is therefore necessary to study and document the finer elements of traditional construction practice. Innovating on the traditional building material and practices would give a lease of life to this construction style.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Despite being located in earthquake sensitive region and often experiencing seismic tremors the State of Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas exhibits an elaborate tradition of constructing multistoreyed houses. Both the local dialects of the State (Kumaoni and Garhwali) have unique words for identifying four different floors of a building. This is suggestive of a common occurrence of multistoreyed structures in the region. This paper attempts to establish that the people inhabiting this rugged earthquake prone terrain have evolved the art of constructing earthquake safe structures well before the evolution of the structural engineering principles governing such a construction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Detailed investigations were undertaken in the area to establish the antiquity of the traditional structures, as were also earthquake safety provisions incorporated traditionally in these. Radiocarbon dating of the wood used in the structures was used to establish the time of the construction of these structures.\nFindings: - Investigations suggest that the region has evolved a distinct, elaborate and magnificent earthquake-safe construction style. This construction style, designated Koti Banal architecture, attained its zenith around 880 years ago. This architectural style exhibits the existence of elaborate procedures for site selection, preparing the platform for raising the multistoreyed structure, also for the detail of the entire structure that was constructed on principles somewhat akin to that of framed structures of modern times.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The representative structures of this architecture are observed to be deteriorating fast due to lack of patronage, resources and awareness. This article brings forth awareness regarding the heritage value of these structures, enabling organized efforts for the conservation and upkeep of these structures.\nOriginality/value: - This article is the result of original research undertaken by the authors and paves the way for the conservation of the age old traditional structures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The impact of market orientation on Chinese retailers' channel relationships
|
[
"Retailers",
"Suppliers",
"Market orientation",
"China"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: China, one of the world's economic powerhouses with an average economic growth ranked the highest in the world during the past two decades (Luo et al., 2005), holds increasing importance in the world economy (World Bank, 2002). Its growth in the retail market is tremendous, evidenced by an annual growth rate of 19.68 percent from 1999 to 2005 (China Statistical Yearbook, 2006). In spite of the current economic downturn, Chinese retail sales are expected to remain robust (Xu, 2009; China Daily, 2009). According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese retail sales grew 21.6 percent year-on-year in 2008, up from 16.8 percent in 2007, although growth slowed during the second half of 2008 due to the economic downturn (Yunlong, 2009). This fast growth has inevitably put Chinese retailing under intense competition (Hingley et al., 2009). When a market is competitive, the firm's market orientation (MO), the degree of a firm's orientation to the competitive market, comes into play (Ellis, 2005). MO is explained by a combination of three factors:1. the firm's customer orientation;2. its competitor orientation; and3. the interfunctional coordination of marketing activities (Narver and Slater, 1990).This concept of MO is relevant in understanding the emerging competitive Chinese retail industry.During the last 25 years, a great deal of research has been done on MO (Kirca et al., 2005). MO is a critical resource for the sustainable competitive advantage of a firm as it provides a firm with market-sensing and customer-linking capabilities (Hunt and Morgan, 1995). MO enhances long-term profitability by increased sales and market share, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and employee commitment (Luo et al., 2005).Despite the proven importance of MO in business performance, however, examination of MO in the retail industry is limited (Elg, 2003). Particularly, Elg (2003) mentioned that retailers are \"a networking organization\" because products come from a large number of suppliers and a retailer's total offering to a large extent depends on its ability to coordinate a vertical chain of activities and actors\" (p. 107). Thus, it is essential to understand the impact of a retailer's MO on supply chain relationships (SCRs) and the resulting impact on the retailer's business performance, because the retailer's business performance is highly dependent on its partners (i.e. its suppliers) (Dunne and Lusch, 1999; Elg, 2003). Over the past two decades, literature on SCRs has focused on \"a relationship marketing approach to business to business exchanges\" (Hingley, 2005, p. 849) emphasizing collaborative relations with strong interdependences, trust, mutual benefits, and long-term commitment (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Ganesan, 1994; Bunduchi, 2008). However, most prior MO studies, with the exception of Siguaw et al. (1998), have examined MO-business performance relationships without considering interactions with business partners. Therefore, the current study attempts to fill this research void.In an effort to provide evidence on the relevance of MO in retailers' SCRs in China, we relate MO to retailer satisfaction with suppliers. Satisfaction has been acknowledged as an important construct in SCRs where it is defined as \"an affective state resulting from the appraisal of all aspects of a firm's working relationship with another firm\" (Anderson and Narus, 1990, p. 63). Satisfaction is the overall evaluation of relationship performance by the firm and an important construct that shows the quality of the relationship between channel members (Rodriguez et al., 2006). Accordingly, it is critical to examine how the MO of retailers and the MO of suppliers influence retailers' satisfaction.This study adopts two types of satisfaction - i.e. economic and social - because a distribution channel member can have economic satisfaction with a partner and yet not have social satisfaction, or vice versa (Geyskens and Steenkamp, 2000). Economic satisfaction is defined as \"a channel member's evaluation of the economic outcomes that flow from the relationship with its partner such as sales volume, margins, and discounts\", while non-economic social satisfaction is defined as \"a channel member's evaluation of the psychosocial aspects of its relationships, in that interactions with the exchange partner are fulfilling, gratifying and facile\" (Geyskens and Steenkamp, 2000, p. 13). It is widely known that developing and sustaining relationships, including personal relationships (i.e. guanxi), is crucial as it is a form of social investment in Asian countries (Yau et al., 2000). Guanxi is a form of personal connections and although previous studies have shown that an individual in the guanxi network can secure resources or draw benefits in business transactions (Wong and Leung, 2001; Lu et al., 2008) more recent work has cast doubt on the current usefulness of guanxi (Sternquist and Chen, 2006). Since the unit of analysis in our study is retailer-supplier relationships at the firm level, guanxi at the interpersonal level is beyond the scope of our study. However, because of the influence of social networks on business, examining the separate role of the social aspect of satisfaction seemed particularly valuable in this study.The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the influence of MO on business performance in the context of Chinese retailers' relationships with their suppliers. To this end, this study proposes a model and tests it empirically with data collected from 99 Chinese retailers. This paper begins with a brief introduction to the Chinese retail industry, and then the research framework and hypotheses are presented and discussed. Next, data analysis, conducted with structural equation modeling, is discussed. Finally, the findings are presented and managerial implications and future research are discussed.Chinese retail industry\nConceptual framework and hypotheses: To study the Chinese retail market, we propose a model depicting the influence of retailer MO on retailer business performance from the context of the retailer's relationships with its suppliers. More specifically, the model posits relationships among retailer MO, supplier MO, supplier role performance, and retailer economic and social satisfaction (see Figure 1).Market orientation began with the marketing concept, the idea that a firm's managerial focus should be on customers' needs (Webster, 1993). Over time, the concept of market orientation has evolved to include three subcomponents:1. generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and future customer needs (IG);2. dissemination of the intelligence across departments (ID); and3. organization wide responsiveness to the market information (RESP) (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990).This study includes these three dimensions of MO for retailers. Supplier MO in this study, however, includes only a retailer's perception of a supplier's information generation (supplier market intelligence, or MI). We believe measuring a retailer's perception of supplier MO is more appropriate than the supplier's view of its own MO because endogenous variables in this study are measured from the retailer's perspective, for example retailer economic and social satisfaction. However, retailers cannot evaluate all the aspects of supplier MO equally. In this study, therefore, we focus only on information generation because it is the area of supplier market orientation that a retailer can most readily identify.Retailer market orientation and supplier market intelligence\nResearch methods: Measurement\nAnalyses: Measurement validity\nDiscussion and conclusions: Summary and discussion of major findings\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study seeks to examine the influence of market orientation on Chinese buyer-supplier relations. A model is proposed depicting relationships among retailer market orientation, supplier market intelligence, supplier role performance, and retailer economic and social satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected from 99 chain store buyers and managers from 25 cities in China. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: - A retailer's market orientation is critical for its own economic and social satisfaction by increasing supplier market intelligence (MI) and supplier role performance.\nPractical implications: - Retailers' MO increased supplier MI and role performance. This study found that economic performance was more important in channel relationships than social relationships. Therefore, suppliers should focus on improving retailers' economic satisfaction through role performance and market intelligence rather than social satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: - Previous MO literature has focused primarily on the firm's performance and ignored the interactive aspect of business performance among channel members. The current study fills this gap by demonstrating the significant influences of retailer MO on supplier MI and on supplier role performance, as well as on retailer satisfaction - both the economic and social components. To the authors' knowledge, the current study is the first to relate retailer MO, supplier MI, and supplier role performance to two types of retailer satisfaction - i.e. economic and social satisfaction.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Transforming the business portfolio: how multinationals reinvent themselves
|
[
"Diversification",
"Longitudinal",
"Acquisition",
"Corporate restructuring",
"Business portfolio restructuring",
"Divestiture",
"Portfolio transformation",
"Refocusing",
"Repositioning",
"Strategy process"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The strategic restructuring of a firm's business portfolio is a common method for a firm to recreate itself and achieve a competitive advantage. It has been used in the 1960s and 1980s when firms started to diversify their business portfolios and often, subsequently, reversed diversification and refocused on their core business (Nippa et al., 2011). It is still at the heart of corporate strategy and more present on corporate agendas than ever before - especially driven by the increasingly competitive and rapidly changing environment that forces firms to regularly prepare for new challenges ahead.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The major purpose of this paper is to investigate antecedents, outcomes and processes of business portfolio transformations, including diversifying, refocusing and repositioning portfolio restructurings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper conducts a longitudinal study on the process of business portfolio transformations among the largest 100 European and 100 North American firms during the period of 1998-2010. A newly developed metric is applied that allows a business portfolio transformation to be identified and quantified and process-related research to be conducted.\nFindings: The study confirms and expands prior literature that postulates that poor performance and over-diversification are key motivations for portfolio restructuring. However, the majority of transformations were not successful, with firm performance further deteriorating in the course of the transformation. The analysis of the transformation process itself reveals that the average transformation took 2.6 years and changed the portfolio composition by 42 per cent. Most transformations are conducted rather continuously over the transformation period and rely heavily on divestitures and acquisitions.\nPractical implications: Managers should not to be too optimistic when they consider a major business portfolio restructuring. In particular, diversifying or repositioning transformations have a low success rate, while refocusing transformations are most successful on average. The study of the process of portfolio transformations offers some advice to increase the odds of a successful restructuring.\nOriginality/value: This longitudinal analysis represents the first study of the process of portfolio transformation by applying a newly developed transformation metric. By uncovering the process characteristics of portfolio transformations among the largest European and North American firms, it provides insights on the occurrence, typical magnitude, duration and order of acquisitions and divestitures of large portfolio transformations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
CoboChild: a blended mobile game-based learning service for children in museum contexts
|
[
"Blended learning",
"Game-based learning",
"Mobile learning",
"Contextual model of learning",
"Child-centered design",
"Museum learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Museum learning is an interactive informal learning process motivated by children's interest and fun in discovery through their physical explorations and social interactions in a free-choice learning context (Perry, 2012; Diamond et al., 2009; Falk et al., 2009; Scott, 2013). To facilitate meaningful museum learning experiences and revisit motivation, it is essential to consider the museum's contextual influences in supporting children's effective learning (Falk and Dierking, 2013). Among the museum learning theories, the Contextual Model of Learning (CML) is widely applied and recognized as the most important guideline for designing learner-centered museum services for diverse target visitors within museum contexts (Hou et al., 2014). According to this model, museum learning experience is shaped through continuous interactions among personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts over time (Dierking, 2002; Falk and Dierking, 2000). The personal context explains individual differences, including: prior interest, experience, knowledge, learning preferences, and visit expectations; all of these significantly affect children's museum learning behavior and experiences, and thus play a key role in self-directed learning in museum contexts (Falk and Dierking, 2013). The sociocultural context explains that most children learn through their social interactions with others, including conversation and collaborative learning in museum contexts. The physical context describes the object-based learning qualities of museum learning (Speight et al., 2012). Hence, museums should provide children with friendly and intelligent navigation tools to support children freely learning through their interactions with the museum exhibits (Falk and Storksdieck, 2005). Owing to the fact that museum learning is a lifelong learning process, Dierking (2002) later added a time factor to the CML, and highlighted that museum learning is an ongoing process and the result of continuous interactions among personal, sociocultural and physical contexts. Therefore, to promote long-term interactions between children and the museum, it is important to consider the whole contextual influence whereby children's continuous learning and revisiting can be promoted.\nResearch method: The BMGBL approach to fulfilling the CML\nExperiment design: Participants\nExperimental results: The fulfillment of the CML\nDiscussions: In brief, the above-mentioned results demonstrate that CoboChild can effectively support the CML to create interactive museum experiences and promote children's motivation. CoboChild not only provides proper services matching children's abilities to support their learning in the museum, but also provides a flexible learning environment with a diverse gameplay design to satisfy different children's learning preferences. The thematic learning activities and social networking services promote the children's active participation and social interactions. Moreover, the diverse gameplay design enhances the playfulness of museum learning, which in turn satisfies the children's intrinsic need for fun in order to motivate their learning (Ryan et al., 2006; Hung et al., 2014; Sintoris et al., 2010). Therefore, the improved engagement is helpful to enhance the personal connections with museum exhibits and others, thereby creating a meaningful museum experience and strengthening children's positive perceptions and motivation in museum learning (Simon, 2010; Dockett et al., 2011; Shih et al., 2011; Yiannoutsou and Avouris, 2012).\nConclusions and future work: In this study, a BMGBL service named CoboChild was developed for children aged nine- to twelve-years old; it considered the influential factors of a museum context to develop a sustainable BMGBL environment for children. Regarding the first research question, most of the children agreed that CoboChild can facilitate their interactive experiences and re-visit motivation through fruitful thematic game-based learning tours and social interactions, which highly satisfied the children's preference for interactive playfulness. Besides, CoboChild provided fruitful motivators, including interactive playfulness and positive feedback, which show the potential to improve children's long-term learning and revisiting. In fact, CoboChild has been widely appreciated by numerous young visitors since 2011, with approximately 1,200 children revisiting the museum and continuously using the service every year. Regarding the second research question, most of the children agreed that CoboChild significantly enhanced the playfulness and interpretation of the museum exhibitions, which motivated their active engagement in museums, so CoboChild is clearly helpful in museum learning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a blended mobile game-based learning service called CoboChild Mobile Exploration Service (hereinafter CoboChild) to support children's learning in an environment blending virtual game worlds and a museum's physical space. The contextual model of learning (CML) was applied to consider the related influential factors affecting museum learning and to promote children's continuous learning and revisit motivations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: CoboChild provides a thematic game-based learning environment to facilitate children's interactions with exhibits and other visitors. A practical system has been implemented in the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS), Taiwan. A questionnaire was used to examine whether CoboChild can effectively fulfill the CML and to evaluate the impacts on museum learning.\nFindings: CoboChild effectively fulfilled the CML to facilitate children's interactive experiences and re-visit motivations in the blended mobile game-based learning environment. Most children described the system as providing fruitful playfulness while improving their interpretations of exhibitions and learning experiences.\nPractical implications: CoboChild considers the related contextual influences on the effective support of children's learning in a museum, and builds a child-centered museum learning environment with highly integrated blended learning resources for children. CoboChild has been successfully operating in the NMNS since 2011.\nOriginality/value: This study developed a blended mobile game-based learning service to effectively support children's learning in museum contexts. The related issues are shown to improve the design of blended museum learning services. This innovative approach can be applied to the design of other child-centered services for engaging children's interactive experiences in museums.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Team working: part 2 - how are teams chosen and developed?
|
[
"Teams",
"Teambuilding",
"Organizational change",
"Organizational culture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: This is the second of two articles on the subject of team working. The first established what a team is, the characteristics of effective and ineffective team and the benefits of team working in terms of productivity, quality, the introduction of new technology and motivation. It highlighted the need for managerial commitment to team working if it is to succeed and the potential impact on organizational culture if it is introduced successfully.\nSelection of teams: So how should teams be selected? It is vital that teams must be capable of doing the job for which they have been selected and this clearly implies that the membership should include people able to contribute towards the completion of task. So specific expertise, knowledge or experience are vital but equally it is important that the members of the team also have the skills necessary to operate within the team if the team is to work and of course at least one member of the team will need leadership skills and be able to run team meetings and group activities.In this connection the work of Dr Meredith Belbin is informative. Quite apart from identifying the team role preferences of the individual members of a team in terms of acting in the roles as coordinator (CO), plant (PL), monitor-evaluator (ME), resource investigator (Rl), team worker (TW), implementer, (IM), shaper (SH), specialist (Sp), completer finisher (CF) he points out that:* imperfect people can make perfect teams; and* the roles, skills and contributions of individual members of a team are complementary.The importance of this can be seen in Table I which seeks to show which people with particular team role preferences would work well together and which would not.This may seem to some as somewhat esoteric and theoretical but some organizations utilize it as the basis for the creation of project teams or cross functional teams on the basis that a team consisting entirely of plants who think up the ideas would have no practical use if there were no completer finishers to bring the ideas into practice. Equally a team full of team workers would no doubt create a pleasant working environment but would be unlikely to come up with anything new. Interestingly in my work in the Business School I find that most of the MBA students are team workers, which makes me wonder sometimes what this might presage for the future management of the companies they will work for.On a more practical level maybe, I have found that understanding the team role preferences of each member of a team can allow the coordinator to capitalize on the respective strengths of each team member and allow them all to contribute their part to a jointly owned problem in the way that Casey (1985) suggests. Similar conclusions are being drawn by Oxford Psychology Press into the way an understanding of people's respective Myers Briggs personality type inventory can assist in the development of effective team working.Except when a new site is being opened, organizations seldom have the luxury of being able to select team members from scratch. Where teams are being created from existing workers, the emphasis will generally have to be on training and development of existing staff. Many companies take the view that the majority of employees can acquire the necessary skills and abilities with appropriate training. It is therefore quite useful to consider some of the concepts that lie behind the development of teams. Teams are unlikely to develop their potential without a struggle. Tuckman for example suggests that a team's development may be viewed in four distinct phases, which he describes as forming, storming, norming and performing.First is the \"forming\" phase when the team is in reality still a collection of individuals dealing with procedural issues and the atmosphere is often artificially polite. Enthusiasm for and commitment to the new team is high but competence is low. Second is the \"storming\" phase when the team members begin to experiment and flex their muscles. Relationships become stormier both between members and between the team and other groups, and members question outside influences such as set procedures. As the team struggles to find the best way to work together, members may experience a temporary lapse in commitment. Third is the \"norming\" phase where the team is beginning to achieve its potential. It has developed its own way of working that is producing results. Fourth is the \"performing\" phase where the team is fully mature and effective. It deals with change in an open and flexible way, constantly challenges itself but avoids damaging conflicts.When the team moves into the performing stage, most people tend to think it has succeeded and that this is a wholly desirable state particularly if the team is what is now termed a high performing team. However a performing team, desirable though it may sound, may paradoxically not be something to maintain in the long term. When I say this to students or participants in my training, session, I get quizzical looks as though I have lost my marbles until I get them to consider where a high performing team goes next and invariably I get the answer down, amongst many others, Indeed the fact that a team is performing can be its downfall because of the potential for complacency. Robertson makes the point that the \"fact that the high of success makes itself felt is actually the first signal that decline is imminent\" and he quotes Bemado Bertolucci who describes it in these terms \"decline of which you are unaware, the decline of those that look but do not see, who listen but do not hear; of those who do not know how to judge themselves or to others\". To avoid the success trap, an organization must constantly be ready to reinvent itself even when it appears to be thriving and its teams performing. Robertson suggests we should always change a winning team and companies such as Shell have coined idioms such as \"if it ain't broke, break it\". To return to Tuckman's model for a moment we should constantly be thinking about \"reforming\" otherwise we will be \"adjourning\" or \"mourning\"The idea of teamwork as the most appropriate form of work organization for shop-floor production or the delivery of services assumes the long-term contribution of teams. It would be unrealistic to expect a team's \"performing\" phase to continue indefinitely and consequently most teams enter a fifth phase. Some teams may be terminated at this stage but most will enter a phase of renewal that will probably involve beginning the development cycle again.Development of team members is a high priority. They can get stuck in the early stages if members are too polite and not prepared to challenge the status quo. Teams may also become complacent after they reach an acceptable level of performance. If teams stagnate or encounter problems that they cannot overcome from their own resources, they will need help from management. This may include clarifying objectives, providing additional resources, training and team building exercises. More than anything they will need team leadershipACAS/Tavistock Institute point to the influence and usefulness of team leaders which they believe come, not from the delivery of traditional supervisory and control methods, but from their ability to lead from the front and in training, coaching and counseling their team members to high standards of performance - usually built on their ability to carry out most of the tasks themselves. They also need to be able to co-ordinate and evaluate ideas for operational improvement coming from the shop floor. Above all, the team leaders need to be capable of facilitating the process of change. Team leaders are generally selected by management, although the views of the team or group can usually be accommodated. In some organizations team leaders are elected by team members or have their appointment endorsed by an election.The first step when choosing team leaders is to decide the type of leadership to be adopted. There are three basic ways of dealing with team leadership:1. The team leader is a supervisor outside the team.2. The team leader is a working team member with the main responsibility for direct liaison with management.3. The team operates without a designated leader inside or outside the team - the self-managed team. Leadership and liaison with management are dealt with by various members of the team according to the task.The type of team leadership adopted will, to some extent, determine selection criteria and training needs. Those organizations that choose to have a team leader operating from outside the team may select from existing supervisors or operatives and train them to fulfill the new role. Team leaders working within the team are more likely to be recruited from operatives and will need full leadership training. Where teams have no designated leader, there will be a particular need for ongoing training for team members to help them manage group dynamics - including conflict - and decision-making.\nTeam development: Self-regulation is necessary if the potential of team working is to be realized. Teams will always be subject to management direction of some degree or another and it is important that the boundaries of their authority are understood. Nevertheless Acas/Tavistock research indicates that self-regulation was lacking in those teams that were not performing to their full potential. It is important to remember, however, that self-regulation will not happen automatically but must be developed. The task of management is to oversee the development of teams and provide the necessary support and training. There will also be a need for managers to accept that mistakes will be made as teams are given more responsibility. The emphasis should be on learning from mistakes rather than establishing blame. Unless teams are prepared to take reasonable risks, they are unlikely to develop independence and the ability to innovate.Self-regulation often begins within the team as members decide on the order in which tasks should be tackled and their distribution among members. As teams develop, they can take on more responsibility for quality, production methods, hours and times of work and the selection of, or discipline of, team members. Mature teams may also manage their own relationships with other teams and take on responsibility for dealing with the wider organization in such matters as the provision of finance and resources.\nConclusion: The introduction of team working is a major step for an organization to take. It is important that management, trade unions and employees ensure they know how team working will contribute to their business strategy and that it is likely to involve a long-term transformation. Even when they are in place, teams will need constant monitoring and development if they are not to stagnate.The early challenge and excitement of establishing teams may fade and it is easy for organizations to accept a level of performance that is short of the optimum.Team working is not a finite project but a process of continuous improvement and innovation. In order to achieve high performance, teams require regular changes and challenges. These may include: changes to team personnel; new tasks; re-examining the contribution the team makes to the overall business aims; and ensuring that the team has regular dealings with other teams.The concept of autonomous teams may be misleading as teams will always be answerable to management and rely on the provision of resources and other support. Nevertheless one of the best ways to ensure that teams continue to develop is to move towards self-regulation - an important way of monitoring the progress of teams is to assess the level of dependence on management It is for management to encourage progress by helping the teams develop greater independence.Reorganizing the workforce into teams is not easy but when successfully developed, team working has been shown to be a way of improving competitiveness and at the same time enhancing the quality of working life for employees.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This is the second of two articles on teamwork which aim to deals with the selection and formation of teams, team leadership, team roles and team development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper builds on the first article which covered such issues as the reasons for moving to team working for improving performance, improving quality and encouraging innovation, promoting and exploiting technological advances and as a means of improving motivation. The article also looks at how teams are chosen and developed. Best practice as outlined by the UK Advisory, conciliation and arbitration service (ACAS) is used together with the personal experience of the author.\nFindings: - The first thing to recognize is that organizations will be at different points in their evolution in team working terms. Teams that need to work within and across an organization such as sales, marketing, purchasing, personnel and finance find that team working fosters a collaborative rather than a competitive or adversarial approach. It is vital that teams must be capable of doing the job for which they have been selected and this clearly implies that the membership should include people able to contribute towards the completion of task.\nOriginality/value: - It is important that management, trade unions and employees ensure they know how team working will contribute to their business strategy and that it is likely to involve a long-term transformation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
From mixed embeddedness to transnational mixed embeddedness: An exploration of Vietnamese businesses in London
|
[
"Mixed embeddedness",
"Forms of capital",
"Opportunity structure",
"Transnational enterprise",
"Vietnamese enterprise"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 2002, this journal published a special issue which focussed on the impact of the economic context and politico-regulatory framework on entrepreneurship among migrants. Its objective was to emphasise that migrant enterprise could not be explained by the social embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurs in co-ethnic social networks alone. The local context - markets and regulatory frameworks were also important. The editors argued that the social and economic embeddedness of migrant entrepreneurs interacted to determine entrepreneurial outcomes, and the notion of \"mixed embeddedness\" was promoted as a better explanation (Rath and Kloosterman, 2002). Mixed embeddedness has since been widely adopted by researchers to explain entrepreneurship in a wide variety of different migrant groups and settings (e.g. see Jones et al., 2014; Kloosterman et al., 2016).\nConceptual framework: mixed embeddedness, opportunity structure and transnational entrepreneurship: Embeddedness has been a key concept in explaining the success of entrepreneurs and that of migrants in particular (Kloosterman et al., 1999). According to Granovetter (1985), all economic action is embedded in social relations that can help or hinder the development of the business. Migrant entrepreneurs, as early scholars argued, were strongly socially and culturally embedded in their co-ethic and family networks, providing them with access to vital forms of social capital (Bourdieu, 1986), not generally available to the mainstream (Coleman, 1988). Although often lacking in financial or human/cultural capital, migrants were able to draw on their family and co-ethnic networks to provide cheap labour, resources and trusted information, which facilitated business success (Tata and Prasad, 2015; Uzzi, 1997).\nData and methods: The Vietnamese businesses community in London was chosen as a case study for this research as it provides a classic example of a new migrant community known to have a widespread diaspora that is supporting the UK-based businesses (Bagwell, 2008, 2015). The size of the Vietnamese diaspora is estimated to be at least three million (Sidel, 2007) dispersed over 60 countries, with the largest number in the USA, large concentrations in France, Australia, Canada and Thailand, and smaller concentrations in Eastern Europe and the UK (Dorais, 2011). The Vietnamese began arriving in the UK following the end of the Vietnam War in the late 1970s. The initial group of refugees has since been joined by family reunion cases, economic migrants, a growing student population and a large number of informal and illegal migrants who have arrived via various migration routes. London has the largest group of Vietnamese with estimated 30-35,000 Vietnamese now residing in the capital (Simms, 2007). It is also home to the largest cluster of Vietnamese businesses. A study conducted in 2003 estimated that over 800 Vietnamese-owned enterprises were operating in London at that time (Bagwell et al., 2003).\nFindings: This section highlights the macro, meso and micro influences on the development of the Vietnamese enterprises and how these influenced transnational business activity.\nDiscussion: The findings from this study suggest that factors influencing business development can be seen as operating at the micro, meso and macro levels as suggested by the mixed embeddedness thesis (Kloosterman, 2010). However, for new migrant businesses such as the Vietnamese, their transnational embeddedness may also impact on each of these levels as follows.\nConclusions: This paper set out to explore the drivers of transnational entrepreneurship amongst the Vietnamese business community in London and the extent to which the theory of mixed embeddedness provides a useful framework for explaining the development of these types of new migrant businesses.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of the mixed embeddedness thesis (Kloosterman, 2010; Rath and Kloosterman, 2002) to businesses with a more transnational mode of operation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Interviews with the owner managers of a sample 24 Vietnamese businesses in London were undertaken to develop an understanding of how micro (individual resources: social, financial and cultural/human capital, and history of migration), meso (local, regional and national markets) and macro (politico-institutional) factors in the UK and overseas influenced business development.\nFindings: The findings illustrate how business development is influenced not just by the interaction of the local (UK) opportunity structure and the entrepreneur's resources, as suggested by the mixed embeddedness thesis, but also by institutional regimes, economies and markets in key countries of the diaspora, and the interaction of these. The extent to which new transnational opportunities can be exploited, however, depends on access to the necessary local and transnational forms of capital.\nPractical implications: The empirical evidence presented is used to present a re-working of the mixed embeddedness thesis to provide a framework for understanding the drivers of transnational entrepreneurship.\nOriginality/value: The paper presents new empirical knowledge of transnational activity amongst the UK Vietnamese business community - a little known refugee community. Conceptually, the paper offers a theoretical development of the mixed embeddedness thesis to enable it to provide an explanation of transnational entrepreneurship amongst new migrant communities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Chinese workers' history: passive minds docile bodies
|
[
"History",
"Docility",
"Chinese worker activism",
"Power-knowledge"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Decades of economic reform have converted China from an internally focussed agrarian economy and society into an outward-looking export leader that has the world's largest workforce of approximately 769 million workers (The World Bank, 2017). It is argued (Chan and Hui, 2016; Leung and Pun, 2009; Pun and Lu, 2010a) that China's rapid economic expansion has been gained at the expense of workers, whose conditions are regarded by prominent scholars in Chinese labour studies as being amongst the most exploitative in modern history. In the wake of increased \"mass incidents\" ranging from 10,000 in 1994 to 87,000 in 2005 (Leung and Pun, 2009, p. 553), and much publicised documentation of worker resistance (Pun and Lu, 2010a), some (Chan and Hui, 2016; Pun and Lu, 2010a) claim that Chinese workers are exhibiting a \"rising consciousness\" that is generated from their poor working experiences. These exponents optimistically conclude that, given the size of the Chinese working class, their rising consciousness will not only challenge their prolonged abusive and exploitative working conditions but also State policies - and ultimately - the authority of the Chinese State.\n2. Studies on labour activism in China: The move to a socialist market economy, beginning with the 1978 economic reform programmes (Chen, 2000), altered China's development strategy from one based on self-sufficiency to one that actively engages in global markets (Lee, 2007). This transformation saw the conscription of millions of peasants as urban industrial and service workers and a dismantling of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) (Leung and Pun, 2009; Pun et al., 2009). An effect of this was the layoff of millions of workers who were then pushed alongside the peasant workers into appalling conditions in the private sector (Mah, 2011, p. 30).\n3. Foucault's concept of governmentality: \"Governmentality\" refers to the how of governing: how we govern, how we are governed, the relation between the government of the state and the government of ourselves and others (Foucault, 1980a). In other words, the particular mentalities of government that have emerged in particular societies (Dean, 2010, p. 2), and by which \"knowledge\" becomes \"truth\" or how we know an event or even people as \"truth\". Our acceptance of this \"truth\" subsequently constitutes our social status (positions or identities) and behaviours (or practices) for ourselves.\n4. Genealogy: the history of the present: Foucault (1991) uses the methodological tool of genealogy to develop an understanding of how governmentality, or a certain knowledge, was established to govern subjects (or people) throughout history. For Foucault (1980b, 1982), a genealogy is the history of knowledge that constitutes and determines how an individual is governed and how he/she is to live their life in the present day. In History of Madness, for example, Foucault (2006) problematises the scientific knowledge of mental illness to show how and why different people, such as lazy, poor, unemployed and the mad, were gathered together, characterised, treated and established as \"madness\" in the history of psychiatry across European societies. By investigating this earlier history, Foucault (2006) notes that while the nature of madness was recognised as a mental illness during the enlightenment period, a new discourse identified \"madness\" as a moral defect in the late eighteenth century. The effect of this was to categorise \"madmen\" as patients within the encompassing authority of psychiatric \"truth\" to provide them with cures, such as moral therapies and education. Through these processes, \"madmen\" were thus made to practice the social etiquette and discipline their bodies in adherence to social norms (or practices).\n5. The Chinese history of present: Consistent with Foucault's methodological practices, this paper charts the historical development and the conceptual underpinnings of the social practices and knowledge that have subtly directed workers to think and behave as workers by reinterpreting key events in Chinese histories. According to Foucault, the genealogist is interested power, knowledge and the body and how these interrelate (Burrell, 1988). Genealogy does not relate a sequence of events, but instead reads texts to understand how the body becomes known by influences of power. Thus, the aim in using the genealogical method here was to locate \"traces of the present in the past, not with the reconstruction of the past\" (Burrell, 1988, p. 225).\n6. Research approach: The study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach of long-term participant-observation and open-ended interviews with everyday workers between 2011 and 2014. Snowball sampling was used with labour NGOs to recruit workers while a random sampling method (Larson and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014) had also used to recruit interviewees from the sites frequented by everyday workers such as employment centres, also known as Talent Markets (rencai shichang), and NGO workers' service centres. The selected sites covered a spectrum of industry type, size and worker occupation to explore the research focus with a diversity of everyday workers in China. Shenzhen; Panyu, Foshan and Haizhu in Guangdong Province were chosen because of the prevalence of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which attracted significant foreign investment. Hence, a \"flood\" of peasant workers nationwide has subsequently migrated to these areas to provide cheap labour in the export factories (Leung and Pun, 2009). Protest activities by these factory workers is a documented phenomenon in Guangdong province (Chan and Hui, 2016). Hefei was studied because this is an underdeveloped region with a large number of SOEs and largely local workers (National Bureau of Statistic's Database, 2011). Hangzhou was also studied because this is one of the most developed regions with the largest number of domestic (or private) enterprises (National Bureau of Statistic's Database, 2011) which have attracted a mixture of local and migrant peasant workers.\n7. Research sample: Rather than focusing on the perspectives of protest activists at a single factory, this study yielded insights and pertinent perspectives about the daily lives of everyday workers in different age and gender groups with different work and non-work experiences across industries, including those working in the hotels, motels and factories. The aim was to understand the regimes of truth (or hidden knowledge) that shape their consciousness and activism across different locations. Thus, a random sample of 36 females and 38 males (n = 74), aged between 17 and 50, were asked how their work and non-work lives have influenced their willingness to improve their working and living conditions for themselves and others. All interviews had been translated and transcribed into English for this analysis and pseudonyms were used to maintain the anonymity of the interviewees.\n8. Data analysis: The research adopted the narrative (or story) approach as an analytical device to explore the research focus. Narratives in the social sciences are conceptualised as discourses that are organised by the sequence of historical events in ways that produce meaningful insights about peoples' experiences of another culture (Hinchman and Hinchman, 1997). The characterisation of narratives is thus chronological, meaningful and inherently social, and reflects the \"knowingness\" of the individuals that leads to the shaping of their practices and experiences within their own histories (Foucualt, 1997a, 1997b, 2001a, 2006). Recollections of the past and evaluations of the present (or \"History of the Present\") (Foucault, 1980b) through narrative analysis is by linking a prior happening to the effects of a subsequent event to make sense of individuals' lives in the present day.\n9. Findings: Based on historical cycles as illustrated in Figure 1, it is argued that the post-Mao CCP leaders consolidate their \"mandate\" to rule by continuing the (re-) production of docile bodies and minds among Chinese workers through the internalisation of the Confucian concept of social status. Worker status is arguably reinforced by the \"low personal quality\" discourse. Table I provides an example of transcripts that illustrate the thoughts and behaviours of the interviewed workers as the workers are subtly influenced by their self-acceptance of their low societal status:\n10. Discussion: In the same way as Foucault's analyses on sexuality (1976, 1986), subjectivity (1980 b, 1982) and madness (1977, 2001a, 2006), the practices of everyday workers in this study are found to be subject to historically constituted discourses. The findings illustrate that workers devalue themselves to be subservient because of a truth that had been deliberately constructed, and which confers upon them a prearranged destiny as low-quality status workers. This mindset is the main determinant of their docility at the workplace.\n11. Conclusion: There are many limitations to this study; for example, the relative smallness of the research sample limits the claim for generalisability of the findings. However, the application of Foucault's genealogical methodology to the exploration of how worker consciousness is shaped by the power-knowledge relations which illustrate a continuation of (re-) production of docile bodies and minds in histories. It is argued that China's stable polity is facilitated by the abilities of the CCP to retain and update the Confucian framework. Confucian (li) filial piety that used to control the masses from the Imperial period through to Mao's China is still a vital theme in manipulating workers in today's China. This theme is repackaged into new governmental discourses of \"quality\" that has classified high (educated) and low (uneducated) societal status. By conforming to the governmental discourses, the workers in this research have constituted a status consciousness that is linked to the Confucian past to maintain their internal docility. The link between their past knowledge and present social practices is the element that constitutes them as docile bodies and minds that severely constrain their possibility to act beyond the defined norms in their power-knowledge relations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to describe an exploratory study that has sought to understand how an institutionalised docility rather than resistance has been created in the minds of Chinese workers by the Chinese State. The study proposes that this docility has been crucial in enabling China to become a world leading economic powerhouse.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on Foucault's concept of governmentality and uses the genealogical method to examine the historical events that have shaped the mentalities of today's Chinese workers. Original interviews (n = 74) with everyday workers across industries and locations illustrate this.\nFindings: It was found that the utilisation of centuries-long Confucian hierarchical rules by successive regimes has created a cumulative effect that has maintained workers docility and their willingness to submit themselves to poor working conditions that - ultimately - benefit the Chinese State and business, though this is at their expense. This finding is in juxtaposition to current research that claim that their working conditions are fostering a rising consciousness and resistance among Chinese workers.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a novel explanation for why Chinese workers accept their poor working conditions and thus critiques current perspectives about Chinese worker resistance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An unintended consequence of exaggerated maximum-discount tensile price claims
|
[
"Purchase intentions",
"Price fairness",
"Perceived savings",
"Price discount",
"Tensile price claim"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: How do shoppers react when they are drawn to a store by an advertisement stating \"Save up to 70 per cent\" but discover that most items are discounted only 20 per cent? What role does the size of the gap between the promoted discount and the actual price discount for an item play when a consumer evaluates a discount deal? These are important questions because this tactic is commonly used in the retail sector to attract shoppers. This tactic is called the \"tensile price claim\" (TPC), and it refers to the practice of stating broad amounts of savings by using ranges such as \"as low as $9.99\", \"Save 20 to 50 per cent\" and \"Save up to 80 per cent\". Retailers are known to present TPCs stating a high maximum discount and then offer only a few items at that high discount with most other items at a low discount. They expect that once consumers enter the store, they will purchase low- and/or non-discounted products. However, the exaggerated maximum-discount TPC (i.e. \"Save up to 80 per cent\"), where the advertised discount is much higher than the actual discount, may cause unintended consequences. And those consequences are examined in this paper.\n2. Theory and hypotheses: 2.1 Tensile price claims\n3. Study 1: tensile price claim effect on consumers' expected price discount: 3.1 Method\n4. Study 2: mediating effect of discount discrepancy: Study 2 examined the influence of maximum-discount TPCs on consumers' price discount discrepancy, followed by consumers' perceptions of the discount deal. In particular, Study 2 investigates the mediating effect of discount discrepancy on the relationship between exaggerated versus non-exaggerated maximum-discount TPCs and consumers' perceptions of the deal.\n5. General discussion: 5.1 Summary and implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Retailers are known to present tensile price claims (TPCs) stating high discounts to entice shoppers. Prior research on TPCs suggests that high TPC discounts increase purchase intentions. However, the current study proposes, first, that the TPC discount shifts expected price discount (EPD) and, second, that the gap between the actual price discount and the EPD influence perceptions of the discount deal. Support for these propositions would suggest that high TPC discounts will only be effective when they closely match the actual price discount. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effectiveness of exaggerated maximum-discount TPCs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two experiments were used. Study 1 investigated the effect of exposure to a TPC on EPD. Study 2 examined discount discrepancy as a mediator of the relationship between a TPC and consumer perceptions (i.e. perceived savings and price fairness) and purchase intentions. PROCESS and ANOVA were used for the analysis.\nFindings: This research showed that exposure to a TPC influenced consumers' EPDs. As TPC discount increased, EPD increased and the discount discrepancy (i.e. actual price discount minus EPD) decreased (and, in some cases, became negative). The discount discrepancy influenced consumer perceptions of savings and fairness, as well as purchase intentions. Consequently, when the actual price discount encountered was not as large as the advertised TPC discount, the results showed a negative, indirect influence of exaggerated maximum-discount TPCs on consumers' discount perceptions, mediated by the discount discrepancy.\nOriginality/value: Previous TPC studies found that the size of the TPC discount positively influences consumers' discount perceptions, implying that larger discounts are more effective. However, this approach does not take into consideration the notion that larger TPC discounts increase consumer expectations about the size of discount and these expectations are used as a frame to evaluate a discount deal. The findings of the current research show a negative, indirect influence of exaggerated TPC discount on consumer perceptions and purchase intentions through discount discrepancy. Therefore, this study provides a new perspective to explain the influence of TPC discount size on consumer perceptions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Academic publishing: Best practice for editors, guest editors, authors and reviewers
|
[
"Publishing",
"Serials",
"Best practice",
"Research"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Writing and publishing papers is an important and integral part of academic life. Having papers published will enhance the author's reputation and enhance the discipline overall. The process of writing articles and having them reviewed by experienced academics on a journal's editorial board, who are authors, teachers and researchers themselves, is a useful one. The comments and suggestions in reviewers' reports usually provide guidance and should contribute to the professional development of both the paper and the author. Indeed, reviewers' feedback should contribute to the development of both the thinking and writing skills of an author.Any discipline will want to encourage a positive and constructive approach to journal editing and reviewing and thus provide support for new and genuinely innovative research alongside traditional and incremental research.From a publisher and editor's perspective the most important criteria will be to endeavour to provide excellence in academic journal article publication. Thus, they must ensure the integrity and impartiality of the academic reviewing process for all concerned - authors, editors, reviewers and readers. The reputation of a journal and value of any refereed academic publication depends upon the quality of the double (or sometimes more) blind reviewing process. To achieve this editors' need to know how to motivate reviewers to do a time consuming job.This paper seeks to identify best practice for editors, authors and reviewers of academic journals and discuss a common sense approach to writing academic articles and getting published.The discussion will also include a discussion of guidelines for guest editors involved in compiling Special Issues. Today many journals include special issues that focus on specific topics within the relevant discipline. One or more \"guest editors\" usually edit a special issue. In order to maintain the integrity of the journal and impartiality of the reviewing process, there are some key points that guest editors need to keep in mind.Finally, a bibliography is attached for further reading. Emerging authors could begin their further reading with Day (1996), Huff (1999) and Perry et al. (2003). The outline of this paper is illustrated in Table I.\nEditors of academic journals - perspectives and best practice: An editor's overall aim is to enhance the standing and progression of the profession, by overseeing the management and provision of a good quality journal. To this end an editor's role includes providing advice and guidance in assisting fellow academics towards publication, looking for papers with topics that fit the focus of a journal and to encourage the progression of ideas, new developments in research and interesting papers that contribute to the domain. Overall, the editor's role is to enhance and protect the integrity and reputation of a journal in the short, medium and long-term. The editor will direct the focus of the journal in terms of how it is different from others in the field and will actively seek to manage a steady flow of papers that are suitable for the journal.In practice, editors carry out their roles in different ways, depending on their own experience and the requirements of specific journals. However, there are some guidelines that are important to ensure best practice. To be fair to authors they should focus on overseeing a fair and constructive reviewing process and always try to be impartial. They also need to manage reviewers carefully by providing clear direction of what is expected from them, choose appropriate reviewers for each paper, encourage reviewers to provide constructive comments and return the review to an author within a given time period.In order to be fair to their reviewers, editors also need to ensure that poor papers are not sent out for review. In addition, they need to motivate experienced academics to accept the role of a reviewer, encourage them to do a good job in good time. Editors need to be constructive and positive at all times. They are not the judge of the worthiness of a paper's topic other than its overall suitability for the journal's remit. Editors cannot be experts in all topics; instead this is the role of specific reviewers.Editors should utilise a check list in assessing the appropriateness of submitted articles. This checklist could include some of the following questions:* Is the topic appropriate for this journal?* Are the style, layout and length appropriate?* Is the research method employed in empirical work appropriate?* Are the empirical findings meaningful and insightful?* Does the article make a meaningful contribution to knowledge?These questions can form a useful checklist for authors before sending an article to a journal.\nAuthors of papers for academic journals - perspectives and best practice: An author's overall aims are to get published and to have their work acknowledged by the relevant research community.In practice, each author has an individual approach to preparing, writing and submitting articles to journals. Writing a paper for an academic journal takes time and requires planning, preparation and careful thought about the most appropriate outlet for the paper. Stages of planning and preparation are vital to selecting the right journal for the paper, getting the best from the review process and eventually achieving success in terms of having a paper published.Firstly, authors should read any potential journal's guidelines before writing a paper. These guidelines are usually in sections of the journal's homepage called \"editorial objectives\" and \"notes for contributors\". The author's aim should be to select the most appropriate journal for the author's research and then write the paper according to the journal guidelines, aims and objectives. Secondly, the author should always write to the highest standard, aiming to achieve their best quality in writing, and ensuring that the paper has logical structure and focus. Then the paper should be proof read before sending off to the journal for review. These steps are described in more detail below.Authors should be aware that the reviewing process could take some time. They should be patient with the reviewing process and respond positively to all queries from editors and reviewers. Authors should allow at least 12 weeks before checking on progress (or at least six weeks if there has been no acknowledgement of submission). It is worth remembering that the reviewing process is based on voluntary and part-time activity of both editors and reviewers so authors are getting a \"free service\". Also authors need to be realistic about the reviewing process and be aware that the number of paper slots in journals is limited, so many papers may be rejected by editors as unsuitable for the journal or being not sufficiently \"polished\" to go out for review.Authors can make the reviewing process more pleasant for editors and reviewers in a number of ways. They can ensure that the paper is well prepared, easy to read, and carefully edited. For instance, stating the aim value and contribution of the paper early in the script will help to get the reviewer \"hooked\" and interested in the paper. Finally, authors should respond positively and thoughtfully to reviewers' comments and not ignore them. Reviewers do not like their comments to be ignored after taking the time to review a paper.\nReviewers of papers for academic journals - perspectives and best practice: A reviewer's overall aims are to enhance the standing and progression of the subject discipline and profession and to provide advice and guidance in assisting fellow academics towards publication. Reviewing articles is also a useful way of staying up to date on developments in the field.When appointed as a reviewer for a journal, the reviewer will be encouraged by the editor of a journal to ensure they take a professional approach to the job and to try to provide constructive and helpful suggestions to potential authors.Any journal will require reviewers to provide professional reports and comments regarding specific papers. From an editor's point of view, she/he will want the reviewer to provide well written, clear reviews for authors within a reasonable time-scale. Ideally best practice for a reviewer would be to provide positive and constructive comments to authors that will allow improvement of their articles and to give direction to authors on how to improve their work, even if recommending rejection.Over the past decade there has been considerable growth in the number of papers written and sent for review for academic journals (certainly in management and marketing disciplines). This growth has increased the demand for good reviewers and on their time. Good reviewers are very important to the running of a successful journal and are sometimes difficult to find. An important aspect of a journal editor's role is in motivating reviewers to be reliable and do a good job of reviewing papers on a regular basis.Editors can make the reviewer's job more manageable by sending appropriate papers that will be of interest to particular reviewers and choosing reviewers who are research active and therefore interested in research. Editors can also ensure that the reviewers are not overworked.\nA common sense approach to preparing papers for academic journals: There are some basic principles and guidelines on how to get published. These include carefully targeting the editor, reviewers and readers of a paper, writing the paper taking account of structure and style, redrafting the paper until it is ready for sending off and revising the paper after reviews have been received back from the editor (Much of this section is based on Perry et al., 2003).Targeting the editor, reviewers and readers\nBest practice for guest editors compiling special issues: In addition to the points above for editors, reviewers and authors, there are some specific issues guest editors of special issues need to address in order to maintain the integrity of the review process. This is particularly important to avoid the guest editor(s) being accused of cronyism and/or using special issues to publish their own work.First of all if a guest editor is planning to include a paper of his/her own then they should be very explicit about this from the outset, they should talk to the journal's editor(s) and should not manage the review process themselves. Instead they should send the paper to the journal's editor(s) to manage the review process independently.For further independence and transparency, a list of the reviewers for the special issue should be supplied to the journal editor(s) and published in the special issue. These reviewers should be different from the list of authors' included in the special issue, otherwise the reviewing process becomes very competitive and inherently unfair (these points are drawn from the European Journal of Marketing's \"Guidelines for Guest Editors\").Guest editors must be aware of the timescales involved in producing a special issue. It is not uncommon for the reviewing gestation process to take 18/24 months it requires a number of time consuming stages as shown here:1. a \"call for papers\" for a special issue needs to give a lead time for potential authors of at least six months;2. three months will be needed to have all the potential papers reviewed;3. authors will need another three months to resubmit their revised papers;4. another three months to allow a second review of the papers; and5. a final two months to allow the guest editor to prepare the issue, write a suitable editorial or commentary and compile authors details and copyright forms.This period of time can be extended if some authors or reviewers fail to return materials on time.\nConcluding summary: Article writing is a craft that requires participation with a wider community of peers, editors and reviewers. We all need to acknowledge each other in this process.Academic journals tend to have relatively high rejection rates. This occurs because of a combination of factors. Some papers that are submitted to journals are a poor match for the journals objectives, are poorly prepared and are sent off too early. Another factor is the number of paper slots in any journal is limited and there would appear to be a growing number of academics writing papers for these limited numbers of places. This makes writing papers very competitive in the current academic environment.There are problems and frustrations with the process of article writing and getting published. Many are caused by poor participation by some or all of the players. Poor preparation of an article in line with the targeted journal's objectives and standards can result in editors receiving many unwanted, inappropriate articles, and therefore waste their time. If allowed to go for review by the editor, poorly positioned and constructed articles can make the reviewer's job very frustrating and difficult. Also many academics are so busy writing articles that they may be reluctant to give priority to reviewing others work. All of these circumstances slow down the reviewing process. This in turn leads to more enquiries from authors waiting for news of how their paper has been received. The only way this situation can improve is that academics recognise that they need to contribute to all aspects of the writing, reviewing and publishing process.A fully active academic needs to do all of the jobs described above at some stage in their career, and sometimes simultaneously. It is useful to recognise the importance of being involved in some or all of these roles and to see it as a participative, constructive and helpful process with something in it for everyone.For editors, reviewers and authors, the peer review process is time consuming and voluntary. However, it generally enhances the standing of the profession. It is something to engage in with enthusiasm and commitment, and to maintain a positive outlook at all times. In all this it should be, and is, a highly rewarding process and experience.\n",
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{
"content": "Purpose: - Writing and publishing research is an integral part of any academic's job. It is important for an individual's academic progression and is vital for the development, updating and refinement of teaching materials. This paper aims to focus on the purpose and value of publishing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Editors, reviewer and authors have different roles to play in the pre-publishing life of a potential article and so the different perspectives of editors, reviewers and authors in relation to successful journal article publication are discussed.\nFindings: - The paper describes the process of preparing academic papers and a stage by stage approach to writing an article. This includes how to target a suitable journal, taking account of the editor, reviewers and potential readers of an article, how to write an academic article, with an appropriate structure and style, redrafting and sending a paper off for review and carrying out requested revisions.\nOriginality/value: - The views expressed in this paper are based on the authors' combined experience of performing all three roles over a number of years. This experience has been enriched by participation in discussions at \"meet the editors\" sessions at a variety of academic conferences throughout the world, and from discussions of academic committees, in particular, the Academy of Marketing Research Committee during 2005.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Exploring the affective mechanism linking perceived organizational support and knowledge sharing intention: a moderated mediation model
|
[
"Knowledge sharing intention",
"Perceived organizational support",
"Affective organizational commitment",
"Organizational tenure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle (Father James Keller, Roman Catholic priest).\nTheory and hypotheses: The key to knowledge management is the exchange of ideas and information that enables the creation and management of collective knowledge (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998), as well as their widespread use within the organization. As Quinn et al. (1996, p. 8) suggest: \"as one shares knowledge with other units, not only do those units gain information (linear growth); they share it with others and feed back questions, amplifications, and modifications that add further value for the original sender, creating exponential total growth\". Without knowledge sharing, an organization may not be able to leverage the knowledge within the organization, the most valuable asset in a knowledge-intensive economy.\nMethods: Data collection and sample demographics\nResults: Measurement model assessment\nDiscussion: The main argument of this study is that the relationship between POS and individual intention to share knowledge with other organization members is mediated by the knowledge owner's affective organizational commitment. In addition, this study claims that the mediation effect is moderated by knowledge owner's tenure (i.e. the extent to which he/she has been exposed to the current organization). As shown in the bootstrapping results (Table IV) and interaction graph (Figure 1), both groups (i.e. with low and high levels of tenure in each current organization) showed significant effects of POS on affective organizational commitment. However, the employees with low level of tenure showed a more significant effect (i.e. steeper slope; t = 10.36) than employees who had been in the present organization for longer periods (t = 7.22). However, the low-tenured employees who had been in the present organization for shorter periods (statistically, a low level of tenure indicates one standard deviation below the mean, while a high level of tenure is one standard deviation above the mean) showed a more significant effect (i.e. steeper slope; t = 10.36) than high-tenured employees who had been in the organization for longer periods (t = 7.22). This moderation effect on the former path of the indirect effect not only influences the effect of POS on affective organizational commitment but also influences the overall indirect effect on knowledge sharing intention, indicating a significant moderated mediation effect. Consequently, the results from the data analyses supported all three hypotheses, suggesting that individuals with lower tenure in their current organization have greater intention for knowledge sharing, being more affectively committed to their organizations, when they perceive an appropriate level of support from their organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderated mediation model in which the effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on knowledge sharing intention is mediated by levels of individual affective commitment to the organization, while the relationship between POS and affective commitment is moderated by organizational tenure.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Hypotheses on mediation, moderation and moderated mediation were tested with data collected from Korean for-profit organizations. Conditional process analyses with bootstrapping supported all three hypotheses.\nFindings: The findings demonstrate that the relationship between POS and knowledge sharing intention is mediated by affective organizational commitment. In addition, the mediation effect is strengthened when an individual's organizational tenure is low. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are followed.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing by providing a basis for understanding the mediating mechanism through which POS influences knowledge sharing intention, and, ultimately, organizational functioning via individual affective attitude. This is the first attempt examining the role of organizational tenure as a key contingency factor in knowledge sharing. By investigating the underlying logic of individual intention to share knowledge, this study expands the current spectrum for knowledge management.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Implementation of advanced manufacturing technology in Pakistani small and medium enterprises: An empirical analysis
|
[
"Senior management",
"Small to medium‐sized enterprises",
"Advanced manufacturing technologies",
"Pakistan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the world of business, small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have a long history of service for providing employment opportunity to the people to share, enhance and equip themselves with the global changes. The role of SMEs cannot be ruled out in any developed or developing countries because it is considered to be the lifeblood to the growth of economy. Pakistan is also emerging as a developing country to share its value and potential in to the mainstream, although yet to be done a lot so that it could come under the umbrella of developing countries. There are many considerable factors for the sustainable development of a SMEs but the role of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) in the overall development of the SMEs is indispensable (Dangayach and Deshmukh, 2005). The AMT is a set of techniques that helps the SMEs to change their traditional way of production techniques to achieve their due share of business within the local and global market (Gunasekaran et al., 2000). SMEs have not received adequate attention from researchers and practitioners to improving their productivity. Therefore, there is a need to help these companies to improve their competitiveness and hence to improve the national economy.The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has been established in Pakistan under the Ministry of Industries and Production in order to foster the development of SME in the economy and was expected to take a key role in this process. Its functions include, inter alia, the facilitation on policy making and the provision of overall planning, programming, research and evaluation of matters related to SME in Pakistan; monitoring and evaluation; encouraging and facilitating development of SME and to protect their interests. For all SMEs, the long-term goal is to stay in business, grow, and make a profit. Especially for manufacturing SMEs, this must understand the dynamic changes that are taking place in the business environment.The current dynamic and turbulent manufacturing environment has forced SMEs that compete globally to change their traditional methods of conducting business. Recent developments in manufacturing and business operations have lead to the adoption of AMT that are based on systems and processes that support global competitiveness, especially for SMEs (Efstathiades et al., 2002). Organizations and SMEs in particular need to re-evaluate every aspect of their manufacturing strategy and quickly move towards an AMT based environment where manufacturing technologies, business strategies and processes are integrated together (Jonsson, 2000).The full understanding, support and leadership of an organization's top management emerge as a crucial factor in almost all the studies for the implementation of modern technology (Beaumont et al., 2002). The importance of top management support goes far beyond the allocation of resources to the program; it sets the priorities for the whole organization (Roberto, 2003). If the organization's senior managers do not understand and show commitment to the program then it is only understandable that the rest of the organization will ask why they should do so. However, it should be delivered from the top management responsible for overall productivity improvement of the company. Efficiency of employees can be improved by providing them collective responsibility and incentive schemes. First of all, top management should equip their employees with latest technologies through training and education and take them into confidence before implementing AMT in their companies (Marri et al., 2003).The formulation of the paper follow as the section two of the paper presents a research methodology. An empirical analysis to demonstrate the role of top management in the implementation of AMT in the SMEs is presented in section three. The section four offers a summary of findings and recommendations. Finally, conclusion is presented in section five.\n2. Research methodology: This section identifies the nature of research methodology within which the research process can be conducted. In this paper, a quantitative approach has been applied. This approach is subjective, as is the data collected and compared in detailed, and the outcome is only as good as the questions developed. The research methodology employed here is based on a literature survey, a conceptual model/framework and an empirical analysis using the data collection from the structured questionnaire from SMEs located in the Province of Sindh in Pakistan as shown in Figure 1. The objective of the survey is to investigate the awareness of SMEs concerning the implementation of AMT and to determine the extent to which this has changed the flexibility of manufacturing after it has been introduced. The purpose of this research is to get awareness of the top management/owners of the SMEs who are in the process of implementing AMTs in their companies. In this research a focus has been fixed towards top management and organizational ability and their long-term vision towards implementation of AMT in their companies. Also, to get awareness either the company is providing incentives and rewards to their employees and equips them with training and education to acquire latest knowledge with automation process while implementing AMTs. If employees will be rewarded with some incentives then they will be motivated and sincere towards their job and the productivity of the company will increase dramatically.The design of the questionnaire is a compromise between length, content and the response rate expected. The rating system for the answer options were kept from 1 to 7 as strongly agrees to strongly disagree, respectively. In some cases it varies from section to section and from question to question. The analysis of the returned questionnaire was carried out with the help of the spreadsheet package \"Excel\".The questionnaire was designed in two different sections. Section 1 deals with the overall background of the company. Section 2 is concerned with the top management support, skills available, training and education, and incentives and rewards of the employees regarding the successful implementation of AMT in SMEs. The response received by the companies including their age, turnover number of employees and amount spent on R&D is shown in Table I.In order to ensure a high representative number of responses, a total of 100 manufacturing companies with workforce not exceeding to 500 were selected. The possibility of identifying and contacting a suitable employee to complete the questionnaire was considered. However, this was not practicable. Therefore, the addressee was chosen as the managing director/manufacturing director/production manager as these functions were thought to have the necessary overview of manufacturing systems design. A total of 24 responses were received. A total of 20 companies were of the opinion that, their company policy does not allow them to fill up the questionnaire. A total of 15 companies have mentioned that, they have not yet implemented AMT in their companies. A total of 24 companies have responded and duly filled in and returned the questionnaire. A total of 25 questionnaires could not be delivered, and rest of the companies did not respond. Initially, quantitative research methodology was adopted to get data through empirical study that is presented in the next section.\n3. Empirical data analysis: An empirical study of SMEs located in the province of Sindh in Pakistan was conducted using questionnaire. The background of the companies, who have responded, has already been illustrated in Table I of section 2. A framework/model for the implementation of AMT in SMEs has been developed and is presented in Figure 2 as a base for empirical research to study the performance measurement while implementation of AMT in SMEs. The issues of implementation of AMT in SMEs are discussed with respect to four dimensions that include top management ability, organizational ability, training and education and finally the incentives and rewards in the justification and implementation of AMT in SMEs. The details follow hereunder.3.1 Organizational abilities of the companies\n4. Summary of findings and recommendations: Following are some of the findings and recommendations for the implementation of AMT in SMEs:* The analysis shows that, there is lack of communications inside the companies while implementing AMT. For the successful implementation of AMT in SMEs, the employees must have a clear understanding of its principles, capabilities, goals and objectives. The literacy factors pertain to those educational efforts that make the employees become more familiar for the implementation of AMT in SMEs and their goals and objectives. This understanding will make it possible for the expectations of AMT in SMEs to be communicated appropriately to all the employees.* Human factors are important in the areas such as installation, operation and maintenance, and safety. To make AMT implementation successful, it is necessary for top management to consider human factors at the earliest stage of the planning and implementation of AMT in SMEs.* Training and education help to minimize worker's resistance. Some of the types of training that can be used for AMT are classroom instruction, computer-based training, workshops, and videotapes.* According to empirical analysis, there is a lack of R&D inside and out side of the company. Many companies even spent less than 1.0 percent of their total revenue on R&D. There is a need to develop inside R&D facilities within the company because the internal R&D personnel and resources can be more efficiently utilized when any new technology required is closely related to a firm's core technology and in house R&D is less costly and time consuming than external acquisition.* The reasons for the failure of AMT in SMEs include lack of technology initiatives, lack of top management's continued support, poor commitment to shop floor employees and inadequate managerial training for AMT projects. Further research is required on setting goals and objectives stipulated by the adoption strategy of AMT in SMEs.* The support of appropriate resources and assistance in implementing AMT in SMEs is a further responsibility of top management. They must support all efforts for AMT implementation by providing financial support as well as time needed for the teams to pursue their project and to implement it.* The employees are the backbone of the company. To motivate them, it is necessary to provide them suitable incentives and rewards.* The survival of SMEs depends upon the increased productivity of their products. The increased productivity will fulfill the demands of their customers and will remain competitive in the global market. It is to be hoped that the adoption of AMT offers the way out of this dilemma by eliminating some of the constraints on capital productivity. The specific mechanisms that can be identified in this connection are sharply reduced inventories of goods and work in progress and, sharply increased output per machine, via increased operating speeds and increased utilization rates.\n5. Conclusions: An attempt has been made in this paper to review the importance of top management regarding implementation of AMT in the SMEs. The experiences of the top management support along with the framework developed with the help of an empirical study conducted in the SMEs located in the province of Sindh in Pakistan for the implementation of AMT are presented. There is a reason to believe that the adoption of new efficient manufacturing techniques may be problematic in SMEs. This is because SMEs frequently lack expertise, time, money, and support to upgrade their current manufacturing operations, introduce new technologies and methods, implement better quality control, and improve work force training. The implications of AMT for human workers are many, and workers should be considered at the earliest stages of AMT planning and implementation to assure peak performance from a totally integrated system. SMEs must address the following with respect to employee morale and motivation: how much emphasis does the company place on workers attitudes, morale and problems; how does the company perform in terms of safety, ergonomics, efficiency, and the convenience of employees; how are workers motivated through incentive schemes; and are workers motivated by product linked bonus schemes? Further research is required in the area of the human factors in designing an AMT and there is a need to establish the level of skill and training required in order to implement AMT in SMEs.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to develop a framework/model for the implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A quantitative approach has been applied. This approach is subjective, as is the data collected and compared in detailed, and the outcome is only as good as the questions developed. The research methodology employed here is based on a literature survey, a model/framework and an empirical analysis using the data collection from the structured questionnaire from SMEs located in the Province of Sindh in Pakistan.\nFindings: - There is a lack of engineering orientation, in-house expertise and organizations long-term vision to accept new technologies. The surveyed companies are giving less importance to arranging training and education facilities either in-house or out side of the companies to their employees. Also, there is a lack of incentives and rewards scheme inside the surveyed companies.\nOriginality/value: - The framework developed in this paper and findings of the research results will provides a road-map to the SMEs who are in a process of implementing AMT.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Reverse logistics capabilities: antecedents and cost savings
|
[
"Reverse scheduling",
"Contracts",
"Cost reduction",
"Retailers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Reverse logistics has received increased attention in the marketing and supply chain literature as it reflects the ability of a firm within a channel of distribution to positively influence the relationship that it has with its customers (Horvath et al., 2005). Reverse logistics also has major cost implications for both the firm and its supplier (Daugherty et al., 2005). For many retail organizations without adequate capabilities to implement a reverse logistics strategies, returns may improve customer service but are a financial burden with the costs exceeding the benefits. The use of reverse logistics is increasingly becoming a competitive necessity in an overall supply chain strategy (Daugherty et al., 2001). Despite the importance of reverse logistics to both researchers and practitioners, there are relatively few studies that have used empirical data to investigate this key product flow that exists in many supply chains (Srivastava and Srivastava, 2006).Within the reserve logistics domain, the product returns process has emerged as a key element that can influence the customers' purchase decisions and thus, an effective product returns process is viewed as a competitive advantage (Stock et al., 2006). Today's cash strapped customer is extremely risk adverse and in response to this reality, some retailers view relatively liberal returns policies as critical to retaining consumers. Furthermore, with the increase of online purchases, many customers are concerned with how an online purchase will translate into a store return, if necessary. It must be kept in mind, however, that because of the increase in returns and their associated costs many retailers have recently become more restrictive in their return policies. The results of a survey conducted by Harris interactive reported that:[...] 92% of customers are somewhat or very likely to shop again [...] if the returns process if convenient [...] on the other hand, 82% are not likely or not very likely at all to shop again [...] if the returns process is inconvenient (Mermelstein, 2006, p. 15).This business practice is now prevalent across all retail formats from brick and mortar to e-tailing, making research in the area timely and managerially relevant.This work builds on the recent research on reverse logistics in the following areas: antecedents and consequences of product returns (Petersen and Kumar, 2009); product returns processing (Stock and Mulki, 2009); managing product returns (Stock et al., 2006); and developing effective logistics programs (Richey et al., 2005). However, unlike other contributions in this research stream, we specifically focus on the perspectives of retailers who perform a critical role in reverse logistics. Since the process of consumer returns begins with the retailer, this research focuses on the reverse logistics capabilities that retailers develop in order to implement their returns policies and move returned products back upstream. Reverse logistics capabilities include the accuracy and the availability of information that is used, and the process and timeliness of reverse logistics information. Reverse logistics capabilities also include the internal and external connectivity and usefulness of that information. These capabilities represent a bundle of information-related processes that enable a firm to better manage its reverse logistics activities that may in turn relate to cost savings.The purpose of this research is to determine how reverse logistics capabilities impact the relationship between antecedents (customer and firm related) and the cost savings achieved from reverse logistics strategies. The specific research questions examined in this research are:RQ1. What are the relationships between customer orientation, customer opportunism, resource commitments, contractual arrangements, and reverse logistics cost savings?RQ2. How do reverse logistics capabilities mediate these relationships?In order to address these research questions, path analysis and multiple regression models are developed and tested to analyze these relationships based on a survey of 295 retailers. This research contributes to the literature by empirically testing and validating the impact of the factors that influence reverse logistics cost savings for retailers. In the following section, a literature review is presented that examines the issue of reverse logistics and identifies the antecedents that contribute to cost savings. Following the literature review, the methodology is presented including the path analysis and multiple regression models that were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The hypotheses are tested and managerial implications and directions for future research are provided.\nBackground: Reverse logistics involves all activities associated with a product or service after the point of sale with the ultimate goal being to optimize or make more efficient aftermarket activities, thus saving money for the firm involved (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 1999). Reverse logistics has been defined as:[...] the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods, and related information from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing or creating value or proper disposal (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 1999, p. 2).Reverse logistics has become a competitive necessity for several reasons including: increasing trend in customer returns, the increasing use of consignment inventory, shorter product lifecycles, and more demanding customers (Daugherty et al., 2001). Reverse logistics is increasingly being considered as a strategic process that captures value through customer satisfaction and cost control (Richey et al., 2005; Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 2001). As the volumes of returns increase world wide, firms are no longer able to ignore the reverse flow of products (Stock et al., 2002). In a retail context, reverse logistics involves the process of handling and the eventual disposition of goods returned from customers (Horvath et al., 2005). As retail margins become narrower, reverse logistics has become a major concern for retail managers due to the costs of storage, loss of current sales, potential recoverable product value, and the importance of both customer and channel partner relations (Daugherty et al., 2005). When an end customer begins the reverse logistics process, it is usually with a retailer. How well the retailer manages the reverse logistics process may determine its cost savings as well as the customer's satisfaction with the retail encounter (Horvath et al., 2005).Antecedents of reverse logistics capabilities\nMethodology: Measurement scales\nResults and findings: As a first step towards evaluating the strength of the relationships between the constructs, a bi-variate correlation analysis was performed using the Pearson correlation analysis and these results are shown in Table II. This analysis showed that all the variables in the model except for customer orientation were positively related to reverse logistics cost savings. It was also found that the moderating variable (reverse logistics capabilities) was positively related to the outcome variable (cost savings) and also positively related to two independent variables (contracts and resources). While this correlation analysis of the direct relationships was interesting, it did not provide further insights about the indirect linkages between the independent variables that drive these cost savings, particularly with reverse logistics capabilities as the mediator in this model. The next step in the analysis was to use path analysis to test the hypothesized relationships.Path analysis\nDiscussion: Using responses from 295 retail managers, this research has empirically evaluated the relationships between three entities: antecedents (customer orientation, customer opportunism, resource commitments, and contractual arrangements), the mediator (reverse logistics capabilities) and the outcome variable (logistics cost savings). Overall, these results tell a very interesting story. When the direct linkages between the antecedents and the moderating variable (reverse logistics capabilities) are evaluated using regression analysis we found significant relationships as hypothesized for H3 and H4, indicating positive linkages between resource commitments and reverse logistics capabilities, and between contractual arrangements and reverse logistics capabilities. For H2, (customer opportunism) the result was negative and significant indicating a negative relationship as hypothesized. We also found a positive and significant relationship for H5, indicating a direct and positive relationship between reverse logistics capabilities and cost savings. However, the result for H1 (customer orientation) was not significantly related to reverse logistics capabilities.The results from our hypotheses testing can be explained from two perspectives: front-end customer-related activities and back-end processes that are both required to effectively handle customer returns. The results for H1-H4 indicate that there is a clear delineation between the impact of front-end customer-related antecedents versus back-end process-related related antecedents. For the customer-related antecedents (customer orientation and customer opportunism) we found no positive relationships with reverse logistics capabilities. However, the antecedents that represent the back-end processes (resource commitments and contractual arrangements) were positively and significantly related to these reverse logistics capabilities. Since we found no significant relationship between customer orientation and reverse logistics capabilities, we believe that more research is needed to test this important relationship. On the other hand, the negative and significant results for customer opportunism underscore the negative relationship between opportunistic customer behavior and the level of return logistics capabilities that a retailer may deploy. For example, in the presence of high customer opportunism, a retailer may have a more stringent return policy and therefore have lower capabilities. The result for H5 (that reverse logistics capabilities do improve cost savings) is also very important to note as it indicates that cost savings were achieved by these increased reverse logistics capabilities.Another contribution of this study was demonstrated by the mediating role that reverse logistics capabilities perform in deriving reverse logistics cost savings. The Baron and Kenny (1986) procedure was used to test the mediating effect of reverse logistics capabilities in this mode. Here, we found that these capabilities partially mediated the relationship between resources and the outcome variable (reverse logistics cost savings) and also between contractual arrangements and the outcome variable (reverse logistics cost savings). These results suggested that retailers should focus not on the independent relationships between the antecedents and the outcome (reverse logistics cost savings), but rather on the mediating role that reverse logistics capabilities play within their returns system. Retailers should focus on their internal capabilities and back-end processes as represented by their reverse logistics capabilities, resource commitments and contractual arrangements. While financial, technical and managerial resources are used to implement the reverse logistics capabilities to handle these returns, they also facilitate reduce cost when these returns are handled in an efficient manner. Similarly, having contractual arrangements in place with key suppliers and vendors were also found to be significant contributors from the back-end processes that are required to handle these returns. One explanation for this finding is that many retailers are electing to outsource their returns processing through third-party logistics arrangements in order to benefit from more efficient returns processes that help to reduce their costs. Here, our research findings are consistent with those of other researchers. For example, Stock and Mulki (2009) found that improvements in product returns processing can improve profitability through cost reductions and higher recovery rates for returned products. They also reported that many large retailers (e.g. Wal-Mart and Target) rely on outsourcing arrangements to derive these cost savings.Our findings are based on the perspectives of retailers who form the initial link in the reverse flow of product. Unlike traditional down-stream marketing channel flows that are initiated by manufacturers, the reverse logistics flow of product most frequently begins with a return exchange made from a customer to a retailer. As more retailers embrace more convenient or liberal return policies they create the opportunity for more complex inventory management practices impacting cost, space, and forecasting at all levels of the marketing channels and supply chains. This complexity magnifies the importance of managing reverse logistics and returns policy at the retail level. In today's competitive environment, many retailers look for ways to streamline functions to realize cost savings, while minimizing the impact on their customer service offering. While the returns policy is a critical component of an organization's customer service strategy, it should not become a financial burden for a retailer. If a retailer carefully cultivates this value-added service by developing their reverse logistics capabilities, improved performance and lower costs are realizable.When the back-end resources and contractual arrangements along with the mediating role of reverse logistics capabilities are considered systematically and holistically, they provide the foundation for competitive advantage because they are key to the returns process that retail end-customers value and use. When these three elements (resources, contracts, and capabilities) are in place, retailers can realize higher cost savings through such elements as lower compliance cost with environmental regulations, improved competitiveness, and efficiencies in meeting customer needs. While other possible beneficial outcomes were not tested in this research, there is empirical evidence that ultimately, satisfied customers can lead to repeat purchases, improved customer loyalty, increased market share, and greater financial returns.Limitations of the research\nSummary and directions for future research: There are several areas for future research that must be considered in light of the present work. The focus of the present research was on reverse logistics capabilities and their influence on cost savings. The development of the capabilities measure that was done specifically for this investigation resulted in items that were related to the use of information and consisted of one dimension. Future research is suggested to further explore this construct for additional dimensions and to measure it accordingly. This research was evaluated using the retailer as the primary channel member responsible for reverse logistics and its resultant cost savings. There are many other industries where the manufacturer plays a more important role in reverse logistics activities and future research can evaluate this from the manufacturer's perspective, both on retailer as well as manufacturer cost savings. Reverse logistics cost savings and its antecedents may be generalizeable across industries and business settings, but this remains to be seen. Of particular interest is the role of reverse logistics in an e-commerce setting, where the e-retailer may serve in a similar capacity as the retailers examined in this study, but with significantly different reverse logistics processes and procedures that may result cost savings derived from variables outside the domain of this research.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The use of reverse logistics has received increased attention in the literature, although the role that reverse logistics capabilities plays in enabling firms to achieve cost savings has not been empirically examined. Reverse logistics capabilities can enable retailers to enhance their return policies and improve their overall cost position. This paper aims to address these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on a survey of 295 retailers, this paper evaluates the influence of customer and retailer related antecedents of reverse logistics capabilities and their subsequent impact on cost savings.\nFindings: - The results indicate that resource commitments and contractual obligations positively influence reverse logistics capabilities and that these capabilities result in cost savings. Customer opportunism is found to be negatively related to reverse logistics capabilities. It is also reported that reverse logistics capabilities partially mediates the relationship between resource commitments, contractual arrangements, and reverse logistics cost savings.\nOriginality/value: - This work builds on the recent research in reverse logistics; however, unlike other contributions in this research stream, the role of retailers who perform a critical role in this area is addressed.\n",
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Lean maturity and quality in primary care
|
[
"Lean principles",
"Observations",
"Qualitative",
"Healthcare",
"Liker"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In Sweden, primary care is the first level in the healthcare system, offering basic medical care to citizens and residents (Swedish Board of Health and Welfare (SBHWb)). The healthcare system strives to deliver care of good quality using fewer resources (Wilson, 2009), while facing emerging demands (Osborn et al., 2015). National guidelines (NG) have been developed to improve healthcare quality, and all staff are expected to adhere to them (SBHWa, 2016). To achieve care of good quality and to increase productivity, Lean principles have spread to healthcare systems worldwide (Brandao de Souza, 2009; Joosten et al., 2009). In healthcare, it is common to adopt Lean using value stream mapping (VSM), improvement events and standardization (Costa and Godinho Filho, 2016). However, only a few studies of Lean have addressed the extent to which different aspects of Lean have been implemented (Brackett et al., 2013). Moreover, most Lean studies in healthcare primarily focus on productivity (Brandao de Souza, 2009; Costa and Godinho Filho, 2016; Mazzocato et al., 2010) and less on quality of care (D'Andreamatteo et al., 2014). The present study addresses Lean maturity in Swedish primary care, investigating the extent to which it is associated with quality of care.\nMethods: Design\nResults: Lean maturity\nDiscussion: Our study is one of the first to report on Lean maturity in primary care based on a comprehensive instrument using staff ratings to measure Lean. The results showed large dispersion in Lean maturity, both between care units and within the same care unit for the 4P, some principles receiving considerably higher maturity ratings than others. Variation in Lean adoption between organizations has been described in several reviews (Antierens et al., 2018; Brackett et al., 2013; Costa and Godinho Filho, 2016). Reasons for Lean adoption only being partial, and for not achieving high Lean maturity, include staff showing limited interest in and having little experience of Lean (Dellve et al., 2015; Drotz and Poksinska, 2014; Hasle et al., 2016), factors also identified in the observational data in our study. According to Liker, to achieve success based on Lean, all staff need to be involved and all Lean principles need to be used. Nonetheless, improvements in quality of care and patient safety have been reported even in cases of partial adoption of Lean (Antierens et al., 2018). Our results indicate that quality of care increases when Lean maturity increases. However, when multivariate relationships were analyzed, controlling for correlations within units, only processes was significantly associated with quality of care. It would seem that some principles contribute more to quality of care than others do, or that certain principles are easier to implement than others, depending on setting and organizational culture.\nConclusions: Lean maturity varied in primary care, both in terms of adoption of different Lean principles and Lean adoption between units. Lean maturity was positively associated with quality of care, indicating that Lean has the potential to meet some of the challenges facing present-day healthcare.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to describe Lean maturity in primary care using a questionnaire based on Liker's description of Lean, complemented with observations; and second, to determine the extent to which Lean maturity is associated with quality of care measured as staff-rated satisfaction with care and adherence to national guidelines (NG). High Lean maturity indicates adoption of all Lean principles throughout the organization and by all staff.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected using a survey based on Liker's four principles, divided into 16 items (n=298 staff in 45 units). Complementary observations (n=28 staff) were carried out at four units.\nFindings: Lean maturity varied both between and within units. The highest Lean maturity was found for \"adhering to routines\" and the lowest for \"having a change agent at the unit.\" Lean maturity was positively associated with satisfaction with care and with adherence to NG to improve healthcare quality.\nPractical implications: Quality of primary care may benefit from increasing Lean maturity. When implementing Lean, managers could benefit from measuring and adopting Lean maturity repeatedly, addressing all Liker's principles and using the results as guidance for further development.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first studies to evaluate Lean maturity in primary care, addressing all Liker's principles from the perspective of quality of care. The results suggest that repeated actions based on evaluations of Lean maturity may help to improve quality of care.\n",
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Contingency factors and reshoring drivers in the textile and apparel industry
|
[
"Reshoring",
"Competitiveness",
"Manufacturing industry",
"Skilled workers",
"Advanced manufacturing technology",
"International manufacturing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between contingency factors and reshoring drivers in the US textile and apparel industry. The textile and apparel industry has been offshoring since the 1960s (Kunz et al., 2016), possesses complex supply chains (Kunz et al., 2016), and in spite of well-known low labor costs in developing countries (Bolisani and Scarso, 1996; Kunz et al., 2016) began to reshore in the 2010s. Reshoring is becoming more prevalent in the textile and apparel industry amongst some well-known brands such as Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren. Some brands and retailers now are committed to sourcing products that are made in the USA as part of their already diverse sourcing portfolios (Reshoring Initiative: Recent Data, 2016; Kunz et al., 2016; Ellis, 2014). Since 2012, the growth in manufacturing by textile mills alone has exceeded the growth of all US manufacturing. Manufacturing in textile mills was up 7.6 percent while all US manufacturing was up just 6.1 percent (Acemoglu et al., 2016). In 2015, the US textile and apparel industry employed 579,300 workers (Acemoglu et al., 2016). Although the current study is of a single industry, Stentoft et al. (2016) pointed out that research on industry-specific contingencies is still needed.\nLiterature review: In this section, the literature pertaining to contingency factors, reshoring drivers, and the relationship between the two will be summarized.\nResearch methodology: Secondary data were analyzed in the current study. The data came from the Reshoring Initiative and were provided by Harry Moser, the Founder of the Reshoring Initiative. The Reshoring Institute uses a similar method as Ancarani et al. (2015) to capture reshoring information on companies. The Reshoring Initiative collects data primarily from publications online, but also from conversations, interviews, and printed material. All of the sources are cited in the database. Examples of the online publications that reported on the textile and apparel industry include national newspapers such as The New York Times that reported on shoes; local news outlets such as The City Wire that reported on towels and the Milwaukee Journal that reported on shoes; mainstream news magazines such as Time that reported on furniture upholstery; and news outlet reports such as CNBC that reported on men's undershirts. Online publications are located through an automated Google search. The Reshoring Initiative website lists the search terms used: reshoring, re-shoring, onshoring, backshoring, near-shoring new US manufacturing, manufacturing returning to the USA, and FDI. The data are cleaned and entered into a data set. Each quarter the cleaned data sets are merged to create the most up-to-date database. The data for the current study were collected in September 2016. There were 140 companies identified for use in the current study. The information retained from the database for the current study included company name, a parent company, contingency factors (US production category, total jobs reshored, year reshoring was announced, year reshored, country reshored from, region reshored from, products reshored) and reshoring drivers. The number of jobs reshored across the companies ranged from less than 50 jobs to between 35,001 and 40,000 jobs. The products reshored were from seven categories ranging from home and textiles to shoes and apparel.\nAnalysis and results: Sample\nConclusions: The aim of this research was to examine the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers in the textile and apparel industry. Secondary data were used to study these relationships. The current study is significant as it: increases the number of research studies on the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers and increases the small number of quantitative studies on reshoring drivers. This study contributes to theory by examining reshoring from a contingency theory-based viewpoint. Six contingency factors and ten reshoring drivers were studied. Not all of the relationships were significant.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between contingency factors and reshoring drivers in the US textile and apparel industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Secondary data on the reshoring drivers and contingency factors for 140 US textile and apparel companies are analyzed using analysis of proportions.\nFindings: The findings show that total annual revenue is significantly related to the reshoring driver of skilled workforce. No significant relationships are present between reshoring drivers and the region of the world reshored from not the region of the USA from which a company operates. There is a significant relationship between market segment and the reshoring driver of manufacturing process. The US production category (reshored, FDI, or kept from offshoring) exhibits a significant relationship with sustainability-related and cost-related reshoring drivers. Quality is a significant driver for reshoring from 2010 to 2016, although decreasing as a reported reason over that time period.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations include a focus on one industry, the lack of information to investigate the differences between companies making captive or outsourced reshoring decisions, and the use of companies who publicly announced reshoring.\nPractical implications: This study outlines the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers. The results provide companies with information about resources that will be demand (e.g. skilled workers) as well as policies and regulations that may be developed to address concerns such as sustainability.\nOriginality/value: This study adds to the limited number of studies on the relationships between contingency factors and reshoring drivers and contributes to the quantitative research on reshoring drivers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Can salesperson guilt lead to more satisfied customers? Findings from India
|
[
"Customer satisfaction",
"Effort",
"Guilt proneness",
"Positive outcome feedback",
"Prosocial motivation theory",
"Relational orientation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: [...] guilt can be understood in relationship contexts as a factor that strengthens social bonds by eliciting symbolic affirmation of caring and commitment (Baumeister et al., 1994).\nIntroduction: The development of long-term customer relationships is a fundamental goal of today's salesforces. Not only has the salesperson's job changed radically (Gonzalez et al., 2014), but the function of sales managers has transformed as well. The new strategy is to hire and train salespeople to effectively interact with customers, gather and interpret information, and create solutions to sustain these relationships (Ramani and Kumar, 2008). Researchers are increasingly interested in determining variables that affect customer-salesperson relationships, specifically customer satisfaction (Ahearne et al., 2007; Zallocco et al., 2009).\nMethod: Data collection\nDiscussion: Relationship marketing - while not free of criticism - has become widely accepted as a successful strategy for firms hoping to compete on loyalty, share-of-wallet and word-of-mouth (Ahearne et al., 2007; Gonzalez et al., 2014). Adapting to the sales literature, this relational emphasis requires a salesperson to focus not just on closing the sale but on fostering customer partnerships. Therefore, salespeople who can successfully nurture client relationships add more value to their organization than those who simply generate revenue. These employees also generate commitment, loyalty and customer lifetime value through multiple sales.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate guilt proneness as a prosocial salesperson trait and its impact on outcomes important to the firm, the customer as well as the salesperson. Specifically, the authors look at how this variable relates to job effort and the indirect effects on customer satisfaction. The corollary purpose is to uncover how managers influence these constructs through positive outcome feedback.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Prosocial motivation theory grounds the conceptual model which the authors test through survey implementation. The final sample consisted of 129 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople working across multiple industries in India. Latent moderated structural equation modeling was utilized to test the proposed model.\nFindings: The results suggest that guilt proneness positively influences the likelihood that a salesperson adopts a relational orientation, which has a direct effect on individual effort and an indirect effect on customer satisfaction. Supervisors have the ability to amplify this effort through positive outcome feedback, but only when relational orientation is low. Their support had no effect on salespeople with a high relational orientation.\nOriginality/value: The study is unique in that it combines an overlooked prosocial trait with a B2B Indian dataset. We provide value for firms because our results show that guilt-prone salespeople put more effort into their job - \"something universally desirable among sales managers\" - through the development of a relational orientation. The authors also give practical implications on how to support salespeople given their level of relational orientation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Theodore N. Beckman (1895-1973): external manifestations of the man
|
[
"Marketing theory",
"Business history",
"Academic staff"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper presents a biographical sketch of Theodore N. Beckman (1895-1973) whose career as a member of the marketing faculty at the Ohio State University spanned a half century. Beckman contributed significantly to marketing thought with seminal work in the areas of wholesaling, credit, and marketing productivity. Further, during his career Beckman guided more than 50 doctoral graduates in marketing, many of whom went on to distinguished careers.Mark Twain once wrote that \"biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.\" The original intention here was to write a biography of the man himself, or rather a portrait of the life of Theodore N. Beckman. Unfortunately, there are so many gaps in the information available on Beckman that I have, for now anyway, had to settle for the clothes and buttons.The Ohio State University Archives provided source materials pertaining to Beckman's career, and I was fortunate to benefit from some insights by former students[1]. However, there is no public record, published or unpublished, of Beckman's personal life. This is regrettable. Thus, I am presenting here some \"external manifestations of the man,\" a phrase Beckman used to describe his own attempt to sketch the life of his long-time colleague, Harold Maynard (Beckman, 1959, p. 430).Fame and merit\nScholarship begins: Theodore N. Beckman was born on 3 September 1895, in Dzigovka, Russia (1961). There he attended the Gymnasium, a high school emphasizing classical training in preparation for university. It is uncertain precisely when Beckman immigrated to the USA, but in 1914, about the time he would have finished high school, he enrolled as a student in the faculty of Arts at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. During the next three years he attended OSU full time, and since he held no significant scholarships or fellowships during that period, we can assume either that his family financed his education, or that he worked his way through college. Given the intense work ethic he demonstrated throughout his life, the latter is quite likely the case.From 1917 to 1919 Beckman left university to serve with the US Army in World War I, achieving the rank of second Lieutenant. Most of that time was spent with the American Expeditionary Forces in France, although he also served in the Medical Corps and Infantry. After the war Beckman returned to OSU to finish his undergraduate degree, but he did so as a student in the College of Commerce and Journalism. That academic year (1919/1920) Beckman seems to have found his calling.Studying marketing at OSU\nThe career of a scholar: Professor of Business Organization ...\nContributions to marketing thought: Beckman once posed the following exam question to his doctoral students. Since the inquiring mind of a graduate student is concerned not only with the subject matter, but also with the personalities that have made special contributions to it, you are asked to identify each of the following with reference to affiliation and to indicate the type or character of major contribution for which he is generally known (Beckman, 1965). There followed the names of several eminent marketing scholars. Of course, Beckman's name was not among them ... yet.Beckman's philosophy of marketing was most strongly expressed and widely disseminated in his Principles of Marketing. Indeed, as an undergraduate text it was unusual because of the close attention given to epistemological issues, especially in the first chapter where careful distinctions were drawn between facts, principles, and theories. His most extensive and seminal work was in the field of wholesaling. And his most important conceptual contribution to marketing thought may have been in the area of marketing productivity. Yet, all of this work was interrelated. Its common theme was the identification, definition, and measurement of the activities carried out in the marketing process. Most of the subjects Beckman was concerned with (wholesaling, credit management, marketing productivity) were significant at the time he was writing, but no longer have the same prominence. His most important work appeared in his textbooks. However, it should be kept in mind that this medium was more important then as a means of publishing original ideas than it is today. There were only a handful of textbooks available at that time and the periodic literature was just beginning to develop. The Journal of Marketing, for example, only began publication in 1936.Principles of Marketing emphasized the functional approach to the study of marketing. This reflected Beckman's preoccupation with the productive activities in marketing and his belief that the functional approach was distinctly theoretical in nature. However, to supplement \"the abstractness which sometimes characterizes the functional method of approach\" (Beckman and Maynard, 1927, p. v), there was considerable application to specific commodities and marketing institutions. Thus, all three classic schools of thought were presented. There was also considerable use of historical material and, of course, statistics related to the costs of marketing. Although he wouldn't be described as a marketing historian, Beckman included historical material in most of his textbooks. In 1956 he wrote a paper entitled \"A brief history of the gasoline service station - with special reference to the marketing of tires, batteries, and automotive accessories\", which was never published. However, in 1993 that paper finally appeared in print in the Proceedings of the CHARM Conference (Beckman and Jones, 1993).When Principles was first published in 1927, Beckman believed it was time to move on from the earlier qualitative, descriptive treatments of the subject, to a more scientific study of marketing (Beckman and Maynard, 1952, p. 19). This meant an emphasis on principles, which he defined as \"explanatory statement[s] of general truth, derived from a study of facts set up in a cause and effect relationship, that always applies under given conditions or assumptions\" (Beckman and Maynard, 1952, p. 20). A prerequisite for such analysis was the correct definition of the elements of marketing. In that respect Beckman's contributions to the field of wholesaling are seminal and enduring.Inspired by the work for his Masters thesis (1922), supported by the extensive data collected for the Census, Beckman developed a comprehensive classification system for the field of wholesaling. His precise definitions of the types and functions of wholesaling were original and have remained substantially unchanged for the past 50 years. Of all Beckman's writing, this work also had the widest appeal. It spanned the academic text and periodic literatures, government and trade publications. However, Beckman had only considered these definitions and classifications as the basis for a more important task, determining the relative efficiency of the different parts of the distribution system. That concern with efficiency or marketing productivity remained with him throughout his life.Intellectually and professionally, what concerned Beckman most deeply was the apparent misconception that marketing was an unproductive, unnecessary part of the economic system. As a senior during his undergraduate studies he believed that, contrary to what was being written and taught at that time, marketing activities were both productive and necessary. This belief became the theme for most of his life's work. With his earliest major research study (1922) he began to identify the productive functions of wholesaling and to measure their costs. Later (1940) he expanded his attention conceptually to distinguish between costs and results, using the term \"efficiency\" to represent the ratio of marketing output (results) to input (costs). During the 1950s Beckman focused on the output component and developed the concept and measures of \"value added by marketing\", which he defined as the economic value of the functions performed in the marketing process (Beckman et al., 1956). Many consider Beckman's work on productivity to be his major contribution to marketing thought. Accordingly, in 1965 a special symposium was held on productivity in marketing to honor his scholarly contributions to the discipline (Heskett, 1965).At that symposium, one of Beckman's former students paid tribute to the scholar with the following words:Thanks for your scholarly contribution. Thanks for what you taught us. Thanks for how you taught us. Most importantly, thanks for instilling in us a sense of values which have profoundly affected not only our lives but also, through us, the lives of many future generations (Otteson, 1965, p. 78).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to describe the life and contributions to the marketing discipline of Theodore N. Beckman whose academic career at the Ohio State University spanned some 50 years.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research used traditional historical interpretation of rare archival documents, depth interviews of two of Beckman's former students, and analysis of Beckman's published work.\nFindings: - The findings are reported as an intellectual biography. The paper reports on Beckman's life and career as an eminent marketing scholar.\nOriginality/value: - Little biographical research has been published in the marketing discipline and to date only a brief sketch of Beckman was published in the Journal of Marketing in 1965.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Vibe manager: the most millennial job title ever
|
[
"Productivity",
"Mood manager",
"Positive working environment",
"Vibe",
"Vibe manager"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: If you want your people to have a better time at work, then the job of the vibe manager is to set a positive culture\nVibe at workplace: Companies these days are giving due importance to the look and feel of the workplace. The way the office is designed has been found to have a great impact on productivity, wellness, and engagement levels of employees. Most organizations today, have a well-designed office space, thereby helping to create an environment conducive to the overall productivity of the employees.\nVibe managers: Companies are looking for people who are well connected, who think out of the box, and have their finger on the pulse of the fast-changing lifestyle and industry trends. Throwing parties, designing the office, and organizing outings and lavish dinners are all part of the job description of a vibe manager. They need to find the best of the venues, menus, and places to connect potential clients to employees. They are expected to keep themselves up to date with the latest changes in the lifestyle and industry and adopt the same.\nCase of Bateman Company: It was for the first time in the year 2014, Bateman Company in San Francisco put up a recruitment announcement for \"Talent and Vibe Manager\". The person's responsibility would be to help recruit \"rock star candidates\" and also come up with some trendy ideas for office activities. \"You need to be plugged in enough to find us the right venues, connected to the right people at the right hotels and basically able to leverage the very best of what Brooklyn and San Francisco have to offer,\" CEO and founder of Bateman Group, Fred Bateman, stated in one of his interactions with the media.\nImportance of vibe managers: Vibe managers fit in with the trend of making employees comfortable and happy, thereby enhancing their productivity. The Dutch entrepreneur Schevernels (2015) wrote in his book, \"The use of vibe managers can ensure that a positive working environment is created, in which people really feel at home at work and therefore get better into a flow.\" This is what helps in the creation of a dream climate in place of just a good organizational climate. It is important to attract people who believe in the same dream, and vibe managers just help in ensuring ways and means to get such people together and bind them.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Businesses have become increasingly concerned about creating \"good vibes\" in the workplace. This would lead to an increase in productivity. For this purpose, they are looking for managers who can create those vibes within the office.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper briefly illustrates the role of vibe managers in an organization and how organizations are gaining a competitive edge merely by focusing on enhancing the satisfaction level of their employees.\nFindings: Millennials today are looking for employees who are cool and can match up to their lifestyle. Trendy arrangements in the company help in ensuring that the employees enjoy themselves at work, which in turn can do wonders to their satisfaction levels.\nPractical implications: Companies must respond to the changing environment and come up with entertaining tasks and unique ways to help employees and clients to get to know each other and also relax.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves the time of researchers and executives by highlighting the important role of vibe managers and how the office vibes can be a cause of satisfaction or dissatisfaction for our employees.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The impact of organisational support for career development on career satisfaction
|
[
"Career satisfaction",
"Human resource management",
"Employee development",
"Career management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Changes in the economic, technological and business environment during the last two decades have significantly impacted people's career attitudes and experiences (Hall, 2002; Pinnington and Lafferty, 2003). These environmental changes have contributed to the establishment of a new psychological contract: the reciprocal obligations held by employees and employers (Hall, 2002). The predominance of organisational restructuring, de-layering and downsizing has contributed to a more flexible or \"boundaryless\" career environment with expectations that individuals will self-manage their careers, rather than rely on organisational direction (Arthur et al., 2005; Kossek et al., 1998).\nKey model elements: Career satisfaction (subjective career success)\nMethod: Sample\nResults: Means, standard deviations and internal reliability for the variables of interest are shown in Table I. An exploratory factor analysis showed that the formal and informal OSCD items loaded on one factor, accounting for 53 per cent of the variance in the factor structure. All the OSCD items were therefore averaged to form a composite OSCD score, with an internal consistency reliability of 0.90.An exploratory factor analysis of the career management behaviours found that all items (except for the two mobility-oriented items and one networking item) loaded above 0.30 on the first factor, accounting for 30 per cent of the variance in the factor structure. A composite career management behaviour score was calculated by averaging all the items loading above 0.30 on the first factor, with an internal consistency reliability of 0.88. The networking item and two mobility-oriented items were removed from further analyses.All the remaining scales obtained internal consistency reliability above 0.85 (refer Table I).The public sector and postgraduate business student samples were analysed to determine differences on demographic variables. The only significant differences were that the university respondents were less likely to be female (kh2 (1)=7.52, p<0.01) and tended to be younger (kh2 (3)=13.86, p<0.01) than the public sector respondents. Due to there being only minor differences, the two cohorts were combined into one sample.Hypothesis testing\nDiscussion: This study explored the contribution that organisations and employees can make to their career satisfaction and the mechanisms by which these relationships occur. This was achieved by testing a subset of the relationships proposed by an extended model of SCCT (Lent and Brown, 2006) and an integrative model of proactive career behaviours (Crant, 2000). The study explored how proactive personality, OSCD and individual career management behaviours relate to career satisfaction.Consistent with previous research (Ng et al., 2005; Seibert et al., 2001a), this study found that proactive personality was significantly positively related to career satisfaction. The study also found that career management behaviours mediated the relationship between proactive personality and career satisfaction. These results support the model of proactive behaviours, which suggests that highly proactive individuals are more likely to achieve greater career satisfaction than less proactively inclined individuals, by engaging in proactive career behaviours (Crant, 2000). The results also support the theoretical proposition by Lent and Brown (2006) that specific personality traits (proactive personality) impact satisfaction via behavioural means (career management behaviours).After controlling for education level and tenure, OSCD explained a moderate 8 per cent variance in career satisfaction. This result supports the premise made by the extended SCCT model that access to goal-relevant environmental resources will be directly related to satisfaction (Lent and Brown, 2006). This finding also supports this study's proposal that organisations can influence their employees' experience of career success by supporting their employees' career development.Individual career management behaviour (comprising career planning, networking, skills development and visibility) was also positively related to career satisfaction. After controlling for education level and tenure, individual career management behaviour explained 9 per cent additional variance in career satisfaction. This finding is consistent with SCCT and the model of proactive career behaviours, since it supports the proposal that individuals taking proactive actions to achieve their career goals (engaging in career management behaviours) are more likely to experience career satisfaction (Crant, 2000; Lent, 2005).The proposal that individual career management behaviours mediated the relationship between OSCD and career satisfaction received no support, due to a non-significant relationship between OSCD and career management behaviours. This finding is inconsistent with the extended SCCT model, which predicts that environmental resources may impact satisfaction indirectly via their impact on goal-directed activities. The relationship between contextual factors, such as OSCD, and individual career management behaviours has received mixed empirical support. For example, Lent et al. (2005) found two different outcomes from their two different studies. The first study of 177 students found a significant relationship between environmental supports and resources and student progress towards their academic goals. The second study of 299 students found no direct relationship between these variables.A possible explanation for this study's results is that individual difference variables, such as proactive personality, moderate the relationship between OSCD and career management behaviours. Given that individuals with a proactive disposition are relatively unconstrained by situational forces (Crant, 2000) it is likely that highly proactive people will engage in career management behaviours independent of the OSCD they perceive. This study possibly suffered from a restriction of range in this independent variable, since the study's respondents (employees participating in career development programs and/or further study) are more likely to have highly proactive dispositions, and therefore engage in career management behaviours independent of their perceived OSCD. This explanation is supported somewhat by the relatively high mean score for proactive personality (3.65 on a five-point scale). Another possible reason for career management behaviours not mediating between OSCD and career satisfaction is that there are additional environmental supports and resources (such as those outside the organisation), individual difference or social cognitive variables impacting individuals' career management behaviours which were not explored in this study.Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organisational support for career development (OSCD) and employees' career satisfaction. Based on an extended model of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and an integrative model of proactive behaviours, the study proposed that career management behaviours would mediate the relationship between OSCD and career satisfaction, and between proactive personality and career satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Public and private sector employees (N=90) participating in career development activities completed a survey regarding their proactivity, OSCD, career management behaviours and career satisfaction.\nFindings: - OSCD, proactive personality and career management behaviours were all positively related to career satisfaction and career management behaviours mediated the relationship between proactive personality and career satisfaction. There was no support for the career management behaviours mediating between OSCD and career satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study provided support for the extended SCCT model by testing a subset of its proposed relationships using a cross-sectional approach. The sample surveyed (employees participating in career development activities) and the large proportion of full-time employees, may limit the generalisability of the findings. Future longitudinal research could more fully test the relationships proposed by the extended SCCT model and include a greater representation of part-time and casual employees.\nPractical implications: - The results suggest that there are benefits for organisations and individuals investing in career development.. First, from an organisational perspective, investing in OSCD may enhance employees' career satisfaction. Second, employees may enhance their own career satisfaction by participating in career management behaviours.\nOriginality/value: - This study integrated the predictions of two models (an extension of SCCT and a model of proactive behaviours) to test the influence of environmental (OSCD) and individual difference (proactive personality) variables on career satisfaction. Exploring how organisational and individual variables together influence career satisfaction provides a more balanced approach to theoretical development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Supporting partner identification for virtual organisations in manufacturing
|
[
"Virtual organizations",
"Partners",
"Modelling",
"Simulation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Owing to globalisation and constantly increasing customer expectations, companies in the manufacturing sector are in a difficult situation: in order to remain competitive within today's customer-driven markets they have to provide customer tailored products which are both unique and offer add-ons to make them more attractive than competitors' products. At the same time, the production costs have to be reduced in order to keep the products competitive in comparison to those coming from low-wage countries.The constantly growing complexity of such products as well as the customer demands regarding innovation, quality and, last but not least, low prices (Picot et al., 2003) require efficient manufacturing systems which cannot be offered by a single company. In order to reduce the time to market to a minimum, while penetrating the market with reasonable prices and highest quality, cooperative approaches have to be followed instead.One way to deal with this situation is to form partnerships of legally independent organisations and share existing resources and skills in order to achieve a common goal. The duration of these partnerships can vary from short- (comprising the production of only one product) until long-termed relationships such as supply chains. The general aim of the resulting enterprise networks is to exploit the core competencies of each of the involved partners in order to fulfil the partly conflicting requirements regarding innovation, quality and prices. If such a network appears as a single company to the customer, it is called a virtual organisation (VO) (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2005).\n2 Motivation: In contrast to long-term enterprise networks, VOs may exist for one order only. Once the order-based business purpose is achieved, they are dissolved and each of the partners aims to become a member of another VO. Although, this kind of cooperation offers a huge potential for companies to maintain their market position, it also entails a significant risk of failure (Wegehaupt, 2004). The main problem in this context is the identification of the right partners for the different stages of the value creation process. Bottlenecks within such an enterprise network resulting from weak or unreliable partners endanger the entire network, preventing the common business purpose from being achieved at all or without increasing costs or lead times. In addition to this, VOs have to be responsive to market demands. This means that the time needed to become operational should not be longer than for an individual enterprise (Seifert, 2007). Thus, the creation process and here the identification and configuration of the right partners represent a critical step and requires the support of a tool (Brutsch, 1999).Owing to the fact that VOs promise a huge potential for industry, the concept is discussed intensively in both research and industry. Recently, one can find various organisational as well technical solutions addressing the improvement of different phases of a VO's lifecycle. However, the configuration phase and here especially the identification of the right partners are not sufficiently considered by these approaches.In order to fill this gap this paper focuses on the identification and configuration of the right partners for a given business purpose. The main objective is to derive a suitable approach by discussing existing technologies and approaches based on a set of core requirements. By achieving that aim, this the paper aims to give an overview of potential approaches, which may be applied for partner identification and configuration and discusses their strengths and weaknesses.The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 3 discusses the concept of VOs and emphasizes the need for a tool supporting partner configuration. Subsequently, the requirements for supporting partner identification and configuration with a tool are developed in Section 4. Within Section 5 existing approaches for the development of the tool are discussed and ranked according the requirements gathered before. Following, a simulation environment is presented in Section 6 together with a small case-study. Section 7 contains the conclusion and Chapter 8 the references.\n3 Virtual organisations in manufacturing: In the last decade, customer-driven markets as well as the evolution of industry in low-wage countries has lead to a paradigm shift in the manufacturing sector. Previous business approaches which aimed at producing the main parts of the product range within the own company were given up. Instead, attempts were made to outsource the production of those parts which can better be delivered by other companies. The point of view changed completely from \"my factory is my castle\" to \"do what you can do best and let the others do the rest\".According to Kaluza (2000), the expectations of industry in such a cooperative provision of products and services cover different aspects (Figure 1).In addition to these, Probilla et al. (1996) justify the development towards cooperative production on increased uncertainties in the market as well as the increased product complexity. In this context, the concept of VOs is discussed as task-oriented ad hoc co-operations.Thus, partnerships in the manufacturing sector are not novel and therefore several different terms (outsourcing, supply chains, enterprise networks, production networks, etc.) have been created all of which describe cooperative, distributed production. A taxonomy was proposed by Sydow (2006) with the aim of achieving a better understanding of the different forms of co-operation. He reduces existing approaches into four different basic kinds (strategic network, project network, regional network, virtual enterprise) all of which are integrated within a matrix comprising four fields along the control of the partnership as well as its duration (Figure 2).Here, the virtual enterprise - which can be considered synonymous with VO - is described as a specific form of a project network which is differentiated from regional or strategic networks by its temporal limitation which means that it exists only for a certain business purpose and will be dissolved after the mission is completed whereas the business connections will be kept and - if applicable - reactivated later for another project. Through the consequent utilisation of IT-technology the virtual enterprise is seen as a cooperation form which appears to the customer as a single enterprise. Although the control of such organisations is seen as partly heterachic, most of them are driven according to a hierarchic approach where a leading company with access to the market aims to find the right partner for a business opportunity (Seifert, 2007).The Virtual Factory Bodensee is one example of an existing VO. It is a consortium of 30 highly specialised companies, all of which are associated through a stable communication platform. In the context of order-related projects, some of these companies form a VO which will be dissolved after the fulfilment of the underlying order. As for project networks, the duration of the partnership is limited to the common business purpose but the connections will be maintained afterwards.VOs gain more and more importance in industry. Indeed, they represent a promising approach in order to cope with the requirements of today's customer-driven markets in the era of globalisation and to ensure the competitiveness of companies. At the same time, the order-based, highly dynamic establishment, operation and dissolution of VOs make them different from other forms of cooperation in manufacturing such as traditional supply chains. In contrast to these rather long-termed relationships which can be adapted during their operation after weaknesses have been discovered VOs have to operate in an efficient way from the outset (Seifert, 2007). Owing to their limited lifetime there is usually no possibility for their improvement without losses in terms of sales, costs or lead times all of which coming along with negative impacts on profitability.3.1 Partner identification in virtual organisations\n4 Requirements for a tool supporting the evaluation of consortia: In fact, there are several requirements which have to be considered for the development of a tool supporting the partner identification and configuration in the context of VOs in the manufacturing sector. They can be separated into two categories: those arising from the specific characteristics of VOs and those related to the industrial use of the tool. Both of these categories will be addressed briefly in the following sections.4.1 Requirements related to the specific characteristics of virtual organisations\n5 Existing approaches: Several approaches be considered suitable for the development of a tool supporting the modelling and evaluation of partner configurations in the context of VOs. Each of them has been used in research as well as in industry for the exploration of complex systems in various domains. Whilst their detailed discussion is outside of the scope of this paper, their main strengths and weaknesses regarding their utilisation for partner configuration are briefly illustrated in the following.5.1 Mathematical methods\n6 A simulation tool supporting partner configuration in virtual organisations: The foundation of the simulation tool which will be presented in the following was laid by the project, optimisation methodologies for networked enterprises (ONE), funded by the European Commission and successfully completed in 2003 with a first working prototype of a simulation environment for enterprise networks (Ding et al., 2004). The main goal of the ONE project was to develop an integrated toolset which would allow the analysis and optimisation of stable supply chains as well as highly dynamic networks. As the tool targeted big as well as small and medium enterprises, great emphasis was placed on user friendly design which also comprises an easy integration into the existing IT-infrastructure. The tool will be presented in the following along with its main components. Subsequently, a small case-study is presented in order to demonstrate the application of the tool and its look and feel.6.1 Components of the tool\n7 Conclusion: The tool has attracted significant attention by industry. Obviously, there is a considerable interest in tools supporting the partner identification and configuration in the context of VOs or the reconfiguration of consortia within more stable enterprise networks such as supply chains.This paper discussed and compared existing approaches and showed that simulation generally represents a suitable approach to support domain experts. However, it also highlighted the lesson learned that usefulness and applicability of simulation systems mainly depend on their user-friendliness. Suitable modelling approaches, powerful graphical user interfaces as well as components for model verification can dramatically increase the acceptance and efficiency of simulation environments. A component which supports users in the identification of a suitable solution for a given problem can further reduce the effort for a simulation study.That a simulation in the context of partner configuration cannot provide a solution on its own can be seen as a general problem with this approach. Automated solution finding could prove very helpful for users to get an initial idea about an efficient solution and therefore effect a significant reduction of the time required for consortia establishment.After a first approach to such an automated solution finding was successfully implemented and tested for the supplier selection problem during the ONE project (Ding et al., 2004), a slightly different approach is currently in elaboration. While the former approach was based on genetic algorithms the new attempt is based on genetic programming (Biethahn et al., 2004; Nissen, 2000). In contrast to genetic algorithms, this approach does not require the transformation of the underlying simulation model into an abstract, string-based representation and vice versa. Instead, genetic programming (as it is applied here) uses instructions for the modification of the underlying model which are combined to programs that will be applied to the internal evolutionary process. Furthermore, genetic programming promises more flexibility regarding the problem specification. As for the former approach the simulation engine will be used in order to calculate the fitness for a certain individual. Work in this direction is currently close to completion.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Virtual organisations (VOs) in manufacturing represent a promising approach for dealing with today's difficult markets. The selection of the right partners during the creation phase is a prerequisite for their success. Owing to the complexity of the underlying networks as well as the need to react immediately to market opportunities, tool support is necessary for finding a suitable consortia for a given business purpose while reducing the immanent risk of failure. The purpose of this paper is to exemplify the conception and realisation of such a tool.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach taken in this work consists of four steps: first of all, the requirements to be fulfilled by the tool are derived from the main characteristics of VOs. Subsequently, existing approaches which could serve as a technical basis for the tool are presented and ranked. To conclude, a tool design is introduced and applied to a brief case study.\nFindings: - It is shown that simulation appears as very suitable within the considered problem domain. It is further pointed out that simulation requires user-friendly components addressing modelling, simulation execution and analysis in order to be applicable and accepted by domain experts as end-users.\nOriginality/value: - The paper presents an overview of technical approaches supporting partner identification during the establishment phase of VOs. It describes a concept for a simulation environment addressing the needs of practitioners from industry. Finally, it depicts necessary extensions for model verification and solution finding.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Job search of men and women on long-term social welfare
|
[
"Germany",
"Gender",
"Job search",
"Growth curve models",
"Household constellation",
"Welfare duration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Modern welfare states are concerned about welfare dependency and that welfare recipients may rely solely on benefits without searching for a job and that job search efforts may even decline over lasting welfare receipt. In reaction to this concern, and similar to other welfare states, Germany implemented strong activating welfare policies with the labour market reforms in mid-2000. The reform involves the normative that welfare recipients have to recommence contributing to the household income as soon as possible (Eichhorst et al., 2010). This principle itself is gender-neutral; the activation policy is informed by an adult worker model (Fleckenstein, 2011).\n2. The German context: The German welfare system under study was implemented in 2005 with the so-called \"Hartz IV\" reforms. The reforms were a major step in the transition of the German welfare state from a strong conservative towards a more liberal model (Esping-Andersen, 1990). To prevent poverty - but not to conserve the previous social status and living standard, a means-tested benefit, titled \"Unemployment Benefit II\", provides the socio-economic existence minimum for individuals and their households deemed able to work and whose entitlement to unemployment insurance has been exhausted.\n3. Theoretical considerations: 3.1 Rational choice model\n4. Data and methods: To evaluate the hypotheses on job search behaviour and its changes over time, the study used data from the first seven panel waves of the study \"Labour Market and Social Security\" (PASS 0613 v1, Trappmann et al., 2013; Berg et al., 2014). The PASS is an annual panel survey of 8,000-12,000 households, approximately 40 per cent of which are receiving the German means-tested welfare benefit \"Unemployment Benefit II\". The following analysis used a total of 14,849 observations from 7,168 individuals who received the means-tested welfare benefits and were unemployed at the time of the survey interviews. Information from any panel wave was used in cases where individuals were unemployed and receiving benefits.\n5. Results: 5.1 Job search and household constellation\n6. Conclusions: The aim of this paper was to shed light on welfare recipients' engagement in job search over time. The job search probability of welfare recipients differs by household constellation and gender upon commencement of welfare receipt; only some groups do in fact reduce their job search likelihood over long periods of welfare receipt, whereas others seem to maintain or even increase their motivation. Differences by household constellation and gender are less distinct for changes in job search probability over time than for the level at the beginning of receipt.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the job search probability in welfare receipt over time for men and women in different household constellations, because it is a major concern in welfare states that long-term receipt is driven by recipients' low job search activity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper analyses the likelihood to search for a job for a sample of unemployed recipients of means-tested welfare benefits in Germany. Data basis is the panel study \"Labour Market and Social Security\" (PASS), and growth curve models are applied in this study.\nFindings: Job search probability differs by household constellation and gender directly after the onset of welfare receipt; differences are less distinct for changes in job search probability over time. Only welfare recipients without children show a pronounced decline in search probability.\nPractical implications: There is no evidence that welfare recipients' overall cease to search for a job by and by. Financial incentives alone cannot stimulate the job search of welfare recipients, when the diverse motives of male and female recipients in various household constellations are not considered as well.\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first to study the long-term development in the job search probability and gender differences by household constellations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
"English is an unwritten rule here": Non-formalised language policies in multinational corporations
|
[
"Case studies",
"Internal communications",
"Multinational companies",
"Languages",
"Corporate communications"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been paid on how companies address linguistic diversity among their employees. A large amount of this research deals with the development and implementation of corporate language policies, and specifically the adoption of a common corporate language, usually English (e.g. de Groot, 2012; Feely and Harzing, 2003; Fredriksson et al., 2006; Harzing et al., 2011; Marschan-Piekkari et al., 1999a). By selecting one, or alternatively a small number of languages, as the standard language for internal communication, corporate language policies are one of the most frequently used types of language management tools today, particularly in multinational corporations (MNCs), where language boundary crossing often constitutes an integral part of employees' daily work activities (Sanden, 2016a; Sanden and Lonsmann, 2018). In Denmark, for example - a small and relatively linguistically homogeneous northern European country with a national language spoken by approximately five million people (Thompson and Phillips, 2013) - 53 per cent of companies who took part in a study conducted by the Confederation of Danish industry in 2013 reported that they made use of English as their corporate language (122 out of 230 companies, Dansk Industri, 2013).\nCorporate language policies - an overview: The implementation of corporate language policies, and especially the use of English as a corporate language, has become a key topic in the growing literature on language and communication in MNCs (Brannen et al., 2014). A common corporate language may establish a shared linguistic framework for information exchange and knowledge sharing in the organisation by removing some of the communicative barriers presented by linguistic heterogeneity (Marschan-Piekkari et al., 1999a, b; Thomas, 2008). Thus, a parallel can be drawn to the concept of language standardisation previously carried out in nation-states, as a way of minimising linguistic diversity by selecting one language as the standard language of a multilingual society (Haugen, 1966; Linn et al., 2018). The frequent choice of English as the corporate language stems from its widespread use in global communication (Tietze, 2008).\nMethodology: Case companies\nThree non-formalised language policies: As the aim of this paper is to examine the immediate and long-term consequences of non-formalised language policies, we present findings that bring insight into the dynamics of these policies by focussing on first, what these polices are by considering the implicit language policy situation they create; second, why these policies came about by exploring the formation of these policies; and finally, how these policies work in practice by examining issues of language policy compliance and non-compliance.\nDiscussion: Our three case companies' approaches to language management illustrate how MNCs may develop non-formalised language policies that focus on providing a common linguistic framework for employees in their everyday multilingual encounters. These language policies are clearly distinct from formalised language policies that contain more or less visible elements of regulatory governance in which the purpose of the policy is to define which language employees should resort to in cross-language communication (see Table III).\nConclusion: As our discussion has shown, the concept of non-formalised language policies raises a number of questions regarding corporate language management and also international management in general. For geographically dispersed MNCs, the formalisation of routines and standard operating procedures is a mechanism the company's leadership commonly use in order to coordinate and standardise activities across national borders (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989, p. 361). The purpose of a language policy is often - also in the three case companies included in the present study - to create a common framework for communication across linguistic differences; in other words, to coordinate language use and language practices within an otherwise highly multilingual environment. Non-formalised language policies, therefore, challenge the concept of corporate policies in general: without a formal language policy decision, employees are left with little guidance as to how the company's official stance towards language use should be complied with in everyday communicative encounters. Rather than limiting the room for individual decision-making at the front-line level, which is the essence of formalisation, a non-formalised language policy leaves all decision-making power to the company's collective workforce.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of corporate language policies that are implemented without formal decision-making processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study based on three Scandinavian multinational corporations which use English as a common corporate language without formal language policy decisions.\nFindings: Non-formalised language policies are found to be clearly distinct from formalised language policies in terms of language policy format, language policy focus, language policy formation, language planning agency and management style. Non-formalised language policies can represent a type of informal control, but the absence of a policy document leaves employees without a common reference point which may cause confusion and inter-collegial conflict.\nOriginality/value: The study offers a nuanced perspective on the role of language policies in corporate communication by demonstrating that language policies may come in a variety of different forms, also as implicit assumptions about language use. Findings reveal benefits and drawbacks of the different language policy approaches.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Internationalization, market forces and domestic sectoral institutionalization
|
[
"International business",
"Organizational analysis",
"Market forces",
"Turkey",
"Exports",
"Social capital"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: preconditions for institutionalization of export development: A comprehensive list of features unique to SMEs is provided by MacGregor (2004) implying newly required competencies, skills and attitudes with regard to internationalization. Features which may be perceived detrimental for internationalization refer, for example, to:* a strong desire to be independent consequently avoiding business ventures that limit such interdependence;* an attitude to withhold information;* making decisions intuitively rather than strategically;* facing a capital gap;* experiencing a lack of competitiveness with larger competitors;* having lower control over the external environment compared with large companies; and* suffering higher failure rates.Specific shortcomings necessitating the acquisition of newly required international management skills refer to:* the gap between the awareness of entrepreneurs of the challenges triggered by internationalization (Kaufmann et al. 2008); and* the strategic responses and specific transition relevant entrepreneurial behavior (Kaufmann et al., 1994). The latter refers to an aspect which especially includes a new requirement for \"synthetic\" behavior in terms of a co-operation between agents of the old and new economic system.Explaining export behavior, Cavusgil and Nevin (1981) considered the level of commitment as one of the sub-dimensions to their study. This behavioral structure is complemented by adaptation to the foreign market system and, the process of participation (Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975; Bilkey and Tesar, 1977; Cavusgil, 1980; Vrontis, 2003; Vrontis et al., 2009). One of the important elements that exporters should consider, with respect to the participation process, refers to acquiring foreign market knowledge. The premise of having achieved a high knowledge level with regards to the foreign market implies that fewer problems will be encountered later in foreign markets (Katsikeas and Morgan, 1994; Vrontis and Kitchen, 2005). While classifying the theoretical studies that were carried out on internationalization, one of the criteria used by Andersson et al. (2004) is the \"learning process\" which brings export knowledge to the fore. The learning process that the export enterprise goes through is a basis for the conceptualization of export behavior. We may make here a reference to the concept of \"experimental market knowledge\" (Eriksson et al., 1997), which comprises foreign business knowledge and foreign institutional knowledge. Institutional learning concentrates on institutional frameworks, rules, norms and values. Focusing on the view that the knowledge element is the basis for the market mechanism, Potts (2001) noted that this comprised certain rules and, in the case that these rules constitute measurable behavior, institutionalization can be achieved. Emphasizing the importance of the institutionalization of export development, Reid (1981) demonstrated that structural conditions do exist under which export expansion institutionalizes.Foreign market information or learning has a moderating effect on the internationalization and performance relationship (Hsu and Pereira, 2008). This learning process and information can convert or support domestic market institutionalization. Beyond the existence of an interactive relationship between institutionalization and market forces, internationalization is also perceived to have an indirect or moderating effect in this process. As FDI has an effect on product market competition (Markusen and Venables, 1999), it can be hypothesized that a high degree of internationalization (DOI) can support domestic market institutionalization.While the dyadic links between domestic market forces, internationalization and domestic market institutionalization have been studied before; correlating the three constructs and investigating the moderating relationship of internationalization is an innovative approach. By means of sparsely used data on the emerging market of Turkey, this article contributes to the literature by considering previously disparate research streams from institutional development, internationalization and institutionalization. This article will combine the research streams to produce an interdisciplinary model showing the moderating effect of internationalization on the relationship between market forces and market institutionalization in an idiosyncratic transitional setting.This paper is designed in three sections. The first section organizes the theoretical perspectives of environmental influences, internationalization and embeddedness and institutionalization concepts and their relationships. The second section describes the study conducted in order to achieve the research aim by a moderated hierarchical regression analysis. In the final section the findings are discussed and managerial implications are provided.\n1 Literature review: Environmental influences\n2 Methodology: The major research objective of this study is to investigate the moderating effect of the internationalization degree on the relationship between market forces and institutionalization.Pre-study\n3 Results: Descriptive characteristics\n4 Discussion and conclusion: The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effect of internationalization on the relationship between market forces and institutionalization. The study was conducted on 149 Turkish exporters. The literature review resulted in two hypotheses. As expected, market forces - trust and organization - have a significant statistical effect on sectoral institutionalization. Internationalization only affects institutionalization when interaction effects were taken into account.We found a direct relationship between trust within the domestic industrial sector, on the one hand, and the organization of the domestic industrial sector and domestic market institutionalization, on the other. Said more simply, when firms trust each other and have confidence in each other, the institutionalization of the domestic sector is more effective. The industry's internationalization is quickening the pace and adaptation of institutionalization of the domestic industrial sector.When interaction effects were analyzed, it was found that the two market forces have a larger effect on institutionalization for a higher degree of internationalization.An important factor of market forces is trust within the domestic industrial sector, and this has a large effect on DSI. It can be considered that communication, confidence and trustful relationships are the main triggering and interaction variables to institutionalization.In terms of the importance of trust, this study confirms previous research findings (Elmuti and Kathawala, 2001; Todeva and Knoke, 2001; van Laere and Heene, 2003; Pansiri, 2005; Li and Qian, 2007; Sharp et al., 2004; Gilsing and Lemmens, 2005): capital intensive industries in well organized, trustful environments can succeed and benefit from internationalization.The organizational or infrastructural factor (as a second dimension of market forces) has an effect on the main interaction framework. All of these results mean that internationalization experiences of exporters are vital for the transformation of the organizational structure of the domestic industrial sector. But, the internationalization degree converts the positive interaction effect of organization to a negative one (b=-0.735). This conversion (i.e. revising the organization structure) means that internationalization requires a change of the organization structure of the sector. The learning process and experiences created by internationalization cause a higher level of structural adaptation.There are possible implications from the obtained results for the Turkish export companies and the local sector construction process. First of all, in order for the knowledge factor (which the export companies acquire in foreign markets) to be transferred to the local market, the companies need to develop an infrastructure for the local market and start an effective organization. While examining market efficiency Keogh and D'Archy (1999) have mentioned that a property market has three levels: organization of the market, construction of the market and creation of a constructional environment. Therefore, the effectiveness of the organization within the sector or market will be a priority for developing competitiveness.With respect to the required building of infrastructure in the local market, however, some barriers erected by local companies might be anticipated - a topic, suggested for further research. Export companies with high regional networking will grow and internationalize faster (Keeble et al., 1998). Hence, infrastructure, especially the organization dimension, will increase the effects of exporting companies on non exporting companies in the domestic sector. This could be perceived to be at the detriment of local companies which might obstruct the development of the sector - implying relational risks such as opportunistic behavior (Elmuti and Kathawala, 2001). This may also affect the attitudes and actions of other companies towards exporting. The dual role of networking or SANs, horizontal or vertical, embeddedness and the implicitly accruing social capital for both, internationalization and constructing the domestic market becomes apparent. Sharp et al. (2004) and Herbohn and Harrison (2004) suggest that an over-emphasis on formal contracts, rigidity or even hostile acquisitions should be avoided as this is regarded to be counterproductive to the spirit of the network which should be based on a voluntary exchange of information, learning efficiency and solutions to common problems.Hodgson (2004) has described institutions as durable systems of established and embedded social rules with structured social interactions, and he has emphasized that constructional changes and constraints can change thoughts, behavior habits and can limit actions. The information transferred to the domestic market with the help of exportation will create a limiting structure in the domestic sector. The basic outcome of this study may be helpful here: the foundational constructions in Turkey exhibit a character that is dependent on the experiences, job culture, infrastructure and communication system, and the strength of the machine system. Therefore, it needs to construct organization and the production framework as the machine park. Furthermore, there has to be information creation by internationalization and, an organization has to be provided which makes the knowledge flow. This is in line with Richter (2001) emphasizing that social action is the common basis of the new economic sociology and new foundational economy. Social action is all about the companies and institutions making their interconnections between them. Conclusively, exporting may be regarded as making an important contribution to a new economic sociology and foundational economy in the domestic country of the exporter. This confirms the wealth creating role of private enterprise as discussed, for example, by Gold (2003).The DOI is described in terms of: business culture, product strategy, know-how system, business relations and price strategy, the experiences of the export personnel, and finally the export administration experience of the company exporting business into foreign countries (with respect to adaptation to foreign markets). The stronger this system is, the stronger its effects will be on other companies in Turkey.However, the salient point here is that the experiences of the export companies require a certain level to be effective in knowledge transfer. New export companies are not expected to have a strong effect on local sector construction. When the structure of an export company in foreign markets is explained in terms of company-environment relations, it should adapt to its environment (selection) and protect its independence against other companies (Aldrich and Pfeffer, 1976). This will enable it to stay strong in the market enabling development of a stable, relevant and comprehensive knowledge base. Therefore, experienced exporters will have a stronger effect on the domestic market. For the newer companies, it is important to rapidly adapt to the foreign markets by uniting with the trust and organization powers in the sector and to transfer knowledge to Turkey. Promising, in this respect, are the findings of MacGregor (2004) and Li and Qian (2007), stressing that younger SMEs are more inclined to engage in networks than older SMEs. Specific training programmes on international entrepreneurship are suggested to support the companies' development in this respect.The increase in foreign knowledge by increased levels of social capital and the capital flow, achieved by higher levels of exports, have contributed to the structuring of the sectors. This, in turn, has considerable implications on administrational terms. First, an active communication network must be created within the sector to synchronize government regulations on export development and export experience. This is confirmed by Yamada (Gingrich, 2003) pointing to the significant role of communication to create and preserve interorganizational networks. Second, for formal institutionalization in the sector, companies intensively involved in export activities in foreign countries and, at the same time, doing business within the country, should be assessed. This is supported by Williamson (2000) stating that new institutional economics consists of four levels:1. embeddedness (informal rules and norms);2. formal rules;3. governance; and4. resource allocations.In addition, the relation between informal and formal institutions (Zenger et al., 2001) should not be ignored. This information finally paves the way for certain constitutional and unconstitutional regulations, rules and promotions in order to raise the level of trust in Turkey. The companies willing to export to Turkey should get involved in the communication network and organization, and increase their own effectiveness. Also, the fact that the market mechanism is embedded proves that the sector has reached co-ordination (Jonmark and Grabacke, 2004, p. 86).Finally, summarizing: this paper provides new detailed insight into the required preconditions for, and the effects of, a successful interplay between macro economic and entrepreneurial strategies with particular relevance for economies in transition. From a variety of disjoint sources, it provides a coherent body of literature underpinning this endeavor.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of micro-environmental international entrepreneurship and the macro-environmental market forces on domestic institutionalization of the industrial sector. In doing so, the paper examines the moderating effect of the degree of internationalization on the relationship between domestic market forces and domestic sectoral institutionalization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based upon the creation of the item pools \"domestic sectoral institutionalization\", \"market forces\" and \"degree of internationalization\" derived from previous research, an applied Delphi technique and a representative sample of 149 exporters in Turkey, a survey using a web-based questionnaire was conducted. All scales were designed and a number of hypotheses were validated. Results were analyzed by the principal components of factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and moderated hierarchical regression.\nFindings: - The empirical analysis resulted in an interaction effect of two sub-elements of the market forces (trust and organization) and internationalization. The findings imply that internationalization can make an important contribution to the institutionalization of the domestic industrial sector. The paper confirms the findings of previous research on the significant importance of trust for institutionalization. Summarizing, it was found that internationalization significantly and positively moderates the effect of trust on institutionalization. Interestingly, however, internationalization negatively moderates the effect of organization on institutionalization implying that the learning process and experiences created by internationalization cause a higher level of structural adaptation.\nOriginality/value: - This paper innovatively sheds light upon the interrelationship between macro environmental market forces, internationalization of entrepreneurship and domestic institutionalization. In doing so, it relates various disciplines, as national and international entrepreneurial behavior, with sociological aspects such as institutionalization for the sake of achieving important macro economic objectives, especially for countries in transition. The comprehensive, reliable and valid research methodology can be applied when researching this topic with important economic implications for transitional economies in other research settings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A new recommendation system on the basis of consumer initiative decision based on an associative classification approach
|
[
"Electronic commerce",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Recommendation system",
"Initiative decision"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rapid development of e-commerce and increasingly massive information have caused that consumers cannot quickly find their own interests and needed products (Kemeny et al., 2016). Electronic commerce recommendation system is an efficient way to solve the problem of information overload. The research of recommendation system is a part of the automation research of personalized website and widely used by e-commerce practitioners (Hung, 2005; Guo et al., 2017). Recommendation systems recommend the information and products to customers based on their interests, characteristics and purchasing behavior, which can effectively increase sales (Bodapati, 2008). They also provide an effective way for enterprise managers to analyze consumers' behavior, predict product sales and make better decisions (Punj and Moore, 2007; Li et al., 2017b). Therefore, the recommendation system is becoming an increasingly hot research spot.\n2. Related works: The literature review focuses on three perspectives: the recommendation system; customer satisfaction and initiative decision; and associative classification and the combination strategy.\n3. The proposed methodology: 3.1 Recommendation scheme optimization framework\n4. Experimental study: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Conclusions and future work: With the rapid development of the e-commerce market, customers and enterprises are in urgent need of the effective e-commerce recommendation system. The recommendation system is an important tool to offer personalized service and maximize customers' satisfaction. At the same time, the recommendation system can improve the service level and prevent the loss of customers; hence, it can help enterprises finally achieve higher sales performance. Therefore, the design of effective recommendation system has high practical significance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to improve the customer satisfaction by offering online personalized recommendation system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By employing an innovative associative classification method, this paper is able to predict a customer's pleasure during the online while-recommending process. Consumers can make an active decision to recommended products. Based on customer's characteristics, a product will be recommended to the potential buyer if the model predicts that he/she will click to view the product. That is, he/she is satisfied with the recommended product. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed recommendation system is validated through a Taobao shop.\nFindings: The results of the experimental study clearly show that the online personalized recommendation system maximizes the customer's satisfaction during the online while-recommending process based on an innovative associative classification method on the basis of consumer initiative decision.\nOriginality/value: Conventionally, customers are considered as passive recipients of the recommendation system. However, customers are tired of the recommendation system, and they can do nothing sometimes. This paper designs a new recommendation system on the basis of consumer initiative decision. The proposed recommendation system maximizes the customer's satisfaction during the online while-recommending process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
History, field definition and management studies: the case of the New Deal
|
[
"Historical research",
"Management history",
"Historical periods",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The roots of this paper lie in two important phenomena - one theoretical and one socio-economic. The theoretical root arises out of arguments for an historic turn in Management and Organization Studies (MOS)[1]. The socio-economic root is the post-2008 economic crisis that serves as the context in which we are grappling with the problem of history. The two, as we will argue, are not unrelated. We were struck by similarities between the current economic crisis and those of the 1929 Wall Street Crash leading to the Depression. We were also struck by how, in either period, management and organizational scholars rarely, if at all, drew lessons from the New Deal for dealing with organizational crisis. How is it an emergent field of MOS (Buchanan and Huczynski, 1985; Wren, 1979) was able to neglect a socio-political phenomenon whose organizational and managerial reach influenced countless lives across the USA and beyond (Hiltzik, 2011; Taylor, 2008)? To deal with this question we return to the debate around the \"historic turn\" (Booth and Rowlinson, 2006) and the role of history in MOS. Specifically we ground our analysis in Durepos and Mills' (2012a, b) notion of ANTi-History, which is an approach to history that fuses insights from actor network theory (Latour, 2005; Callon, 1986), the sociology of knowledge (Mannheim, 1968), and poststructuralist historiography (Jenkins, 1991; Munslow, 2010).\nA question of history: Alfred Kieser's (1994) call for a historic turn in organization theory was somewhat paradoxical. After all, the field was not bereft of historical accounts. One need only think of the influence of the work of Chandler (e.g. 1977), and Kieser's (e.g. 1989) more recent contributions, as well as historical accounts of the field itself (e.g. George, 1972; Wren, 1979; Shenhav, 1995). Kieser (1994, p. 612) felt existing accounts were becoming decreasingly evident and increasingly reduced to \"myopic fact-collect[ing]\". He proposed a reintegration of history and organizational science, in which he sought to \"enrich organization theory by developing links with the humanities, including history, literary theory and philosophy, without completely abandoning a social scientific orientation\" (Usdiken and Kieser, 2004, p. 8). It was from this grounding that Keiser (1994) proceeded to develop an argument for \"why organization theory needs historical analyses.\nConstructing history, defining disciplines: An interrogation of the New Deal in MOS needs to commence at the intersection of two questions. First, how is history constructed and what is the process of inclusion or exclusion from that history? Second, how do disciplines come to define themselves, and how do they erect the theoretical fences that enclose and demarcate legitimate lines of inquiry?\nHistoricizing MOS 1900-1940: In 1916 the American Association of Colleges and Schools of Business (AACSB) was formed. One of the initial power brokers that brought together the deans of 16 business schools was Leon Marshall of the University Chicago's College of Commerce and Administration. Marshall, a leading liberal economist, would later \"come to play an important role in shaping New Deal policies as a member of the National Industrial Recovery Board, which reported directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt\" (Khurana, 2007, pp. 144-145).\nThe \"New Deal\" and MOS: Following the end of the Second World War, the environment for business professors had dramatically changed, with the advent of large-scale government funding of behavioral research, the engagement with corporate foundations - in particular the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the onset of the Cold War (Robin, 2001; Cooke, 2006). There was a renewed emphasis on the importance of business in society unseen since prior to the New Deal era but now there was an important twist. The business school had become the subject of direct political attention, being \"considered vital to the economic, social, and political interests of the nation\" (Khurana, 2007, p. 231). Government funding for the social sciences was largely focussed on such things as the improvement of business practices and corporate foundation funding was closely linked to the Cold War notion that democracy was \"inextricably linked to support for corporations and management\" (Khurana, 2007, p. 239). The situation was such that, \"in the McCarthy era, anything that looked like criticism of business aroused suspicion\" (Khurana, 2007, p. 234).\nConclusion: the past-as-history: Our focus on the New Deal raises a number of questions about the relationship between history and MOS, in particular the definition of the field itself. Questions include the ontological character of history, context and relationalism and the link between history and MOS, ethics, Anglo-American centeredness, and the case for historical engagement.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is threefold. First, to argue for a more historically engaged understanding of the development of management and organization studies (MOS). Second, to reveal the paradoxical character of the recent \"historical turn,\" through exploration of how it both questions and reinforces extant notions of the field. Third, to explore the neglect of the New Deal in MOS to illustrate not only the problem of historical engagement, but also to encourage a rethink of the paradigmatic limitations of the field and its history.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Adopting the theory of ANTi-history, the paper conducts an analysis of historical management textbooks and formative management journals to explore how and why the New Deal has been neglected in management theory.\nFindings: Focussing on the New Deal raises a number of questions about the relationship between history and MOS, in particular, the definition of the field itself. Questions include the ontological character of history, context and relationalism, and the link between history and MOS, ethics, Anglo-American centredness, and the case for historical engagement.\nOriginality/value: The paper argues for a new approach to historical understanding that encourages a revisiting of what constitutes the field of MOS; a greater awareness of and opening up to alternative (hi)stories and, thus, approaches to MOS; and a re-evaluation of phenomena such as the New Deal and other more radical ways of organizing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Heritage: the priceless hostage of accrual accounting
|
[
"Control",
"Economic benefits",
"Assets",
"Public sector accounting",
"Service potential"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There is a wide, long-established literature documenting how the public and private sectors are different (Rainey et al., 1976; Nutt and Backoff, 1993; Boyne, 2002) and how publicness may affect the functioning of governments, the provision of services and the accountability mechanisms adopted in the public realm (Lapsley, 1988; Boyne et al., 1999; Steccolini, 2019). A parallel literature has developed in accounting scholarship, discussing the (un)suitability of private sector techniques, standards, and perspectives for public sector accounting (e.g. Ellwood and Newbury, 2006; Grossi and Steccolini, 2015). In practice, however, private and public sector accounting standards appear to be on a convergence path, encouraged by the accounting profession and by international and supranational institutions.\n2. Literature review: This section reviews the extant literature on the accounting treatment of heritage assets, pointing to the existence of significant contention about both the recognition of heritage assets in the general purpose financial reports of governments and their measurement and disclosure.\n3. Research methodology: The objective of this paper is to examine how the convergence of private and public sector accounting standards is affecting conceptual and practical issues relating to heritage. The criteria for the recognition of assets were developed for the private sector, and then made applicable for the public sector context. As pointed out above, however, various studies in the literature have shown that heritage assets do not fulfil these criteria. In spite of this, the debate on how accrual-based financial statements are to incorporate them persists, culminating in the issue of another Consultation Paper on the subject by the IPSASB. How shall the IPSASB embrace the particularities of heritage assets? Shall it take into consideration the practical issues faced by national standard setters when attempting to deal with financial reporting of heritage assets? Or shall the IPSASB \"capture\" heritage assets in its rhetoric that private sector concepts should apply just as well in the public sector?\n4. Findings: This section presents the results of the documentary analysis along the six above identified themes. For each theme, the IPSASB's proposal is compared and contrasted with national experiences and the responses to the consultation process.\n5. Conclusions: This paper sought to better understand the convergence of private and public sector accounting standards by looking at the conceptual and practical issues relating to heritage - a topic that is particular for the public sector context. This was done through a qualitative documentary analysis based on the IPSASB's Consultation Paper on heritage, the responses to the consultation, and the standards currently adopted by 15 European jurisdictions, reflecting a variety of country sizes and administrative traditions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how the convergence of private and public sector accounting standards is affecting conceptual and practical issues relating to heritage. More specifically, the paper is intended to provide a better understanding of the state of the art in national and international accounting standards on heritage assets, and of the views influencing such standards.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative documentary analysis is carried out to explore the variety of existing positions and views on heritage, ranging from the scholarly literature, through potential stakeholders and users, to international and national standard setters.\nFindings: The analysis shows that the path of convergence between public and private sector standards and practices is still problematic. After more than two decades of debate around the nature, definition, measurement, and reporting of heritage, these issues are far from settled.\nResearch limitations/implications: In the light of calls for increased measurement and reporting of public sector \"assets\", and specifically for the definition of standards to recognise heritage, the paper suggests the need to strongly reconsider whether the convergence between public and private sector standards is desirable, feasible and effective. As such, the risks of embracing simplified or hybrid forms of accounting and reporting for heritage should be more seriously assessed. While reporting on heritage is important, it is fundamental to keep it distinct from reporting on government's regular operations, in order to appreciate its specific value, nature and features.\nOriginality/value: Looking at European national standards for heritage, the IPSASB's proposals, and the reactions to the latter by relevant stakeholders, the paper provides a pluralistic view on the positions and experiences about heritage, contributing to the debate on the convergence between private and public sector accounting standards.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Impact of point-of-purchase olfactory cues on purchase behavior
|
[
"Sensory marketing",
"Purchase behavior",
"Olfactory cues",
"Point-of-sale marketing",
"Sales promotion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As consumers have become increasingly bombarded with information, marketers have had to adopt new ways of attracting their attention and impacting their behavior. Human senses, consumer experiences and sensations are considered in emerging marketing paradigms as a major sub-phenomenon (Achrol and Kotler, 2012). The focus has broadened - both in practice and in academic research - from visual marketing to engaging other senses (Krishna, 2012). This is unsurprising given that the use of subconscious sensory triggers seems to be an efficient way to engage consumers and influence their behavior and perceptions (Krishna, 2010). In particular, the use of scents for marketing purposes has attracted due attention recently, and the results speak for themselves: scents enhance evaluations of products and stores (Bosmans, 2006), increase time spent in a store (Mitchell et al., 1995) and may even increase sales among young or impulsive consumers (Morrin and Chebat, 2005; Spangenberg et al., 2006).\nTheoretical background: Scents' impact on consumer response\nMethodology: Experiment design\nResults: Results of the scent pretest\nDiscussion and conclusions: Our study aimed at enlarging the understanding on olfactory cues and consumer behavior in retailing. Specifically, our interest was in the impact of olfactory cues at the point of purchase on purchase behavior, measured in sales. The results show that olfactory cues are capable of increasing sales of a predetermined target. Interestingly, the increase in sales was evident both at the single product and product-category level, but there were significant differences between the scents employed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of olfactory cues at the point of purchase on consumers' purchase behavior in terms of sales.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The theory of semantic congruence and sensory marketing on consumer behavior is tested using data collected through an experiment and analyzed using quantitative methods.\nFindings: The presence of an olfactory cue has a positive impact on purchase behavior, as measured by product and product-category sales. Results indicate that a more common, category-congruent scent is optimal, as opposed to product-congruent, differentiating scent, even for a single product.\nPractical implications: The findings encourage retailers to implement scents at the point of purchase as a sales promotion tool. Targeting a product category, instead of a single product, would seem the most feasible target scope.\nOriginality/value: This paper studies sensory marketing and cue congruence in a real-life retail setting, measuring the impact in terms of sales, and not only in relation to purchase intentions or brand image. Addressing a precisely defined target that suits retailing, namely, a single product and product category, is also novel, contrasting with earlier studies focused on ambient scents in large environments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Fragmented time and domiciliary care quality
|
[
"Marketization",
"Care quality",
"Domiciliary care",
"Fragmented time"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As western populations age, so the demand for adult social care increases. Domiciliary care, one form of social care, affords personal care, protection or social support for vulnerable adults in their own homes (Gray and Birrell, 2013) and should improve quality of life for (mainly) older people (Francis and Netten, 2004). Yet high profile UK scandals have raised concerns over care quality (Kingsmill, 2014; Flynn, 2015) and, while the context here is Wales, these concerns are reflected internationally (Cunningham et al., 2014; Broadbent, 2014). Inadequacies in care provision have substantial ramifications. Directly, some of society's most vulnerable adults suffer poor care and thus poor life quality. Indirectly, effective operation of health care systems is compromised by, for example, \"bed-blocking\", whereby hospital discharge is delayed due to a lack of available social care provision (e.g. Marsh, 2016), to an extent that threatens to de-stabilise health care provision. Delivery of high-quality social care is thus an urgent imperative.\nMarketisation and domiciliary care employment relationships: In many neoliberal economies, there has been marked reduction in the state provision of domiciliary care over recent decades (Cunningham, 2008). A shift to marketised relationships has occurred in which the state, via local authorities, commissions most domiciliary care from independent (private and voluntary) sector service providers (Cunningham et al., 2014). Understanding of commissioning is essential to the examination of both wider employment practice (Rubery et al., 2013) and, specifically, fragmented time (Rubery et al., 2015). Marketisation draws on supposedly efficient business principles and aims to improve care quality. In practice, the external commissioning of care has long been associated with quality concerns, related in large part to the cost pressures that have dominated local authority commissioner agendas (Cunningham, 2010). Indeed, Cavendish's (2013) review of UK care failures argued that the local authority monopsony of commissioning suppresses rates and UK Home Care Association, the employers association for domiciliary care providers (UKHCA, 2015a), reports that care is often commissioned at less than its cost price[1]. Inadequate funding is compounded by insecure commissioning arrangements, with a move away from block contracts, where an agreed number of hours are purchased whether used or not, to spot contracts, where payment is only made if care is taken up (see Knapp et al., 2001 for detailed explanation). Time is the unit of account adopted (Rubery et al., 2015) and domiciliary care provision is typically measured in minutes with, in a drive for efficiency, the increased use of short visits of 15 and 30 min or less (Bessa et al., 2013). Using spot contracts, commissioners operate framework agreements that accredit service providers as operating at an appropriate quality level (Bessa et al., 2013) and providers submit tenders for care packages on a price-by-case arrangement. In combination, these practices have created inadequate and insecure funding streams for independent service providers. This has substantial implications for social care employment relationships (Broadbent, 2014) which, as framework agreements rarely address terms and conditions of employment (Burrowes, 2015), have limited protection from market pressures.\nFragmented time: The paper builds on Rubery et al.'s (2015) argument that time is a critical issue within domiciliary care. This flows both from commissioning practice, discussed above, that adopts time as a unit of account and the use of time to frame service scheduling and employment terms and conditions. Developing this, Rubery et al. (2015, p. 753) propose the concept of \"fragmented time\" that draws on six indexes including payment for time in work-related activities (e.g. travel), insecurity via zero-hour contracts, variable and/or extended schedules, time constrained work and work schedules that meet worker preferences. Broadly, these indexes evidence adoption of zero-hour contracts and episodic working (Moore and Tailby, 2015), both of which facilitate removal of unproductive time as demanded in a marketised, cost-constrained context.\nCare quality: There are many, contested definitions of care quality (Atkinson et al., 2016). It is conceptualised here as the lived, subjective experiences of care recipients (Bee et al., 2008), which is important in examining facets of care meaningful to care recipients. For example, in social care, Iparraguirre and Ma (2015) adopt support for retaining control over day-to-day activities. In emergency care, Shankar et al. (2013) include respect for care recipients' values, preferences and needs and, in mental health, Bee et al. (2008) focus on length of visit, perceived care worker motivation and continuity of contact. There is thus a strong case for using subjective experiences and, returning to domiciliary care, this paper draws on Francis and Netten's (2004) core dimensions of care quality, that is, continuity, reliability and flexibility. Continuity refers to the consistency of care worker(s) attending a care recipient and is critical when delivering an intimate service (Eborall et al., 2010); reliability refers to care workers fulfilling scheduled visits and arriving punctually; and flexibility describes the ability of a care worker to deliver beyond the care plan, the document which records care recipient needs. The research question here is how fragmented time affects this care quality. Despite wider research that clearly demonstrates employment practice/service quality relationships (Whyman et al., 2015), there is no research that explicitly links employment practice, and more particularly fragmented time, to care quality, only research that suggests tentative links (Broadbent, 2014; Cunningham, 2016). This paper adopts an inductive approach to examining these relationships and they are later developed through analysis.\nResearch context and methods: The paper draws from a Welsh Government-funded project that investigated employment practice and its implications for recruitment, retention and care quality in Welsh domiciliary care (Atkinson et al., 2016). Like many western nations, domiciliary care is a high priority for Welsh Government, as demand for domiciliary care grows as the population ages (Age Cymru, 2015). Reflecting typical patterns of marketization, 22 Welsh local authorities commission nearly 80 per cent of domiciliary care from around 336 independent (private and voluntary) sector providers (CCW, 2014). Employment is thus mainly in the independent sector, where around two-thirds of the 18,000 strong domiciliary care workforce is based (UKHCA, 2015c).\nFindings and discussion: This section first demonstrates the implications of neoliberal structures and marketization for the employment relationship, exploring in particular fragmented time (Rubery et al., 2015), and then evidences its detriment to care quality using Francis and Netten's (2004) core dimensions.\nConclusions: This paper explores aspects of employment practice in domiciliary care work to ask: what are the consequences of fragmented time for care quality? It makes a valuable empirical addition to social care employment research, particularly in reporting care worker perspectives on this question. Drawing on Rubery's (2015) analysis of employment trends, it demonstrates that fragmentation and flexibilisation in a highly feminised sector combine to create fragmented time and that this is detrimental to care quality. Independent providers, who deliver around 80 per cent of domiciliary care, struggle to recruit and retain the necessary labour (Rubery and Urwin, 2011); care workers suffer dissatisfaction, stress and burnout (Taris et al., 2003); and care quality is compromised through lack of continuity, reliability and flexibility. The research site is Wales, but similar international policy contexts mean the findings have wider resonance (e.g. Cunningham et al., 2014; Broadbent, 2014).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the marketization of domiciliary care, its consequences for employment practice, specifically fragmented time, and the implications for care quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Focus groups and face-to-face or telephone interviews were conducted with care commissioners, service providers and care workers across Wales. There were 113 participants in total.\nFindings: These demonstrate fragmented time's negative consequences for service providers, care workers and, ultimately, care quality.\nResearch limitations/implications: No care recipients were interviewed and care quality was explored through the perceptions of other stakeholders.\nSocial implications: For policy makers, tensions are evidenced between aspirations for high-quality care and commissioning practice that mitigates against it. Current care commissioning practices need urgent review.\nOriginality/value: The research extends the definition of fragmented time and integrates with a model of care quality to demonstrate its negative consequences. Links between employment practice and care quality have only previously been hinted at.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Clicks business of deposit-taking institutions: an efficiency analysis
|
[
"Stochastic frontier approach",
"Profit efficiency",
"Cost efficiency",
"Automated teller machines",
"Deposit-taking institutions"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: During the past two decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the landscape of international financial markets remarkably and have received significant attention from the researchers (see Frame and White, 2012 for a survey). In this context, the utilization of ICT for retail payment services have positive effects on banks' efficiency and customers' convenience (Hasan et al., 2012; Fung et al., 2014). In Japan, although banks have weathered various problems of non-performing loans but they are facing new challenges such as massive holdings of government bonds (IMF, 2012), longer term decline in domestic demand and changing customer expectations (PWC, 2014) and more stringent prudential supervision (Basel III) requirements which may further reduce degrees of freedom in searching profits. For sustainable gains, banks have to think of a right mix of automated and branch services.\n2. Description of variables and the database: This research is based upon \"intermediate approach\" where banks are treated as multi-product firms which use three inputs: labor (X1), capital (X2) and borrowed funds (X3) to produce two outputs: loans and bills discounted (Y1) and investments (Y2). Loans and bills discounted (Y1) are the sum of all loan accounts and bills discounted whereas investments (Y2) are measured as the sum of securities, equities and other investments. The price of labor (P1) is measured as personal expenses divided by total number of employees. The price of physical capital (P2) is calculated as depreciation and rent divided by the value of premises and equipment. The price of borrowed funds (P3) is measured as interest expenses divided by total deposits.\n3. Methodology: As mentioned earlier, our study uses SFA to interrogate the effect of technology on the banks' performance. SFA requires the specification of a functional form for the frontier. Transcendental Logarithm (translog) and Cobb-Douglas are the most used functional forms. Among them, translog function, which is a generalization of Cobb-Douglas function, is more flexible in nature and applied more frequently in the studies of financial sector for multi-inputs and outputs[8] such as Lozano-Vivas and Pasiouras (2010), Silva et al. (2017), Berger et al. (2009), Alhassan and Biekpe (2016). Following the literature, in our study, we employ the multi-product translog model to estimate the cost and alternative profit stochastic frontiers.\n4. Empirical findings: The estimated coefficients of the cost and profit functions are reported in the Table IV (panels A, B, C).\n5. Efficiency indices and scope economy: The empirical evidence strongly suggests that it may be misleading if commercial banks are evaluated and ranked based solely on either cost efficiency or profit efficiency. The two performance measures must be used jointly, rather than independently, along with scope economy to provide a reliable judgment on how a bank performs.\n6. Conclusion: Despite the importance of virtual banking and efficiency studies, the literature on virtual banking is limited. Our study fills this gap in the literature. The study interrogates the effect of ATMs on banks' performance. SFA was used to estimate banks' cost and profit efficiency indices and to examine the relationship between the number of ATMs and the cost and profit inefficiencies. We then estimated scope economy based on the estimated cost function and then ranked all banks on the basis of their profit and cost efficiency scores as well as scope values. Unbalanced panel data covered 124 banks for the period of 14 years prior to the crisis of 2008.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the direct and indirect effects of automated teller machines (ATMs) on the performance and scope economies of the Japanese financial institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Stochastic frontier approach is adopted to estimate banks' cost and profit efficiency indices and to examine the relationship between inefficiency scores and the number of ATMs.\nFindings: The study concludes that the banks not only minimize costs and save money by using ATMs, but also spend the saved funds on hiring highly skilled staff to introduce a better product mix which allows the banks to observe scope economies.\nOriginality/value: The findings suggest that although branches would remain a crucial interaction point for relationship banking, but given their high fixed cost, shifting routine banking transactions from the branch to low-cost electronic channels can significantly reduce costs and enhance efficiency of the financial institutions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Sense-making and acting for descent futures: human and cultural pathways
|
[
"Well-being",
"Enactive evolution",
"Industrial society",
"Progress",
"Societal complexity",
"Viability"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the context of an inquiry into humanity's civilisational futures, the concept of socio-political collapse understandably stirs strong emotions. The historical and archaeological records confirm significant correlation between collapse in the complexity of socio-political institutions and serious population-scale adversity. Even so, as a possible future for any human society, the general idea of collapse tends to evoke in the popular imagination associations significantly more extreme than the records of past experience warrant. In one account, it's a magnet for end-of-civilisation apocalyptic fantasies, and, in another, as the sworn enemy of civilisation's ever onward march to futures inherently bigger, better and brighter than the present, it spells nothing less than the end of meaningful existence (Greer, 2008).\n2. The case for confronting descent: The broad case for taking the prospect of descent seriously is outlined in this special issue's editorial introduction. The energetic dimension of this warrants further attention before proceeding. In the most straightforward terms, descent is the general outcome when a given level of social complexity becomes too costly to maintain. Amongst those who study the historical wax and wane of human societies closely, in the more nuanced accounts, the term collapse is often reserved for situations in which descent proceeds spontaneously, by processes beyond the influence of human institutions and agency (Tainter, 1988; Greer, 2008). Descent can also unfold in response to intentional strategies to reduce institutional complexity - that is, where the process is subject to human influence. The distinction is a matter of context-specific qualification though - in terms of consequences for socio-political complexity, \"spontaneous\" and \"intentional\" processes produce conditions for which the collapse concept performs a useful sense-making function.\n3. The progress myth: meaning-making in the modern world: Put simply, the myth of progress holds that human history is characterised by a unidirectional, largely deterministic and hence predictable pattern of change from less to more socially desirable states (Pollard, 1968). Proponents for the myth's explanatory power in relation to human history often see supporting evidence in their interpretations of change trajectories associated with the social realms of knowledge, economics and technology and also (though with more frequent reservations) those of politics and morality (Van Doren, 1967; Pollard, 1968). The influence of this sense-making narrative a historically recent development, coinciding with the scientific worldview's rise to prominence in Enlightenment Europe and hence more-or-less with industrial society itself (Wright, 2004; Gray, 2013; Greer, 2008; Pollard, 1968). It follows from this that within the myth, the forms of social organisation accompanying industrialism are afforded a status of superiority over both the pre-industrial societies from which they themselves emerged and their contemporaneous non-industrial societies in other regions. Societies arranged along lines other than those governed by industrial-world logic, norms and knowledge are therefore regarded as essentially deficient.\n4. Descent, collapse and viable trajectories: The extent of the progress myth's influence on contemporary culture, apparently supported and legitimised by the popular view of evolution as progressive improvement, sheds some light on why concepts such as \"descent\" and \"collapse\" bring to mind for so many people immediate negative associations. Abstract social concepts such as these involve metaphorical mappings from more concrete experiences with physical phenomena (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). But in the physical realm, descent and collapse can entail associations readily regarded as positive[4]. Two simple examples illustrate how easily the default association is turned on its head: aviation and automotive design.\n5. Rethinking human well-being: from optimality to viability: In rescuing descent from its apparent hostility to human well-being, we can ask how well we are served in the first place by maintaining present extremes of economic production and socio-political complexity. Here, enactive evolution's fitness criterion of viability in preference to optimality comes to the fore as a guide for sense-making. Tainter (2011, p. 91) points out that, contrary to common assumptions, the surplus production characteristic of contemporary industrial societies runs counter to what most people across human history have actually wanted for themselves:\n6. Lifeways for socio-cultural viability: Aboriginal Australia and Tibet: The examples I consider here are the traditional lifeways of Aboriginal Australia and Tibet. Both are presented as instances of indigeneity. For Aborigines, this is a matter of explicit self-representation. In the case of Tibet, where the term indigenous is not widely used, it reflects parallels between the ways many Tibetans both in exile and in China choose to represent their culture, and \"ideals of environmental stewardship, connectedness to nature, spirituality, and egalitarianism\" characteristic of indigenous identification (Yeh, 2007, p. 69).\n7. Implications and conclusions: My suggestion here is not that we take past traditional or indigenous societies as templates for designing descent pathways, and I am not advocating for a simplistic \"return to the past\"[5]. Nor am I suggesting that modern global citizens co-opt as instrumental solutions to contemporary problems isolated aspects or \"features\" of cultures outside those in which their own lives have unfolded (Davis, 2013). Rather, I wish to create an opening for a different orientation to well-being - one that might offer us expanded degrees of freedom under descent conditions. This is motivated by the view that continuing to pursue the progress myth's promise when its fruits are no longer available is surely a recipe for suffering. If a meaningful and satisfactory existence is predicated on the extension of economic growth and universal availability of increasingly arcane technologies, then what are the implications of circumstance denying us these? The knowledge systems, forms of thought and lifeways depicted in the examples of Tibet and Aboriginal Australia highlight the opportunities that alternative sources of meaning and purpose open for walking different social evolutionary pathways into existence.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to make the case for continued opportunity for high levels of human well-being under descent conditions characterised by declining economic throughput and socio-political complexity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Relationships between assumptions about human well-being formed within a modern industrial context, the guiding narratives attending these, and the broader cultural influence of ideas from the evolutionary sciences are examined. Alternative ways of making sense of these relationships are explored. The experiences of societies guided by cultural narratives based on different premises to those most influential in industrial societies are reviewed for their implications for human well-being under descent conditions.\nFindings: Human experiences of well-being are principally a function of the sources of meaning and associated narratives by which members of a culture make sense of their situation, as these determine the nature of the material and energetic conditions required to live well. Under descent conditions, the narrative of progress that has supported viable societies during the 300-year period of industrial expansion is unlikely to continue serving humanity well. Collective participation in the renewal of guiding cultural narratives is a primary target for efforts to provide continued opportunities for high quality of life to all members of humanity.\nPractical implications: The findings point towards specific characteristics of cultural sense-making narratives that may support viable human societies under descent conditions.\nSocial implications: By moving beyond the default assumption that descent automatically implies decline in human well-being, a barrier may be lowered to more open and mature society-wide engagement in conversations about the present human predicament and effective ways of responding to it.\nOriginality/value: New connections are identified between perspectives based on biological evolutionary theory and the continued influence of the idea of progress in establishing default assumptions about prospects for human well-being under descent conditions. Experiences of non-industrial societies are taken as the basis for identifying opportunities for human well-being under far more modest material and energetic conditions than those available to the portion of humanity that presently enjoys benefits of industrial development that outweigh the attendant costs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An exploration of emotional intelligence across career arenas
|
[
"Leadership",
"Non‐profit organizations",
"Profit",
"Emotional intelligence",
"Careers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the growing recognition of emotional intelligence (EI) as an essential element of leadership, interest is stirring regarding the demonstration of EI by people at different levels of leadership and in diverse career arenas. Little, if any, research exists which investigates the EI levels of leaders in dissimilar career fields. Researchers suggest that there may be disciplinary differences in those for which the construct of EI has an appeal. Specifically, \"teachers, social workers, and parents\" as opposed to \"business people and tough-minded social scientists\" (Gardner, 1999, p. 10) may be more likely to gravitate toward the idea of EI. Perhaps the reverse is true as well, that people with enhanced EI are attracted to particular types of careers.Alternatively, certain organizational cultures themselves may enhance and in fact promote based in part on employee EI. In such a workplace culture, one may assume that people in top leadership positions will have the highest EI levels. Indeed, initial research (Dulewicz and Higgs, 2003; Goleman et al., 2002) suggests that EI levels are higher among workplace leaders, and are even further elevated as leadership levels rise in an organization. Organizational norms described by Kouzes and Posner (1995) that enable people to achieve corporate goals reflect a climate that embraces, supports, and rewards EI. Managers who choose not to follow organizational practices defined by corporate values are less likely to rise to top leadership positions (Langley, 2000). An organization that supports and promotes EI in its corporate values may see more people following established ground rules, and more emotionally intelligent managers rising to top leadership positions.This study involves a unique look at diverse career climates in relation to EI and compares the EI of leaders in the non-profit and profit business arenas. It stands to reason that emotionally intelligent people may be inherently more drawn to a particular type of career, that certain career fields may more actively recruit and promote with EI in mind, or that certain organizational climates may cultivate EI. The research that follows begins to investigate some of these questions. This author's professional experience generated curiosity and led to the hypothesis that if EI scores of leaders in non-profit health and human service mission-driven agencies were compared with the scores of leaders in profit-driven businesses, there would be a difference. Specifically, it was hypothesized that non-profit leaders would demonstrate higher EI levels than their profit-driven counterparts. In reviewing the groundwork that leads to the research and discussion regarding EI across career arenas, it is important to first look at the construct of EI itself, its link to performance in the workplace, and its link to quality workplace leaders.Construct of emotional intelligence\nMethodology: This study explores the relationship between EI scores of Director-level leaders in divergent fields, specifically, in non-profit health and human service mission-driven agencies and profit-driven businesses in the State of Alaska. Comparisons were made between the two groups of leaders on their scores of overall EI, as well as on five subscale EI competency areas.Subjects\nFindings: For this study, the 15 conceptual component scores produced by the EI assessment were not individually compared across the two groups of business leaders. Rather, the overall EI and five subscale scores were used for comparison purposes. These scores were linked to individual leaders using e-mailed responses from each participant to the researcher, which indicated the participants' career arena as non-profit or profit.Research results\nConclusions: The apparent overall trend in this research was that leaders in the non-profit health and human service arena scored as more emotionally intelligent than their counterparts in the business for profit arena. The following discussion considers the relationship between EI and career choice and career alignment with EI strength areas, and also organizational cultures in relation to the EI of leaders. Potential implications are outlined for human resource professionals, trainers, and leaders themselves. Insight to limitations of this study and ideas for continued research on the topic of EI are also offered.Discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This quantitative study seeks to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence scores of leaders in non-profit health and human service agencies and profit businesses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Director-level leaders in the non-profit (n=32) and profit (n=32) business arenas completed an online emotional intelligence self assessment (Bar-On EQ-i). Descriptive statistics were gathered and comparative analyses explored the differences between leaders in the two groups.\nFindings: - Results revealed significant differences between leaders in non-profit and profit businesses in overall emotional intelligence, and in the particular competency areas of stress management and adaptability.\nOriginality/value: - This paper identifies a difference in emotional intelligence levels of leaders based on career field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The influence of the quality of the physical environment, food, and service on restaurant image, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions
|
[
"Foodservice quality dimensions (physical environment",
"Food",
"And service)",
"Restaurant image",
"Customer perceived value",
"Satisfaction",
"Behavioral intentions",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Customer services quality",
"Consumer behaviour",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The consistent increase in cultural and ethnical diversity in the United States has resulted in the variety and prosperity of ethnic restaurants in the U.S. foodservice market (Liu and Jang, 2009a). In particular, because of good taste and great customer perceived value for the price, the popularity of Chinese cuisine has been increasing. According to Liu and Jang (2009a), there are about 43,139 Chinese restaurants in the United States, which is larger than the combined number of all McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King domestic outlets. Chinese restaurants generate over $17.5 billion annual sales, accounting for about a quarter of the overall annual sales generated by ethnic restaurants in the US (Liu and Jang, 2009a).Today, Chinese restaurants are facing increasing competition from the growth of other Asian restaurants (e.g. Thai, Indian, Vietnam, and Korean restaurants). In addition, American consumers have become more sophisticated, more familiar with ethnic cuisine, and increasingly they prefer healthy or spicy food. As a result, Chinese restaurants can no longer largely rely on good taste or low price alone for their success (Liu and Jang, 2009a). Today, customers are no longer willing to sacrifice poor service or dining environment (atmosphere) for good taste when they seek an exotic experience in ethnic restaurants. An excellent overall dining experience via excellent food in conjunction with good atmosphere and high-quality service needs to be achieved to meet their satisfaction. However, it is still not empirically tested if customers in this segment are primarily driven by food, atmospherics, or employee service.Service quality and customer satisfaction have become the most core marketing priorities since they are prerequisites of consumer loyalty, such as repeat sales and positive word-of-mouth (Han and Ryu, 2009; Liu and Jang, 2009b). In today's intensely competitive market, it is generally assumed that the key to gaining an advantage lies in delivering high-quality service that will, in turn, lead to satisfied customers (Han and Ryu, 2007). In particular, in the restaurant industry, customers generally use food, physical environment, and employee services as key components of restaurant experience in evaluating the restaurant service quality (Chow et al., 2007; Namkung and Jang, 2008; Ryu and Han, 2010). A proper combination of these vital attributes should result in customers' perceptions of high restaurant service quality, which in turn should enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the restaurant industry. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the influence of multiple components of restaurant service quality on outcome variables such as restaurant image and customer perceived value.The literature has discussed the impact of an organization's image on consumer behavior, particularly on consumer loyalty in the service sectors (Andreassen and Lindestad, 1998). Some previous studies have found that the perceived quality of the physical environment (Baker et al., 1994; Nguyen and Leblanc, 2002) or the service quality (Lai et al., 2009) can significantly influence store/corporate image. This image can have a subsequent influence on customer perceived value and satisfaction, which, in turn, affects their loyalty (Lai et al., 2009; Patterson and Spreng, 1997; Prendergast and Man, 2002; Ryu et al., 2008). However, few studies have examined to identify the antecedents and consequences of image, specifically restaurant image in relation to the restaurant experience.Although the importance of a Chinese restaurant sector has been consistently growing, it has not gained much attention in research. Despite the importance of foodservice quality, academics and managers know relatively little about how the combined effects of restaurant service quality (physical environment, food, and service) elicit restaurant image, customer perceived value, and customer satisfaction, which, in turn, affect consumer behavior. In particular, to the best of our knowledge none of previous studies have examined the linkage between three dimensions of restaurant service quality and the restaurant image. In addition, the combined effects of three antecedents on customer perceived value have been rarely examined even though customer perceived value is a fundamental determinant of customer satisfaction. Consequently, this study aims to bridge these gaps by developing an integrated model that explicitly accounts for the effects of three components (physical environment, food and service) of restaurant service quality on the restaurant image, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in a Chinese restaurant segment.This study is important both theoretically and practically. This study attempts to develop a conceptual model that explicitly accounts for the influences of three restaurant service quality factors (physical environment, food, service) on restaurant image and customer perceived value. Practically, this study can provide various insights into the important role of three dimensions of restaurant service quality on customers' perceptions towards the restaurant image, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction and loyalty behaviors to restaurateurs.\nLiterature review: Restaurant service quality\nMethodology: Measures\nResults: Sample characteristics\nDiscussion: Summary of the study\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to propose an integrated model that examines the impact of three elements of foodservice quality dimensions (physical environment, food, and service) on restaurant image, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected from customers at an authentic upscale Chinese restaurant located in a Southeastern state in the USA via a self-administered questionnaire. Anderson and Gerbing's two-step approach was used to assess the measurement and structural models.\nFindings: - Structural equation modeling shows that the quality of the physical environment, food, and service were significant determinants of restaurant image. Also, the quality of the physical environment and food were significant predictors of customer perceived value. The restaurant image was also found to be a significant antecedent of customer perceived value. In addition, the results reinforced that customer perceived value is indeed a significant determinant of customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction is a significant predictor of behavioral intentions.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The proposed model and study findings will greatly help researchers and practitioners understand the complex relationships among foodservice quality (physical environment, food, and service), restaurant image, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in the restaurant industry.\nOriginality/value: - This study is the first to develop an integrated model that explicitly accounts for the influence of three restaurant service quality factors on restaurant image and customer perceived value. Using structural equation modeling, this study empirically confirms that the model with the causality from quality, in particular three dimensions of foodservice quality in this study, to restaurant image is superior to the one with causality from image to quality in the context of restaurant.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analyzing conversion rates in online hotel booking: The role of customer reviews, recommendations and rank order in search listings
|
[
"Conversion",
"Collaborative filtering",
"Search listings",
"Online hotel booking",
"Online customer reviews and ratings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Customers increasingly prefer the Internet to shop for products and services and digital channel becomes important platform for sellers at different sectors. With the help of intermediary Web sites such as booking.com and expedia.com, online hotel booking becomes widely popular in hospitality industry and the share of the revenues generated through online booking has been constantly increasing (Sileo, 2011).\n2. Literature review: Online customer reviews and ratings, collaborative filtering-based recommendation systems and search listings are the most relevant streams of research related to our paper.\n3. Hypotheses: Hotel rooms are experience goods whose quality can be assessed after purchase. For such goods and services, buyers usually search for additional information from a variety of sources prior to purchase decisions to mitigate the uncertainty of product quality (Papathanassis and Knolle, 2011). Even though online platforms supply comprehensive information about hotels and their locations, still significant information asymmetry exists between potential customers and sellers. Ba and Pavlou (2002) noted that there are mainly two types of uncertainties:\n4. Data: We collected our data, which include online reservations for Barcelona and Paris hotels between April 2012 and June 2012, from Booking.com. Our data set includes the following information on 1,037 hotels in Paris and 540 hotels in Barcelona: number of online reservation, average hotel price per night, star rating, number of customer reviews, average customer rating and its breakdown, staff, service/facilities, cleanliness, comfort, value for money and location. We conducted a factor analysis on all dimensions of customer ratings and obtained two factors. All dimensions except location load on a single factor that we call service rating, as all are either directly related to the service offering or a function of it. We calculated service rating for each hotel by averaging the score of each dimension except location.\n5. Model: 5.1 Empirical model for conversion rate\n6. Results: 6.1 Estimation results for conversion rate\n7. Discussion and conclusions: This study empirically examines the impact of consumer reviews, collaborative-filtering-based recommendations and rank order in search listings on conversion rates in the context of online hotel booking. Our analysis considers various models developed by previous research: a fractional logit model and a regression model with the beta distribution. We checked models assumptions and assessed the performance of models with data collected from Booking.com. We analyze the impact of consumer reviews under two dimensions: service and location. We find evidence that high location ratings, high numbers of recommendations and high ranks in search listings have a significant and positive effect on conversion rates. Furthermore, we show that there is a significant interaction between recommendations and rank in search listings. Specifically, we find that high numbers of recommendations increase the conversion rate of hotels with low ranks in search listings. This result suggests that high numbers of recommendations mitigate the adverse impact of a low rank in search listings on conversion rate. We also show that while price has a significant and negative impact on conversion rate, service rating and star rating do not have significant impact on conversion rate. We also analyze the impact of these variables on online hotel room sales and make the following observations. High location ratings, high numbers of recommendations and high ranks in search listings have a positive impact on sales. Furthermore, while price is negatively associated with sales, service rating and star rating do not significantly contribute to sales. We also quantify the impact of these variables on the conversion rate and number of bookings.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of three main technologies on converting browsers into customers: impact of review rating (location rating and service rating), recommendation and search listings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper estimates conversion rate model parameters using a quasi-likelihood method with the Bernoulli log-likelihood function and parametric regression model based on the beta distribution.\nFindings: The results show that a high rank in search listings, a high number of recommendations and location rating have a significant and positive impact on conversion rates. However, service rating and star rating do not have a significant effect on conversion rate. Furthermore, room price and hotel size are negatively associated with conversion rate. It was also found that a high rank in search listings, a high number of recommendations and location rating increase online hotel bookings. Furthermore, it was found that a high number of recommendations increase the conversion rate of hotels with low ranks.\nPractical implications: The findings show that hotels' location ratings are more important than both star and service ratings for the conversion of visitors into customers. Thus, hotels that are located in convenient locations can charge higher prices. The results may also help entrepreneurs who are planning to open new hotels to forecast the conversion rates and demand for specific locations. It was found that a high number of recommendations help to increase the conversion rate of hotels with low ranks. This result suggests that a high numbers of recommendations mitigate the adverse effect of a low rank in search listings on the conversion rate.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the understanding of the drivers of conversion rates in online channels for the successful implementation of hotel marketing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Investigating health information systems-induced errors
|
[
"Error analysis",
"Patient safety",
"Evaluation",
"Health information systems",
"Socio-technical"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Concerns about technology-induced errors are still emerging and its importance in healthcare practices calls for more studies (Borycki et al., 2016) as they are linked to patient harm and death (Borycki, 2013). Health information systems (HIS) are known to reduce errors and improve patient safety. However, new harmful and potential errors have been consistently reported (Institute of Medicine, 2012; National Quality Framework, 2016). Complex healthcare domains that involve settings, clinical processes and human errors contributed to error incidents in all stages of the medical process. Further, the vast complexity of HIS such as Electronic Medical Record (EMR) that involved large information management is prone to error that could be harmful to patient (Emergency Care Research Institute, 2014) Although error incidents are inevitable, they can be managed by understanding their behaviour and type (National Quality Framework, 2016). Thus, this paper discusses a review of HIS-related errors and their management approaches, including related theories and models in healthcare and information systems (IS) domains.\nMethod: A literature review was performed on the effect, type, incident stage, source, management and methods of HIS-induced error. A critical review of selected models was performed in order to identify medical error dimensions and elements based on human, process, technology and organisation factors. Electronic searches were conducted on IS and medical databases (MEDLINE, EBSCOhost, Science Direct, Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge and Wiley Online Library). Search terms from related disciplines were identified from the literature review and a thesaurus index of databases:\nHealth information systems-induced errors: Medical error types\nError models: Studies on health informatics-related errors that relate to human error theories are pioneered by Reason (1990). Reason's (2000, 1990) error model has been evolved as a basis for developing evaluation models for understanding error incidents and identifying causes of errors. For example, some (Zhang et al., 2004) viewed it as human factors while others (Leape, 1997; Borycki et al., 2009) focussed on factors such as technology, systems and the organisation (Borycki et al., 2016; Zapf et al., 1992). We reviewed a number of error models that apply Reason's error theory based on their own advantages and common error elements (Table III).\nManaging HIS-induced error: Medical errors emanating from human, process, technology and organisation factors of HIS can be managed and prevented using a number of approaches. Table IV shows previous studies on medical error prevention.\nApproach to the evaluation of HIS-induced errors: The effectiveness of HIS requires ongoing, iterative and dynamic evaluation and development to improve systems and prevent errors from recurring or spreading (Bates, 2005; Borycki and Kushniruk, 2017; Callen et al., 2010; Poon et al., 2010; Yusof, 2015). Formative or summative evaluations can be performed either during system development or after system uptake (Koppel et al., 2008; Yusof et al., 2008). Both forms of evaluation are also known as ex post evaluation (Thomas et al., 2008; Xavier, 2000) and both forms use experiments or observation, depending on the purpose of the evaluation (Yusof et al., 2008). Experiment-based methods can only illustrate a change in the rate of error incidents, while mixed methods, such as observations and content analysis, can provide a more detailed insight into the reasons why new types of errors emerge after HIS adoption. Even without indicating any specific theory or model, findings and discussions in ex post reports could provide an understanding of incidents of errors as learning processes and future improvement of systems.\nConclusion: HIS-induced errors are prevalent and complex. Various prevention and management efforts have shown promising outcomes, although further studies and improvements are needed. Consistent evaluation on overall and each clinical stage can be performed based on this study's proposed medical error classification, namely, the human, technology, process and organisation aspects. The evaluation could provide information about possible health informatics-related errors and good practices that prevent medical errors.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a review of health information system (HIS)-induced errors and its management. This paper concludes that the occurrence of errors is inevitable but it can be minimised with preventive measures. The review of classifications can be used to evaluate medical errors related to HISs using a socio-technical approach. The evaluation could provide an understanding of errors as a learning process in managing medical errors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A literature review was performed on issues, sources, management and approaches to HISs-induced errors. A critical review of selected models was performed in order to identify medical error dimensions and elements based on human, process, technology and organisation factors.\nFindings: Various error classifications have resulted in the difficulty to understand the overall error incidents. Most classifications are based on clinical processes and settings. Medical errors are attributed to human, process, technology and organisation factors that influenced and need to be aligned with each other. Although most medical errors are caused by humans, they also originate from other latent factors such as poor system design and training. Existing evaluation models emphasise different aspects of medical errors and could be combined into a comprehensive evaluation model.\nResearch limitations/implications: Overview of the issues and discourses in HIS-induced errors could divulge its complexity and enable its causal analysis.\nPractical implications: This paper helps in understanding various types of HIS-induced errors and promising prevention and management approaches that call for further studies and improvement leading to good practices that help prevent medical errors.\nOriginality/value: Classification of HIS-induced errors and its management, which incorporates a socio-technical and multi-disciplinary approach, could guide researchers and practitioners to conduct a holistic and systematic evaluation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Corporate branding and rebranding: an institutional logics perspective
|
[
"Institutional logics",
"Corporate rebranding",
"Organizational transformation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Interest in the corporate brand dates back to the 1990s. King (1991) reasoned that to sustain a comparative advantage over competitors in the future, it would become necessary for organisations to position themselves as brands, as this would give the companies opportunities to grow as they evolve the company brand. Balmer (1995) contended that corporate brands had ascendency over product brands and that corporate brands were of strategic importance, commenting that even Proctor and Gamble saw the need to develop their corporate brand, despite having strong product brands. He went on to describe the underpinning concepts associated with corporate brands, particularly corporate identity and image. These concepts had already been written about by writers such as Margulies (1977), Kennedy (1977) and Abratt (1989), but the notion of a corporate brand had not been explored.\nCorporate branding and organisational strategy: A significant development in the understanding of the relationship between corporate identity and corporate branding was Balmer's actual, communicated, ideal, desired (ACID) test and its iterations. Balmer realised that the corporate identity/image interface represented only one of a number of interfaces between the concepts that were being developed at the time (Balmer, 2001a, 2001b). The original ACID test alluded to the communicated identity as who we say we are or the corporate brand. Later developments in this schema were used to analyse the changing corporate brand of British Airways (Balmer et al., 2009). An analysis of the changes in the British Airways corporate brand over time demonstrated that there was one period in which British Airways misaligned its identities and produced a corporate brand that did not accord with stakeholder expectations of the treasured organisation when the CEO decided on an organisational direction of a \"world\" favourite airline, rather than a British airline. The authors conclude that: \"[...] the melding of corporate identity and corporate brand management constitutes a strategic imperative for contemporary organisations\" (Balmer et al., 2009, p. 18).\nCorporate branding and rebranding in cases of organisational change: As an awareness of the role and importance of corporate branding increased, so did the impetus to rebrand organisations in response to internal and external factors which triggered a new or revised strategic direction. As such, corporate rebranding became a significant part of organisational strategy. Merrilees (2005) illustrated what he termed \"radical brand evolution\" with his case study of Canadian Tire. Merrilees (2005, p. 201) used this term to indicate that although brands change over time, radical brand evolution occurs when there is a need to radically evolve the corporate brand as part of a strategic imperative. His research showed that the key to successful rebranding in these cases relied on the extent to which organisations managed three key constructs: brand vision, brand orientation and brand strategy. In brand vision, research is needed to decide on a new positioning. Brand orientation involves getting internal endorsement from key stakeholders and, finally, brand strategy is the implementation phase.\nAn additional perspective: The institutional logics framework has been used in management to understand the complexities and contradictions inherent in modern organisations. Friedland and Alford (1991) posited that Western society is based on a range of broad socio-cultural institutions, including markets, corporations, the professions, the state, families and the Christian religion. Institutional logics flow from these institutions and serve to guide action at both the individual and organisational level (Friedland and Alford, 1991). Hence, an institutional logic consists of material and symbolic systems that underlie practices, values, beliefs and rules of behaviours that individuals and organisations can use to determine appropriate behaviour in a particular situation (Friedland and Alford, 1991).\nExamples of the effect of institutional pluralism on corporate branding and rebranding: A spectacular example of institutional pluralism is the case of BP and its \"Beyond Petroleum\" slogan. As detailed by Balmer et al. (2011), even though it is beneficial for organisations such as BP to attempt organisational transformation towards an ethical positioning strategy with a corporate brand to match, such transformations are only possible if an organisational-wide philosophy supporting such a positioning is present. In a similar vein, BHP failed to change from \"[...] an unabashedly technocratic culture of 'The Big Australian'\" (Hanson and Stuart, 2002), even though the organisation wanted to be seen as environmentally aware, as dictated by the external environmental forces at the time. The institutional practices of BP and BHP did not change to a sufficient degree to incorporate an institutional logic underscored by the values, beliefs and practices of environmental sensitivity. The culture and behaviour of both organisations were associated with extracting commodities in the most efficient way, ignoring environmental impacts beyond those mandated by law.\nWeaknesses and limitations: Although this article refers to case studies that are in the literature, no systematic research which focuses on institutional pluralism, as it applies to corporate branding has yet been undertaken.\nFurther research: This article has included some cases of organisations who were unable to make the transition from one organisational logic to another, mainly because of their failure to understand the nature of the challenge presented. Further case study research is needed to understand how some organisations successfully manage the challenge of institutional pluralism and what strategies they use to balance competing logics within the framework of successful corporate rebranding.\nManagerial implications: The main implications for managers are as follows:\nConclusion: A number of authors have grappled with the problem of how to successfully rebrand an organisation in times of organisational transformation. Miller et al. (2014) summarised and categorised the academic literature on the topic. A common underlying theme to all the work detailed in the academic articles available is that corporate rebranding is a strategic event or series of events and that, to be successful, corporate rebranding must move in unison with the overarching corporate strategy, although it is desirable to do so at a slow pace and with an understanding of the expectations of stakeholders and the culture of the organisation. Although it has been suggested that it is possible to adopt an ambiguous position in terms of linking past corporate brand and strategy with the strategy and corporate brand, this is not always possible. What is required is an in-depth understanding of the institutional logics that drive an organisation and the effect of competing logics in relation to articulating a corporate brand promise that can be sustained.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the institutional logics framework adds a fresh perspective on corporate branding, particularly in times of organisational change and subsequent corporate rebranding.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper examines previous comprehensive approaches to corporate branding in the face of organisational transformation, applying institutional theory which adds to intelligence already developed regarding corporate branding and rebranding in this situation.\nFindings: An understanding of the institutional logics framework provides insights into how corporate branding and rebranding in organisations is affected in an environment where the organisation simultaneously holds values and beliefs inherent to two or more competing institutional forms (Townley, 2002).\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research is required to develop a model which integrates institutional logics into previous approaches to corporate rebranding.\nPractical implications: Consideration of the underlying institutional logics of an organisation and how organisational transformation results in competing institutional logics and institutional pluralism leads to profound thinking about branding and rebranding an organisation.\nOriginality/value: Although there are a number of studies which look at how to evolve the corporate brand in times of organisational transformation, the institutional logics approach has not yet been applied to this issue, except by the author.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Imperfect work conditions in Bangladesh RMG sector
|
[
"Bangladesh",
"Garment industry",
"Labour law"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Article 14 of the Bangladesh Constitution states that \"It should be a fundamental responsibility of the state to emancipate the toiling masses - the peasants and workers - and backward section of the people from all forms of exploitation[1]\". But even after more than 40 years of independence, the condition of workers in Bangladesh is not even close to the constitutional vision. The country needs both economic and political reforms to achieve inclusive growth.\nHistory of Bangladesh labour laws: Bangladesh has adopted a revised Bangladesh Labour Law in 2006. The revised law brought changes in the area such as hygiene and safety and labour welfare. Before the revision of the law, the country followed an archaic law which was passed in 1881 during the colonial rule in the Indian sub-continent. There were many amendments made to the act by the British Government such as, Worker's Compensation Act, 1923; The Children (Pledging of Labour) Act, 1933; The workmen's protection Act, 1934; The dock Labourers Act, 1934; Payment of Wages Act, 1936; The Employer's Liability Act, 1938; The employment of children Act, 1938; Maternity Benefit Act, 1939 and The Mines maternity Benefit Act, 1941 (Bangladesh Labor Law, 2006). After the partition of India (Bangladesh was part of Pakistan), the same old labour laws were followed with some modifications. After independence of Bangladesh in the year 1971, the Government followed the same laws under the aegis of Bangladesh Law Orders (President's Order No. 48).\nShortcomings of revised Bangladesh Labour Law: The Labour Law, 2006, has serious shortcomings as has been identified by the recent labour unrest in the country (Tamanna, 2010), especially the RMG sector.\nDecent work and social compliance: The ILO has created a decent work agenda, to uplift the working conditions of workers. Decent work underlines the workers expectations regarding their workplace[9]. The objective of decent work is to provide opportunities of employment which offers fair income, social security for workers and their families, freedom of expression at work and equal treatment for both men and women. The ILO decent work agenda has four strategic objectives:\nSocial compliance in the garment industry: The working condition in Bangladesh garment industry is appalling and often, workers are not aware of their rights[10]. But one of the major issues plaguing the Bangladesh Garment Industry is compliance[11]. In 2011, Mckinsey conducted a survey and interviewed Chief Purchasing Officer of garment importers based in the USA and the European Union (McKinsey report, 2013). They cited compliance as the second most important factor after infrastructure in the Bangladesh garment industry. The industry has valid economic reasons to fulfil its responsibility in meeting the social compliance, as failure to do so might led to losing global markets and losing its competitiveness as a garment exporter. This could trigger serious consequences such as millions of workers losing their jobs and endangering the economic growth. This highlights the importance of enforcing compliance in the garment industry.\nConclusion: The Labour Law in Bangladesh needs to be updated regarding provisions in employment standards, health and safety, social welfare and social protection. The legal provision needs to be strengthened regarding collective bargaining and trade unionism. There is scarcity of building and labour inspector in the country, and it has been even acknowledged by the European Union Inspection Committee. The Government of Bangladesh, International Labour Organization and the European Union have signed a memorandum of understanding on 8 July 2013 and agreed to hire 200 more inspectors by December 2013[15].\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the effectiveness of labour law in Bangladesh and provide suggestions to improve working conditions in the country.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The article provides an analysis of the factual impact of labour law in Bangladesh.\nFindings: The study reveals the appalling condition in the ready-made garment industry. The factory owners tend to bend the laws and exploit the workers.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers some suggestions to improve the working conditions of the workers in the garment industry of Bangladesh.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Culinary tourism assets and events: suggesting a strategic planning tool
|
[
"Competitiveness",
"Perception",
"Stakeholders",
"Tourism",
"Strategic planning",
"Strategic management",
"Focus groups",
"Culinary tourism",
"Tourism system"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Tourism destinations and businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve and differentiate their offerings. They aim to achieve a better positioning and gain a competitive advantage. Every destination should provide valuable experiences and tourism operators should devote their resources to catering for their guests through their offerings (Middleton and Clarke, 2001; Soteriades, 2012). Furthermore, the consumption of food and drink is an important part of contemporary lifestyles, often indicating social status and the extent of cultural capital (Long, 2004; Scott, 2006). It should therefore not be surprising that specific forms of culinary consumption have also become an important part of tourism (Hall and Mitchell, 2005).\n2. Literature review: The present study is based on the theoretical backgrounds of strategic planning and Leiper's model for a tourism system, which are briefly presented below.\n3. Culinary tourism: suggesting a strategic planning tool: The issues and aspects related to culinary tourism, which have been presented above, constitute the foundations and pillars of the framework suggested by this article. The managing, marketing and evaluation of experience opportunities have become an important part of planning a tourism destination offering in which culinary tourism is considered.\n4. Empirical study: 4.1 Purpose of the study\n5. Conclusions and implications: Literature suggests that using appropriate approaches and adequate planning and management tools are likely to result in more effective tourism systems at destination level. As primary resources, culinary assets allow visitors to experience the hosting destination more fully and get better acquainted with it, although this is not their sole function. Other functions of culinary assets are their contribution to extending the opportunities of destination development, and their use as a tool of destination branding to attain differentiation and competitive advantage.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this article is to suggest a framework to be used as a strategic planning tool for culinary tourism projects at destination level.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on theoretical background of strategic planning and Leiper's tourism model, a conceptual tool is suggested. Its value is investigated through an empirical study that was performed, which employed a qualitative research method (discussion groups of experts).\nFindings: The article suggests a framework to be used as a strategic planning tool for culinary tourism projects. The empirical study identified the merits, drawbacks and limitations of the framework to be taken into account. It can be used only in combination with other tools to achieve a comprehensive approach to designing, managing and marketing culinary tourism assets strategically.\nResearch limitations/implications: Because of its exploratory nature, the study has inherent drawbacks. The suggested framework should be finalised. Future studies could explore the perspective of visitors deeply and should also investigate the appropriate tools to be implemented at operational management level.\nPractical implications: In the fields of strategic management and marketing, the study enhances a comprehensive approach. It contributes to positioning and analysing culinary tourism within the context of a whole destination system. It provides an additional tool for destination planners and managers to be used along with other tools in performing their tasks at strategic level.\nOriginality/value: It is the first study that suggests and empirically investigates a strategic planning tool at destination level, based on the theoretical backgrounds of strategic planning and tourism system. It provides an integrated approach incorporating the main issues to be dealt with in the field of culinary tourism.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Supplier selection for a sustainable supply chain: Triple bottom line (3BL) and analytic network process approach
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Triple bottom line",
"Supplier selection",
"Analytic network process (ANP)",
"Multi-criteria decision model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Organizations now recognize the importance of sustainability and thus sustainability has become an integral part of business strategy. Sustainability had remain as part of many cultures but formal introduction of sustainability as a concern for businesses can be traced to the Brundtland report published in a book entitled \"Our Common Future\" (Linton et al., 2007). Considering its wide ramifications, the definition of sustainable development as presented by World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) is more accepted which states that: \"Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.\" Over the years, sustainability supported by Agenda 21 adopted at United Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, 1992, has emerged as a catalyst for global activities to improve their understanding about sustainable development paradigm (Zilans and Abolina, 2009).\n2. Supplier selection problem: Over the years, the supplier selection process has grown more complex as it not only considers price but also series of quantitative and qualitative factors considered as important for firms' survival and growth in future (Ho et al., 2010). In a review of decision models utilized for supplier selection, Boer et al. reports the use of techniques like data envelopment analysis, total cost approaches, linear programming, linear weighting models, statistical methods, and artificial intelligence. Decision-making methods reported by various researchers in literature for the supplier selection can be represented as multi-criteria decision models (MCDMs), mathematical programming, artificial intelligence, expert systems, and multivariate statistical analysis (Kirytopoulos et al., 2008). A recent review reported by Ho et al. (2010) based on 78 articles has examined issues like the most popular techniques and relative importance to criteria of supplier selection.\n3. Supply chain and the \"3BL\": Businesses today understand the importance of preserving the environment and social responsibilities of a firm. However, to achieve higher performance on sustainability, greater efforts are required to transform the whole supply chain thereby leading to sustained competitive advantage in the marketplace (Beske and Seuring, 2014). Studies in the area of SSCM suggest that there exists a direct relationship between sustainable supply chain performance and competitiveness, financial, and operational performance of a firm (Keating et al., 2008). The quest for sustainability is no longer considered as an exercise to satisfy regulatory requirements, rather companies like Toyota, GE, Timberland, and Starbucks view sustainability as a catalyst for growth and gaining competitive advantage. Sustainable viewpoint considers development to be sustainable when it considers benefits of all stakeholders and is carried out in a judicious manner with an optimum use of natural resources (Hart and Milstein, 2003). A review of literature indicates that businesses sustainability demands balance of the natural environment, society, and economic performance supporting the concept of 3BL for managing businesses (Elkington, 1998). Thus, development can be called sustainable if it delivers benefits on all the three dimensions simultaneously. This can be achieved by monitoring companies' performance on the three variables using sustainability indicators (Tajbakhsh and Hassini, 2015).\n4. The ANP: MCDMs are useful tools to arrive at optimum decisions for problems influenced by multiple criteria. In literature, MCDM like TOPSIS, ELECTRE, and AHP are used to solve multi-criteria models. Among them, AHP solves the problem by considering the problem in a hierarchical form where the lower-level variables are the subsets of the higher-level variables. It uses experts' judgment to prioritize various criteria and sub-criteria at each level of hierarchy. However, a number of real-life MCDM problems cannot be structured in a strict hierarchal manner as there exits interdependencies among variables and sub-variables (Saaty, 2001). These interdependencies lead to structuring of the problem in a network form that allows for feedback among clusters of decision elements. To solve such network, ANP is suggested which takes into consideration the dependence and feedback among alternatives or criteria. In problems where relationships among variables cannot be strictly structured as higher or lower levels and where the interdependence among variables cannot be ruled out, ANP is the best option available to the decision maker.\n5. The decision environment: an illustrative example: The proposed approach was applied to the supplier selection problem for a large white goods manufacturer in India. The company introduced its products in the market in early 1990s and since then it has come a long way in becoming one of the leaders in white goods segment. With new stringent environment legislation enforced, company needs to seriously consider its performance on environmental dimension. Furthermore, as the company is not an Indian-owned company there is an expectation by the local populace that the organization earning profits should contribute to the overall betterment of the society. These concerns have led the company to chart out a program to develop sustainability practices in all its area of operations. The company does not have subsidiaries and thus it is dependent on its suppliers to achieve superior environmental and social performance. To achieve the objectives of sustainability, the company has realized that support of right type of supply chain partners is crucial. As the company is planning to launch a new line of products, it is in the process of evaluation of suppliers for the supply of certain critical components. The following section describes the model development and its application for the case company.\n6. Discussion: Pursuing a sustainable supply chain agenda involving an \"ethical sourcing code of conduct\" can lead to an improved corporate reputation (Roberts, 2003). In the illustrative example presented in this paper, \"supplier B\" seems to be the preferred supplier for the case company treading toward a sustainable supply chain. In a study by Igarashi et al. (2015), on the inclusion of environmental criteria in the supplier selection in the Norwegian public sector, it was found that purchasers use different types of environmental criteria and that such criteria may be used in different stages of the selection process. Typically, they avoid a direct trade-off between green performance and other classical purchasing criteria. The study indicated that purchasers either ignore environmental criteria, define it as part of other existing criteria, or use environmental criteria as qualifiers early in the selection process. In contrast to this study, the model developed in this paper explicitly considers environmental dimensions in addition to the traditional economic dimension in the supplier selection and thus provides a better option for the supplier selection.\n7. Managerial implications of the research: Practically, the methodology advances supplier selection models that only focus on conventional criteria to include sustainability dimensions within the domain of traditional supplier selection criteria. The model presented in the paper brings the novelty of utilizing all the sustainability dimensions with the simultaneous consideration of the commonly used supplier selection criteria. The changes in the business environment that are brought due to emphasis on sustainability are affecting supply chain decisions. Companies in developing countries find difficult to integrate sustainability in strategic decisions like supplier selection due to the lack of appropriate tools and the complexity involved in simultaneous consideration of multiple criteria. In this regard, the proposed model would aid supply chain managers to reach a more judicious decision.\n8. Conclusions: This study proposed an integrated 3BL and ANP approach for supplier selection for a sustainable supply chain. The proposed approach evaluates alternative suppliers, in terms of economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The case of a large white goods manufacturer operating in India was presented for the illustration of the proposed approach. One of the major contributions of the approach is the consideration of interdependency among the dimensions and enablers. This was effectively employed for producing the priorities of the alternative suppliers.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to integrate the \"triple bottom line (3BL)\" approach in the supplier selection decision. It also aims to consider the feedback effect of the decision on strategic factors that determine the future viability of the firm in the market.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A multi-criteria decision model is developed that considers simultaneously the impact of three dimensions of 3BL approach and their sub-dimensions on the supplier selection decision. The proposed model is evaluated for a large white goods manufacturer using the analytic network process (ANP) approach.\nFindings: The ANP considers the impact of variables, sub-variables, and their interdependencies simultaneously. The outcome of the model is the relative priorities for the firms considered as potential suppliers.\nPractical implications: This research was conducted in one of the largest developing economies. The impact of integrating sustainability would be widespread due to the huge market in which the company operates. The results of this research can provide support to the decision makers in arriving at an optimal decision considering all sustainability dimensions.\nOriginality/value: The novelty of the approach lies in the application of multi-criteria model integrating sustainability dimensions with a feedback effect for supplier selection. The case company would benefit by showing its commitment toward environment and social responsibility leading to improved brand image and sustainable business.\n",
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"Brand play" versus "Brand attack": the subversion of brand meaning in non-collaborative co-creation by professional artists and consumer activists
|
[
"Brand equity",
"Artist co-creators",
"Brand attack",
"Brand play",
"Non-collaborative co-creation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One view of branding is as a dynamic social process constructed through multiple relations between companies and stakeholders, for instance, Merz et al. (2009), Veloutsou (2009), Vallaster and Von Wallpach (2013), Kaufmann et al. (2016) and Von Wallpach et al. (2017). The outcome of active dialogue and interaction between the integrated parties is \"co-creation\" of the brand's value and meaning (Iglesias et al., 2013; Black and Veloutsou, 2017). Most published studies in the field of brand co-creation tend to take an optimistic perspective of consumers engaging with each other and with the brand, a process which has become a key objective in the marketing strategies of many companies (Dessart et al., 2015). However, the involvement of consumers in the creative and innovative co-creation processes around branding entails the risk of negative forms of engagement (Hollebeek and Chen, 2014). Brand co-creation can mean that companies lose control over the brand's meaning (Cova and Paranque, 2016; Saleem and Iglesias, 2016), which may be pushed in unwanted directions (Ind, 2014). Co-creators could misuse their increased empowerment by behaving non-collaboratively instead of as valuable contributors and thereby representing an uncontrollable source of information (Black and Veloutsou, 2017). Both the existing literature and real-life cases suggest that non-collaborative co-creators may either playfully parody initial brand meanings or express negative emotions they feel towards the brand and its meanings (Fournier and Avery, 2011; Zarantonello et al., 2016; Hegner et al., 2017).\nConceptual background and development of hypotheses: Co-creation of brand meaning\nEmpirical study: Sampling\nGeneral discussion: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the ways in which \"non-collaborative co-creation\" can affect brand equity as perceived by independent observers. It reports a study of the different effects on that perception attributable to non-collaborative co-creation that takes the form of either \"brand play\" or \"brand attack\" and is executed either by established artists or mainstream consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A 2 x 2 between-subjects experiment (brand play versus brand attack; consumer versus artist) measured observers' perception of brand equity before and after exposure to purpose-designed co-created treatments.\nFindings: Non-collaborative co-creation has a negative effect on observers' perceptions of brand equity and brand attack, causing a stronger dilution of brand equity than brand play. Artists either mitigate the dilution or have a positive effect on those perceptions.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research could usefully investigate the relative susceptibility of brands to non-collaborative co-creation, the effects on brands of higher complexity than those in our experiment, exposed in higher-involvement media, and the effects of more diverse forms of co-creation.\nPractical implications: Brand managers must recognise that co-creation carries considerable risks for brand equity. They should closely monitor and track the first signs of non-collaborative co-creation in progress. It could be beneficial to recruit artists as co-creators of controlled brand play.\nOriginality/value: This study offers a more complete insight into the effect of non-collaborative co-creation on observers' perceptions of brand equity than so far offered by the existing literature. It connects the fields of brand management and the arts by investigating the role and impact of artists as collaborative or non-collaborative co-creators of brand equity.\n",
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Over qualified and under experienced: Turning graduates into hospitality managers
|
[
"Hospitality management",
"Hospitality education",
"Skills",
"Graduates",
"Australia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Vocational degree programs, including those in hotel and hospitality management, are intended to satisfy an industry need for skilled future employees and, as a result, there is a need to ensure the academic curriculum not only meets educational expectations but also industry and student expectations regarding the skill sets needed in the workplace. Students enrolling in degree programs in hotel or hospitality management are motivated by anticipated vocational and career outcomes (O'Mahony et al., 2001; Purcell and Quinn, 1996). This research investigated hospitality manager's expectations of graduate skills and compared these with student perceptions of the skills that hospitality managers valued. The results of this research are valuable in curriculum development and in planning internal and external communications strategies for faculty offering similar courses.Tertiary educators in hospitality have long recognised the importance of matching program outcomes with industry needs and there have been a number of studies of hospitality employer expectations of graduates in the USA (for recent examples see Perdue et al., 2000; Nelson and Dopson, 1999; Kay and Russette, 2000) and in the UK (Baum, 1991). However, there has been little published in the Asia Pacific region. Moreover, previous studies have generally adopted the management competency framework developed by Sandwith (1993), which is arguably of limited value in curriculum design because it describes a narrow range of relatively advanced management skills that one would not expect to find in an undergraduate or recent graduate. Instead this study adopts the broader generic skills model which was developed in an educational context to aid curriculum design (Dunne et al., 1999).\nLiterature review: There have been a number of studies that have looked at aspects of the hospitality curriculum including the rationale for competency based education, the inclusion of work based training, industry expectations of graduate skills and the actual skills held by graduates. This review of the literature is structured under three related themes; the changing needs of industry, graduate skills and the generic skills framework. It concludes with an overview of the generic skills model, which was adopted as the underlying framework for the current research.Changing needs of industry\nMethod: There were two major aims of the study: first, to apply a generic skills framework to hospitality managers' expectations of graduate students entering a management traineeship program; and second, to identify differences between hospitality managers' expectations of graduate students and undergraduate students' perceptions of what managers look for in graduate recruits. These issues were investigated by surveying samples of both populations using a self-completion survey instrument that required each group to rate the importance of a range of hospitality related skills. The skill ratings in each group were then compared in order to develop a form of expectations-perceptions \"gap analysis\".Instrument design\nResults: Usable responses were received from 371 industry managers (a 43.6 percent response rate) and responses were received from 82 percent of the properties targeted. A summary profile of the industry respondents is presented in Table I. Overall there was a good spread of managers from the various functional and operational areas and a good representation of both male and female managers. However there was a clear, but predictable, gender bias within the functional areas with human resource (HR) and sales and marketing (S&M) managers more likely to be female whilst food and beverage (F&B) and general managers (GM) were more likely to be male. Mean age also followed an expected pattern with the operational areas of food and beverage (F&B) and rooms being represented by younger managers and sales and marketing (S&M) and general management (GM) by older managers. A comparison of current age and the number of years in the hospitality industry indicates that, on average, food and beverage managers entered the industry at approximately 18 years of age while human resource managers and sales and marketing managers entered at about 22 and 27 years of age respectively. Slightly over one third of all the respondents had a university degree but this was much higher in the traditionally professional area of human resources.In the student sample the mean age was 20 years and on average they had worked in the industry for only one and a half years. Females represented 69 percent of the sample and 44 percent of the responses came from non-Australian students.The next section of this paper describes the results of the skills rating exercise. The two populations sampled in this study had quite different socio-economic profiles, particularly in terms of age and employment experience. A number of studies have found that individuals with different life experiences and cultural backgrounds use scales in subtly different ways (Rennie, 1982; Vasilopoulos et al., 2000). To minimise the impact of this type of response set on comparisons between the two groups the responses to each of the 52 items were standardised for each individual. This procedure centers each individuals mean response to the 52 items to zero. Relative importance of a skill is indicated by a standardised mean value with positive sign and relative unimportance by a standardised mean value with negative sign.Table II presents a comparison of industry managers and students responses to the 52 skill descriptors. The analysis uses comparisons of the ranked standardised means to identify the difference or \"gap\" between manager and student ranking of a skill descriptor. The absolute size of the gap is a good indicator of the level of agreement or disagreement between the two groups. Positive gap values at the top of the table indicate those skill descriptors that were ranked more highly by managers than students. Negative gap values at the bottom of the table indicate those skill descriptors that were ranked more highly by students. A t-test is also used to identify significant differences between the standardised mean rating of each skill descriptor by the two groups.In absolute terms the five biggest differences in ranking occur among those skill descriptors that students ranked more highly than industry managers did. Three of these five skill descriptors relate to the conceptual and analytical domain, one to an advanced form of oral communication and one to teamwork and leadership. The t-test of the standardised means shows that students rated each of these skills as significantly more important than did managers. The trends at the top of the table, i.e. among those skills ranked more highly by managers, are not as clear, however skill descriptors related to adaptability and learning do feature in two of the top three places suggesting that managers placed greater emphasis on this dimension than did students.Skill descriptors in which there was the least amount of disagreement between the two groups are located in the middle of Table II. Analysis of the ranked skills shows that there was a substantial amount of agreement among industry managers and students about the most important skills for a graduate entering a hospitality management traineeship. Both groups identified the same skill as the most important among the 52 skill descriptors (\"Deal effectively with customer problems\") and eight of the top ten ranked skill descriptors were common to both groups. Managers and students also identified the same skill descriptor as least important among the 52 items (\"Design and implement basic primary research\"). However, the gap between industry expectations and student perceptions was generally much greater among those skills ranked outside the top ten.Among the most important ten skill descriptors identified by managers, the generic skill groups of interpersonal skills (four mentions), problem solving (three mentions) and self-management (two mentions) featured most strongly. It is interesting to note that industry managers identified none of the skill descriptors associated with the conceptual and analytical domain in the top 20. In fact industry managers ranked eight of the ten skill descriptors associated with the conceptual and analytical domain in the bottom 20 while students generally ranked these items substantially higher.\nDiscussion: There have been a number of investigations of hospitality graduate skills and the needs of the hospitality industry over a period of 20 years and it seems the same themes and concerns continue to be evident. Whilst it is to be expected there will be changes in curriculum content and industry needs over time, for example in respect of information technology, there continues to be a distinction between industry and student perceptions of what skills and roles are appropriate for graduates entering the industry. Students have been criticised for having unrealistic expectations of the types of responsibilities they may be given and consequently the types of skills they will be expected to exercise on entering the industry (Purcell and Quinn, 1996). At the same time industry tend to discount student's formal qualifications on the grounds of lack of experience and frequently we hear the complaint that students are \"over qualified but under experienced\" for even entry level management positions.The analysis of the specific skill descriptions shown in Table II shows that managers ranked skills related to the interpersonal, problem solving and self-management domains as most important. However, they tended to discount, both relevant to the other skill descriptions and compared to student perceptions, those skills associated with the conceptual and analytical domain. This is an important finding since it is these skills that are emphasised in most bachelor degree level programs and it seems judicious to consider the causes of this dichotomy. In developing this discussion three themes emerge - those of expectations, experience and education. This discussion identifies only two or three key issues relevant to each theme and does not attempt a comprehensive discourse.Expectations\nConclusion: It is a great concern that many of the strongest graduates of tertiary hospitality management programs leave the industry because of unfulfilled expectations. This paper has used a generic skills framework to show that there are significant gaps between industry expectations and student perceptions of the skills that are most valuable to graduates entering the industry. These results suggest that students and academics are investing time and effort in developing conceptual and analytical skills that will not, at least immediately, be valued by employers of hospitality graduates. In response, the paper has suggested a number of strategies for re-focusing hospitality curriculum, ensuring better learning outcomes for students of hospitality management, and maximising retention of graduates once they are in industry. Most of these strategies rely on greater co-operation between education providers and industry to design educational curriculum, undergraduate industry experience programs, and graduate internships that challenge participants and maximise the learning that can be gained through the synergies of a collaborative industry-education approach.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper sets out to report on research that investigated hospitality managers' expectations of graduate skills and compared those expectations with student perceptions of what hospitality managers value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research adopted a generic skills framework and data were collected through a sample survey of 850 Australian hospitality managers and 211 undergraduate hospitality management students.\nFindings: - Managers rated skills associated with interpersonal, problem solving, and self-management skill domains as most important while students appeared to have realistic perceptions of the skills that managers value when recruiting hospitality graduates. The most substantial areas of disagreement came in those skills associated with the conceptual and analytical domain. Industry managers tended to discount the skills in this domain relative to students.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The sample of managers used in this study were predominantly of Australian nationality and, in an increasingly global hospitality labor market, there may be some benefit in repeating this study with managers from different cultural backgrounds.\nPractical implications: - A number of strategies are proposed in the paper for bridging the expectation gaps and ensuring better learning outcomes for students and industry stakeholders.\nOriginality/value: - In adopting the generic skills framework this research presents an alternative to previous studies that have used a management competencies framework. As such, it is of more immediate value to those responsible for designing undergraduate hospitality management curriculum who need to ensure that programs meet academic standards as well as industry and student expectations regarding the skill sets needed in the workplace.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Customer response to interactional service experience: The role of interaction environment
|
[
"Causal attribution",
"Customer-employee interaction",
"Interaction environment",
"Positive and negative interactional service experience"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Imagine that you go to a nearby hardware store to get some advice for a new drill you are interested in. You finally find a frontline employee and approach him or her, but unexpectedly, the response to your request is harsh and unfriendly. How would you react? Now imagine the same situation, but before approaching the employee, you witness a rude order from a co-worker that precedes the employee's grumpy behavior. How would your reaction to the frontline employees' emotional display differ in light of this additional information indicating a reason for the behavior beyond the employee's control?\nTheoretical background and hypotheses development: Causal attribution\nStudy 1: Design\nStudy 2: Design, stimulus development, procedure, and measures\nDiscussion: Researchers have long argued that environmental cues strongly affect consumer behavior (Dijksterhuis et al., 2005), but few studies have empirically investigated such cues in the context of interactional service experiences. The current research examines how triggers in the interaction environment can affect customers' behavioral response to service employees' emotional display. The following sections review the key findings and implications.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees' negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee's emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger's visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.\nFindings: Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.\nOriginality/value: This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is \"faked.\"\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Business transformation at Zegna: Human resources as a change agent
|
[
"Organizational performance",
"Human resource management",
"Organizational change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Ermenegildo Zegna is an Italian based luxury menswear company. It is a family owned business that employs 7,500 people, almost half of whom are based in Italy. In 2006 it turned over EUR779.4 million.\nOpen to change: After taking on the new role, Tyler-Cagni found that the senior team at Zegna was very keen for the HR function to be a business partner and change agent - a refreshing change from the norm at that time.To help with the change Tyler-Cagni brought in HR transformation consultant Jan Hills. Through a process of internal consultation and analysis of structure, culture and current policies, together they identified the following four principle areas of change that the HR team would need to put into action.1. Structural changes. The structure of the HR team needed to be examined and changed to fit the new requirements of HR.2. Skill and attitudinal changes. For the changes to be successful, all of the HR team members needed to see the value of the new role for HR and to fully support the evolution of their roles and the HR function.3. Education of the client. As the function and responsibility of HR changed, the line managers needed to understand the value of these changes to the business.4. Policies and HR systems. For the changes in the HR team to be credible, the HR function had to set an example of how the change in the business would be carried out. Planning, training, coaching and new HR attitudes needed to be adopted.It was clear that in order to help the business achieve its change objectives, the HR team had to make the same changes itself. In order to do this they needed to understand the current perception of HR and what the business strategy and plans were for the future. To gain this understanding, the Ulrich model was used and internal clients were surveyed.The survey highlighted the company's priorities and goals so that the transformation team could put together a change plan for the HR department that would focus on facilitating those priorities. In that way, it could make sure that the company and HR were working towards the same goals.\nDemonstrating the value of HR: Equally important as changing the mindset of the management team was the need to educate the HR team members themselves, many of whom were very happy in their current roles. For the move from transactional to strategic HR to be successful, the buy-in of the current HR team of 30 people across ten countries was essential.Tyler-Cagni pulled together the senior HR team from around the globe and, using the results and findings from the client survey, developed a plan of action for HR. The initial plan also agreed the principle skills and competencies that HR would need to move forward. A development plan was then put together for each HR person together with budget and support to achieve it.A series of training workshops were developed around the success profile. The workshops were not the end product however; the HR team needed to be able to quantify and demonstrate the impact and success that its training programs had on the business. This was done by showing the management team how training delivered improvements to the company and ultimately the bottom line.After training with factory supervisors, for example, there was a significant decrease in absenteeism. The first training also had a big impact on sales. The annual sales increase achieved by people taking part in the training is between 17-27 percent higher than that of those not having training.What's more, the training results (along with other initiatives) meant that changes within the HR team were physically happening, as opposed to what has happened in some other companies where people speak about change, but in reality very little is actually different.\nOvercoming challenges: The changes that were made were not always successful and challenges were encountered during the process.Even when the HR team has committed to learning more about the client, the industry and the direction of the company, there is no denying that moving from a transactional to a strategic role is not easy. There are key skills that HR people need and there are some core underlying beliefs that make for successful HR people.These include:1. Knowing how to give positive and useful feedback.2. Having the confidence and knowledge to make good judgments.3. Developing good coaching skills.4. Being able to facilitate in any given situation.Some more unexpected problems also presented themselves during the move from transactional to strategic HR at Zegna. Once HR people made the move into a strategic role, sometimes they found that they could become too influential and suddenly they were invited to provide input on areas that were not within the HR responsibility, such as customer management.\nAn ongoing process: The move from transactional to strategic HR is not a one off, closed-ended process. At the beginning of 2007 after a period of growth, Zegna made further changes to its business model and once again Tyler-Cagni is the change process leader. She is conscious of making sure that as the company changes, the HR team is at the forefront. Working again with HR, she plans to repeat the initial workshops and carry out a further survey to find out what the line managers need from HR during this new period of change. HR must keep ahead of the changes and needs to always be thinking of new ideas and new attitudes and to keep pushing forward.\nComment: This is a review of \"HR leading by example during Zegna transformation\" by Tyler-Cagni and Hills (2008). This article outlines the challenges met by Ermenegildo Zegna when it decided to transform the organization into a performance-oriented culture and how these challenges were overcome. The article is clear and concise, and employs an interesting and readable style. It is of value to those concerned with human resources and/or business transformation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints 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: - Ermenegildo Zegna is an Italian based luxury menswear company. It is a family owned business that employs 7,500 people, almost half of whom are based in Italy. In 2006 it turned over EUR779.4 million. When Zegna's senior management team decided to transform the organization into a performance-orientated culture, the decision was made to start with the HR function.\nPractical implications: - 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"
}
] |
3D printing the future: scenarios for supply chains reviewed
|
[
"Logistics",
"Additive manufacturing",
"Scenario planning",
"Gap analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is an ongoing discussion as to how 3D printing (3DP) might evolve over the coming years, and how 3DP systems may be implemented and integrated into manufacturing systems. While Rogers et al. (2016) provide an overview of existing practices, the technologies of 3DP are advancing rapidly and when looking to the future, scenario planning approaches can make a valuable contribution (e.g. Birtchnell and Urry, 2013; Potstada and Zybura, 2014). These techniques are particularly useful in prediction for emerging technologies, as they present a series of alternative possibilities for the future rather than trying to attempt to predict a definitive outcome, allowing investigation of future performance if any of these outcomes should occur (Schoemaker and Mavaddat, 2000). With such a variety of predictions in published 3DP literature (often reflecting a diverse disciplinary base examining the opportunities with this technology), there is a need to evaluate and synthesise these existing scenarios to identify common components drawn from established supply chain theory. In doing so, gaps (which we term \"white space\", reflecting Frankel et al., 2005) in existing thinking on future 3DP scenarios can be identified, driving future research opportunities.\nScenario planning for supply chain management: Being an innovative technology, the full range of applications of 3DP has still to be realized. Consequently, scenario development and planning approaches are often used to provide alternative views of future uses and applications of this technology within an applied context. Scenario development and planning was popularised by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s and differs from other planning methods, in that rather than trying to determine a definite outcome for the future, it aims to develop a range of possible futures (Schwarz, 1991). Importantly, scenarios examine the \"external environment; that is the environment within which an organisation operates\" (O'Brien, 2004). In doing so, they consider the relationships between uncertainties, trends and the behaviour of actors involved in the scenario (Wright and Cairns, 2011). By developing scenarios, organisations can plan for development against various possible futures, refining the scenarios further as time goes on and future reality becomes clearer (Schoemaker and Mavaddat, 2000). Bishop et al. (2007) document a wide range of available techniques for generating scenarios, ranging from a \"genius\" approach based largely on expert judgement, to more structured techniques such as probability trees.\nDeveloping a coding framework for future additive manufacturing (AM) scenarios: The implications for supply chains of the introduction of 3DP as a manufacturing technology are widespread, including effects upon transportation costs (Birtchnell et al., 2013; Barz et al., 2016), lead times (Holmstrom et al., 2010; Khajavi et al., 2015), inventory (Khajavi et al., 2014; Mavri, 2015), product quality and reliability (Monzon et al., 2015; Wagner and Walton, 2016) production flexibility, productivity and economies of scale (Petrick and Simpson, 2013; Baumers et al., 2016; Sasson and Johnson, 2016), supply chain sustainability (Chen et al., 2015; Ford and Despeisse, 2016), new business models (Rayna and Striukova, 2014) and opportunities for new suppliers (Bogers et al., 2016). This research, however, focusses on three areas: customer engagement, examined using OPP (Gosling et al., 2007), the geographic distribution of manufacturing and the type of manufacturing operation, each of which is described further in the following sections. Through the initial exploratory study and discussions with expert practitioners, these criteria were identified as those which commonly featured in, and yet consistently differentiated between the future proposals under examination, giving a strong indication of the nature of each scenario being proposed.\nMethod: This study employs a structured literature review to evaluate potential scenarios for 3DP already proposed in the literature. Unlike traditional narrative, literature reviews that can be affected by author bias (Tranfield et al., 2003), the structured approach provides a detailed explanation of the literature base searched and how it was analysed in the provision of a robust investigation. Saenz and Koufteros (2015) provide guidance on the best practice for the construction of structured literature reviews, and these have been instrumental in the development of the review process. We also draw heavily on the guidance of Tranfield et al. (2003) in definition of the literature review, and Seuring and Gold (2012) in the analysis of publications.\nResults: Overview of the sample\nIdentifying the \"white space\" of 3DP supply chain scenarios: In order to identify the \"white space\" of 3DP supply chain scenarios, we now consider the combinations of coding variables, to build a more complete picture of the scenarios which are being proposed. There are 90 possible combinations of factors for scenario creation, but only 27 of these possible combinations were found in the literature, as shown in Table VI and Figure 5.\nConclusion: The motivation for this paper arose from the recognition that, while many future scenarios proposed for 3DP have been proposed by both academics and practitioners, little explicit focus had been given to supply chains. It was recognised that potential scenarios were scattered within literature crossing many disciplines, yet often appeared to have commonalities between them. Equally, it was identified that there were potential scenarios that had not been considered within the literature. Therefore, the aim of the paper was to identify the \"white space\" of existing 3DP supply chain scenarios and consider the feasibility of 3DP being able to fill this gap.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the existing scenarios for 3D printing (3DP) in order to identify the \"white space\" where future opportunities have not been proposed or developed to date. Based around aspects of order penetration points, geographical scope and type of manufacturing, these gaps are identified.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structured literature review has been carried out on both academic and trade publications. As of the end of May 2016, this identified 128 relevant articles containing 201 future scenarios. Coding these against aspects of existing manufacturing and supply chain theory has led to the development of a framework to identify \"white space\" in the existing thinking.\nFindings: The coding shows that existing future scenarios are particularly concentrated on job shop applications and pull-based supply chain processes, although there are fewer constraints on geographical scope. Five distinct areas of \"white space\" are proposed, reflecting various opportunities for future 3DP supply chain development.\nResearch limitations/implications: Being a structured literature review, there are potentially articles not identified through the search criteria used. The nature of the findings is also dependent upon the coding criteria selected. However, these are theoretically derived and reflect important aspect of strategic supply chain management.\nPractical implications: Practitioners may wish to explore the development of business models within the \"white space\" areas.\nOriginality/value: Currently, existing future 3DP scenarios are scattered over a wide, multi-disciplinary literature base. By providing a consolidated view of these scenarios, it is possible to identify gaps in current thinking. These gaps are multi-disciplinary in nature and represent opportunities for both academics and practitioners to exploit.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A mixed methods research toward a framework of a maintenance management model: A survey in Moroccan industries
|
[
"Maintenance management",
"Mixed methods research",
"Qualitative study",
"Quantitative study",
"Maintenance model",
"Moroccan industries"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Industries in Morocco test contribute to about one-third of the annual gross domestic product (GDP). Industrial areas include phosphates, rock mining and processing, automotive and aviation, food processing, leather goods, and textiles and construction. Morocco is currently creating several free zones to encourage foreign investment; this overall strategy aims to reinforce industry to become a major leverage for growth and job creation. In this highly competitive business world, some factors have always been considered as a priority in companies, quality, reliability, flexibility and ability to reach demand and delivery, in order to achieve competitiveness (Phusavat and Kanchana, 2008). Besides being a competitive advantage for most organizations, sustainability is becoming a necessity today for long-term survival(Katiyar et al., 2018). In order to assist experts to support effective sustainable development and sustainability decision making, the international organizations launched the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Framework in 2011 (Gbededo et al., 2018). It is agreed that maintenance in industries is a function that contributes to improve all those factors previously cited. However, no previous study about maintenance management status has been conducted in Morocco, thus leading to the interest to study this topic.\n2. Methods: 2.1 Mixed methods research in literature\n3. Results of qualitative and quantitative studies: 3.1 Results of the qualitative study\n4. Discussion: The analysis of the results obtained by qualitative and quantitative studies showed that the most impacting factors of maintenance management in the surveyed companies are top management, maintenance department, information management and human factor. The other factors depend on those four key factors, as shown previously in the correlation analysis.\n5. Preliminary maintenance management framework model: Maintenance management is the process of leading and directing maintenance organization. This process consists of defining and implementing a strategy through two stages: framework and process. Framework is the structure that will ensure the support needed to manage maintenance effectively, whereas process is a series of actions and stages to be followed (Crespo Marquez et al., 2009). Ding and Kamaruddin (2015) defined model as a description of a process that aims to model, analyze and determine the optimal maintenance policy with consideration to predetermined objectives and maintenance criteria. Developing maintenance management model is a complex process, as maintenance is linked to every function in a company at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Moreover, maintenance is a moving function since it depends on continuously evolving factors such as business objectives, production methods, equipment technology, work culture or legal regulations.\n6. Conclusions and perspectives: The aim of this paper was to identify the factors that characterize maintenance management in surveyed Moroccan companies and then to develop a conceptual framework of model to improve maintenance management. Since there is no similar published study done in Moroccan companies, it was risky to restrict the method of collecting data from the surveyed companies by selecting the KPI of maintenance management from the literature.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the maintenance management status in a sample of Moroccan industries through highlighting the most impacting factors. A preliminary framework of a maintenance management model is proposed on the basis of the study findings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mixed methods research (MMR), including qualitative and quantitative independent studies, was conducted in a sample of Moroccan industries. The process of collecting data involved submission of questionnaires to industrial managers and on-site visits. Analyzing case studies and correlations between maintenance factors were used to define the status of maintenance management. The preliminary framework of a maintenance management model was presented through a basic graph.\nFindings: The surveyed companies have three levels of maintenance management: inner, medium and good. The most impacting maintenance factors include the top management policy and maintenance department approach. Most of the companies surveyed do not have an overall maintenance model, as most of decisions are based on random factors rather than the data analysis approach. The preliminary framework of maintenance management model involves the main factors with recommendations to improve maintenance management performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample in this study is limited to seven companies in the qualitative study and thirty-one companies in the quantitative study. The informants are the industrial managers of those companies. In order to apply this maintenance model in industry, an advanced version of this model is to be developed through providing key performance indicators (KPI) and an implementation process for each factor, including other participants in the companies from top management and operational levels.\nPractical implications: The study may contribute to assess maintenance management and to develop a framework of maintenance management models in industries, especially when no previous basic study was conducted in a specific context.\nOriginality/value: The original contribution of this paper is using MMR to develop a preliminary framework of a maintenance management model. This methodology aims to narrow the gap between academic studies and maintenance management in industries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Endogenous categorization and group inequality
|
[
"Group inequality",
"Categorization endogeneity",
"Neighbourhood effects"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Membership in a particular group may dramatically affect one's socio-economic status, leading to the existence of group inequality. On the economic point of view, members of discriminated groups may enjoy smaller returns on human capital investment, due to taste-based (Becker, 1957) or occupational discrimination (Bergmann, 1974), or accumulate less human capital than those coming from dominant groups. It can be explained, for instance, by statistical discrimination (Phelps, 1972; Arrow, 1973), discrimination in the access to and quality of schooling or disadvantages accumulated over generations. Finally, there is also the \"third-degree price discrimination\" (Pigou, 1920), consistent with profit-maximization, when the agent's reservation value is inferred from her observable characteristics[1].\n2. Theoretical framework: 2.1. Neighborhood effects\n3. The model: The following model will formalize the ideas presented above. There is population composed by genetically distinct individuals. There are two groups in this society: the Blues and the Greens. A fraction b of this population owns a gene G, which generates a physical, easily observable characteristic associated with the Green social group. For instance, this gene can be associated with skin darkness and the Green group can be the Black social category. This society is also characterized by group hierarchy, in such a way that the Blues are the dominant group and the Greens, the dominated one.\n4. Dynamics of the model: A point (Equation 13) is stationary if it is a solution to the system of difference equations represented by (1.A) and (1.B):\n5. Concluding remarks: A model of qualification acquisition by phenotypically distinct individuals was presented above. It was shown that, under sufficiently small levels of discrimination, the endogeneity of the categorization contributes to the persistence of group inequality: idiosyncratic members of the disadvantaged group will no longer be seen as role models and, then, other members of the group will not be stimulated to deviate from group detrimental behavioral prescription. Conversely, if discrimination is very high, discriminate groups are heavily penalized under low levels of CE, as they could not escape from discrimination by adopting a pro-mobility behavior and passing as a member of the dominant group.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of categorization endogeneity (CE), meant as the influence of endogenous elements (e.g. behavioral traits) in group categorization, in the persistence of group inequality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author integrates economic and sociological elements in a dynamic model of human capital accumulation by phenotypically distinct individuals. Both kinds of elements are influenced by the degree of CE.\nFindings: Effect of CE in the incentive of members of dominated groups to accumulate human capital is twofold: it allows them to pass as belonging to the dominant group but, on the other hand, it reduces the social pay-off stemming from such behavior, as they may be \"expelled\" from the reference group by their peers. It is found that, under sufficiently low levels of discrimination, CE widens the range of values of the neighborhood effects parameter for which group inequality is stable.\nOriginality/value: Despite the endogeneity of categorization has been explored in other studies, this is the first one which argues that this element may underpin, under certain conditions, group inequality regarding human capital accumulation. The results presented here sheds some light on real-world issues, as the nature of neighborhood effects, the role of segregation on the maintenance of racial inequality and public policies to combat group inequality.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The bridge between macro and micro banking regulation: A framework from the model of financial flows
|
[
"Financial stability",
"Central bank",
"Macroprudential policy",
"E58",
"G38"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The subprime crisis made clear the fact that the regulatory strategy maintained until then was not equipped to anticipate the crisis or dampen its effects. Consequently, after the crisis, policymakers recognized the need to change their behavior and incorporate macroprudential policy in conducting economic policy[1]. In 2010 during the International Journal of Central Banking Conference on \"The theory and practice of macro-prudential regulation,\" one of the main concerns was how to fix financial regulation, which was broken by the financial crisis. Blinder (2010) suggests a general framework in which the role of financial stability is to avert contagious runs or breakdowns of the financial \"plumbing\"[2]. To address such issues, the policymakers began to develop new tools - the so-called macroprudential policy - where the behavior of the banks had greater relevance and the policy debate is focusing on financial stability (Galati and Moessner, 2013).\n2. The model: The economic agents in this model are households (deficit and surplus), banks, and a social planner. With the intention of capturing the dynamic of economy, we consider a simple two-period model where, in the first period, surplus households provide funds to banks and banks transfer these funds to deficit households. In the second period, the banks get back the funds lent to deficit households and return the funds to surplus households. Therefore, banks have a central role in this framework because they are responsible for the intermediation process.\n3. Conclusion: An important result of the model developed in this study is that bank failures occur when banks do not maintain sufficient resources to support the liquidity constraint from the interbank market. This behavior is a consequence of the market itself balancing the aggregated flows in periods of normality\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss more efficient mechanisms of regulation in the financial system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors developed a theoretical two-period model of financial flows (FFs) that considers households, banks, and a social planner.\nFindings: It is important to highlight that different from other studies that do not distinguish between financial crisis and financial instability, the authors assume financial instability does not mean crisis, but represents a deviation in the behavior of the aggregate financial intermediation and in the financial operations of each bank from the equilibrium.\nPractical implications: The practical implication of the model is the proposition of an efficient policy for financial stability based on forward-looking financial regulations.\nSocial implications: An important result is that bank failures occur when banks do not maintain sufficient resources to support the liquidity constraint from the interbank market. Another result is that the central bank reacts, via exchange of reserves with the market, to financial instability. This behavior on the part of the central bank is inefficient because the banks will assume that in the case of failure they will be \"saved;\" thus it creates an adverse incentive (moral hazard) that can amplify the risk over the entire financial system.\nOriginality/value: The originality of the model is the proposition of an efficient policy for financial stability based on a forward-looking financial regulation. In this strategy the regulator acts in advance (ex ante) to minimize the mismatch of FFs in relation to the flow balance. This manner of acting is a counterpoint to the financial regulation based on capital requirement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Benchmarking the risk assessment in green supply chain using fuzzy approach to FMEA: Insights from an Indian case study
|
[
"Performance",
"Operations management",
"Decision support systems",
"Benchmarking",
"Competitive advantage",
"Supply chain management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Due to various governmental rules and policies for environmental protection, increasing customer knowledge and the demand for eco-friendly products, green (environmental) considerations are overwhelming organizations (Green et al., 1998; Srivastava, 2007; Govindan et al., 2014).\n2. Literature survey: The present section covers the literature on GSC and GSCM risks in GSC corresponding to the probable failure modes, and their causes and consequences have also been examined. Research on sustainability, GSC and the supply chain has grown in the past two decades. In this analysis, Google Scholar and Google Search databases were used to collect articles published in journals, conference proceedings and books. All articles were considered to be representative of the current body of knowledge associated with GSCM, GSCM adoption and implementation and assessment and risk management and GSC form a risk management viewpoint.\n3. Research gap and problem defined for this work: GSCM has already been introduced in developed nations, but relatively is a fresh idea from a developing nation context. In recent years, however, various nations like China, India, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan are promoting environmental measures and enforcing or encouraging organizations to adopt the green trend to ensure sustainable production in their business activities (Chien and Shih, 2007). With regard to the GSCM, it is to be noted that an adequate implementation of all stages in the process of green initiatives will uncover probable risks and risk-related issues affecting GSC. Hence, there is a need to list the possible risks related to GSC at the initial phase of work. After listing the possible risks, it is important to know their probable impacts on various business activities related to GSC (Ma et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2012). In this sense, the need emerges to assess and manage the risks linked to GSC for improving its effectiveness on the various business levels. Mangla et al. (2016) proposed an integrated methodology based on the fault tree analysis (FTA) and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to propose a risk assessment framework in GSC. Besides, it has also been mentioned in their study that FTA focuses only on one top event at a time, which means an entire tree needs to be generated for each top event. Therefore, future work may be conducted using other risk assessment techniques, such as FMEA, that overcome the limitation of the FTA method. In addition to this, however, in the existing literature, there is a lack of studies, particularly on exploring the assessment and management of risk with regard to GSC and GSCM (Ma et al., 2012; Mangla et al., 2014, 2015). In this connection, the present research work attempts to close this research gap by proposing an evaluation framework for risk assessment and or management in GSC, which is the need of hour for optimizing the GSC performance in organizational context (Mangla et al., 2015).\n4. Research methods: This section illustrates the research methods (FMEA and fuzzy FMEA) that are used to accomplish the purpose of the present work. There are several methods and techniques available such as FTA, the AHP/fuzzy AHP, combination of FTA and AHP/fuzzy AHP, FMEA and Petri-net model, to evaluate the impact of risk and uncertainty (Raharjo et al., 2008; Sharma et al., 2008; Radivojevic and Gajovic, 2014). FTA is a useful analytical tool for identifying and classifying hazards and calculating system reliability (Hyun et al., 2015). However, the application of FTA is limited in such a way that focuses only on one top event at a time, which means an entire tree needs to be generated for each top event. AHP/fuzzy AHP helps in assessing the relative importance (weights) of risk factors, however, not capable to capture the cause and effect of these risks factors (Govindan et al., 2017).\n5. An industrial application: A GSCM example of a plastic manufacturing firm operating in the north India is discussed in this work. The case firm has a prime objective to become a leading company in India, and in the global market, for all its plastic-based products. The firm is primarily engaged in manufacturing of acrylic and plastic-based products, such as plastic stools and chairs, thin-wall kitchen containers, kitchen racks and many other household items. There are more than 250 employees in the firm. The firm has a turnover of approximately $100m. The case firm started in the India plastic industry, and held a substantial national and international market share. The case firm has been working under ISO 14001:2004 certifications. The case firm has a well-framed environmental mission in its business policy, and is keen to lower its ecological impact. Additionally, the firm wants to maximize its economic-ecological gains and is committed to sustainable business development. To achieve this, the firm has adopted the GSC initiatives in various aspects in the business. Recycling is the primary reprocessing (recovery) operation in GSC under study. Major plastic, recycled and reused sources are tubs, plastic pallets, bags, packaging materials, bottles, trays, containers, etc. In the meantime, the managers of the case firm were finding difficulties in managing the GSC effectively. They were finding different risks in implementing different GSC business initiatives. Besides, they also recognized several failure modes and causes for these risks in managing of the GSC network on various levels in the business. Due to this, the case firm is interested and has the desire to accurately identify the risks. The manager also seeks to develop a structural decision model to access and manage the GSC risks in an effective manner. This forms the basis for selecting this case study for this research.\n6. Implications for managers: From a managerial context, several suggestions were recommended for recognized failure modes to effectively manage the prevalence or consequences of related risks for efficient GSCM adoption (Table VII). In order to identify major risks for the case GSC, 16 failure modes are defined through FMEA analysis, and grouped into four subsystems (i.e. supplier perspective, organization perspective, customer perspective and reverse logistics network design).\n7. Conclusions: This contribution develops a benchmarking framework that facilitates GSCM managers and planners to model and access GSC risks and probable failures. This paper proposes to use the fuzzy FMEA approach for assessing the risks associated with GSC. In conducting fuzzy FMEA analysis for risk assessment in GSC, the opinion of experts has been utilized and integrated to quantify linguistic expressions. To identify major risks, 16 failure modes are selected. The failure modes were determined after an extensive literature survey and from interviews with experts in the field. Furthermore, in order to decide the risk priority, the RPN and FRPN are determined. According to the findings of this work, the failure modes, given as improper green operating procedure, i.e. process, operations, etc. (R6), and green issues while closing the loop of GSC (R14) hold the highest RPN and FRPN scores, obtaining the top rank by both classical and fuzzy FMEA analysis. It means \"improper green operating procedure, i.e. process, operations\" and \"green issues while closing the loop of GSC\" impede organizations in implementing GSC initiatives in supply chains. Thus, it requires significant managerial effort in this direction. The proposed GSC risk assessment model is extended to an industrial example of a plastic manufacturing firm in India.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to facilitate green supply chain (GSC) managers and planners to model and access GSC risks and probable failures. This paper proposes to use the fuzzy failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) approach for assessing the risks associated with GSC for benchmarking the performance in terms of effective GSC management adoption and sustainable production.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Initially, different failure modes are defined using FMEA analysis, and in order to decide the risk priority, the risk priority number (RPN) is determined. Such priority numbers are typically acquired from the judgment decisions of experts that could contain the element of vagueness and imperfection due to human biases, and it may lead to inaccuracy in the process of risk assessment in GSC. In this study, fuzzy logic is applied to conventional FMEA to overcome the issues in assigning RPNs. A plastic manufacturer GSC case exemplar of the proposed model is illustrated to present the authenticity of this method of risk assessment.\nFindings: Results indicate that the failure modes, given as improper green operating procedure, i.e. process, operations, etc. (R6), and green issues while closing the loop of GSC (R14) hold the highest RPN and FRPN scores in classical as well as fuzzy FMEA analysis.\nOriginality/value: The present research work attempts to propose an evaluation framework for risk assessment in GSC. This paper explores both sustainable developments and risks related to efficient management of GSC initiatives in a plastic industry supply chain context. From a managerial perspective, suggestions are also provided with respect to each failure mode.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Contemporary issues of form and substance: an Islamic law perspective
|
[
"Form",
"Form over substance",
"Substance gap"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past decades, the Islamic financial system has achieved tremendous progress. However, it has also faced criticisms regarding its operations, products and services. A few scholars have argued that it is a replication of the conventional financial system (Chong and Liu, 2009; Khan, 2010; Beck et al., 2013). Critics have referred to it as putting old wine in a new bottle by changing the name and adding a Shari'ah-compliant tag (Zaher and Hassan, 2001; Hasan, 2015). Ahmed (2011a) further reasoned that Islamic financial transactions are compatible with Shari'ah (Islamic law) in form, but fail to meet its substance and spirit. Besides, many debates have given attention to the application of \"form\", hence circumventing the \"economic substance\" of Islamic financial transactions. This raises concerns regarding how authentic some Islamic financial transactions are.\nForm and substance: a Shari'ah perspective: In principle, Shari'ah emphasises that every contract must comply with its legal form, i.e. its essential requirements and its nature and implications. This implies that the form and substance of the transaction are both necessary (Ahmed, 2011b). However, most Islamic financial products are designed by using a series of contracts. Debates arise as to whether the effect of each contract in isolation is to be recorded - hence recognising the \"form\" of each contract - or whether the economic effect of the series of transactions is to be recorded - thus recognising the \"economic substance\" of the overall operation.\nAccounting perspective on form and substance: International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) provide higher weight to economic substance rather than legal form for recognition and measurement purposes of accounting transactions. For instance, in paragraph 4.6 of the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (IASB, 2010, p. 26), the preference for economic substance over legal form is expressly mentioned as follows:\nContemporary issues: Abozaid (2012, p. 8) identified three reasons for substance gaps in Islamic finance contracts:\nConclusion: This study assesses the issue of form and substance from an Islamic law perspective and introduces the new concept of substance gap in the literature. Identifying the substance gap is meant to pinpoint the area of disjoint between the form and its intended substance within the contract process from product development to execution to effects. This study investigated the issue of form and substance from classical and contemporary angles; the issue was also identified in the fields of law and accounting.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the concept of form over substance and introduces the term substance gap to the literature. The substance gap is defined as the difference between the way a concept is expressed and its intended result. Besides, the study investigates the issue from both classical and contemporary viewpoints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology adopted in this paper is descriptive research.\nFindings: This paper has depicted the substance gap in contemporary contracts and found that form is equally important as substance in Islamic finance contracts. This paper offers a fresh outlook on form and substance to highlight the importance of the issue and its significance. The findings of the study will help researchers address the issue at its roots and help them to bridge the gap between the form and substance of Islamic finance contracts.\nOriginality/value: This paper investigates the substance gap in contemporary contracts that exists between the fiqh rules and conditions of an Islamic contract, and their development and construction. Further, the gap could also be attributed to the pressure to cope with a complicated modern finance environment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Consensus and activism through collective exchanges: a focus on El Cambalache, Mexico
|
[
"Chiapas",
"Feminism",
"Heterodox economics",
"Anarchism",
"Consensus decision making",
"Decoloniality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In Chiapas, Mexico as in many places, structural violence abounds. Among the many violences suffered by those living in this area, is a systematic denial of access to basic resources. Food, healthcare, literacy, potable water; money, technological devices such as cell phones and computers; and a well-maintained infrastructure of roads and electrical lines as well as many other resources are hard to come by for most people. Since the Spanish conquest of this region many groups of indigenous peoples have rebelled against the various colonial and neo-colonial governments, the slave holding plantations, and the corporations that deny access to these resources (Garcia de Leon, 2002). In contemporary times the fight for resource access continues. In Chiapas, though the struggle of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation is among the most well-known organizations internationally, a good number of projects fight for autonomy. Many organized groups of people work on a variety of levels to increase resource access through the creation of autonomously governed territories, campesino organizations, autonomous media collectives, direct producer to consumer networks and other heterodox economic projects. This paper tells the story of the process of organizing people in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas through a small money-less economy called El Cambalache (The Swap in English). The project seeks to increase resource access for participants while generating an inclusive feeling of resource-full-ness. El Cambalache promotes the idea that while there is little access to money in this region, attaining money does not necessarily lead to amassing resources. This is particularly important when resources include solidarity, mutual aid, education, collective process and experience and other immaterial forms of wealth. Within this money-less economy it is recognized that each person in the economy might not have everything they need and want but as a community we have enough. Access to resources can be mediated without money.\nLiterature review: locating our economy: The social studies of science and technology and the decoloniality of thought bring to the fore the question of how knowledge is generated and who is generating it. Though specifically, the decoloniality of thought examines how continuing currents of colonialism shape the experience and social construction previously colonized peoples. Both fields coincide in the concept that Knowledge is produced in a specific location by certain people that are permitted specific debates and knowledge production (Law, 2011; Mignolo, 2000; Sousa Santos, 2014a). Here, I differentiate between Knowledge and knowledge. Where Knowledge refers to institutional and highly indoctrinated (Chomsky, 2012) forms of knowledge that arise through practices of elite knowledge production that stem from centers of colonial and neo-colonial power. This Knowledge is produced and located in Europe, the USA, and many of the states in the Commonwealth of Nations as well as elite spaces in territories that have experienced colonialism. These places constitute what is often referred to as the Minority World (Esteva and Prakash, 1998), the Western World, the First World, the Developed World and/or the Global North. The use of these terms has been proliferated within the politics of development as a specific capitalocentric view of how nations and states should be developed so that they may better fit within an acceptable market structure (Sachs, 2010). The language used is telling of its strength as hegemony, where the words \"world\"or \"global\" are used to refer to what are actually few people and less space. The authors of such language claim their ideas are \"universal\" or that situated ideas are \"generalizable.\" Beyond the borders of the worlds that create \"universal\" Knowledge there exists what Anzaldua (1999) refers to as the borderlands; spaces (both physical and intellectual) where undetermined liminal lifeworlds bring about the decoloniality of thought. This proposal refers to rejecting the continuing colonialisms that make invisible the thought, theory and practice that reflect lifeworlds beyond the dominant hegemonies of the Minority World. Sousa Santos (2010, 2014b) has investigated the five century long process of epistemicide over most of the planet since the discovery of the Americas. His work demonstrates specific examples of how epistemes in colonial territories were violently destroyed in order to further the hegemonic imposition of a zero-point epistemology. Much work has been done to obfuscate the ontos and epistemes beyond the borders of empire, in spite of the multiplicity of unique, place-based ways of being and constructions of knowledge that saturate much of the world. In response to westernization through coloniality Walter Mignolo (2011) has suggested that scholars and non-scholars should engage in Epistemic Disobedience, where we actively create and privilege knowledge and praxis that defy those epistemes originating in the centers of empire.\nMethods: learning how to swap: Research methods enact realities (Law, 2004; Mol, 2002). This project embraces performative economic research in order to put in motion an economy with horizontal power relationships where it creates space for, \"the oppressed to become researchers of their own circumstances\" (Gibson-Graham, 2006, p. 133) and create new spaces through action based community development (Gibson-graham, 2006).\nFindings: exchange value changes everything: In fall of 2014, three of the Generators put together a presentation for the rest of the group on exchange value. In the meeting, exchange value was presented as an emotional process. The focus was the moral and personal values that are exchanged in economic interactions. Exchange value was an emotional experience that came from each person's life. The Generators talked about the shame and betrayal felt when one's work is valued less than what is needed to buy all of the essentials for daily life. They spoke of the fear of being in debt and not meeting commitments, as well as the fleeting happiness that comes when things are purchased and feelings of self-worth as varying depending on access to money. There was a desire among the group to forge an economy that did not effect those feelings. As time passed and the conversation grew it was decided that the project would be based on redistributing that which was under-valued; for example, abilities that were not necessarily used for making money but were something that the person enjoyed would be valued as important. Objects that were unwanted but still useful and would normally be considered garbage would be the primary goods exchanged. This was the rule that was developed, \"Everything has the same value because what is inter-changed are things one no longer needs and knowledge, abilities and services you want to share\". The project accepts just about any object as long as it functions or is repairable. A pencil will have the same value as a sweater, a chair or a laptop. To this date over 700 people have participated in exchanges from diverse parts of the region and the world. When asked what they think about El Cambalache most people reply, \"It's useful,\" \"It makes sense that things should be shared\" and \"People feel like they are part of something\". One participant said, \"I like how all things and services have the same value, it means that what I can share is as important and valuable as what someone else shares and that makes us the same.\"\nAnalysis: consensus reflections on the value of waste: Consensus decision making in conjunction with the personality of each of the Generators transforms inter-personal relationships and the group thought process. The space created by the easy sharing of ideas in a group with horizontal power relationships allows for the development of concepts such as inter-cambio, as well as other rules that enable building an inclusive social movement. Discards take all forms, not only are goods and knowledge under-valued, but people as well. Though there has been a great deal of resistance to the denigration of indigenous people in the region with successful incremental struggles to support a multiplicity of ways of life, oppressions continue. Having something to give when one is told they never have enough draws people in and includes them in the resistance to being under-valued. Following Hawkins (2006), the way each person wastes positions them as the ethical person they want to become. In becoming a space beyond capitalism El Cambalache transforms waste into usable items and creates inter-cambio.\nConclusion: El Cambalache realizes money-less ontos-rich spaces by dismantling capitalism in exchanges which create inter-cambio through consensus decision making and collective action research. As a resistance movement, El Cambalache calls forth practices that feeds the flourishing of non-capitalist economies because it is a diverse network of people, things, ideas and practices that transform each other toward non-dominative relationships through a rule-based system. The use of a non-hierarchical, open-ended decision-making process resonates throughout the network as an organizational form that begets more non-hierarchical relationships. These relationships create an inclusive space for participants and those who will in the future further transform El Cambalache into new liberatory decolonial realities that eschew individualist consumption based thinking and embrace collective well-being. The focus on exchange value as an emotional process that negotiates the gamut of experiences and self-worth in particular, presents an alternative scale of value that incorporates the experience of economic actors in the network. This perspective arose within an anarchist space where economic practices are built around having sufficient access to resources and providing that access to the surrounding community. El Cambalache contributes to the literature on heterodox community economies, anarchism and feminist decolonial thought by providing a living example of what a horizontal non-capitalist economy may look like. Finally, El Cambalache proposes a different organizational form, based on clear, simple, economic rules where participation and inclusion in the project are easily achieved and few barriers other than knowledge of the existence project limit participation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how consensus decision making serves as a foundation for organizing an alternative economy while the agency of the economic project itself organizes participants because it serves to distribute resources as people need them and foment a community of sharing based on the concept that as individuals we are lacking but as a community we have enough. The paper asserts that as activists looking to foment change, alternative economic projects in themselves are actors in organizing community building and resistance to capitalism.\nDesign/methodology/approach: El Cambalache (The Swap in English), located in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, is an exchange-based money-less economy that trades unwanted items as well as knowledge, abilities and skills that one wants to share. The project receives anything; specifically used, broken and/or unwanted electronics as well as just about anything else that one might possess. In exchange people provide laptop maintenance classes, language exchange, land to be worked, rooms, gardening services, objects, stories, etc. The rules in this money-less non-capitalist economy organize participation through one exchange or many.\nFindings: Consensus decision making is an effective method for engaging in non-hierarchical research projects.\nOriginality/value: This project contributes to research in heterodox economies by presenting an original project with a new suggestion for exchange value as an inclusive process of exchange among participants in the economy. It also provides evidence that consensus decision making can be a useful and productive method for research.\n",
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] |
Professional autonomy under pressure: towards a dialectical approach
|
[
"Autonomy",
"Contradictions",
"Division of labour",
"Medical work organization",
"Organizational control"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The reorganization and management of medical work remains a significant area of analysis for both organizational studies and the sociology of professions, in so far as it connects with broader contemporary debates concerning institutional change (Adler and Kwon, 2013), the technocratic turn in the management of healthcare (Levay and Waks, 2009) and the ongoing reform of welfare states. In light of these developments, a substantial body of literature attempts to capture and conceptualize the changing aspects of medical work in the context of public healthcare (Harrison, 2009; Waring and Bishop, 2013). Medicine, as an exemplary case of organization of the \"free\" professions (Ashburner and Fitzgerald, 1996; Larson, 1977) carries with it the central idea of autonomy of organized expert groups to decide on the principles and procedures of their own activities (Larson, 1980). Accordingly, systematic managerial innovations in the organization of medical work have been regarded as challenging professional autonomy (Kirkpatrick et al., 2005).\nOrganizational analysis: towards a dialectical approach: Contradictions constitute a central concept to dialectical thought (Adler, 2011; Ollman, 2008) which has been proposed as an alternative approach to organizational analysis. Much of this work is based on early scholars' (Benson, 1977; Goldman and Van Houten, 1977; Heydebrand, 1977) critique of \"theories which affirm the present order or which deal with minor adjustments or variations upon that order\" (Benson, 1977, p. 6). Developing a dialectical approach to organization studies may fill this gap while offering a \"processual perspective\" (Benson, 1977, p. 2) that could address the limitations of rational and functional theories in understanding the process of change in organizations. Dialectics support an understanding of social phenomena as \"mutually dependent processes in constant evolution\" (Ollman, 2008, p. 11) while drawing on core principles such as totality, contradiction, quantity-quality change, negation of the negation, that facilitate approaching this evolution as a historical process.\nMethod: Research context: the greek NHS\nResults: Our findings suggest that two major organizational contradictions underpin the process of medical autonomy evolution. The first contradiction tends to develop between medical autonomy, as a self-control structure, and the established division of labour through which bureaucratic control is exercised over the allocation of resources and over the distribution of healthcare service. The second contradiction tends to develop between those aspects and the ongoing organizing activity, expressed through strategies to extend, intensify and centralize organizational control over labour, resources and the distribution of healthcare service. Both contradictions will be presented below through two major categories that medical autonomy manifests itself: the doctor-patient relationship and medical practice.\nDiscussion: En this paper, we have argued that the organization of medical work is evolving as temporarily reified historical outcomes of productive activity (i.e. the established professional autonomy relations and the organizational control structure), are under pressure, yet resistant to the ongoing activity of organizing medical work (i.e. attempts to extend and intensify organizational control over labour, resources and the distribution of service). In particular, we conclude that as this contradiction develops it constitutes the historical process through which professional autonomy tends to becoming quantitatively reconfigured. The analytic aspects of professional autonomy were described as they manifested in the organization of medical work in a public bureaucracy. Specifically, it is illustrated that professional autonomy is analytically and historically expressed as a self-control relation exercised over the doctor-patient relationship and over medical practice. The process of reconfiguring of professional autonomy is then expressed in two ways: first, as a tendency towards constraining health professionals' power to self-define their relationship with the public and second, as a tendency towards curtailing professionals' discretionary domain over the use of resources.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of evolution of medical autonomy as an analytic and historical aspect of the medical work organization in a public bureaucracy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors draw on the analytic concept of organizational contradictions (Heydebrand, 1977) to inform a dialectical approach in organizational analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 20 doctors of a Greek general public hospital were conducted and archival data were collected.\nFindings: The findings suggest that the historical development of two contradictions characterize the process of medical autonomy evolution. The first contradiction tends to develop between medical autonomy, as a self-control relation, and the established division of labour through which bureaucratic control is exercised over the allocation of resources and over the distribution of healthcare service. The second contradiction tends to develop between those reified aspects of the medical work organization and the ongoing organizing activity, i.e. activity towards extending, intensifying and centralizing organizational control over labour, resources and the distribution of healthcare services. These contradictions indicate a pressure towards constraining health professionals' power to self-define their relationship with patients and towards curtailing their discretionary domain over the use of resources.\nOriginality/value: This paper offers an empirical approach to materialist dialectics for organizational analysis towards conceptualizing change as a historical process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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A comparison of level of discrimination directed at academic staff in a Turkish and an Azerbaijani university
|
[
"Discrimination in employment",
"Academic staff",
"Turkey",
"Azerbaijan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In spite of increasing regard for human rights in the cosmopolitan global business world and legal and administrative arrangements made on this subject, it is assumed that the application of discrimination against human resources in organizations is an important problem. A detailed definition of discrimination is as follows: discrimination is \"the exclusion of some groups in the sharing of power, satisfaction and income because of their color, sex, ethnic origin, religion, ideology or physical ability, even though these have no effect on their work\" (Kasimoglu and Halici, 2002, p. 333), as a result of which, power, satisfaction and income are shared only by those groups having the same characteristics.The same definition can be encountered in various studies related to different dimensions in the literature on this subject (McGuire, 2000; Lively, 2000, Cassier and Reskin, 2000; Maume, 1999; Glass, 1999; Spalter-Roth and Deitch, 1999; Alvesson, 1998; Hofstede, 1998; Lawler and Bae, 1998; Morgan, 1998; Ragins et al., 1998; Daily et al., 1999; Hughes and Thomas, 1998; Ross and Wright, 1998; Cunningham and James, 1998; Darnell et al., 1998; Harlan and Robert, 1998; Holzer, 1998; Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998; Morgan, 1998; Nelson, 1998; Roy and Barling, 1998; Yates et al., 1998; James, 1997; Balkir, 1996; Pfeiffer, 1994; Devey-Tomaskovic, 1993; Collinson et al., 1991; Jenkins, 1989; Becker, 1971). In these studies, the reasons for exclusion are based on subjects such as race, language, sex, religion, ideology and physical insufficiency in general. The factors driving exclusion are prejudices, traditions and economical advantage (Peitchinis, 1989, pp. 24-6). The factors mentioned above cause discrimination against some staff and the application of behaviors and attitudes in organizations which are unfair. As a result, negative effects are inevitable for both the organization and individuals.The increasing importance of the subject of discrimination and the lack of studies performed in Turkey prompted the present authors to begin an ethnographic study in this area. In the first part of the study (Kasimoglu and Halici, 1999) discrimination areas were determined in universities in Turkey using approaches related to general discrimination mentioned in the literature. The study data was obtained by qualified data collection procedures, observation, document content analysis (job advertisements, books and brochures of organizations) and interviews. When the data was examined thoroughly, it revealed that discrimination can be studied in three basic processes:1. employment processes;2. work processes; and3. after-work processes.The analysis does not include after-work processes, because of the characteristics of the population surveyed. Job advertisements and evaluation of job applications (nepotism approaches, ideological tendencies and local oppression) have been shown to be discrimination areas in the process of staff employment in state-owned universities, whereas in private universities the reference system and the effects of the social environment of the universities have been significant. Discrimination areas in the work process appear in performance evaluation, using unit opportunities, rewarding and punishing in state-owned universities, and performance evaluation in private universities.In the second part of the study (Kasimoglu and Halici, 1999), a survey was developed to measure the discrimination areas determined by ethnographic research. The Cronbach's alpha (a) coefficient was found to be 0.9740 (Kasimoglu and Halici, 2000). The high value of the correlation coefficient and the high inner coherence coefficient explained the reliability of the content. Therefore, a scale was developed to measure both the validity and reliability of the discrimination level in general, and also in certain areas of higher education.In the third part of the study (Kasimoglu and Halici, 2001), the discrimination level suffered by academic staff in higher education in Turkey was determined. Also, at the end of the survey, various relations were examined among the level of discrimination, and the various demographical qualities of state-owned and private universities. Academic staff in economics and administration were chosen for the research because it was considered that the education level of these academic lecturers should be more suitable than academic lecturers from other disciplines, since they teach in subject of management, and should be more conscious of and sensitive towards to subject of discrimination. Total enumeration was done to increase the reliability of the survey. In order to increase the rate of reply to the survey, a web page was included (www.baskent.edu.tr/~anket); and the people targeted were asked to reply to the survey. The web page address was also sent to academics via e-mail.In the fourth and last part of the survey, data concerning the discrimination level in higher education in Azerbaijan was compared with the data from Turkey. Also, a computer program was written in order to display the research data simultaneously (see www.baskent.edu.tr/ ~ anket/top_sonuclar). This enabled people in Azerbaijan and Turkey (both Canakkale and Ankara) to see the data in detail and at the same time.\n2. Methodology: 2.1 The research area and the population\n3. Results: The results are studied in two different sections, i.e. demographic- and discrimination-level evaluations.3.1 Demographic results\n4. Discussion: From analysis of the results of this research, a significant difference in general discrimination levels between Turkish and Azerbaijan universities was calculated. While the evaluations were being done, meaningful differences emerged in five basic areas of discrimination between the results of Turkish and Azerbaijani instructors.Azerbaijani instructors perceive more discrimination in basic discrimination areas than their Turkish colleagues.The results show that standard deviation is low in five discrimination areas for Turkish academics. Among these areas, the highest discrimination is encountered in determination of workload. However, the highest discrimination area is found to be providing staff with opportunities in the institutions for Azerbaijani academics. In other words, Turkish instructors stated that they were discriminated against when workload was being determined, whereas Azerbaijani instructors were discriminated against in the provision of opportunities in their their institutions.The lowest difference in general discrimination between Turkish and Azerbaijani instructors was found to be in job advertisements and the determination of job applications. Although the results show that Azerbaijani instructors face more discrimination regarding this issue, the average of Turkish instructors is not low but cannot be ignored. It is not possible to determine any cut-off point because of the contents of discrimination subjects.In other words, it is not possible to determine a certain level above or below which entails discrimination. On a five-point Likert scale, the non-discriminative point is below 1. So, every point above 1 can be called discrimination. However, the level of discrimination is open to discussion.Therefore, the results show us that there is discrimination in Turkish and Azerbaijani universities. It is worth studying the sources of the perception of discrimination, and especially the effects of discrimination on the culture in future research.The necessity of bringing discussing this administrative problem (which is often ignored by both managers and staff) in detail is obvious. It can be seen that both the system of modern human resources management and positive organization climate outlined by organizational theories do not really exist in the universities.In contrast to approaches of bringing out the value of the individual in the system, the research shows us that mostly, methods to exclude the individual from the system are applied. It can be said that the basic problems that the instructors come across occur because of both the lack of professional management principles and the classical characteristics of organizational structure.However, universities are the cornerstones of the mission for collecting and distributing modern knowledge. Qualified individuals tend to head towards different productive power markets because of the factors mentioned above. Organizational structures and the changing of management understanding accelerate qualified work power or brain migration because countries that understand the power of qualified human brain power for competition use the advantages of possessing the organizations and the systems to fill the gaps in these areas.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this study is to understand the level of discrimination against academic staff in a Turkish and an Azerbaijani university. This research is the last stage of a four-stage study.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In the first part of the study, the areas of discrimination in universities were determined using approaches related to general discrimination mentioned in the literature. In the second part, a survey was developed to measure the areas of discrimination determined by ethnographic research. In the course of the third part of the study, the discrimination level directed at academic staff in higher education in Turkey was determined. In this last part of the research, the discrimination level in Azerbaijan is analyzed and compared with the results gathered in Turkey. In order to increase the rate of reply to the survey questions, a web page was included in the Baskent University web site (see www.baskent.edu.tr/ ~ anket) which targeted people were asked to reply to. A total of 220 instructors - 98 of whom were Turkish and 122 Azerbaijani - replied to the survey.\nFindings: - For each factor, the averages of academic staff were obtained, the difference between averages was determined, and the significance of the differences between averages was tested. Although the results show that Azerbaijani instructors face more discrimination, the average response of Turkish instructors is not low and should not be ignored.\nOriginality/value: - The basic problems that instructors come across occur because of a lack of professional management principles and the classical characteristics of the organizational structure.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Framework for internet-supported inter-organizational product development collaboration
|
[
"Product development",
"Internet",
"Economic cooperation",
"Business policy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The product development phase has a significant impact on the efficiency of the entire supply chain. Especially in the development of complex products, which is usually accomplished in processes that are distributed among producers and their suppliers, there is potential for increasing the ability to compete.Driven by modern information and communication technologies (ICT) numerous approaches for organizing product development collaboration have been developed during recent years. Their core element is the use of ICT to support design activities, data and information management, as well as the interaction between development partners. In this paper we concentrate on those tools of ICT which support interaction between the development partners. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is the all-encompassing term for all aspects of computer-supported cooperation (Wigand et al., 1997). ICT can on the one hand offer tools to enable personal communication such as e-mail, video-conferences and chats. On the other hand it can enable partners to get access to common material. Common material includes all objects of information, which are used in and arise during the collaboration process (Krcmar et al., 2000). Asynchronous tools for using common material allow file-transfer, file-sharing, data exchange, or data base sharing. Synchronous tools such as shared whiteboards, viewers, or applications, enable distributed development partners to work on the same task and therefore support close interaction and collaboration.In this context, Willaert, Graaf and Minderhoud defined the concept of Collaborative Engineering, which is:... a systematic approach to control life cycle cost, product quality and time to market during product development, by concurrently developing products and their related processes with responses to customer expectations, where decision making ensures input and evaluation by all life-cycle disciplines including suppliers, and information technology is applied to support information exchange, where necessary ... (Willaert et al., 1998).They interpreted collaborative engineering as a logical consequence of concurrent engineering and pointed out the important role of ICT. A similar technology-driven approach was developed by the Aberdeen Group, which described Collaborative Product Commerce as a \"new category of software and services that uses internet technologies to tie together product design, engineering, sourcing, sales, marketing, field services and customers into a global net\" (AberdeenGroup, 1999). Accenture avoided the pure technology orientation when it defined Collaborative Product development as business capability to enable fast and efficient product development across dispersed organizations (Accenture, 2001). The integration of technologies, processes and strategies is defined as main base for successful implementation. Monplaisier and Haji as well as Monplaisier and Salhieh point out the enabling function of ICT and concentrate on its efficient use to support interaction (Monplaisir and Haji, 2002; Monplaisir and Salhieh, 2002). Kersten and Kern outline the importance of a holistic design for cross-organizational product development and define Collaborative Engineering as the internet-supported design of distributed product development processes, considering technological as well as organizational and human aspects (Kersten and Kern, 2003). Other approaches in this area follow the same basic ideas (Bullinger, 2003; Contero, 2005).All the approaches mentioned have the common thread of offering a wide framework providing very general guidelines for the design of product development collaboration. None of them supports companies in choosing the right configuration for their specific development tasks or situations, based on their actual interaction needs.Driven by this situation the main aim of our paper is to develop a framework for internet-supported inter-organizational product development collaboration in supply chains. This supports companies in selecting the appropriate approach for designing distributed development processes according to their specific interaction needs.Our paper is structured as follows: In the next section we describe our basic approach: focusing on interactions for organizing product development collaboration. Based on this, we explain the key dimensions which have to be considered in designing collaboration. Insights in industry confirm our findings. In the third section we develop our framework. Its main requirements are described and the basic concept is explained. We introduce a portfolio and identify three ideal types of partner integration which differ in the level of intensity of collaboration. For each type we propose specific guidelines for the design of partner integration, considering IT support as well as strategic, organizational, and personnel aspects. In the penultimate section we describe briefly our test application in the shipbuilding industry. Finally, we summarizes our conclusions from the paper.\nOrganizing product development collaboration: Inter-organizational product development processes can be differentiated on the basis of the interaction required for addressing the common development target. Therefore, not every product development task requires the same intensity of collaboration between the partners. Due to cost-benefit considerations the intensity and design of integration have to be based on the requirements of the existing development situation.Basic approach - focusing interaction\nDeveloping the framework: Based on our approach of focusing on interaction, the state of the art in this field, and the results of our empirical study, we derived requirements for a practically useable framework that internet supported inter-organizational product development collaboration should fulfil:* The main idea is to determine the level of collaboration intensity according to the interaction needs of the partners in their specific development situation.* ICT is one main element, because it enables spatial collaboration.* Organizational, technical and human aspects must be considered.* The framework has to provide specific guidelines which can be easily implemented in industry.In the following we set up and describe our framework with the help of a portfolio of interaction types.Setting up the framework\nTest application in the shipbuilding industry: The proposed framework was partially tested in a joint research project with the ship-building industry (Bronsart et al., 2002). Based on a defined collaboration scenario, a ship yard and three of its development partners used our guidelines to design the organizational and technical integration of the partners. Due to its challenging nature the rudder system design phase was chosen. Within this test case the shipyard is responsible for the design of the whole ship, whereas a supplier delivers the design of the rudder machine. The concept of the rudder machine room as an interface to the ship hull is done by an engineering consultant. A certification society is responsible for the certification of the rudder machine and its final assembly in the hull (Koeppen et al., 2004).The defined development task is characterized by a low ex-ante-specifiability as well as reciprocal integrated interdependencies of partner subtasks. Thus it requires a high interaction intensity and PD III must be selected as the appropriate interaction type. For organizational integration this leads to the glass-box approach, to provide for high transparency of development processes and the implementation of a comprehensive information and communication structure. In our case we decided to set up an internet-based information and communication platform (IC-Platform). As described in section 3 the full scale of ICT functionalities for personal communication as well as asynchronous and synchronous use of common material was implemented. To define the detailed measures for organizational integration as well as for the design of the IC-Platform, we carried out a detailed process analysis, including possible disturbance variables. This ensured a common process understanding, resulting in the definition of an efficient inter-organizational development process. Based on this we were able to create an information flow model, which included the required communication structure as well as the content and objects of communication. This approach was used for the design of the IC-Platform and the choice of ICT functionalities. The target of the organizational and \"technical\" integration was to minimize collaboration effort. The overall performance and productive efficiency were tested by the industrial partners, and approved the applicability of our proposed approach for partner integration to design product development collaboration.\nConclusion and outlook: The design of distributed product development processes is a core element of supply chain management. For this reason, companies need guidelines for an efficient and effective design for development collaboration. Our analysis identified three appropriate types of partner interaction, and developed specific design guidelines for each type. The framework described can help companies to configure their cross organizational development processes according to their needs. It therefore has a great potential to contribute to company competitiveness. The framework was partially tested in a joint research project with the ship-building industry. Based on a defined collaboration scenario, one ship yard and three of its development partners used our guideline to design organizational and technical integration. The results showed that the resulting design of product development collaboration could fulfil the requirements of the industrial partners. Nevertheless, the framework as a whole must be tested further in practice in order to analyse its usability in industrial applications.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to introduce a framework for internet supported inter-organizational product development, which enables companies to efficiently configure their development processes according to their needs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Three ideal types of partner integration are identified and specific design guidelines for each type are proposed. Current approaches for product development collaboration are analysed. Based on their shortcomings the main approach of this paper evolves. Additionally the main results of interviews with experts are used to develop and introduce a framework which has been tested partially in the shipbuilding industry.\nFindings: - The paper identifies three types of partner integration and proposes specific design guidelines.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The framework introduced in this paper provides guidance for future research in the area of product development collaboration.\nPractical implications: - The framework further supports managers in designing efficient and effective inter-organizational product development collaboration by choosing the appropriate level of partner integration.\nOriginality/value: - The paper presents a practical and usable framework for internet supported inter-organizational product development collaboration. The main focus is on designing the partnership interaction.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
"I like being a teacher" : Career satisfaction, the work environment and work engagement
|
[
"Work engagement",
"Teachers",
"Career satisfaction",
"Self-determination theory",
"Job demands and resources theory",
"Work burnout",
"Motivation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Previous research has identified work engagement and work burnout as important markers of employee's mental well-being, and has linked both constructs to the psycho-social work environment experienced by employees (e.g. Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli, 2004). According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2000) not only does burnout severely compromise the mental health of workers but it is associated with increased costs to industry through sick days, increased staff turnover and reduction in productivity. Teachers' burnout can be especially devastating because of the amount of emotional labour involved and the loss of a sense of commitment (see Fink, 2003). Consequently it is an imperative that school administrators become fully cognisant of the adverse conditions that cause burnout among teachers and promote what is thought to be its positive counterpart, work engagement (e.g. Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2003). Work engagement is generally recognised as a condition of optimal worker well-being that is associated with greater worker contentment, input and productivity. It is therefore in the interests of school administrators to reduce teacher employee burnout and to promote environments that contribute to the proliferation of engagement (Schaufeli, 2004).\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Table I provides the mean scores and standard deviations for the research variables for both sampling times. The majority of the variables did not differ significantly over time. Only two variables produced significantly differently means scores over time: control t(311)=5.85, p<0.001 and rewards t(311)=-3.46, p<0.001. These results suggest that respondents perceived they had less control and greater rewards in their workplaces at T2. In regard to the single statement, \"Teachers attract a great deal of respect in the wider Australian community\"; achieved a mean score of 2.03 (SD=0.93) at T1 and 2.07 (SD=0.96) at T2. At T1 8.7 per cent (n=27) and at T2 11 per cent (n=34) of respondents agreed with this statement. The remainder of respondents were neutral (T1 and T2 n=43, 13.8 per cent) or disagreed (T1 n=242, 77.6 per cent; T2 n=235, 75.3 per cent) with the statement indicating a widespread perception among respondents that their profession was not highly regarded within the community.\nDiscussion: This research has found some persuasive evidence that supports compatibility between the SDT and JD-R theoretical perspectives. The SDT association between fulfilment of psychological needs and work engagement (May et al., 2004) informed the hypothesis that career satisfaction would demonstrate strong relationships with work engagement. In the current study, this was the most compelling finding, thereby offering strong support for the SDT perspective (Ryan and Deci, 2000) in regards to work engagement. Career satisfaction not only demonstrated strong relationships with all criterion variables in the current study, but also an enduring (over time) effect in regards to vigour, dedication and disengagement. This suggests that people's aspirations and needs are reflected in their choice of career and how satisfied they are with that choice.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare the explanatory power of two theoretical frameworks in regard to the work engagement of 312 Queensland teachers from non-government schools. The first theoretical model is the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory which suggests that work engagement will be evident if people report an abundance of resources in their work environment. The second perspective is self-determination theory (SDT) which suggests that work engagement will be evident if people are able to satisfy their personal psychological needs within the work environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The current research collected data from the same participants on two occasions with a six-month interval. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the research hypotheses both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.\nFindings: It was found that the SDT provided the more compelling explanation for work engagement, in that career satisfaction (rather than job satisfaction) was a robust predictor of work engagement, although some evidence was also found for a contribution of the psycho-social work environment (supporting the JD-R model) in teachers' work engagement or burnout. It was concluded that these two theoretical perspectives are compatible.\nPractical implications: It is recommended that future studies of work engagement include some measurement of people's satisfaction that the career they have chosen fulfils their personal aspirations.\nSocial implications: The theories of SDT (work engagement as a fulfilment of psychological needs) and JD-R (work engagement as a balance of job demands and resources), while coming from different directions appear to be compatible, with each perspective enriching the other and affording administrators a more complete understanding of dynamics affecting the psychological health of teaching staff.\nOriginality/value: Previous work involving the JD-R and work engagement has focused on the immediate psycho-social environment of the workplace. The current research finds that career satisfaction predicts all dimensions of work engagement in cross-sectional analysis and over time. This supports insights from SDT and suggests that a more complete understanding of the dynamics of work engagement must include people's opportunity to redress psychological needs within the workplace.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Text mining analysis roadmap (TMAR) for service research
|
[
"Text mining",
"Service research",
"Machine learning",
"Natural language processing",
"Qualitative research",
"Artificial intelligence"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Service researchers are faced with an unprecedented volume of textual data generated from a range of sources and formats such as research publications, news items, industrial reports, online chatter, surveys, interviews, blogs, scripts and notes. It is expected that the number and complexity of these qualitative data documents will only increase in the future. The International Data Group predicts that by 2025 there will be 163 ZB of data in the world, with around 80 per cent of business-relevant information originating from unstructured forms, primarily text (Techrepublic, 2017). Key sources of this growth are from firm-generated content including, for example, annual reports news items, and from customers' comments on websites and consumer-generated content that appear in social networking sites.\nLiterature review: In this first section, we provide a review of service research studies that have used text mining, which are summarized in Table I. As shown in Table I, prior studies have focused on five topic areas: literature reviews, analyzing customer behavior, branding and market structure, online customer reviews and pricing. To illustrate, we provide one example from each of these five areas.\nText mining analysis roadmap (TMAR): Our main goal is to provide a six-stage roadmap for researchers to develop a text mining model (Figure 1). We adapted the cross industry standard process for data mining (Chapman et al., 2000; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2019; Villarroel Ordenes et al., 2014; Zaki and Neely, 2019). The first stage - background study - involves generating common themes from the relevant publications. The second stage is pre-study: business understanding, which comprises extracting information from secondary data (e.g. company reports, news and websites) and primary data (e.g. observation notes or interview scripts, if available). The third stage, data understanding, involves the process of preparing the textual data for the modeling phase. The fourth stage, Data Modeling, includes the building and testing of the text mining model developed from the data understanding and processing data phase. Next, the data validation stage checks the reliability and accuracy of the text mining model and the final stage is the \"Insights Gained\" which enables interesting insights from the textual data to be gleaned.\nStage 1 - background study: Aim. The aim of this stage is to generate themes from the literature review. The guiding question here is \"How can you generate key themes from your literature review?\"\nStage 2 - pre-study business understanding: Aim. The overall aim of any pre-study is to gain business understanding. This can be undertaken through identifying key secondary data sources (e.g. websites, news, company reports, etc.) which could help in the study prior to collecting the primary data sources (e.g. observations, interviews, focus group, experiments, workshops, surveys, etc.). The guiding question at this stage is \"How can you analyze secondary data and primary data?\"\nStage 3 - data understanding: Aim. The aim of this stage is to prepare and commence processing the textual data. The guiding question here is \"How can you prepare and process textual data sources?\" There are many different textual data sources that are generated from marketing systems and platforms such as surveys, CRM, social media and many others (Zaki and Neely, 2019). We demonstrate below how researchers can prepare and process these textual data using a top-down approach employing theoretically-guided methods (Humphreys and Rebecca, 2017).\nStage 4 - data modeling: Aim. In this section, we demonstrate how researchers can use a bottom-up classification approach to analyze survey verbatim comments of a B2B heavy asset service that offers both physical goods and services. The guiding question at this stage is \"How can you develop a text mining model?\"\nStage 5 - data validation: Aim. According to an extensive review of text mining studies by Nassirtoussi et al. (2014), most of the studies report the \"accuracy, recall or precision and sometimes the F-measure\" for the purpose of evaluating the developed models. The guiding question at this stage is \"How can you validate a text mining model?\"\nStage 6 - insights gained: Aim. In this section, we demonstrate how service researchers can use visualization techniques to generate deep insights from the textual data. This section could be considered the managerial implications part. The guiding question at this stage is \"How can you generate insights from textual data?\" Range of techniques. Text mining software and tools have built-in techniques and extensions for visualization libraries. Alternatively, researchers can export the generated model outcome into a tabular format (e.g. CSV and Excel) and then import it into another visualization software program (e.g. Tableau).\nConclusion: In this article, we make at least two important contributions. First, we respond to calls for work to demonstrate the usefulness of employing using text mining techniques to the ever growing amount of qualitative data in service research (Antons and Breidbach, 2018; Humphreys and Rebecca, 2017; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2019; Villarroel Ordenes et al., 2018; and Zaki, 2019), showing how to use text mining in practice across a range of contexts. Second, we provide a six staged TMAR to guide researchers, including offering practical guidance on how to choose between the alternatives through illustrative examples from a range of different business contexts.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a step-by-step text mining analysis roadmap (TMAR) for service researchers. The paper provides guidance on how to choose between alternative tools, using illustrative examples from a range of business contexts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors provide a six-stage TMAR on how to use text mining methods in practice. At each stage, the authors provide a guiding question, articulate the aim, identify a range of methods and demonstrate how machine learning and linguistic techniques can be used in practice with illustrative examples drawn from business, from an array of data types, services and contexts.\nFindings: At each of the six stages, this paper demonstrates useful insights that result from the text mining techniques to provide an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon and actionable insights for research and practice.\nOriginality/value: There is little research to guide scholars and practitioners on how to gain insights from the extensive \"big data\" that arises from the different data sources. In a first, this paper addresses this important gap highlighting the advantages of using text mining to gain useful insights for theory testing and practice in different service contexts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance and board equity ownership
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Managers",
"Boards of Directors",
"Corporate ownership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recent financial scandals have raised the issue of whether for-profit public companies are being run in the best interests of shareholders. Management may have too much power and not enough supervision or accountability, particularly in companies with widely dispersed ownership. Agency conflicts, i.e. conflicts that arise from the separation of ownership and control, may not be resolved effectively through corporate governance systems.Corporate governance systems are defined in a variety of contexts. Farinha (2003) reviews definitions of corporate governance dating back to Berle and Means (1932) through current researchers and concludes that although the definitions of governance differ, they share some common elements. All refer to conflicts of interest between insiders and outsiders over the generation of value by a firm that cannot be resolved effectively by contracting. A corporate governance system, then, is the system of monitoring devices, internal and external, specific to each organization, that defines how these mechanisms are set up and how each will fulfill its monitoring role. It is important to understand that the governance system is specific to each company, and that different ownership structures may result in different structures, cultures, and outcomes based on their unique governance objectives. The overriding goal is the protection of outsider stakeholder interests. Stakeholder interests are protected in a variety of ways, i.e. by ensuring compliance with laws, regulations, and technical standards, by ensuring equitable allocation of economic rents, by monitoring management decision-making to ensure that decisions will create long-term value for the entity, and/or by ensuring that information prepared and provided by management is relevant and objective (of high quality). In this study, we examine publicly traded companies with diverse ownership structures, whose directors act as agents of stockholders.One of the most important functions of the corporate governance system in this context is to ensure the quality of the financial reporting process. Board members, acting as agents of owners, are being held increasingly responsible for controlling the actions of management and for evaluating and implementing effective systems of controls. Recent legislation and the major stock exchanges now require boards to have a majority of outside directors and audit committees to have three independent directors. The intent is to limit the ability of management to engage in earnings management and opportunistic behavior by increasing the ability of both the board and audit committee to monitor management (Farinha, 2003).Earnings management is generally defined as \"a purposeful intervention in the external financial reporting process, with the intent of seeking some private gain\" (Dechow and Skinner, 2000). Earnings management includes fraud, purposeful violations of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and accounting choices within GAAP that mask true economic performance and the volatility of earnings. One stream of research has focused on the relationship between board of director characteristics and fraud (Beasley, 1996; Beasley et al., 2000; Dechow et al., 1996), and between management power and fraud (Dunn, 2004). Others have examined the relationship between non-fraud earnings management and specific characteristics of boards and audit committees, such as independence (Klein, 2002b) and meeting frequency (Xie et al., 2003). The findings of the both streams of research are consistent with governance reforms for independence and accountability. However, evidence suggests that management can overcome monitoring mechanisms, even those that meet the new legislative and exchange standards. Chief Executive Magazine (Niskanen, 2003) reports that all major firms charged with accounting scandals through 2002 were in full compliance with the standards for board and audit committee independence now required by law. This implies that monitoring by independent directors is not always sufficient and/or effective in controlling management malfeasance.So why might independent directors not be effective monitors? The explanation may be found by examining the power and incentive of board members to perform their fiduciary duties.\n2. Competing theories: Encouraging stock ownership among directors is often used to align the interest of directors with those of the shareholders. There are two competing theories about how board of director members, acting as agents for the stockholders, react to owning stock in the firms they serve.Convergence-of-interests theory\n3. Design of this study: This study investigated which of these two theories can be supported by observation. If the entrenchment theory is observed, this study investigated whether entrenchment thresholds could be identified and whether governance mechanisms can be sufficient to reduce the effects of entrenchment[2].Measures and statistical tests\n4. Results of the study: Statistical tests showed that the variables acted in the predicted manner and each SIC grouping showed that the research model was well specified and significant at the 0.05 level. The variation in working capital accruals explained by cash flows ranged from an average of 49 percent in the manufacturing industry to 68 percent in the oil and gas industry (see Table AI in the Appendix). This is consistent with prior researchers' tests of the model (Dechow and Dichev, 2002), which provides validity for using the model to estimate earnings quality. The relationship between the strength of governance and estimation errors was inverse, as expected, indicating that stronger governance resulted in less errors and higher earnings quality. The effect of board insider ownership on estimation errors was not significant except in the entrenchment range, where errors increased as ownership increased. The statistical results appear in Tables AII and AIII in the Appendix. The results of the statistical tests are discussed in the following paragraphs. During the discussions that follow, visualize the results as depicted in Figure 1.Convergence-of-interests or entrenchment?\n5. Conclusions: From the above research findings, we make the following conclusions about for-profit firms and recommendations for those people attempting to manage these issues:* We feel this research and other related research studies provide sufficient evidence that the uniform model of convergence-of-interests does not reflect reality. The entrenchment model seems more reflective of how board members react to equity ownership in the firm they are serving, consistent with earlier research results of Beasley (1996) and Dechow et al. (1996). Given sufficient equity ownership, board members may become entrenched, whereby their interests do not reflect the interests of the shareholders and the board members have sufficient voting power to suppress sanctions on them or their removal. This suggests the need to have stronger governance mechanisms at higher levels of equity ownership than is implied by the convergence-of-interests theory. Firms need the strongest controls within the entrenchment range.* What was particularly surprising, however, was the finding that both insider board members and independent outsider board members can become entrenched. In fact, within the entrenchment range, both sets of board members can be simultaneously entrenched. The negative effect of insider ownership on earnings quality indicated that neither group was acting in the owners' interests, i.e. both groups were entrenched. These findings are consistent with Morck et al. (1988), who found that independent board members with stock holdings responded to financial incentives in a similar fashion to management and could also become entrenched. This means that governance mechanisms should not address specific types of board members, but rather should address the activities of all board members. It also means that governance mechanisms that rely on the existence of independent board members to moderate the activities of insider board members may be weaker controls than generally thought. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act relies considerably on these types of controls. This finding is especially critical to regulatory bodies and legislators who attempt to address these issues. Auditors should also note the implied weakness of independence as a control mechanism when not considered in conjunction with equity allocations.* We find that while entrenchment exists, effective governance can moderate the effects of entrenchment. Firms must assess the types of governance mechanisms available and select those that fit their operation. It is important that firms design and implement their governance mechanisms before the need for them arises, because we also saw that entrenched firms' board members were able to resist adding more governance mechanisms when the mechanisms seemed to be needed most. Further research is needed to identify those types of mechanisms that provide the strongest controls over the actions of board members.* Future research may find that specific individual governance mechanisms may provide material control, but for now, we suggest that firms and analysts should concentrate on sets of governance mechanisms. It seems reasonable that governance indexes based on an assessment of many mechanisms may provide credible criteria for rating or ranking a firm's governance strength. While we endorse no specific products, two such indexes are the Accounting and Governance Risk Rating (AGR(r)) provided by Audit Integrity Incorporated (see www.auditintegrity.com), and the Corporate Governance Quotient (CGQ(r)) provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (see www.issproxy.com) which is also available via Yahoo!Finance (see http://finance.yahoo.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org).* So far, these discussions beg the issue about whether firms should encourage stock ownership by managers and board of director members. We know that firms often use stock options as a means to attract quality managers when large salaries cannot be paid (for example, with start-up companies). Key managers routinely sit on the board of directors, and more often than may be desired, they chair the board. However, we see that problems can arise as equity ownership rises sufficiently to entrench such people. Is the problem avoided entirely if stock ownership is not encouraged? Future research should address this issue.One final point needs to be made. The reader should not generalize the results of this research to other types of organizations, such as not-for-profit or governmental entities. As we stated at the very start of this article, we studied for-profit, publicly held firms where directors acted as agents of the stockholders and corporate governance was tasked with the responsibility to monitor management and improve investor confidence in reported earnings quality. We acknowledge that in other types of entities, the governance culture and objectives may be different and our results may not apply.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to test empirically the relationship between board equity ownership and corporate governance on earnings quality of for-profit corporations, to help practitioners enhance corporate governance practices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study examines two competing theories of equity ownership (convergence of interests and management entrenchment) to explain how board members react to owning the firm's stock and whether governance impacts their behavior. In a sample of 499 publicly traded firms, a governance index was calculated and the relative power of equity ownership and governance was regressed on reported earnings quality.\nFindings: - The results support the management entrenchment theory. Both independent and insider board members become entrenched, negatively impacting reported earnings quality and the strength of the governance structure. However, effective governance using a composite of mechanisms moderates the effects of entrenchment.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The effect of individual governance variables on earnings quality is not identified. The reader should not generalize the results of this research to other types of organizations, such as not-for-profit or governmental entities. The authors studied for-profit, publicly held firms where directors act as agents of the stockholders and corporate governance is tasked with the responsibility to monitor management and improve investor confidence in reported earnings quality. The authors acknowledge that in other types of entities, the governance culture and objectives may be different and the results of this study may not apply.\nPractical implications: - The results provide insight regarding the motivations and behavior of board members and the impact of stock ownership on their actions. Stronger governance controls are needed within the entrenchment range of stock ownership. Firms should not rely on oversight by independent board members to control insider board members. A composite of governance mechanisms can moderate negative behavior.\nOriginality/value: - The results challenge commonly held beliefs that independent board members and board members who own stock will perform their fiduciary duty. This means that governance mechanisms should address all board members, not just specific types and that equity ownership must be very high before it can be relied upon as effective.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Action learning approach to teaching business engineering methodology
|
[
"Curriculum",
"Learning",
"Business engineering"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Business process management (BPM) has emerged as a powerful concept for improving organisations' performance (Davenport, 1993; Hammer and Champy, 1993; Jeston and Nelis, 2008). In fact, business processes are considered key differentiators in a global competitive environment. However, BPM initiatives require a major shift in thinking from a traditionally vertical \"function-oriented\" perspective to an understanding based on horizontally structured \"business processes\". For many employees and managers this mind shift is quite demanding (Kilmann, 1995; Hellstrom and Eriksson, 2013).\n2. Background and related literature: 2.1 BE\n3. Curriculum design: To provide students with the methodological knowledge that is required to transform companies into process-based and customer-centred organisations, we developed a BE curriculum. The course is dedicated to graduate students and is part of a master in management programme (MSc). It is based on action learning and performed in a classroom setting.\n4. Method: To analyse which elements of action learning are decisive for learning the BE methodology we conduct a post-test design using both a questionnaire and an evaluation of the BE results after finishing the course week. Participants answer the post-test (that includes also an open commentary field in addition to the measures described in the following) without being informed of their performance results to avoid potential influences. Additionally, we collect data based on a questionnaire regarding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, work experience and prior knowledge before the course starts. The measures used are described below.\n5. Empirical results: 5.1 Descriptives\n6. Discussion: Overall, the participants achieve high performance results except for the explanatory knowledge in the micro design phase. Looking at the performance scores, the participants achieve better results with regard to delivering content than to delivering explanations in their documentations. It thus appears to be easier to learn and express declarative knowledge than procedural knowledge within BE. Moreover, the correlation results reveal that participants with high performance in terms of content also achieve high scores in terms of explanations. This can be explained by the complexity of BE which requires a high learning effort to understand the methodology and to apply it to a different context. The participants first learn the application to a given, exemplary case and then to explain the reasons how and why they applied procedural elements of BE to their own case.\n7. Implications and limitations: 7.1 Theoretical implications\n8. Conclusion: This paper suggests an action learning approach to teaching BE methodology. The research is based on a course we developed for graduate-level students in a master in management programme. The results presented here reveal that action learning is useful to acquire knowledge of BE. However, this learning approach incorporates a multitude of elements, and some are more important than others. Our results contribute to BPM learning theory as we show that every dimension of action learning is useful in the domain of BE. However, emphasis should be put on specific learning elements in certain phases of BE. While the variety of learning elements is useful in addressing different learning needs of students, the workload for students is relatively high. In order to use the limited time in the best possible way, theoretical input and the use of an exemplary case should be reduced. Instead, the time should be made available to allow for more group discussion on the self-developed case. In addition, the instructor should visit the teams frequently, but without spending too much time on each visit. It is more important to be present as often as possible but without discussing issues down to the last detail. Students mostly have to understand BE on their own in order to obtain high learning performance; this is accelerated by spending more learning time in the team.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The business engineering (BE) methodology is used to design process-oriented and customer-centred companies in a systematic and holistic way. However, BE demands a high learning effort with regard to the logical flow, instruments and supporting software. The purpose of this paper is to explore which elements of action learning are most useful regarding BE.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To enable students to learn BE, a graduate-level course based on action learning is designed. Within a one-week schedule, participants are guided through the three phases of BE covering 31 learning elements. A post-test measures the learning experience. Regression analysis identifies elements that lead to high learning performance.\nFindings: Results from five courses with 79 students reveal that action learning is useful to obtain declarative and procedural knowledge of BE. Learning elements delivering theoretical input and the use of an exemplary case could be reduced, while more time should be devoted to group work on a self-developed case study.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is based on a specific course design for the topic of BE, which might limit the results' transferability to other business process management (BPM) teaching areas. However, it provides implications about the decisive elements for learning how to design process-oriented companies.\nPractical implications: The results can be used by instructors to design more meaningful courses on BE.\nOriginality/value: The paper delivers new insights into how issues of BPM should be taught. This area, particularly regarding BE, has received little research attention.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance during financial distress - an empirical analysis
|
[
"Case study",
"Corporate governance",
"Financial distress",
"Insolvency",
"Empirical legal research"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Analysis of the impact of financial distress on the governance of UK public companies is a relatively new area of research. To date, much of the reported research in this area in the UK has focused on the interpretation of legislation and judicial decision-making, and the analysis of governance codes in the context of solvent companies. There is little reported empirical research on how governance in financial distress is actually shaped within the context of laws and regulations governing director behaviour and the evolving relationship between the directors of the company, shareholders and other third parties, particularly different types of creditors and ultimately insolvency practitioners[1]. The application of an empirical research method to this area is a comparatively new approach that might challenge the perspective of some legal scholars who may feel it does not sit easily alongside the doctrinal interpretation of primary and secondary legislation.\n2. Corporate governance during financial distress: Corporate governance in financially distressed public companies shares many similarities with that of governance in solvent companies[2]. Company directors in such companies continue to have the ultimate control of corporate assets (Berle and Means, 1968) with the understanding that their overall performance should promote the success of the company[3] without breaching statutory limits and the company's constitutional boundaries[4]. They are still obliged to demonstrate reasonable care and diligence[5] in making strategic decisions that relate to all corporate affairs, including, but not limited to, public dissemination of critical information that should provide a transparent picture of the company's financial and economic status. Directors remain accountable to shareholders for their past and future decisions, facilitating shareholders' contribution to the governance of the company through the organisation of general meetings and voting on crucial resolutions predominantly proposed by the board of directors. Directors' responsibilities have been augmented in recent years in the UK with the introduction of governance codes that seek to establish principles of best practice. Conformance with the most recent Code is recommended for public companies continuing to operate in the UK Stock Exchange.\n3. The case study approach: Traditional doctrinal approaches to legal analysis tend to focus on a detailed review of judicial decision-making. In such an approach, legal cases are analysed by scholars for the degree of consistency in interpretation and the extent to which they present novel insights. The focus of interpretation is on the framework of existing legal precedent and statutes. This analysis is typically from the perspective of the court as it seeks to interpret and make a judgement about the behaviour/conduct of the different parties. Comparison between cases allows researchers to form a more comprehensive view of the judicial decision-making process.\n4. Source and value of secondary data sources: As the research began, it became apparent that there was a wide range of sources available to the researcher that would enable her to develop a detailed discussion of decisions taken by the board of directors and other participants (primarily secured creditors and administrators) during the informal rescue process. The individual sources are detailed here to illustrate the information available - all in the public domain. As a cautionary note, the breadth and complexity of the information that was available meant that the process of collecting, sifting and interpreting the information was time-consuming with each case taking an average of two months to complete.\n5. Case study structure: The structure of the case studies emerged as the researcher began to collect data on each case. It was shaped in part by the existing literature mainly focusing on debt and asset structure, pre-financial distress governance structure and informal rescue processes. As data were brought together, it became clear that it would be possible to present directors' choices of informal rescue options, identifying influences from specific participants in each decision. The overall framework for each case reflects this sequence.\n6. Governance in distress: Each of the companies faced different internal and external challenges that put increasing pressure on their financial position. Factors included the purchase of distressed assets, the acquisition of new subsidiaries that required further investment, an outdated merchandising strategy that was increasingly uncompetitive and exposed by the financial crash of 2008, failure to transfer production overseas, slow response to the entry of new online competitors and/or lack of any proactive strategy to minimise the costs relating to wages and rents relating to retail stores at a time of recession. The companies were also trading at the beginning of the credit crunch in 2007 when lenders became increasingly cautious about extending further borrowings.\n7. Concluding remarks: This paper has demonstrated the potential for the use of empirical research to examine corporate governance in financially distressed companies. There is a paucity of literature that has examined the area of governance during the immediate period prior to the company's entry into a formal insolvency procedure. Doctrinal analysis appears to offer little exploration of the interrelated decisions which directors make, choosing to focus largely on the legal concept of director duties and their potential liability for wrongful trading. By undertaking a detailed analysis of the decisions taken by directors, creditors and shareholders this researcher was able to explore the governance issues which can emerge during financial distress and identify the potential of an empirical methodology to analyse the area. Whilst conducting this research, it became evident that there was a lack of attention in statutory and common laws to important issues such as the gradual transition of control powers and asset ownership to secured creditors. In addition, the role or administrators prior to commencement of a formal insolvency procedure is not clearly documented or understood, despite the potential of such a role to influence the subsequent choices made once a formal insolvency procedure is implemented.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The traditional form of legal research with its predominant emphasis on doctrinal and theoretical analysis is now increasingly augmented by empirical research that seeks to document actions and decisions and draw broader conclusions. This relatively new research tradition is arguably making a positive contribution to legal theory and practice, particularly in the USA [for a general discussion see SJ Lubben, \"Do Empricial Bankruptcy Studies Matter?\" (2012) 20 ABI L Rev 715]. The paper aims to report on the use of empirical research to examine corporate governance in the context of financially distressed UK public companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses statutory corporate filings and mandatory stock exchange reports to document the process of informal debt resolution prior to the company's entry into administration or Company Voluntary Arrangement. The findings are presented in an innovative way as a series of case studies focusing on process, participants and outcomes of informal debt resolution.\nFindings: The paper concludes that it is possible to use case study research as a means to explore corporate governance in the context of financially distressed companies. Although such an approach is challenging in various ways, there are some advantages that complement more traditional research approaches. The findings show how directors' attention shifts away from shareholders' interests to those of creditors at times of financial distress and challenges conventional models of governance that stress shareholder value.\nOriginality/value: The distinctive features of the research are the development of a case-study based approach that draws on publicly available data sources, a process based analysis and a synthesis of corporate governance and law.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An empirical investigation of the combinatorial nature of operational practices and operational capabilities: Compensatory or additive?
|
[
"Manufacturing industries",
"Operations management",
"Process control",
"Process analysis",
"Operational practices",
"Operational capabilities",
"Compensatory",
"Additive"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: In the field of operations strategy, managers typically aim operational change initiatives and their associated resource investments at developing new practices or capabilities, with the overall goal of creating competitive advantage for an organization. One investment focus centers around adopting and implementing operational practices that could significantly improve operations performance (Flynn et al., 1995; Fullerton et al., 2003; Giffi et al., 1990; Schonberger, 1996; Ward and Zhou, 2006). The other stresses developing operational capabilities that help the operations management system address those problems of greatest interest to the firm and to the critical customers (Dosi et al., 2003; Ferdows and De Meyer, 1990; Flynn and Flynn, 2004; Hayes and Upton, 1998; White, 1996). At first glance, both operational practices and capabilities appear similar. Yet, they are differentiated by several important traits.For the most part, prior operations strategy research has emphasized operational practices, with relatively less attention being given to the study of operational capabilities. More important, little research has studied these two constructs together. This is an important omission since operational practices and capabilities may be interrelated. Under the umbrella of operations strategy, operational practices and operational capabilities represent different but related investment decisions that require choices in terms of how to expend limited resources. One of the major challenges of operations strategy development is to craft investments that best support the overall business strategy. Because resources are finite, managers must consider what to invest in and how much to invest. In doing so, managers must consider whether investments are additive or compensatory in nature.Investments aimed at developing additive resources require that a certain minimum level of investment is made in each area. Each practice or capability is necessary but not sufficient for competitive advantage. Failure to meet this minimum for any single requirement will negatively affect performance. On the other hand, if investments are compensatory, a lack of investment in one or more areas can be offset or compensated for by investments in other areas. A compensatory system is less restrictive in that tradeoffs can be made. Given that investments in practices and capabilities demand scarce resources; this raises the question of how a firm should invest in practices and capabilities.The objectives of this study are two-fold:1. compare and differentiate operational practices and operational capabilities conceptually; and2. empirically assess whether practices and capabilities tend to be more compensatory or additive in their effects on operations performance.Compensatory relationships would call for focused, deep investments, whereas an additive nature would require investments in a broader range of activities such that some minimum requirement is met in each area.This study makes several contributions. First, by defining and differentiating between operational practices and operational capabilities, this study reduces the confusion that surrounds these two constructs and it helps us better understand how they contribute to operations strategy. Second, our data analysis provides evidence regarding the combinatorial nature of operational practices and operational capabilities. This evidence, in turn, has important strategic implications for resource allocation schemes and their impact on operational performance. The last contribution is methodological. This study employs statistical tests of non-nested models - a relatively little used procedure in operations management. We believe that this procedure has wide application in operations management studies where researchers want to select the \"best\" model from different competing theoretical perspectives to explain a phenomenon.\n2 Differences between operational practices and operational capabilities: While operational practices and operational capabilities are important concepts to strategy in general and to operations strategy specifically, the differences between these constructs are often unclear. For example, some researchers have used these terms interchangeably. Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) noted that practices can be viewed as a form of capabilities - a view also echoed by Lee and Kelley (2008). Other researchers such as Teece (2007) have challenged this view, arguing that capabilities are distinct from practices. In this section, we resolve the confusion between these two constructs by focusing on the following four tasks:1. to examine the attributes of operational practices and operational capabilities;2. to identify the differences that exist between them;3. to offer definitions for the two critical constructs; and4. to discuss the implications of these differences for operations strategy.2.1 Operational practices\n3 Combinatorial nature of operational practices and operational capabilities: As stated above, managers who make investment decisions must address inter-relationships among operational practices and among operational capabilities. Having discussed the conceptual difference between practices and capabilities, this section examines their combinatorial natures.3.1 Compensatory vs additive\n4 Research methodology: 4.1 Operational practices and capabilities\n5 Results: Following the analytical approach described above, two sets of regression analysis were conducted for each of five dimensions of operations performance. Table III summarizes the results of model selection criteria for operational practices. The additive models outperformed the compensatory models where cost, conformance quality, and design quality were the dependent variables. However, the compensatory models provided better fits when delivery reliability and flexibility were dependent variables.The same approach was employed to compare the compensatory nature and the additive nature in the set of operational capabilities. Table IV summarizes the results. The compensatory models consistently provided better fits to data than the additive models did - they had greater explanatory power and the regression coefficients were always statistically significant[2].To supplement the above tests, we performed non-nested model tests - Cox-Pesaran test and J- testin STATA 9 for each pair of rival models to evaluate whether one model better fit the data statistically. As H1 argues that operational practices tend to exhibit additive nature, the compensatory nature model (model 1) was setup as the null model in the first round testing. To prevent the situation in which the additive model could also be rejected and to further strengthen the results, we reversed the null model and the alternative model in the second round of tests. We conducted two similar rounds of tests to test H2. Tables V and VI report the results for exploring the combinatorial nature of operational practices and capabilities, respectively.Consistent with the findings of the earlier tests, the results shown in Table V indicate support for H1. in some cases and support against H1 in others. The results support H1 in that they provide evidence of the additive nature of operational practices in explaining cost performance, conformance quality, and design quality. On the other hand, the results are against H1 when delivery reliability and flexibility were the criteria. The compensatory model appeared to better explain the data in these cases.Table VI provides results for tests of the capabilities' effects on operational performance. Again consistent with the previous tests, the results in Table VI uniformly indicate that the compensatory model better explained operational performance for each of the five operational performance variables. These results provide strong support for H2.\n6 Discussion and implications: 6.1 Operations practices\n7 Conclusions, limitations, and future research: 7.1 Limitations and future research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Operational practices and operational capabilities are critical yet distinct elements in operations strategy. The purpose of this paper is to examine their conceptual differences and explore how they are developed in a portfolio, considering the potential for practices and capabilities to be either compensatory or additive in nature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The compensatory model argues that the lack of investments in certain practices or capabilities can be offset by higher level of investments in other practices or capabilities. In contrast, the additive model argues that the firm must invest in certain practices or capabilities and that trade-offs are impossible. The authors examine evidence for these two competing models using an approach borrowed from studies of multi-attribute consumer preference models and statistical comparisons of non-nested models.\nFindings: - Data for the study were collected from operations managers who were members of a large professional organization. The findings indicate that the effects of operational practices are additive for some operational outcomes and compensatory for others. However, the combinatorial nature of operational capabilities is purely compensatory.\nPractical implications: - The results imply that adequate investment in a wide range of operational practices is necessary to enhance operations performance. However, operations units appear to have more flexibility in choosing to develop a distinctive operational capability set.\nOriginality/value: - The study clarifies the different orientation of operational practices and operational capabilities as they contribute to operations strategy. The findings provide guidelines regarding the combinatorial natures of operational practices and operational capabilities. These guidelines have critical strategic implications for resource allocation schemes and how these schemes affect operational performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Telecommuter intent to leave
|
[
"Leadership",
"Leadership style",
"Telecommuters",
"Turnover",
"Behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An increase in the number of telecommuters in the workplace has created new challenges for organizational leaders. A single leader often faces geographic, time, and cultural differences among team members resulting in structural, evaluation, developmental, and inspirational challenges. An additional challenge faced by managers of telecommuters is the retention of these employees. Intent to stay or leave an organization is the strongest predictor of actual voluntary turnover. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between perceived leadership styles and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. Linear regression results indicated a significant relationship between perceived transformational and telecommuter intent to leave an organization (F(1, 111)=34.36, p<0.001) suggesting the more a leader demonstrates a transformational leadership style, the more a telecommuter wants to leave the organization. Linear regression results indicated a significant negative relationship between perceived laissez-faire leadership style and intent to leave an organization (F(1, 111)=20.01, p<0.001) suggesting the more a leader demonstrates a laissez-faire leadership style, the less a telecommuter wants to leave the organization. No relationship existed between perceived transactional leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. The findings in this study were unexpected for all three leadership styles, as decades of research suggest transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles have a positive effect on employee turnover intentions and transformational leadership style has a negative effect on employee turnover intentions.\nBackground: Employee turnover is \"the rate of change in the working staff of an organization during a defined period\" (Shahnawaz and Jafri, 2009, p. 159) or \"the movement of employees out of an organization\" (Lee et al., 2006, p. 1951). Turnover is the estimated probability that an individual will stay with an employing organization (Lee and Liu, 2006). Two forms of employee turnover exist: involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary turnover occurs when an employee unwillingly leaves an organization, frequently occurring during layoffs, restructuring, or retirement initiated at an organizational level (Ashworth, 2006). Voluntary turnover occurs when employees choose to leave an organization, and is frequently described \"as a deliberate, job dissatisfaction-initiated process that includes job search and subsequent expected utility deliberations\" (Weller et al., 2009, p. 1146).\nResults: The study included three research questions. For each research question data were analyzed using linear regression analysis. Linear regression analysis was a suitable choice because the method is used in correlation research to explore the relationship between multiple dependent variables and a single independent variable (Pallant, 2007). The degrees of freedom (df), mean (M), standard deviation (SD) of the t-test, and probability values (p) were calculated for each variable. The confidence level was set at 0.05. With a confidence level of 0.05, if a significant difference exists, a researcher can be 95 percent confident that the difference did not occur by chance (Pallant, 2007). The degree of change estimate was a beta coefficient (b) or standardized regression coefficients, including a standard error (SE). A degree of change is statistically significant when the likelihood of a Type 2 error is 0.05 (Pallant, 2007).\nDiscussion: No relationship was found to exist between the extent to which a leader demonstrates a transactional leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. This finding supports research suggesting transactional leadership can have a positive effect on follower satisfaction and performance, both of which have been found to increase intent to stay with an organization. (Hunt and Schuler, 1976; Klimoski and Hayes, 1980; McNall et al., 2010; Podsakoff and Schriesheim, 1985; Podsakoff et al, 1982; Reitz, 1971; Shahnawaz and Jafri, 2009; Sims, 1977). In a constructive form, the transactional leader works with individuals and groups, establishes contracts to achieve objectives, determines individual capabilities, and creates a compensation and reward system (Snodgrass et al., 2008). Limburg and Jackson (2008) suggested traditional supervision-based methods of management appear to be inappropriate for telework, and concluded that transactional organizational structures, leadership, and processes applied to telework assist teleworkers and teleworker managers, increasing overall performance. These findings are consistent with a studies conducted by Detamore (2007) and Dimitrova (2003). Detamore (2007) suggested there is no correlation between transactional leadership and employee intent to leave. Dimitrova (2003) proposed transactional leadership as more effective for managers of telecommuters at a large Canadian telecommunications company. Transactional leadership is frequently regarded as a less effective leadership style than transformational in a traditional work setting (Holtz and Harold, 2008; Rafferty and Griffin, 2006; Ross and Gay, 2006; Webb, 2007). A shift away from transformational leadership toward transactional leadership may be a more effective leadership style for telecommuters (Huws et al., 1990; Korte and Wayne, 1996; Kraut, 1989; Olson, 1988; Olson and Primps, 1984; Steinle, 1988). Transactional leaders often assist their followers determine objectives or goals, and how these objectives or goals are achieved (Bass, 1985). Frequently the goal setting is a collaborative effort with active participation by the follower. In a sales environment, transactional leadership is a customary mode of operation (Yammarino and Bass, 1990; Jolson et al., 1993). Results of the current study coincide with these findings. Transactional, rather than transformational, leadership may be a more effective leadership style for telecommuters and have a positive effect on telecommuter retention rates.\nConclusion: The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between perceived leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. In all, 200 telecommuters received invitations to complete the survey, 113 completed the survey for a response rate of just over 56 percent. A relationship was found to exist between perceived transformational leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. A significant negative relationship was found to exist between perceived laissez-faire leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. No relationship was found to exist between perceived transactional leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. The findings were unexpected for all three leadership styles.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between perceived leadership styles and telecommuter intent to leave an organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative non-experimental design was used to examine the relationship between perceived leadership styles and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. In all, three leadership styles were examined: transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire. Telecommuters responded to a single online survey combining two validated survey instruments, the MLQ 5X Rater Form and the Staying or Leaving Index. Respondents were instructed to consider their current manager when responding to the survey.\nFindings: Linear regression results indicated a significant relationship between perceived transformational and telecommuter intent to leave an organization (F(1, 111)=34.36, p<0.001) suggesting the more a leader demonstrates a transformational leadership style, the more a telecommuter wants to leave the organization. Results indicated a significant negative relationship between perceived laissez-faire leadership style and intent to leave an organization (F(1, 111)=20.01, p<0.001) suggesting the more a leader demonstrates a laissez-faire leadership style, the less a telecommuter wants to leave the organization. No relationship existed between perceived transactional leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization.\nResearch limitations/implications: The data collected represents perception of leadership behavior vs actual leadership style. Further research should gather both perceived and actual leadership behavior. Research encompassing perceived and actual behaviors would allow for an assessment of the degree of convergence and assist in judging the accuracy of perceptual data.\nPractical implications: A relationship was found to exist between perceived transformational leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. A significant negative relationship was found to exist between perceived laissez-faire leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. No relationship was found to exist between perceived transactional leadership style and telecommuter intent to leave an organization. The findings were unexpected for all three leadership styles.\nOriginality/value: Extending the study to gather actual leadership behavior instead of perceived behavior, expanding the populations to include greater diversity, and conducting the study as a longitudinal study to capture leadership over time are recommended for future research. Organizational leaders may wish to use the results of the study to aid their understanding of which leadership styles affect telecommuter intent to leave an organization.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Some economic dimensions of the mental health jigsaw in Australia
|
[
"Australia",
"Psychiatry",
"Health services",
"Mental health services",
"Economic sectors"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to describe various economic dimensions of the Australian mental health sector. This is relevant as no overview of the economic data on mental health exists and, generally speaking, Australian economists have shown somewhat intermittent interest in mental health issues. Moreover, researchers are confronted with several difficulties. Data are \"patchy\" and those that exist are often by-products of the administrative or legislative processes that surround mental, and general, health service provision. As well, the concepts and issues that confront economists analysing mental illness (MI) can be complex (Williams and Doessel, 2001). Furthermore, although there are common problems between mental health economics and (general) health economics (e.g. uncertainty, variations in treatments, etc.), as Frank and McGuire (2000, p. 895) say, \"Mental health economics is like health economics only more so\". The lacunae in the literature have been demonstrated by Williams and Doessel (2005) and Williams and Doessel (2006), in their two reviews of the empirical Australian economic literature on MI and its main co-morbidities.Given a somewhat threadbare backdrop of economic knowledge of the mental health sector in Australia, this paper contributes an economic synopsis using time-series economic data on various aspects of this sector. In the next section, we give an account of the mental health \"jigsaw\". This account indicates all the components of the mental health sector, data on which would provide a description that is composite, Panglossian and \"best-of-all-possible worlds\". We then present some data on public (dedicated) psychiatric institutions at the national level, and some comparable data for Queensland. It is clear that there is a marked difference between the aggregate experience for Australia and that of a single state[1]. Attention is then directed to various data on the operation of private fee-for-service (FFS) psychiatry. We provide measures of the absolute, and the relative, size of this sub-sector of private medical practice. Next, in order to shed some light on how psychiatry operates in Australia, we also apply some economic techniques to analyse the different services (or joint production) of private psychiatrists. Finally, we examine the funding split (between the Australian Government and consumers) for expenditures on private psychiatry services.\n2 Comprehending the mental health jigsaw: One of the objectives of the Australian National Mental Health Strategy, when it was implemented from 1 January 1993, was to address the parlous state of data on mental health in Australia, including, inter alia, expenditure data. For discussions of the strategy, see Whiteford (1992, 1993, 1998) and Whiteford et al. (2002). The development of the \"national mental health data strategy\"[2] has borne some fruit in that there is now an annual, uniform, nation-wide collection of various mental health data (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005). However, bear in mind that these data begin only in 1992-1993, and are predominantly concerned with the public provision of services: the private sector, in large part, is not the focus of the strategy.The purpose of this section is to piece together some main parts of the mental health sector. Doing so is like the \"piecing exercise\" of a jigsaw puzzle for several reasons, but one ought to bear in mind two points: that the boundaries of the task are not necessarily clear; and that the picture is partial.First, boundaries are often somewhat arbitrary when one attempts to comprehend the health sector. For example, Abel-Smith (1963), the architect of the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of health expenditure (sometimes referred to now as National Health Accounts), adopted a \"narrow\" \"traditional\" or \"conventional\" focus. Expenditures on seat belts in cars, highway barriers, restaurant regulatory services, the provision of potable water, etc. are excluded, even though they are motivated by health concerns. Given that such exclusions exist, it is appropriate to include a descriptor like \"conventional\" as is done in the title of Figure 1. See the discussions below[3].Second, partial pictures of expenditure are common in studies of the health sector (or any segment thereof, such as mental health). Opportunity costs (for patients, relatives, etc.), such as lost earnings, are excluded, while \"intangible\" costs associated with pain, suffering, disability and so on, also are not taken into account[4].The concepts behind such \"layers\" of costs are found in the \"cost of illness\" (COI) approach, pioneered in mental health and intellectual disability by Malzberg (1950), Fein (1958) and Conley (1973).The analogy from the table game thus seems appropriate here, although only parts of the jigsaw puzzle of mental health are on the \"tables\" of researchers at present.A depiction of the jigsaw analogy is shown in Figure 1, a Venn diagram, which identifies all services to the mentally ill, as well as the groups that provide those services. Note that the figure is constructed with \"All Mental Health Services (Formal and Informal)\" at the centre. Other parts of the Venn diagram represent other parts of the health sector, some of which do not relate to mental health at all, e.g. \"Private Non-psychiatric Hospital-based Services, including Accommodation\" \"Non-Mental Illness (MI) Pharmaceuticals\", etc. Thus, the universal set is the health sector, and the only remaining parts not shown in Figure 1 are the opportunity costs of illness (loss of wages/salaries) and pain and suffering. In the texts to follows, it will become clear that heterogeneity characterises this sector: there are multiplicities of the services that are provided, and multiplicities of localities where they are provided.Multiple service providers are shown in Figure 1: general practitioners (GPs), specialist psychiatrists, para-medical professionals, family members, self-help groups and so on. Some are renumerated for their service provision and others are not. The figure also shows those services being provided in various locations. While, in the Australian institutional context, location can, in large part, be simplified to \"in-hospital\" and \"out-of-hospital\" there is an important distinction to be made, with regard to the provision of mental health services, between dedicated public psychiatric hospitals that provide long-term care for the chronically ill, and short-term hospital services for the mentally ill with acute conditions[5]. Note also that the provision of long-term care has decreased since the advent of the deinstitutionalisation movement in the 1950s (Doessel and Scheurer, 2004).Another characteristic is that public services for acute MI can be located in the general wards of public hospitals, but can also be located in dedicated psychiatric wards of such hospitals. Dedicated private psychiatric hospitals are yet another treatment location shown in Figure 1.Although Figure 1 shows the main distinctions, it does not capture all the \"messiness\" that arises from the dynamics underlying the health sector: changes in funding/insurance arrangements, the ebb-and-flow of federal structures and so forth are not depicted. However, Figure 1 is sufficient to impart the flavour of heterogeneity.Suppose now that one sought to determine the level of expenditure on all mental health services. Figure 1 shows that this would involve the summation of expenditures associated with the following nine areas, where the areas represent types of mental health services: A+B + C +D +E +H +J +L +N[6]. If one has a slightly wider conception, i.e. mental health treatment/services and hospital accommodation, the focus would be on the following 12 segments in Figure 1: A+B +C +D +E +F +G +H +I +J +L +N. Of course, a comprehensive conception of \"mental health expenditure\" (as conceived of in the COI approach) would not only include these ten areas but also other areas: opportunity costs, disability, pain, suffering, loss, etc. which are not specifically shown in Figure 1. The Figure thus serves as a general guide to some of the territory for which this paper provides further details. More specifically, some time-series data on public psychiatric hospitals will be presented (segments D and F of Figure 1) and FFS psychiatric services provided in-hospital and out-of-hospital (segments J and H).\n3 Public psychiatric institutions: Although some numerical, non-economic, time-series data on patients in public mental hospitals from 1906 are available for Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001), and for Queensland from 1883-1884 (Doessel and Scheurer, 2004), time-series economic data are not available before 1960-1961. Such work began in the mid-1960s when Deeble (1967), who began publishing health expenditure data using the WHO framework of Abel-Smith (1963), collected data on a classification \"Public Psychiatric Hospitals\" a component of the WHO classification. Subsequently, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has routinely collected these data on an annual basis.Figure 2 shows the available data for Public Psychiatric Hospital expenditure from 1960-1961 by government and non-government source of funds, in constant (2000-2001) prices[7]. Note that non-government funds are clearly trivial (in a quantitative sense): chronic MI has been regarded as the responsibility of government. This time trend reveals some temporary increases apparent in the late 1980s, but the overall inverted U-shaped trend suggests declining current expenditure since the early 1970s. This decline is explained, in large part, by the deinstitutionalisation process that has occurred in Australia, in line with other countries such as the UK (Barham, 1992) and the USA (Brown, 1985).Figure 2 shows grouped data for six separate state-based systems. Such aggregation can conceal differences between the states in terms of scope or coverage of the data. To provide a preliminary view of this problem, Figure 3 shows per capita expenditure on public psychiatric hospitals for Australia from 1960-1961, combined with per capita expenditure on psychiatric hospitals for one state, Queensland, during the same period[8]. Clearly, Queensland is a-typical compared to the grouped expenditures of the Australian data. Queensland's per capita expenditure was uniformly below that for Australia until 1995-1996. From 1996-1997 Queensland's per capita expenditure has exceeded that for Australia, by a relatively small margin. Given the context of deinstitutionalisation, Queensland's per capita expenditure does not exhibit the (general) inverted U-shape exhibited in the Australian data[9]. The Australian experience is clearly not uniform: this is not surprising given that Australia's health \"systems\" are state-based.Having these \"public\" pieces of the mental health jigsaw \"in hand\" now, attention turns next to the available time-series economic data on FFS, or private practice, psychiatry.\n4 Private fee-for-service psychiatry: In terms of Figure 1, this section of the paper examines areas J and H for Australia. Several cross-sections through time for these areas are taken, involving the absolute size of private FFS psychiatry, the relative size of private FFS psychiatry, the types of services provided, and the ex post coinsurance rate under Australia's health insurance arrangements.The economic data on private FFS psychiatry in Australia exist as a by-product of the administration of Medicare, which has been the responsibility of the Health Insurance Commission (HIC), now called Medicare Australia, since 1984-1985. For an examination of the pricing and subsidy relationships undergirding private psychiatry under Medicare, see the positive economic analysis in Doessel and Williams (2004).4.1 The absolute size of private psychiatric practice\n5 Conclusion: This paper has provided an introduction to some economic data on the Australian mental health sector. In summary, this paper first presented some aggregate data for Australia (from 1960-1961) on dedicated (public) psychiatric hospitals. Queensland government expenditures were then singled out for analysis. Next, the data on private FFS psychiatric services were studied in some detail, in order to shed some light on the operations of Medicare in the context of private FFS psychiatry. Four dimensions of private FFS psychiatry were considered: the absolute size of private psychiatry in financial terms; the relative size of private FFS psychiatry (measured in four ways) compared to all private FFS medical services; an overview of categories of psychiatry services provided in the private sector provided by applying the HHI to \"service categories\"; and an examination of the trend through time in the split in funding of private psychiatry service provision between the Australian government and consumers.We have several conclusions. First, there is evidence that expenditures on public psychiatric hospitals have fallen, although there are likely to be some important differences between the states. Second, the absolute size of private practice psychiatry has fallen since the mid 1990s. Third, the relative size of private practice psychiatry has also fallen since the mid 1990s, indicating that the absolute decline in psychiatry was not typical of FFS medicine in general. Fourth, the relative size of private psychiatry varied between the states. Fifth, there was a high degree of service mix concentration towards consultations in consulting rooms, although there were also regional variations in the service mix. And finally it was shown, using data on the ex post coinsurance rate, that net fees, as a proportion of gross fees, had risen within a few years of the introduction of Medicare.This paper has focussed on just two parts of the \"bigger picture\" of the mental health sector in Australia: public psychiatric institutions and private FFS psychiatry. No descriptions are included about other service providers, such as GPs, psychologists, nurses, the voluntary sector, etc. For one economic approach to collecting data on community-based services in Australia, see Williams and Doessel (2001). Nor are data on private psychiatric hospitals examined here.Although this study is partial, it complements two recent reviews of the empirical Australian economic literature on MI (Williams and Doessel, 2005; Williams and Doessel, 2006) that reveal the lacunae of studies that apply the tools and concepts of conventional economic analysis to the mental health sector. This brief analysis of two segments of the mental health sector, viz. public psychiatric hospitals and private psychiatric practice, suggests more questions that can be addressed rather than answers provided: puzzles have been added to the jigsaw.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, although there are some unique features associated with mental illness, such special features do not preclude economic analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - As a mechanism for understanding how individual economic studies fit into the mental health sector, a conceptual framework of the components of mental health service provision is outlined. Emphasis is placed on, not simply institutional and market resources, but also on the services provided by relatives, self-help groups, etc.\nFindings: - Australian data on parts of the mental health sector are employed to illustrate that some (and different) economic analyses can be undertaken in mental health. First, time-series data on public psychiatric hospitals are employed to demonstrate trends associated with deinstitutionalisation. Other data (for Queensland alone) indicate that there are state-based differences in the provision of such services. Second, attention is then directed to the analysis of time-series data on private fee-for-service psychiatric services. Various concepts and measures from industrial economics are applied to analyse the relative size of this service industry, the pricing behaviour of the profession, the service-mix of \"the psychiatry firms\" operating in Australia. In addition, the analysis also sheds some light on the distributional implications of Australia's national (and uniform) system of health funding, Medicare.\nOriginality/value: - Apart from demonstrating that economic analyses can be undertaken in the difficult area of mental health, this paper indicates a number of puzzles (e.g. various regional variations within a unified profession and a uniform national funding scheme) that invite further investigation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The value of mentoring: A mutually beneficial experience for mentor and mentee
|
[
"Mentoring",
"Relationship building",
"Learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nMentoring as a learning aid: Learning is fundamental to the growth and success of any organization. And any business that fails to comprehend its importance is surely destined for a place among the also-rans.\nFoundations of success: For mentoring to succeed in any learning context, it is essential that opportunities exist for frequent interaction. The reciprocal nature of the relationship is a must too. With foundations like these in place, the association can mutually benefit both mentor and mentee alike. It obviously becomes a win-win situation for the company involved when such partnerships flourish in the workplace.\nMutual gain: The responsibilities intrinsic to the role ensure that mentoring offers considerable scope for self-discovery. Mentors can develop their own capabilities as well as those of the person being mentored. And his or her confidence is sure to grow as they witness their mentee progressing. The reciprocally beneficial experience of mentoring should mean that both have become much better placed to either secure a certain position with the company or make further progression. Completing the mentoring program helps equip them with the range of soft skills which complement technical capabilities and have become highly regarded by organizations today.\nComment: The review is based on: \"Do mentors learn by mentoring others?\" by Rekha and Ganesh (2012). The authors analyze a youth mentoring program in India to illustrate how mentors can benefit from such programs as well as mentees. They identify various ways in which personal and professional development might be enhanced for mentors in a highly informative article that will provide value for any practitioner with an intention to use mentoring as a development tool.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims 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: Learning is fundamental to the growth and success of any organization. And any business that fails to comprehend its importance is surely destined for a place among the also-rans. Various possibilities exist where learning and development is concerned. One such option gaining in popularity is mentoring. It has now become recognized as having a key role in the personal and professional development of those participating in such programs. Mentoring typically involves an older person imparting their knowledge and experience to a less worldly individual placed under their guidance. Enabling the \"mentee\" to learn thus tends to be the main objective of these arrangements.\nPractical implications: The paper 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"
}
] |
Entrepreneurial orientation, firm market power and opportunism in networks
|
[
"Networking",
"Entrepreneurialism",
"Strategic alliances",
"Small- to medium-sized enterprises",
"Horizontal marketing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and its dimensions - such as innovativeness, risk taking and proactiveness of the firm (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996) - have been found to influence the development of competitive strategies (Lumpkin et al., 2010; Rauch et al., 2009; Wiklund and Shepherd, 2005), environmental scanning (Covin, 1991), knowledge creation (Li et al., 2009), marketing philosophy (Chen et al., 2012), firm capabilities (Lisboa et al., 2011) and company processes such as more decentralized organizational structures and strategic decision-making (Rauch et al., 2009; Wiklund and Shepherd, 2005). Clearly, EO provides the firm with partial capabilities of enhancing the success of new product development and is essentially important to ensure a proactive and aggressive focus on addressing upcoming and unarticulated customer needs (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001; Covin, 1991). As such, highly entrepreneurial firms may be primarily concerned with being innovative and first to market with new products while taking on the associated risk, which means that they are likely to substantially engage in intense networking and partnerships to access and experiment with ideas with limited resources (Davidsson, 2006; Lumpkin et al., 2010; Frishammar and Horte, 2007).\nTheory background and hypotheses: Horizontal networks among actual and potential competitors serve as conduits for firms to access external resources and functional needs that are not developed internally (Achrol and Kotler, 1999; Powell, 1990; Hadjikhani and Thilenius, 2005). Such networks are defined as:\nMethodology and data: The data for this study included firms involved in horizontal types of multipartner networks in Sweden over a five-year period. The data we use consisted of firms from a database of such networks identified by contacts with Swedish corporate and governance agencies (Almi and Nutek) with knowledge of network formation among Swedish companies. In the networks we selected for study inclusion, companies from the same product domain cooperated to improve their success in the marketplace. The data consist of 108 firms in the 25 networks operating within the metal manufacturing, timber, information technology and tourism/leisure industries. We collected responses at both the firm level and network level. Firm-level data are based on questionnaires to the owners or operating managers of the firms. Member firms of the SME networks do not need to interact directly with all other members in the network (Wincent, 2005; Varamaki and Vesalainen, 2003). As such, we also surveyed network-level representatives who are part of an administrative organization that provides support to joint project (e.g. product development) firms in a focal network (Human and Provan, 1997). Network respondents work closely with the member firms in a given network and have detailed insights on the projects pursued and any disputes that take place within the network (Thorgren et al., 2009). These respondents oversee disputes regarding firms within a given network, effectively representing a form of governance at the network level.\nVariables: Dependent variable\nEmpirical analysis and results: Given the multi-year, multi-firm structure of our data, we needed to utilize panel data techniques to test our hypotheses. We used hierarchical analysis to test the hypotheses. In a first step (Model 1), we entered control variables; in a second step (Model 2), the main effects of entrepreneurial orientation and firm power (thus testing H1 and H2); and in a third step (Model 3), we added the interaction term to test the moderation hypothesis (H3). Due to the panel character of our data we used Prais-Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE). Although feasible generalized least squares approach (FGLS) could also be used when error structures are characterized by panel heteroskedasticity, panel autocorrelation, and contemporaneous correlation, PCSE approach is preferable because FGLS may produce standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence. PCSE adequately accounts for the panel structure and allows for heteroskedasticity, within-panel AR(1) serial correlation, and cross-sectional dependence, and is more conservative than FGLS (Beck and Katz, 1995; Greene, 2000). The models were fitted by use of the generalized estimation equation approach (Liang and Zeger, 1986).\nDiscussion and implications: In this paper, we set out to explore the effects of a firm's entrepreneurial orientation and power on its opportunistic behavior within horizontal networks. Past research on EO has focused on positive outcomes for firms while neglecting the dark side of the strategic orientation (Zahra, 2005; Danneels and Kleinschmidt, 2001; Li et al., 2008). This has created an incomplete picture of EO. Our study contributes to the growing body of literature of entrepreneurial firms involved in interfirm network collaboration in both marketing and management (Lamprinopoulou and Tregear, 2011; Westerlund and Rajala, 2010).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation, firm market power and their interaction on opportunism in horizontal exchange networks. The aim is to investigate how entrepreneurial orientation and market power individually can lead to opportunism, but possessing both characteristics will mitigate such behavior.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on an analysis of 108 firms in 25 networks using a panel-corrected standard errors approach, the study tests hypotheses regarding how entrepreneurial orientation, firm market power and their interaction impact opportunism within a focal horizontal network.\nFindings: The results of the analysis show that entrepreneurial orientation and firm market power are both positively related to network opportunism, but when firms possess both characteristics, opportunism toward fellow network actors is mitigated.\nResearch limitations/implications: Research on entrepreneurial orientation has primarily examined the positive outcomes of the strategic orientation. Firm power has been studied as an antecedent of opportunism and governance mechanisms. This study examines the joint impact of the two and brings new insight to the research streams.\nPractical implications: Horizontal networks are conduits for resource and knowledge exchange, yet managers need to be concerned about how firms seek competitive advantage. Our framework suggests that managers should be concerned about dealing with network actors with an entrepreneurial orientation philosophy or high market power, but when firms possess both, they are deemed safer partners.\nOriginality/value: The manuscript extends research on entrepreneurial orientation, firm power and horizontal networks. While both entrepreneurial orientation and power may impede networking relationships, this paper shows that firms that possess both may be the best relational partners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
From Big Data to Big Impact: analytics for teaching and learning in higher education
|
[
"Academic analytics",
"Analytics in higher education",
"Big Data in higher education",
"Big Data in teaching and learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Over the last years Big Data has become one of the top buzzwords across industries and has gained much acceptance since 2009 (Waller and Fawcett, 2013; Manyika et al., 2011). Due to an increasing demand, it is no wonder that the global Big Data analytics market is growing significantly. In 2015, for example, the market grew by 31.4 percent, reaching now $4.50 billion on a global scale (Frost and Sullivan, 2015). As a result, a career as data scientist is considered as one of the most desirable jobs of the twenty-first century (Davenport and Patil, 2012). Big Data analytics has been defined as the process of analyzing data to uncover patterns using computing algorithms, programming and statistical modeling techniques for finding valuable and timely correlations. This way, actionable insights can be derived that drive business decisions inside an organization (Frost and Sullivan, 2015). Major applications of Big Data are to improve customer service, understand consumer engagement patterns and optimize resources. It further assists in finding patterns and identifies abnormalities across various data streams (Bates et al., 2014).\n2. Big Data: Big Data technologies help organizations to become competitive and sustain in the dynamic marketplace (Goes, 2014). Gartner (2015) shows that more than 75 percent of companies are investing or planning to invest in Big Data in the next two years. This is due to the fact that Big Data analytics reinforce an organization's competency to make proactive decisions. Much has been done about Big Data in the private sector (including retail and business analysis), whereas the public sector and the higher education field seem to lack behind (Nils and Berg, 2015). Rise in demand for Big Data comes from high-growth industry verticals, namely, banking and financial services, government and retail (Table I).\n3. Big Data and higher education: Big Data in higher education is still in its infancy. The digital campus infrastructure such as the campus network, various internal applications and server, LMS and other end-user devices create big volumes of data. Though, they are hardly used to get valuable insights into a variety of concerns across educational institutions (Chen, 2014). However, the learning process of graduating students is recurrently criticized for its inadequate ability to prepare students with the skills and morals required for their later employment (Neubaum et al., 2009). As a result, several solutions have been proposed for higher education institutions to excel (McClure, 2007). Most of the solutions have been called for far greater levels of transparency and accountability - not just internally, but with students, parents, taxpayers and other external stakeholders (Hosangadi, 2014). Here, Big Data analytics offers an opportunity. Much of the impetus for using analytics in higher education also comes from gradually strained university budgets and greater awareness on spending. Also students, as consumers, are increasingly demanding and require evidence that their fees are being spent appropriately. Using Big Data in higher education, known as learning analytics, includes the collection and analysis of data related to the advancement of learners and the perspectives in which learning takes place. Hence, it provides teachers with educational content-related information as well as identifies activities which offer better teaching and assessment processes (Daniel, 2015).\n4. Methodology: A native category approach forms the ground for this study. This research methodology has been chosen as it avoids investigator historical bias by successively and gradually eliminating the investigator from the direction of the interview process (Harris, 2000). In addition, it should force respondents into open-ended deliberations with the investigator, fixing future enquiry by questioning key comments made by the respondents. Based on this approach, 23 uniform semi-structured interviews have been conducted. All respondents were representing Indian higher education institutions. Only two faculties were having experience in an international context. However, in order to add valuable insights it has been made sure that the respondents have a thorough understanding of the topic with diverse perspectives. Therefore, it has been referred to purposive sampling (Kuzel, 1992; Guest et al., 2006) and reputational case selection (Lecompte et al., 1993). The interviews covered six IT specialists, seven specialists in higher education administration, five academicians from public funded institution and five academicians from private funded institutions. All were having more than a decade experience in the respective domain area. Even though a uniform semi-structured interview guide has been used, the interviews with IT specialists focused mainly on technical, privacy and security solutions. In the same way, the interviews with administrators were primarily on regulations, reporting and compliances, while the faculty interviews mostly addressed applications for teaching and learning. To extend the insights analyzed by the interviews, scientific articles and publications on Big Data applications in higher education have further been studied. A variety of aspects of Big Data, including technology solutions, legal issues, applications, innovations, etc. have been mapped for a better understanding of the respective application. Based on the interviews and the supporting data from an assortment of secondary data sources, findings have been briefed in form of a case study approach.\n5. Results: Based on the conducted interviews and an extensive literature review, current and potential applications of Big Data for achieving competitive advantage in higher education institutions have been evaluated. As a result, four major application areas have been identified. These application areas are reporting and compliance; analysis and visualization; security and risk mitigation; and predictive analytics (Figure 1).\n6. Conclusion: Big Data analytics in education is of significant interest and has gained high priority for most higher education institutions. Consequently, both practitioners and academics see great opportunities to use Big Data in higher education. However, most widespread academic analytics are limited to \"reporting and compliance\" as well as \"analysis and visualization\" (Bichsel, 2012). Higher education institutions collect and store a great amount of data, but they do not use them effectively (Davenport and Patil, 2012). They need to develop competencies to utilize data for \"security and risk mitigation\" and \"predictive analytics\" to gain strategic advantage benefiting institutions and various stakeholders.\n7. Limitations and opportunities for future research: Qualitative methodology is suitable to explain single constructs and also the relationships between different constructs, but it does not explain the magnitude of the relationships. Therefore, future quantitative studies are required to estimate the degree to which various applications of Big Data influence the performance of higher education institutions. Lack of Big Data experts in higher education constrained the ability of this research by leading to repeated themes. Finally, including participants from other countries would have assisted further in generalizing our findings.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of Big Data in higher education institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative research approach using semi-structured interviews was employed to get insights from 23 experts from the Indian higher education sector. Respondents included higher education specialists from information technology, administration and academicians from public and private funded institutions.\nFindings: Based on competitive advantage and data complexity, four major application areas were identified for the use of Big Data in higher education. These application areas are reporting and compliance; analysis and visualization; security and risk mitigation; and predictive analytics.\nResearch limitations/implications: Qualitative methodology is suitable to explain constructs and relationships between constructs, but it does not explain the magnitude of the relationships. The lack of Big Data experts in higher education constrained the ability of this research by leading to repeated themes. Finally, including participants from other countries would have assisted further in generalizing the findings.\nOriginality/value: As both interest and reluctance persists about Big Data, it calls for the application across industries and cost-benefit analyses. A number of researchers have studied the use of Big Data in various fields associated with the applicability, the data availability, the cost, the competence, the privacy, the relevance and the ownership. Very few publications explicitly address the integrative use of Big Data in higher education. So the current study examines the applicability of Big Data analytics in higher education institutions.\n",
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] |
The trickle-down effect of empowering leadership: a boundary condition of performance pressure
|
[
"Empowering leadership",
"Trickle-down effect",
"Performance pressure",
"Task performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Organizations must rely on effective leaders to navigate in a constantly changing, often ambiguous, environment (Hassan et al., 2013; Humborstad and Kuvaas, 2013). Empowering leadership has attracted the attention of many researchers and managers, in part because of its potential for promoting employees' psychological empowerment, which facilitates self-development and independence in the workplace (Lorinkova and Perry, 2017; Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Studies have demonstrated that empowerment can lead to a variety of positive employee outcomes, such as increases in job satisfaction (Spreitzer et al., 1997), team performance (Chen et al., 2011), task proficiency (Martin et al., 2013), extra-role behavior (Raub and Robert, 2010), team collaboration (Hill and Bartol, 2016), and creativity (Byun et al., 2016). Given the potency of empowering leadership, it is important for both researchers and practitioners to gain more insights into the processes through which empowering leadership affects key organizational outcomes, such as employee job performance. Indeed, Cheong et al. (2016) argued that there is a critical need for investigating the relationship between empowering leadership and followers' work performance. However, surprisingly few studies have examined such processes and the associated boundary conditions. Thus, one purpose of this study is to investigate the trickle-down effects of leaders' empowering behaviors on the task performance of subordinates across the hierarchical ladder.\nTheoretical background and hypothesis development: Social learning of leadership behavior\nMethods: Participants and procedures\nResults: Means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations among key variables are provided in Table 1. The internal consistency of all measures was satisfactory and consistent with previous research.We conducted two sets of hierarchical regression analyses to test Hypotheses 1 and 2. Table 2 presents the regression results. Each variable was mean-centered before being entered into the regressions in order to ease interpretation and mitigate concerns for multicollinearity (Aiken and West, 1991). For both sets of regressions, we included the following controls for both subordinates and lower-level leaders: age, gender, education, and tenure with direct supervisors.Hypothesis 1 proposes a positive relationship between the empowering leadership behaviors of both higher- and lower-level leaders. As shown in Model 2 of Table 2, the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders is positively associated with that of lower-level leaders (b = 0.26, p < 0.001, DR2 = 0.14). Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported.Hypothesis 2 suggests that performance pressure would moderate the relationship between the empowering leadership behaviors of higher- and lower-level leaders. Model 4 in Table 2 indicates that, in the regression of the empowering leadership behavior of lower-level leaders, the coefficient for the interaction term involving the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders and performance pressure is negative (b = -0.16, p < 0.05, DR2 = 0.17). Additionally, the interaction term accounts for significant incremental variance (DF = 5.21, p < 0.05). To further explore this interaction, we plotted the results by following the procedure suggested by Aiken and West (1991). As shown in Figure 2, the positive relationship between empowering behaviors across the two levels of leadership is stronger when performance pressure is low rather than high. These results provide support for Hypothesis 2.Hypothesis 3 predicts that the empowering leadership behavior of lower-level leaders mediates the relationship between the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders and the task performance of subordinates. We tested the significance of the indirect effect by using the bootstrapping method (Preacher et al., 2007). Specifically, we estimated a 95% bias-corrected confidence interval for the indirect effects by bootstrapping 10,000 samples. As shown in Table 3, the confidence interval does not include zero (ranging from 0.01 to 0.10), which suggests that the indirect effect was statistically significant in this mediation model. We further conducted a Sobel test (1982) to assess the indirect effect of the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders on the task performance of subordinates. The result of the Sobel test in Table 3 suggests that the mediating effect of the empowering leadership behavior of lower-level leaders is significant (p < 0.01). Taken together, these results provide support for Hypothesis 3.Finally, Hypothesis 4 predicts that performance pressure would conditionally influence the strength of the indirect effect of the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders on the task performance of subordinates via the empowering leadership behavior of lower-level leaders. We used SPSS macro developed by Preacher et al. (2007) to test this moderated mediation hypothesis. Table 4 presents the mediation effect under both high (one standard deviation above the mean) and low (one standard deviation below the mean) levels of performance pressure. Consistent with Hypothesis 4, the indirect effect of the empowering leadership behavior of higher-level leaders on the task performance of subordinates via the empowering leadership behavior of lower-level leaders is conditional on the level of performance pressure. The indirect effect is stronger (0.08) and significant (confidence interval ranging from 0.02 to 0.18, not crossing zero) for low-performance pressure. However, the indirect effect is weaker (0.03) and not significant for high-performance pressure (confidence interval ranging from -0.01 to 0.08, crossing zero).\nDiscussion: Our study proposes and finds support for the existence of the trickle-down effects and the boundary condition of empowering leadership in organizations. Specifically, this study finds that the empowering behavior of higher-level leaders is positively associated with the empowering behavior of lower-level leaders, and that the empowering behavior of lower-level leaders mediates the relationship between the empowering behavior of higher-level leaders and the task performance of subordinates. Additionally, this study demonstrates that the lower-level leaders' perceived performance pressure moderates the relationship between high-level leaders and low-level leaders empowering leadership and also moderates the strength of the mediated relationship between high-level leaders empowering behaviors and employee performance via lower-level leaders empowering behaviors. This study provides theoretical and practical implications as follows.Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: By taking a social learning perspective, this study examines the trickle-down effect of empowering leadership across hierarchical levels in an organization. Specifically, this study aims to demonstrate that the empowering leadership of higher-level leaders promotes the task performance of employees through the mediation of the empowering leadership of lower-level leaders. It also seeks to confirm the role of performance pressure as a boundary condition in social learning process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Under a moderated mediation framework, this study tests our hypotheses through a hierarchical regression analysis. The data used in the analysis is from the survey responses of 209 subordinate-supervisor dyads.\nFindings: This study finds that the empowering leadership of higher-level leaders promotes the empowering leadership of lower-level leaders, which indirectly improves the task performance of employees. It also finds that performance pressure perceived by lower-level leaders moderates the relationship between the empowering leadership of higher- and lower-level leaders, thus moderating the proposed indirect effect.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study complements the findings of previous studies by identifying the trickle-down effect of empowering leadership across different hierarchical levels in an organization and by highlighting its boundary condition. In addition, this study provides evidence for the presence of trickle-down effect of leadership in an Eastern culture.\nPractical implications: This study suggests the necessity of leadership education and training programs within organizations by revealing the importance of social learning process for promoting empowering leadership. In addition, it also suggests that performance pressure in an organization not only dampens empowering leadership but also has a negative effect on the task performance of employees.\nOriginality/value: This study demonstrates the influence mechanism of empowering leadership through a systematic verification of its trickle-down effect, which has been lacking in previous studies. It also highlights the moderating role of performance pressure, as a contextual factor, in the social learning and influence process of empowering leadership.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Is cutting development and training in a recession a good idea? Looking at the IT and ITeS sector in India
|
[
"Business planning",
"Recession",
"Communication technologies",
"Training",
"India"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: \"You can change the behavior in an entire organization, provided you treat training as a process rather than an event\" - Warren G. Bennis.\nChallenges in the IT and ITeS industry in India: Indian IT and ITes services grew at 38 percent in 2006-2007 as compared to the previous year and clocked revenues in excess of 40 billion$. A CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 18 percent was expected till 2011 with revenues of more than 100 billion$ in that year.The above findings sound good and look bullish. However, there are certain challenges to be dealt with, such as the rising rupee value, attrition levels, shortage of skills, rising input costs and above all global recession.Global recession\nOrganizational responses during recessions: It sounds easy to fire or lay off employees. But when we think about the cost, time and the difficulties involved in finding good and experienced people, it is far more worthwhile to retain existing employees and keep them engaged by providing development opportunities. It not only provides a sense of security and confidence for employees but also enhances the image of the organization. Besides, the employees will be loyal to their organization.During recessions, organizations should not sack employees but engage their support to battle against recessions. They should find ways and means to cut down on unwarranted expenditure elsewhere; partly through the ideas and ingenuity of the employees themselves.Recession is also the right time to focus on innovation and creativity. An emphasis on greater market research (which is often neglected because of complacency when times are more profitable) would definitely pay off. Creating new products or services can open the gates for new consumers of products or services.Indian companies spend anywhere between 0.5 and 2 percent of their turnover on developing their employees. At the lower end of this range, it would be considered meager when compared with foreign companies whose spend is often considerably higher. The Indian IT and ITeS companies, which are essentially people-oriented businesses, seem to fare better spending about 3-5 percent of their revenues on upgrading employee skills. However, this is not as much as it might appear due to the high attrition levels in parts of the sector.Rather than seeing training budgets as a prime source for cost cuts, Indian organizations would be better served to maintain if not increase their allocation. Corporate training enhances employees' confidence and commitment to their organization. This energy in turn creates increased revenues for the employer, thus potentially outsmarting the competition. One may ask how this is possible. When employees are well trained in their domains they feel confident to execute their tasks effectively. Ultimately, they are able to contribute wholeheartedly for the prosperity of the organization.Corporate development keeps employees fully engaged in the right way on the right things, rather than wasting their energy in worries about whether or not they will keep their jobs. As a result, they deliver better products and services resulting in better customer service. It is a well known fact that only satisfied customers give repeated business thus resulting in better revenues for employers. Besides, providing corporate training to employees during any downturn can be easier if workloads are reduced, creating more time to spend on development activities.\nConclusion: To sum up, there are both problems and prospects in these sectors. Presently we may be beset with a higher proportion of problems due to the current global meltdown. However, the future of Indian IT and ITeS sectors is promising as findings reveal that by 2010 we could have an estimated $69 billion ITeS business and $97.5 billion IT market which is a silver lining in anybody's black economic cloud.Continuous training helps in upgrading and updating the skills and abilities of employees regularly thereby enhancing employee effectiveness and efficiency. There is lot of uncertainty and complexity in the present world due to the global financial crisis and continuing rapid changes in technologies. Continuous corporate development can equip employees to not only cope with these challenges but to face them squarely with confidence and mettle. Learning and development is a business priority and those organizations that recognize this will be far more able to take advantage of the upturn when it comes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The article highlights the importance of corporate training in knowledge sectors like Information Technology and Information Technology \"enabled services\" sectors during times of recession. It treats recession as a boon not as a bane - as an opportunity for employees to spend time learning and for employers to gain a competitive edge.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - During recessions, organizations should not sack employees but engage their support to battle against recessions. They should find ways and means to cut down on unwarranted expenditure elsewhere; partly through the ideas and ingenuity of the employees themselves. Recession is also the right time to focus on innovation and creativity. An emphasis on greater market research (which is often neglected because of complacency when times are more profitable) would definitely pay off. Creating new products or services can open the gates for new consumers of products or services.\nFindings: - It concludes that training is only a comma not a full stop. Training is an investment not an expense. Despite any recession, it should be maintained as a continuous process to ensure organizations remain competitive and productive.\nOriginality/value: - The article focuses on IT and ITeS sectors in India, looking at the value of training from a different perspective. It converts the threat of recession to an opportunity. It is aimed at senior executives, busy practitioners, HR executives, training consultants and trainers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Lean services: a systematic review
|
[
"Lean",
"Lean management",
"Literature review",
"Services"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The evolution patterns of \"Quality\" as a management science have been significant throughout its history. There have been instances where breakthrough thought-processes in the advance of Quality's journey were remarkable. One such revolution took place a decade after the Second World War, when the Quality movement progressed in a new direction. With an aim to generate process efficiencies through customer advocacy and effective operations management, the revolutionary \"Toyota Production System (TPS)\" emerged and later gained popularity as Lean. This philosophy was not invented at a single point, but the outcome of a dynamic learning process that adapted practices from the automotive and textile sectors in response to environmental challenges in Japan after the Second World War (Fujimoto, 1999; Holweg, 2007). A number of sensei (Japanese for teacher) have contributed to defining Lean in its present context as shown in Table I.\n2. Methodology: This paper aims at highlighting the importance of Lean methodology through an exhaustive literature review, and identifying Lean's implications and applications in the service industry right from its initiation in 1990s until today. The key objectives are to answer the following questions:\n3. Descriptive analysis: Descriptive analysis of the reviewed sources have revealed some interesting inferences. The literature sources were analysed against three attributes, namely: time, publication title and the region, thus catering to the aim of studying the evolution and application of Lean services. Using a chronological perspective, we observed how Lean in services evolved over time; Figure 1 shows the number of articles published annually during the period under analysis (Martinez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes, 2014; Vamsi Krishna Jasti and Kodali, 2014; Panwar et al., 2015). As Bowen and Youngdahl (1998) is the pioneer article (dos Leite and Vieira, 2015), hence it is taken as the starting point. Much literature related to theory and practices of Lean services is available in various publications and conferences. A search revealed articles from diverse journals in the fields of operations, healthcare, quality, software, management, etc. Figure 2 shows the coverage/spread of articles in the journals of various publishers (Choong, 2013; Bhamu and Sangwan, 2014; Vamsi Krishna Jasti and Kodali, 2014). The available literature was classified on a regional basis (Figure 3) to show how Lean services have been adopted globally (Bhamu and Sangwan, 2014). These three aspects are dealt with next.\n4. Taxonomy of Lean service literature: The Lean service literature has been viewed on two dimensions, namely time and content. From the Time perspective, authors have studied the evolution of research on Lean in services; and have classified it into four eras similar to the stages of adoption of any new methodology. These are pre era, awareness, exploration and finally adoption or implementation of Lean. Figure 4 lists the major ideas of each era, thus tracing the history of service management and identifying the major ideas which altered or helped in the growth of Lean services. Table III lists some of the most cited articles of each era. From the Content perspective, Lean services are categorised into Conceptual/Theoretical Publications, Lean Service Frameworks/Models and Lean Service Applications/Case Studies (Figure 5). Table IV shows the literature categorised by content and time dimensions, i.e. Evolution of Lean Services. These are discussed in more depth below.\n5. Conclusion and research gaps: The paper reviewed the evolution of published research on Lean Management in Services, to comprehend what Lean is in services, to classify the studies and suggest gaps for scholars and practitioners to carry out future research. The significant conclusions derived out of the study are Lean in services is different from that in manufacturing because of the inherent characteristics of services. Although the thinking or philosophy behind Lean principles remains unchanged from manufacturing to services, Lean tools and practices need to be tailored for the service industry. Many authors have articulated the same point but are silent on what adaptations are needed. The majority of the research on the application of Lean has talked about Lean as a solution for a department or a specific problem. Studies of the application of Lean to the whole enterprise are missing. For sustainable results, one needs to view services as a system and apply Lean rather than in a piece-meal approach. Lean means showing a commitment to continuous improvement using tools and methods for process improvement as well as showing respect for people through leadership behaviours and business practices.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of Lean methodology through an exhaustive literature review, and its implications and application in the service industry right from its initiation in 1990s till date.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper summarises the evolution of Lean in services and has systematically classified the reviewed literature in four dimensions, namely time, publisher, region and content. Further under \"time\" dimension, the literature is classified into Pre-Lean era, Lean awareness era, Lean Exploration era and Lean implementation era. Under the \"content\" dimension, the categories include theoretical foundation, frameworks/models and application/case studies.\nFindings: The analysis inferred; Lean is gaining roads in services, though the research is still at nascent stage. Lean is applicable in services though transfer of Lean manufacturing principles to services has certain limitations because of the characteristics of services. The need is to focus on process difference between services and manufacturing. Respect for people and employment engagement is critical to Lean in service. The authors identified the necessity to standardise the Lean service definition, principles, and tools and to develop guidelines for structured implementation in service industry.\nResearch limitations/implications: Though multiple databases have been taken-up but that does not assume that the literature presented in this paper is by any means comprehensive. Development of a standard model/framework for Lean services is critical for future research. Rigorous industry-specific studies, specifically in developing nations are another area for future research. Future studies could analyse the impact of join applications and possible links between Lean service and other approaches like TQM, Six Sigma, etc., with an aim of process improvement.\nPractical implications: This paper would serve as a resource for Lean practitioners as well as researchers as a fundamental platform, contributing to Lean body of knowledge.\nSocial implications: Service industry has special significance to the society in large. Many services including governments, public interest services, non-profit organisations, healthcare, banking, consulting, etc., has a significant share across markets. Lean being a proven methodology for successful process improvements has to be looked at from a services perspective. This paper helps in such interest.\nOriginality/value: Publications reviewing the adoption of Lean in services is scarce in literature. This paper serves as an excellent resource for research on the subject and will facilitate academicians and practitioners to objectively understand Lean in service sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Antecedents to responsible financial management behavior among young adults: moderating role of financial risk tolerance
|
[
"Responsible financial management behavior",
"Financial knowledge",
"Financial attitude",
"Internal locus of control",
"Financial risk tolerance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Policymakers and financial services marketers have focused on measures to improve financial decision making and financial management behavior across the nations. A variety of factors play an important role in responsible financial management behavior, including global downturn, the need to maintain the savings rate which has the likelihood of moving southwards and a shift toward credit culture. While loan defaults, particularly in developed countries, caught attention after global financial crisis, policymakers and regulators need to address the concern for an emerging country like India, where the banking industry is facing asset quality issues among both priority and non-priority segment (RBI Annual Report). The shift in global finance away from US and European countries and growing interest in emerging countries is also a reason to examine financial management behavior.The study contributes to the literature on financial management behavior in various ways. First, while most of the past studies have investigated financial management behavior among young adults from a developed country perspective, few studies delve into the topic from an emerging country perspective. The present study fills the gap by coverage on respondents from India. Second, experience has also raised questions regarding the efficacy of financial literacy (Alsemgeest, 2015; Reyers, 2019). It is observed that contrasting results are available regarding the role of financial literacy efforts toward responsible financial management behavior, particularly among young adults. Third, consistent with the financial management model covering input, personal subsystem and managerial subsystem which is an adaptation of Deacon and Firebaugh (1988) model, the present study considers that financial knowledge will influence financial attitude which will further impact financial management behavior. In addition to financial knowledge and financial attitude, the study examines the role of locus of control on responsible financial management behavior. Fourth, most of the earlier studies have relied on the financial management scale by Fitzsimmons et al. (1993) and Prochaska-Cue (1993). Thereafter, the scale developed by Dew and Xiao (2011) was psychometrically validated. The scale is comprehensive and generalized since it covers the aspects of savings, investment, cash management and credit management. The study has employed the scale developed by Dew and Xiao (2011). And fifth, past studies have explored financial risk tolerance, with demographic, socioeconomic and attitudinal characteristics as independent variables (Grable, 2000). The purpose of the study is to extend the inquiry by classifying financial risk tolerance into higher and lower financial risk-tolerant. In addition to covering major antecedents such as financial knowledge, financial attitude and internal locus of control, the study examines financial risk tolerance as a moderator to financial management behavior. The objective of the study is to explore antecedents to financial management behavior among young segments in an emerging country.The next section covers the theory and conceptual framework. Thereafter, hypothesis development is discussed. It is followed by data collection, methodology, results, discussion, limitations, conclusions and managerial implications.\nTheory and conceptual framework: The topic is important to financial services since financial services are related to fiduciary responsibility. Fiduciary responsibility requires that financial services marketers discharge duties with a focus on the client's interest. Since depositors repose trust and faith by keeping money with banks/financial institutions, financial services marketers have a responsibility to protect depositor's interest. Responsible financial management behavior, which deals with savings and investments, and changing asset allocations when appropriate, can play an important role in fiduciary responsibility. With growing concerns of low financial literacy (Agarwalla et al., 2015), increased sophistication of financial products and issues associated with incidences of misselling, there is greater attention to financial management behavior.According to the transtheoretical model of change, both knowledge and psychological factors contribute to behavioral change (DiClemente and Prochaska, 1982). The importance of psychological aspects is recognized in the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), which examined the attitude-behavior relationship. According to the theory of planned behavior, among other factors, attitude shapes behavior intentions and behaviors. Shim et al. (2010) observed a positive relationship between attitude and financial management behavior. The transtheoretical model of behavior change holds that self-efficacy, which is related to internal locus of control, plays a crucial role in behavioral change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 2005). The uncertainty theory relates to individual risk aversion to the wealth that an individual possesses. Using the theory of uncertainty, Mas-Colell et al. (1995) and Varian (1992) pointed out that individuals tend to exhibit lower risk and start taking a risk once their income crosses the threshold level.The financial situation in young adults is characterized by a high level of debts, which warrants greater attention. The increasing debt burden requires better management of money resources to navigate financial decisions (Lusardi et al., 2010). Young adults, including students and those who join the working class, confront complicated financial decisions in today's demanding environment. With the given situation where public sector institutions are reducing pension burden, it becomes more challenging. In emerging countries, there is increased availability of debt through higher exposure from both traditional and digital finance and development of newer methods of financing, like P2P financing through electronic means. Given that young adults comprise the majority population and there are increased concerns regarding responsible financial management behavior, the growing importance of young generation necessitates insights into antecedents to responsible financial management behavior.Financial knowledge\nHypothesis development: Financial knowledge and financial attitude\nMethodology: Data collection and sampling\nAnalysis and results: Evaluation of measurement scales\nDiscussion: Our study contributes to the existing literature on financial management behavior in multiple ways. First, the study applies the representative, comprehensive, psychometrically validated scale developed by Dew and Xiao (2011), which covers the aspect of savings, investment and credit management. Second, the study identifies the antecedents to financial management behavior and shows how financial knowledge, financial attitude and internal locus of control influence responsible financial management behavior. The present study confirms that financial attitude is a mediator between financial knowledge and responsible financial management behavior. Financial knowledge does not directly influence financial management behavior. The findings are consistent with the recent study by Tang and Peter (2015), Borden et al. (2008) and Jones et al. (2005), which confirmed weak or no relationships between financial knowledge and financial behavior. This suggests that the individual may not take full advantage of their financial knowledge unless it results into developing appropriate financial attitude. Internal locus of control is considered a variable that affects responsible financial management behavior. As the magnitude of the path coefficient of financial attitude was higher than the internal locus of control, financial attitude deserves more importance. The present study differed from Grable et al. (2009) as the study did not establish a direct relationship between financial knowledge and financial management behavior.\nLimitations: We would also like to highlight the limitation of this study. The financial knowledge used in the survey is based on self-reported responses. These questions may fail to capture respondents' financial knowledge in other financial areas or their application-oriented knowledge. The future study can add the construct pertaining to financial literacy. As measures of financial literacy become more rigorous, the results of studies will become more exact and useful. Thus, a valuable future study can be a field experiment covering the relationship between personal finance and its corresponding financial behavior. Future studies could broaden the scope by incorporating additional psychological characteristics. The future study can be a comprehensive study covering participants from both developed and emerging to assess similarities and differences.\nConclusion and managerial implication: In the past decades, policymakers and educators have focused on programs to promote responsible financial behavior among households, both from developed and emerging countries. While the majority of studies are from a developed country standpoint, the present study from India adds to the literature. Although the role of financial knowledge in responsible financial management behavior was examined, the study underscores the contribution of the financial mediator as a mediator between financial knowledge and responsible financial management behavior. Furthermore, we add to the literature by exploring the role of internal locus of control in predicting responsible financial management behavior. Consistent with the theory of planned behavior, the study highlights attitude-behavior relationship and recognizes psychological aspects (Ajzen, 1991). Additionally, the role of locus of control is consistent with transtheoretical model of behavior change which suggests that internal locus of control plays a crucial role in behavioral change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 2005). The findings validate financial risk tolerance as the moderator affects in the relationship of financial knowledge, financial attitude and internal locus of control with financial management behavior. The findings have important implications for policymakers, educators and government agencies in their efforts to enhance financial management efficiency. Financial knowledge courses can incorporate socio-psychological aspects to enhance individual awareness of potential hurdles in converting financial knowledge to responsible financial management behavior through financial attitude.The experience suggests that a majority of young adults have completed their formal education and concerns are raised regarding financial literacy and financial education programs. Furthermore, diverse results are available on the long-term effectiveness of financial education efforts among the young (Fernandes et al., 2014; Hastings et al., 2013). Past studies have investigated subjective and objective financial knowledge. To meet the requirement of young adults, support of financial education both in a formal level and at the workplace may be beneficial. The approach can be to target financial behaviors, using appropriate financial knowledge tied to financial attitude. To help convert financial knowledge into financial attitude and then to responsible financial management behavior, it is recommended to make the programs more participative. Interesting content, including digital means, can develop higher interest among young adults. Newer technological tools, such as video content, have been successful and can be used to instil responsible financial management behavior. Educators may collaborate with employers for employer-sponsored events to engage more young adults toward responsible financial management behavior. Since financial risk tolerance moderates the relationship, individual profiling based on risk levels can be helpful.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The study examines the antecedents of responsible financial management behavior among young adults in India and explores the role of financial risk tolerance as a moderating variable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sample includes young adults in the age group of 18-35. The analysis uses a two-step approach via standard partial least squares structural modeling (PLS-SEM) and ordinary least square (OLS) regression.\nFindings: Structural modeling results show that financial attitude fully mediates the relationship between financial knowledge and responsible financial management behavior, and locus of control influences responsible financial management behavior. Financial risk tolerance moderates the relationship. Among demographic factors, age and occupation influence responsible financial management behavior.\nResearch limitations/implications: The financial knowledge used in the survey are based on self-reported responses. The future study can include participants from both developed and emerging countries to assess similarities and differences.\nPractical implications: Despite the growing focus on improving financial literacy, there are growing concerns regarding responsible financial behavior. Since financial services is related to fiduciary responsibility, managers and policymakers need to ensure that financial knowledge results in improving financial attitude, which further leads to responsible financial behavior.\nOriginality/value: The present study from an emerging country will add value to the literature.\n",
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] |
The unintended consequences of a pay-for-performance rule change: U.S. Department of Defense's National Security Personnel System
|
[
"Human resource management",
"Employee work attitudes",
"Pay-for-performance system"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: More than a decade ago, with explicit congressional authorization enacted in 2003, the Department of Defense (DoD) created the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) as a unique pay scale attempting to more closely link employee pay to job performance (Ginsberg, 2008, 2009). It was implemented by DoD during the 2006 Fiscal Year (FY) (US Merit Systems Protection Board, 2006, p. 15; Ginsberg, 2008, 2009). The hallmark features of the proposed regulations contain significant changes in the processes used for addressing employee grievances (adverse actions and appeals), conducting labor relations and, most significantly, in adopting pay-for-performance (PFP) and performance appraisal systems (US Federal Register, 2005; Haga et al., 2010, p. 211). A major goal of the proposed regulations was to replace the traditional General Schedule (GS) classification and rating system with a PFP system phased in by 2010 (Rutzick, 2005). A fundamental motivation for this reform was the notion that linking individual pay and performance will lead to increased work effort and productivity (US Federal Register, 2005; US Congressional Budget Office, 2008; Perry and Porter 1982). On the other hand, critics charge that performance-based pay systems have several unintended, negative consequences for employee motivation and performance. Commentators argue that the proposed PFP system would lower employee morale, increase competition among employees and undermine teamwork and cooperation (US Federal Register, 2005; Zeller, 2004; Ballenstedt, 2008).\nDesign of DoD's NSPS: More than a decade ago, with explicit congressional authorization enacted in 2003, the DoD created the NSPS as a unique pay scale attempting to more closely link employee pay to job performance (Ginsberg, 2008, 2009). The PFP provisions of the NSPS were hailed as a means of making DoD employees more responsive, flexible and effective (Ginsberg, 2008, 2009; US Congressional Budget Office, 2008). The design of NSPS developed from inequities and problems associated with the GS system, which serves as the federal government's main pay system and bases raises and promotions largely on an employee's length of service. Officials at DoD used the GS system to highlight what they perceived as shortcomings of the federal personnel system. They argued that pay levels and pay raises do not sufficiently distinguish between better government workers and their lower-performing counterparts, discouraging the former group and making them more difficult to retain (US Congressional Budget Office, 2008, p. 2). Specifically, one important weakness of the current pay setting system for GS employees is its inability to vary pay adjustments within its classification system. Current regulations regarding pay mandate that annual pay adjustments be applied across the entire GS classification system, regardless of variation in comparability estimates for particular occupations or grade levels (Llorens and Rush, 2011, p. 4). The drafters of the NSPS legislation sought to eliminate the dysfunctions of the original system. Relief from the GS program first appeared in a bill introduced on June 2, 2003 by Senator Susan Collins, who proposed the National Security Personnel System Act. That bill was not passed. Another bill that addressed DoD personnel, however, H.R. 1588, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2004, set definitions and provided guidelines for a new DoD personnel system. The Senate passed the bill on June 4, 2003. President George W. Bush signed the legislation on November 24, 2003, as P.L. 108-136 (117 Stat. 1392) (Ginsberg, 2008, pp. 3-4). NSPS was finally authorized by the 2004 NDAA, implemented in April 2006, and repealed by Congress in the 2009 NDAA. About 211,000 non-bargaining unit DoD employees had been converted to NSPS in two \"Spirals\"[1] or implementation phases by October 2009 when conversion to NSPS was halted (Ginsberg, 2009, p. 5; Schay and Fisher, 2013, p. 360).\nLinking PFP systems with employee job satisfaction: A fundamental motivation for DoD's PFP scheme is the notion that linking individual pay and performance will lead to increased work motivation and performance (US Federal Register, 2005; US Congressional Budget Office, 2008; Perry and Porter 1982; Kellough and Lu, 1993; Kellough and Nigro, 2002). Supporters of PFP schemes draw from both expectancy and reinforcement theories. Expectancy theory assumes that if individuals expect to receive a valued reward for high performance, they are more likely to exert effort (Vroom, 1964). Therefore, DoD's PFP initiative is expected to increase work effort and performance if an employee values monetary rewards and assumes that those rewards will result from their increased effort and performance (Pearce and Perry, 1983; Perry et al., 1989). Reinforcement theory posits that individual behavior is a function of its consequences (Ferster and Skinner, 1957; Skinner, 1969). This approach suggests that an organization can influence behavior of its members through incentives or punishments (Trevino, 1986). On the basis of this theory, then, rewarding high performance with financial incentives would positively reinforce employees' orientation toward results (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1997; Belle, 2010, p. 168). Specifically, proponents of PFP systems suggest that differentially rewarding higher and lower levels of performance will raise the job satisfaction of productive workers that making pay contingent on performance will encourage marginal performers to improve their work effort, and that the absence of a minimal pay raise will drive out poor performers who are not able or willing to improve (Kellough and Nigro, 2002, pp. 146-147).\nResearch design and methodology: This section provides details about the data and the statistical methods used to investigate the effects of changing the PFP rule on employee job satisfaction.\nResults: This paper presents results in two parts. It begins with DID estimates for the overall impact of the new PFP rule on employee job satisfaction. Then, this paper undertakes a subgroup analysis strategy. One of the primary objectives of NSPS was to reduce undeserved pay inequities by gender, race and supervisory status (US Merit Systems Protection Board, 2006; US Congress House of Representative, 2010; US Government Accountability Office, 1995; Ginsberg, 2008). Hence, it is of particular interest to understand the effect of NSPS on specific subgroups. Hence, this paper also presents results separately by gender, race and supervisory status subgroups.\nDiscussion: The US DoD PFP program under the NSPS was an extraordinarily influential and controversial policy that, over the last decade, has brought performance-based pay systems to scale at some US federal departments. The impact of this federally mandated reform on employee work attitudes and behavior is an empirical question of central importance. This study presents evidence on this broad question using repeated cross-sectional data of federal employee job satisfaction on a variety of human capital program areas from the FHCS 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. This study utilizes a DID research design that relies on comparing changes over time in three federal agencies, two of which, namely, US Air Force and Navy, had a long-standing policy of the traditional GS system which was affected by the intervention under study, and another, US Department of Treasury, whose employees were unaffected by the intervention.\nConclusion: A key question in the debate over PFP systems is whether they are successful in developing more effective personnel processes or more motivated public employees. There is limited research focusing specifically on the consequences of different PFP systems and their effects on employees. In addition, there is little empirical evidence that PFP systems have the effect on employee behavioral attitude it is intended to have. This study presents evidence on these broad questions using repeated cross-sectional data on federal employee job satisfaction on a variety of human capital program areas from the FHCS 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. To make generalizations about the overall DoD, the US Air Force and the Navy are analyzed as a proxy for the DoD. This study utilizes a DID research design that relies on comparing changes over time in three federal agencies, two of which had a long-standing policy of traditional job tenure and merit affected by the intervention under study, and another whose employees were unaffected by the intervention. Applying a DID research design to the motivational premises on which merit pay is based, this study evaluates the reactions of DoD employees to the PFP system in the context of the NSPS. The study results suggest that the new PFP rule had a large negative effect on DoD civilian employee job satisfaction. The evidence of a substantial negative impact on employee's job satisfaction is undoubtedly bad news for advocates of PFP systems. These results raise doubts that the PFP system adopted by the DoD was successful in developing more effective personnel processes or more motivated public employees (Kellough and Nigro, 2002, 2006, p. 463). Although the DoD's NSPS program was ended due to a combination of design flaws, implementation setbacks, union legal attacks and Democratic electoral victories in 2006 and 2008, Congress may use NSPS as a model--evidencing both good and bad experiences--for a federal workforce that may transition to a performance-based pay system in the future (Ginsberg, 2009; US Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2017). Thus, the findings of the current analysis regarding the effects of the PFP initiative under NSPS will help policy makers in Congress to decide whether to maintain or modify the GS, or to create a new federal pay system.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of a pay-for-performance (PFP) rule change on US Department of Defense (DoD) employees' job satisfaction by looking at changes in the DoD's National Security Personnel System.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data for the analysis are derived from the 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey. A difference-in-differences (DID) quasi-experimental methodology was used to examine the effect of a PFP rule change on DoD employee job satisfaction. The Department of Air Force and Navy are analyzed as a proxy for the DoD. This study also undertakes a subgroup analysis strategy to understand the effect of PFP systems on specific subgroups (classified by gender, race and supervisory status).\nFindings: This study's results indicate that the overall effect of the introduction of a new PFP rule at DoD is a decrease of approximately 7.9 percentage points in employee job satisfaction, which is a substantial negative effect. In addition, this paper further finds that DoD's PFP system has widened the gender gap in job satisfaction at DoD.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to both the theoretical and the empirical understanding of PFP systems and public employee work morale and attitudes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Management science, planning, and demand management
|
[
"Economics",
"Scientific management",
"Taylorism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Outside of a small corpus of revisionist work in this journal (Schachter, 1995, 2000; Nyland, 1995; Nyland and Rix, 2000; Nyland and Heenan, 2005; Bruce, 2015), scientific management or Taylorism has principally been conceptualized as a means of driving employee productivity by an autocratic approach to management that deskilled labor and that was economistic, antiunion and sought to perpetuate employer hegemony. I argue in this paper that this constitutes a serious misreading of Taylorism and, in so doing, contribute to the small but growing corpus of \"deconstructionist\" management history seeking to \"punctur(e) a widely accepted myth, story, or orthodoxy\" (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011, p. 26) regarding scientific management. Following Schachter's (1989) plea, this paper joins the ranks of those who have grounded their research on a painstaking analysis of primary source material in an effort to try and right the wrongs of those who have demonized Taylor and Taylorism and set the historical record straight to rehabilitate scientific management (Drucker, 1976; Nyland, 1989; Nyland and Bruce, 2012; Nyland et al., 2014).\nEconomic planning and demand management in the USA: In July 1933, newly elected President F.D. Roosevelt established the first and only national planning agency in the US history (initially called the National Planning Board - NPB) and for the next decade or so in its many permutations, this body crafted and implemented \"a bank of public-works projects that could be drawn upon as a countercyclical tool in response to downturns in the business cycle\" (Reagan, 1999, p. 1). As I elucidate, this agency was the logical outcome of a much older, decidedly pluralist and uniquely American stream of discourse about economic planning. Planning had been contemplated in the USA as early as the 1890s, revealing a politically neutral belief in the need for intervention - direct or indirect - to ensure a well-functioning socioeconomic system (Balasciano, 1998). The approach to planning in the NPB was a synthesis of at least four different ideologies: social management planning, technical-industrial planning, business economy planning and macroeconomic planning (Lee, 1990; Balasciano, 1998). Each differed in terms of their respective stances vis-a-vis the level of state intervention, breadth of stakeholder involvement and the level of the economy targeted. My principle interest in this paper is the impact on such planning discourse of progressive business managers in and around the scientific management movement whose approach was an amalgam of social management, technical-industrial and macroeconomic planning.\nMethod, the Taylor society and the Bulletin: While sensitive to the highly contested discourse around the precise ontological and epistemological status of history and historical method, particularly its use (and abuse) in management and organization studies (Collingwood, 1956; White, 1973, 1985; Ankersmit, 1997; Jenkins, 1995, 2003; Munslow, 2010), I argue that historical research is a viable means of inductively interrogating data and sources, combining intuition and validation through triangulation of sources, hypotheses and disciplines to generate research questions and craft theory, particularly as regards how different management models have evolved (Goodman and Kruger, 1988; Godelier, 2009). But given management historians cannot directly observe the past, we must reconstruct it, primarily from documentary \"traces\" (Callinicos, 1995). Accordingly, I am also sensitive to the fact that I am imposing my narrative while simultaneously deconstructing a rival narrative. The command and reliability of my archival evidence thus needs to be assured if I am to debate the validity of the narrative I impose. Following Joyce (2007), my method of archival research is reasonable because, being based on a \"close, scrupulous and critical\" interpretation/representation of the \"traces of the past\" in the Bulletin of the Taylor Society, the authorization that archival source gives me is \"a gift from the past to the future\" - a \"right to speak\" accompanied with a moral \"duty to doubt\" (Joyce, 2007, p. 89).\nPublic works and war planning: In the formative issues of the BTS, it seems that there is only a narrow role for planning focused on the individual enterprise or factory to scientifically determine how and when work is to be done in the interests of efficiency. Yet, if we consider Taylor's own writings and also the pre-First World War activities and writings of some of his disciples published in the BTS, a broader conceptualization of planning is readily apparent, even at this early stage of this epistemic community's development. This would make sense insofar as Taylor himself - in what would be his last ever public appearance in March 1915 - emphasized that:\nHerbert Hoover and industry planning: Herbert Hoover was the most highly placed exponent of scientific management in the 1920s. Both in his positions as president of the Federated American Engineering Societies (FAES - the intellectual birthplace of the Taylor Society) and later as Secretary of Commerce and eventually as the US President, Hoover was able to abet the elevation of scientific management from a largely shopfloor concern to an industry and, eventually, a national concern. Although a supporter of free-market capitalism, Hoover recognized that the market was not always the most efficient allocator of society's scarce resources and that the government had a key role in correcting market failure and fine-tuning the economy. Where mainstream economists mooted unrestrained competition between independent economic units guided by the \"invisible hand\", Hoover talked about decentralized and voluntary national economic planning arising from cooperation between business and government, largely via trade associations (Wilson, 1975). The government would simply provide the impetus and the information, whilst corporate heads would do the actual planning. \"If we could secure this cooperation\", Hoover maintained, \"[...] we should have provided a new economic system, based neither on the capitalism of Adam Smith nor upon the socialism of Karl Marx\" (cited in Layton, 1971, p. 192). So then:\nThe Great Depression, FDR and national planning: On the eve of the Great Depression, the maturation of the scientific management movement in terms of their conception of planning and the evolution of the concept to include a concern with the macroeconomy was all but complete. The publication in 1927 of Tugwell's Industry's Coming of Age encapsulates this well. The greatest economic event of the nineteenth century, he writes, was when Taylor first held his stopwatch on workers at the Midvale Steel Plant. Only Taylor had not gone far enough and what was necessary, he argues further, was an extension of planning from the single factory to industry and then to the entire economy. Tugwell questions the existence of the \"invisible hand\", saying that what was needed was a \"guiding hand\" in coordination and planning. America had such during the wartime in the War Industries Board, but it was needed during peacetime as well (Tugwell, 1927).\nConclusion: By exploiting a largely unexplored archival source - The Bulletin of the Taylor Society - I have demonstrated that by the application of the scientific method to the management of the production process, F. W. Taylor provided the basic planning tools, which, if developed, could enhance humanity's control over anarchic market forces and aid the construction of a society based on democratic and effective planning. This was achieved by exhibiting how the planning concept was applied to ever broader areas of the US economy. What began as a tool for attempting to cure supply-side ills, developed over 50 years into an instrument for managing aggregate demand. In the thoughts and deeds of the Taylor Society members published in their journal and elsewhere, there is a clear evolutionary shift of emphasis in their thinking triggered by three different catalysts: from efficient production and distribution at a plant level via Taylor himself; to standardization and rationalization at an industry level via Hoover in the 1920s; and finally to direct government management of aggregate demand in public spending and monetary control via Roosevelt and the New Deal(s) of the 1930s that anticipated and meshed with the development of Keynes' ideas concerning macroeconomic management.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper explores the \"proto-Keynesian\" ideas of progressive members of the scientific management community with regard to micro- and macroeconomic planning/management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a systematic exegetical analysis of articles published in a largely unexplored primary/archival source, the Bulletin of the Taylor Society between 1915 and 1934.\nFindings: This paper surfaces a latent \"proto-Keynesian\" bedrock among progressive segments of the US management community that provides a more cogent explanation for the wholehearted reception, as well as the decisive impact, of Keynes' ideas on US macroeconomic policy than do extant explanations in the history of economic thought. Further, it reveals that most of these progressive managers with views as to both cause of and solution for the 1930's Depression were members of the Taylor Society, an epistemic community devoted to the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management.\nOriginality/value: The paper adds to the small but growing corpus of revisionist management history that seeks to problematize the received wisdom about scientific management or Taylorism. Few, if any, management historians appreciate that F. W. Taylor provided the basic planning tools which if developed, could enhance humanity's control over anarchic market forces and aid the construction of a society based on democratic and effective planning.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Challenges to professional identities and emotional exhaustion
|
[
"Identities",
"Professional workers",
"Stress",
"Role salience",
"Emotional exhaustion",
"Employees",
"Professions",
"Human resource management",
"Work identity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Identities are \"positions in the social structure, which are enacted in role relationships with others and viewed as descriptive of oneself\" (Thoits, 1995, p. 72). According to the identity-relevant stress proposition, events occurring in highly-salient identity domains should have a greater impact on psychological well-being than events occurring in less salient domains (Thoits, 1991). For example, if being an accountant is a highly valued role identity for a person, then any event that would disconfirm that identity would be expected to have detrimental psychological health consequences. Similarly, human resource professionals may experience distress, anxiety or emotional exhaustion resulting from challenges to the active retention of their highly valued identity acquired through the internalization of role-related expectations.\nRole identities and stress: According to identity theory[1], social roles such as friend, mother, spouse, college student, or accountant form the basis of a person's self-identity (Burke, 1991; Stryker and Burke, 2000; Thoits, 1991). They are linked to positions within the social structure and they \"provide individuals with the meaning and guidance that is necessary for the development and maintenance of self-concept and well-being\" (Marcussen, 2006, p. 1). A role identity is a sense of meaning attributed to oneself in relation to a specific social role (Burke and Tully, 1977). When a role identity is in jeopardy, the individual may experience the loss of a sense of self. Certain events may therefore challenge role identities and this may result in emotional exhaustion, a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion. The identity-relevant stress proposition further predicts that events occurring in highly-salient identity domains will have a greater impact on psychological well-being than events occurring in less salient domains (Thoits, 1991, 1995). To clarify this proposition, we first address the concept of identity salience.Identity salience\nMethod: A survey was administered in partnership with an association of human resource professionals. The aim of the survey was to better understand the responsibilities and work experience of human resource professionals. The questionnaire was administered electronically to human resource professionals from multiple organizations. An electronic mail message described the study and directed the participants to a web site where they could complete the questionnaire.The survey questionnaire was pre-tested with ten human resource professionals. This pre-test was administered electronically to ensure proper functioning of the system. After completing the questionnaire, each participant in the pre-test was reached by telephone to go over the procedure and the survey items. Only minor changes were made to the questionnaire in response to their comments.The professional association generated a list of all its members employed in organizations with ten or more employees. This condition was applied to leave out any consultants. Of the 3,000 members contacted with an electronic mail message, 891 either completed or partially completed the web-based questionnaire, for a response rate of 29.70 percent. A preliminary analysis showed that the proportion of respondents who answered the questions at the beginning of the questionnaire was higher than the proportion responding to the questions at the end of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was relatively long and it was administered electronically which may explain the high number of incomplete questionnaires.Of the returned questionnaires with complete data, we retained only those in which the respondent reported working full-time and in a permanent position as opposed to temporary work. These restrictions are justified by the concern that part-time or temporary professionals may have role identities that are of a different nature. Given the incomplete data, the final sample for this study thus consisted of 572 full-time, permanent, human resource professionals from multiple organizations; all members of the same professional association based in Quebec (Canada). The organizations covered by this final sample included 138 with fewer that 200 employees, 120 with 200 to 499 employees, 81 with 500 to 999 employees, 138 with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 95 with more than 5,000 employees. A relatively high proportion of the organizations were unionized (59.10 percent). This final sample included a higher proportion of women (67 percent) than men (33 percent) and the average age of the respondents was about 39 years.Measures\nResults: Table I shows the descriptive statistics and correlations between the study variables. Of particular interest is the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion. This relationship suggests that when human resource professionals perceive that their employer does not provide them with the opportunity to engage in the responsibilities associated with their professional role, they tend to experience more emotional exhaustion.Table II reports the multivariate associations. The second step of the hierarchical regression shows a relatively strong positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion. This would again suggest, in accordance with our first hypothesis, that the more human resource professionals perceive that their employer does not provide them with the opportunity to engage in the responsibilities associated with their role, the more emotional exhaustion they tend to experience. As we describe below, moderated multiple regression further informs that the relationship between identity threat and emotional exhaustion changes as identity salience changes.The second hypothesis predicted that the more salient the role of human resource professional, the stronger the association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion. Table II reports that the interaction between identity verification and role prestige is significantly associated with emotional exhaustion (i.e. strain). Figure 1 provides a graphical illustration of this joint effect on emotional exhaustion. As depicted, the greater the prestige associated with the human resource professional role, the stronger the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion (H2a). Consistent with this graphical representation, the conditional effect of the focal predictor (i.e. lack of identity verification) at low (b=0.44, t=5.81, p=0.00), moderate (b=0.58, t=10.37, p=0.00), and high (b=0.73, t=9.34, p=0.00) levels of the moderator variable was significant with coefficients suggesting a steeper slope at a high level of role prestige than at a moderate or low level of role prestige. As such, the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion is strongest at high levels of role prestige.Table II also reports that the interaction between a lack of identity verification and affective commitment to the profession is significantly associated with emotional exhaustion. Figure 2 provides a graphical illustration of the joint effect of a lack of identity verification and affective commitment to the profession on emotional exhaustion. As depicted in this figure, the stronger the affective commitment to the human resource profession, the stronger the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion (H2b). Consistent with this graphical representation, the conditional effect of the focal predictor (i.e. lack of identity verification) at low (b=0.39, t=5.45, p=0.00), moderate (b=0.50, t=9.65, p=0.00), and high (b=0.61, t=8.61, p=0.00) levels of the moderator variable was significant with coefficients suggesting a steeper slope at a high level of affective commitment to the profession. Again, the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion is strongest at high levels of affective commitment to the profession.It was recommended that interactions with covariates be assessed to determine whether they act consistently across levels of other variables (Cohen and Cohen, 1983; Frazier et al., 2004). We therefore added a final step to each regression equation containing interactions between the covariates (i.e. age and gender) and all other variables, including the product terms. For the regression equation that included role prestige as a moderator, the omnibus F test representing this final step was not significant (F=0.57, p=0.75). For the regression equation that included commitment to the profession as a moderator, the omnibus F test representing this final step was significant (F=2.22, p=0.04). Further inspection revealed a significant interaction between age and commitment to the profession (b=0.14, t=2.46, p=0.01), suggesting future research consider how age and commitment to the profession interact in the prediction of emotional exhaustion. Our probing suggests that the negative association between commitment to the profession and emotional exhaustion is stronger for younger than for older human resource professionals. In other words, in terms of controlling emotional exhaustion, the advantage of being committed to the profession may be lost as one gets older.\nDiscussion: While some research has examined identity construction (Pratt et al., 2006) and change (Ibarra, 1999) amongst professional workers, few studies have addressed the question of what happens when a professional identity suffers from a lack of verification from a significant source of input. In response to this question, our study found much support for the identity-relevant stress proposition. The first hypothesis was supported suggesting that when employers do not provide human resource professionals with the opportunity to engage in the responsibilities associated with their role, these professional workers are more likely to experience strain in the form of emotional exhaustion. We also found that the greater the prestige associated with their role, the stronger the positive association between a threat to the identity associated with that role and emotional exhaustion. The stronger the affective commitment to the human resource profession, the stronger the positive association between a lack of identity verification and emotional exhaustion.Research implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study seeks to examine the identity-relevant stress proposition according to which events occurring in highly-salient identity domains have a greater impact on psychological well-being than events occurring in less salient identity domains. The aim of the study is to integrate identity theory into occupational stress research by investigating the proposition that the lack of verification of a salient role identity will be associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using a questionnaire methodology, data were obtained from full-time, permanent, human resource professionals from multiple organizations.\nFindings: - As predicted, the lack of verification that occurs when an employer denies a professional the opportunity to engage in the responsibilities associated with a salient role was associated with more emotional exhaustion. Moreover, in a way consistent with identity theory, both role prestige and affective commitment to the profession moderated this relationship, providing additional support for the identity-relevant stress proposition.\nOriginality/value: - Identity theory offers a valuable perspective for work stress research, one that appears to be especially applicable to highly professionalized occupations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Stakeholder group influence on media reputation in crisis periods
|
[
"Financial crisis",
"Crisis communication",
"Stakeholder groups",
"Banking industry",
"Swiss banks",
"Media reputation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This analysis aims at showing how crises affect media reputations of organizations. As one of the major societal crisis in recent past, the financial crisis 2008 has triggered a lot of research (Schranz and Eisenegger, 2011; Roubini and Mihm, 2010; Stiglitz, 2010; Raithel et al., 2010; Shechter, 2009; Schultz and Raupp, 2009). Regarding corporations, the crisis was often examined from an economic perspective and research concentrated on the effects on company performance, share prices or product sales. In this paper the effects of the financial crisis on corporate media reputation are analyzed.\n2. Literature review: The literature generally distinguishes between societal and organizational crises. In an organizational crisis the negative effects are restricted to a single organization and its direct stakeholders. Typically these would be customers, employees or investors. A crisis limits the scope of action of the affected organization, endangers the organizational goals and is considered as a reputational threat (Coombs, 2007; Seeger et al., 1998; Milburn et al., 1983). As Coombs (2007) points out the news media play an important role in the perception of crises as most people will learn about an organization in crisis via the media.\n3. Research design: 3.1. Research method\n4. Findings: Tonality was cross-correlated by time period in order to test if the assessment of Swiss banks by stakeholder groups differed in the crisis and pre-crisis periods (kh2=113.875; df=2; p=0.000). In pre-crisis period the shares of positive and negative assessments were exactly equal (22 percent) whereas mostly neutral or balanced statements were articulated by stakeholders (56 percent). In the crisis period negativity was clearly predominant in evaluations of the Swiss banking industry. The share of negative stakeholder assessments (46 percent) was significantly higher than in pre-crisis period. Also the amount of positive ratings was significantly lower in crisis (8 percent). Neutral or balanced assessments (46 percent) were lower as well. In sum clearly more negative assessments of Swiss banks were articulated by stakeholder groups via the media (see Table II). As a result the RI for the three examined banks was in total significantly lower in crisis (RI=-0.38) compared to pre-crisis period (RI=0.00).\n5. Discussion: The aim of this study was to shed light on how the formation of media reputation changes in times of crisis. At first (RQ1) we wanted to know if the financial crisis affected the evaluation of Swiss banks by stakeholder groups. Not surprisingly a clear rise of negativity in stakeholder assessments could be observed. This leads to a significant lower reputation in crisis compared to pre-crisis period. Negativity in media reporting goes hand in hand with a one-sided focus on UBS. The institute was considered as a main culprit for the financial crisis in Switzerland. As a result positive contrasting effects for its competitors Raiffeisen Bank and ZKB could be identified. Their media reputation was more positive in the crisis period. One reason was that the business models of the two smaller banks were perceived as more conservative and nationally oriented. This was considered as a competitive disadvantage before the crisis but was all of a sudden evaluated as the superior model after the financial meltdown.\n6. Conclusion: This paper conceptualizes media reputation as the product of evaluation of an organization by various stakeholder groups instead of a defining a single reputation. For academics this approach is valuable because it gives further insights into the formation of media reputation. By describing this process more precisely the concept of media reputation as a whole gains relevance. It evolves from merely measuring a positive or negative tonality in media coverage and develops an explanatory power. Reputational crises can be described as specific constellations of stakeholder groups, tonality and topical focus in the media coverage. Hence, by identifying regularities when analyzing different crises this approach could be further developed into an early warning system for organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The concept of media reputation is a well-documented field in communication research. However, it often remains unclear how the process of reputation formation takes place exactly. The purpose of this paper is to analyze which stakeholder groups are the driving forces in the process of reputation constitution of the Swiss banking industry and how it was affected by the financial crisis in 2008.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Given that mass media are the main source of information about an organization in crisis for the public, media reputation serves as a valuable concept for analyzing the effects of crises on organizations. This study is therefore based on a content analysis of Swiss newspapers published between 2004 and 2010.\nFindings: Data shows that the influence of political stakeholder groups on media reputation of Swiss banks is higher in times of crisis. In addition the focus in media coverage changes from economic topics in pre-crisis period to social topics in crisis period. The increased importance of political stakeholder groups and social topics in crisis lead to a more negative and less controllable media reputation.\nOriginality/value: This study aims at a better understanding of the impact of stakeholder groups on corporate media reputation in crises. Instead of defining reputation as a single item this approach allows a more differentiated analysis of the process of reputation constitution.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Introduction of electronic documents: how business process simulation can help
|
[
"Banking",
"Automation",
"Management",
"Services",
"Process improvement",
"Business process simulation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The financial services industry is characterised by intense competitive pressure. Banks and insurance companies are faced with a change from a supplier-dominated to a demand-oriented market. This trend goes in line with the increasing usage of internet-based financial services. As a result, customers expect lower prices and fast and transparent service processing, and this includes financial and insurance products. However, a major drawback is the dependence of most banks on paper documents. These documents are essential for service delivery, either for processing the documents themselves, e.g. for ordering, or for recording information due to legal restrictions. Thus, a lot of paper is used in financial service companies, and is passed on between employees. To enable increases in efficiency, a major opportunity is seen in the digitalisation of these documents (Sprague, 1995; Hwang et al., 2013).\n2. Method: In general, there is agreement in the academic field that dynamic model descriptions and analyses have to be integral parts of studies, and be related to superior systems (Sharda and Bury, 2011). Dynamic modelling, specifically simulation, can be regarded as an essential element of process modelling. BPS in particular entails developing dynamic models for the purpose of analysing and evaluating business processes. Within this context, a number of attempts to integrate static and dynamic process models have been undertaken - with varying levels of success (Barber et al., 2003). All in all, BPS seems to be a preferable instrument to evaluate different measures for increasing process efficiency, especially since mutual dependencies and effects can be analysed based on their chronological sequence.\n3. Theoretical background: 3.1 Characteristics of financial service processes\n4. Set-up of the case study: 4.1 Basic information\n5. Results of the simulation: In the 200 simulation runs of the as-is process, 14,930 transactions are completed during the measurement period of 28 days, i.e. this number of loan requests is simulated by running the entire process model in the form of bundles of documents for each case. These can be either completed and accepted loans, as well as rejected funding requests, or approved loans that are not accepted by the customer due to a competing offer. Funding requests that are rejected before the approval process starts do not count as completed (activity \"funding request rejected\"). The completion is decisive in the sense that it runs through the entire business process to one of the two defined endpoints for the documents during the scan service provider (existing customers) or the archive service provider (non-customers). Not every object that is induced by the generator at the beginning of the process is completed during the measurement period. The reason for this is that some objects enter the process at the end of the simulation time, and are not yet finished when the simulation period ends.\n6. Discussion: The simulation results show - except for the slight increase in blocked time - an improvement in all measures, compared to the as-is process; this underlines the positive impact of the introduction of the e-file on the performance of the business process. Using the simulation results, the questions outlined earlier in the paper can now be answered.\n7. Limitations: For the simulation model, the number of exposures and the percentage of new customers from the operational systems are used. However, there is no workflow management system from which all the input data can be generated, and the missing values are estimated by experts who are familiar with the process. Thus, the working times for each activity are modelled largely on the basis of this expert information, with distributions. In particular, working times for activities in sales are mainly based on surveys that were conducted as part of process cost accounting for mortgage loans. It has to be noted that the expert estimates for input parameters are naturally associated with the uncertainty, since they are subjective.\n8. Conclusion: This paper has shown how business process simulation can be used to evaluate the introduction of e-files in a process. Especially the modelling shows how a conceptualisation for simulation purposes of such settings can be performed. Beside the typically used factor time, we also highlight implications for additional business based on workload analysis, and for resulting costs. The e-file enables efficiency gains through the elimination of copying and administrative duties for paper-based manual filing, and is the basis for industrialisation steps such as automation, workflow control, centralisation and outsourcing of processing steps. The average cycle time, as well as the costs, could be reduced. Additionally, it is shown that the reduction of working hours by introducing the e-file disproportionately affects a reduction in wait times. Thus, the resource wait times can be identified as bottlenecks in the process. Furthermore, sales staff have a reduced administrative workload, which also leads to a reduction in costs for processing a loan request. The introduction of the e-file has a positive effect on the relevant performance indicators, and opens the potential for additional business. These aspects could only be identified using the simulation model described. Thus, a company can ensure a coordinated action plan to effectively use the resulting business opportunities, and only focus on the technical implementation of such a system.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Many companies still use paper documents within their service processes, which is supposed to be inefficient, and a digitalisation of documents is a promising alternative. However, such a change is expensive and the process typically has to be adapted. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to show how business process simulation (BPS) can be used to forecast the effects of the introduction of electronic documents.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper presents a case study of a German bank, and shows how BPS can be used to evaluate the introduction of electronic documents in financial service processes.\nFindings: The case study shows how BPS can be applied to evaluate the implications of introducing IT systems using the example of e-files. The results reveal that not only cycle time, but also costs and administrative workload, can be reduced, while the number of processed orders increases.\nPractical implications: On the one hand the data generated in the simulation results can form the basis for feasibility studies regarding IT investments, e.g. for the migration of historical data from the old document management system system. On the other hand, further actions can be deduced for sales staff and other processes, which can use employees' additional free time.\nOriginality/value: Real case examples are rare, as many companies do not apply simulations. This paper is the first to analyse the impact of introducing electronic documents in service processes using BPS. The paper provides an approach how to conceptualise such settings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The value of a dollar
|
[
"Discounts",
"Promotion",
"Communication",
"Recession",
"Pricing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In today's recessionary environment, offering good products at fair prices may not be enough to get customers to beat a path to your door. You need to communicate very clearly to consumers why your product is a sensible purchase, even as they are cutting back on other areas of spending. Put simply, you need to communicate value.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Most business executives understand the importance of offering good value for money to their customers. But sometimes they do not put enough thought into how customers perceive value. This is particularly true in today's recessionary environment. Executives need to communicate clearly how and why their offerings are good value for customers. In doing so, they can help customers overcome resistance to discretionary spending and improve perceptions of value versus alternatives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this article, Jackson considers a number of case examples of businesses that have improved their price-value perceptions by adjusting their product offerings in subtle ways that help communicate value. Examples industries cited in the article include food service, retailing and the auto industry. The author then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across any business considering strategies to communicate the value of their offering.\nFindings: - Companies should proactively communicate the value of their products or services, particularly during recessionary periods when customers are more wary of discretionary spending. This involves developing innovative programs change how the purchase occasion is perceived, providing rational arguments for why the purchase makes sense and addressing customer concerns. The companies that do the best job of communicating the value of their offering will be rewarded by retaining customers during downturns and will reap the benefits of even higher spending when the economy recovers.\nOriginality/value: - Business managers have always recognized how price and value are critical considerations in purchasing behavior. This article extends that thinking to reinforce how small changes in how a product is configured or positioned to consumers can lead to big differences in value perception. Executives who recognize this can manage effectively through recessionary periods and help build long-term shareholder value.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance best practices: the proof is in the process
|
[
"Boards of directors",
"Corporate governance",
"Best practice"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Corporate governance best practices are, by their very design, intended to enhance board members' ability to discharge their responsibilities - responsibilities to shareholders, the company, and each other. Despite decades of research, dialogue, and debate regarding board effectiveness, despite recent legislative changes such as the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, despite ever-increasing requirements placed on firms by the various listing exchanges (e.g. New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ), there is little evidence that corporate governance, specifically board effectiveness, has significantly improved over time. At the risk of revisiting the obvious, corporate governance failures at corporations such as Enron, Qwest, Adelphia, Hollinger, and Parmalat provide compelling evidence of the failure of boards that were compliant in regard to multiple elements of \"best practice.\"\nIndependence in spirit as well as structure: Current conceptualizations of board independence do not adequately capture the notion of independence. To be classified as independent under today's guidelines, a director must meet a series of requirements that include having no personal or professional relationship with the company or its management. In principle, this is a commendable goal. In practice, however, a director can be fully in compliance yet clearly not independent in spirit.Take, for example, a director who is not, and has never been, employed by the company on whose board he/she sits. This director holds equity in the company, consistent with director equity requirements, but not exceeding the Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines of five percent that would render the director an affiliated director (we would note that the typical director of a large US-based corporation holds a fractional percentage of equity in the firm, often less than 0.001 percent). This director receives no remuneration from the company other than in her/his service as a board member. Further, this director is not related to any member of the company's executive team.Yet, this same director has been on the board for 12 years, plays tennis at least monthly with the company's CEO, a tradition dating back to their days as college fraternity brothers (let's face it, the vast majority of CEOs are male, as are the clear majority of corporate board members), and they served as best man at each other's respective weddings. By SEC and exchange listing (e.g. NYSE, NASDAQ) guidelines, this director is independent. Does anyone, however, believe this director's independence (e.g. his ability and/or willingness to critically evaluate the CEO) is not compromised? Or what of the director who is so enamored of her board position that she elects not to challenge management or fellow directors for fear of losing her board seat? Similarly, what of the director who takes on \"special board assignments\" for which he is generously compensated above and beyond \"standard\" director remuneration? Is this director likely to engage in behaviors that agitate management or fellow board members, even when such agitation is needed or appropriate? Not likely.The bottom line, then, is that a given board may be fully compliant from a regulatory standpoint regarding board independence and at the same time have a board that is structurally independent but by no means independent in spirit.\nConstructive debate: Another central requirement for board effectiveness is for directors to engage in constructive debate, both among themselves and between the board and management. While this might seem to be a \"no brainer,\" consider the number of meetings you have sat through (whether in a boardroom or elsewhere) where critical issues were not debated or discussed. This lack of dialogue might have been a function of any number of factors, but some of the more notable ones include a domineering CEO/chairperson or presiding director with an agenda, board members' discomfort with conflict, board members' lack of skill or knowledge in how to engage in constructive, as opposed to destructive, debate, or meeting design that is heavily reliant on \"canned\" presentations at the expense of active discussion.Any of these conditions would be enough to stifle constructive debate in the boardroom. Imagine, then, the power of the intersection of a number of these conditions. A presiding director can easily work behind the scenes with a CEO to structure a meeting agenda so that the sequence of material presented, the manner in which the material is presented (e.g. long-winded presentations accompanied by numerous overheads), and the time allotted for discussion of any given agenda item virtually ensure no detailed discussion. Is it any wonder, then, that the vast majority of board decisions are unanimous? Such unanimity might be the result of nothing more than \"going with the flow\" so as not to disrupt the status quo.\nEffective information flows: Beyond having an effectively structured meeting that facilitates constructive debate, effective board process requires open channels of communication. This includes both written and oral forms of communication. It is a poorly kept secret in corporate circles that management tends to provide meeting materials to directors days, if not hours, prior to scheduled meetings. How, then, can directors fully consider board issues if insufficient time is provided to read, absorb, and contemplate information. As importantly, no time is afforded for gathering supplementary information should that be needed to enrich the board's discussion.Granted, such delay tactics may be the result of a campaign designed to prevent directors from fully considering meeting material. Sadly, it is more often the case that it is simply a function of lack of accountability and responsibility on the part of company management - and a board that does not hold such management to higher standards. Are there occasions when material must be delivered to board members at the last minute? Certainly. Let that not be the norm, however.Another practice that restricts effective flow of information is when board members are granted limited access to key executives, or worse, to other board members. When lines of authority between the board and executives are so narrowly circumscribed that one or a very few individuals control the bulk of access to information, information can too readily become misconstrued, distorted, or withheld. Consider the function of a funnel - it is designed to restrict flow.\nInclusion, not exclusion: A classic technique for disrupting effective board functioning is to employ the age-old tactic of \"divide and conquer.\" Boards, by design, conduct a significant amount of important business in sub-groups, i.e. committees. The committee structure enables the board to employ limited, and sometimes specialized, resources to best effect. The audit committee, for example, is arguably best able to function when those board members with the highest level of financial expertise serve on this committee. To employ all board members, or even a subset of board members with relatively less financial expertise and experience than others, in discharging the responsibilities of the audit committee would almost certainly result in a less than efficient or effective financial oversight process.While task segmentation via the committee structure can be highly enabling, it can also result, intentionally or otherwise, in board members being excluded from critical information - with deleterious effects on board discussions. Consider the discomfort of certain board members when a full board discussion takes a turn toward consideration of an acquisition candidate that had been extensively discussed in executive committee meetings, but those board members were unaware that an acquisition was being considered, yet alone on the table for discussion.We by no means suggest that boards abandon the committee structure, which can be highly effective. We do, however, suggest care in how information discussed in committee meetings is channeled to other board members. The goal should be one of inclusion, not exclusion. There is never an appropriate occasion for withholding information from a board colleague. If the issue is that a given board member cannot be trusted with certain sensitive information, that member should be removed from the board, not from certain board discussions.\nIntegrity: For us, the bottom line on board effectiveness is rather straightforward. Boards are most effective when they are composed of individuals who have, and operate with, integrity. As obvious as this may sound, there are sadly numerous high profile examples of directors who have failed on this count. No amount of structure and no amount of attention to effective process can overcome directors who elect to conduct themselves with less than integrity, honor, honesty, and respect for others. At the same time, a board comprised of directors who individually and collectively conduct themselves with integrity is, in the words of the popular Mastercard commercials, priceless.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper looks at the failure of corporate boards to incorporate best practices into their functioning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study discusses the failure of corporate boards to incorporate best practices into their functioning.\nFindings: - One answer to the continued failure of corporate governance, albeit not likely the answer, is a misplaced focus on structural aspects of the board of directors at the expense of process issues.\nPractical implications: - Provides executives with information on important factors to consider in monitoring board performance.\nOriginality/value: - This article is of particular value to CEOs and other board members.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Maintenance analytics for railway infrastructure decision support
|
[
"PCA",
"Anomaly detection",
"Maintenance analytics",
"Rail profile measurement",
"Rail wear"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the modern track structure, the requirements on rail performance are increasing as they are expected to have high resistance to wear, fatigue, brittle fracture and compression. In addition, rails are required to have good surface quality, good observance of profile and low residual stress for safe, comfortable and sustainable passenger and rail freight operations (Lichtberger, 2005). In contrary, the loading condition of railways is increasing with faster, longer, more frequent and heavier train operations. For instance in Sweden, the iron ore train is 750 m long and approximately 25 per cent of these trains on the southern loop of the heavy haul line travels with an axle load of 32.5 metric tonnes, i.e. 8.3 per cent heavier than the nominal axle load. Undoubtedly, rails could be more susceptible to surface and subsurface damage being the contact point on the track directly bearing this increasing loading profile. Rail wear is of great interest since it is known to be an important degradation mode that can limit the performance of rail, reduce its life span, cause failure of other elements and significantly increase track life cycle cost if not well managed.\n2. Rail wear: The stress environment of rail is complex with contact stress, bending stress and thermally induced stresses. From the viewpoint of maintenance engineering, the contact stresses must be adequately optimised and the contact surfaces on both rail and wheel must be well managed. For example, application of gauge face lubricators and the use of premium grade rail steels in narrow curves with radius less than 700 m radius (Pointner et al., 2009; prEN 13674-1, 2002; UIC, 2005). Negligence in these aspects can lead to critical damage in the form fatigue or wear due to high contact stresses.\n3. Framework for rail maintenance analytics: Analytics has become an essential aspect of the operational and business intelligence in various application areas. It is now an increasingly common practice for supporting managerial and technical decisions but the exact meaning is often unclear. Different department/sectors interpret analytics to indicate different things. The most relevant description of analytics in railway asset management is the use of statistical and mathematical data analysis procedures to cluster, segment, score and predict what developments are most likely to happen (Gareth et al., 2010). In other words, analytics entail autonomous examination of data or content using advanced techniques and tools for discovering relevant hindsight, deeper insights, and reliable foresight to understand processes and make recommendations. The analytic techniques include data or text mining, machine learning, classification learning, forecasting, visualisation, cluster analysis, multivariate statistics, graph analysis, and simulation (Gartner, 2016).\n4. Anomaly detection method: The early detection of anomalous events can be considered to be an integral part of descriptive and diagnostic analytics as it answers the question, \"what is (has) happening (happened)\". In the context of rail management, the question deals with the detection of wear patterns that do not conform to normal or expected behaviour and can be learned from observations in an unsupervised learning. In physical asset engineering, different data-driven methods that seek to acquire underlying knowledge from large amounts of empirical data have been used for fault or anomaly detection (Dai and Gao, 2013). These methods can be classified as: statistics-based, distance-based, spectra-based and density-based approaches (Pascual, 2015). A comprehensive taxonomy, mapping and notes on the applications of data-driven outlier detection methods have been done by Zhang (2016). In this study, two approaches are selected: PCA which is spectra-based approach and the local outlier factor (LOF) approach which is density-based approach. The later approach is used to validate the results of PCA approach.\n5. Case study: The case study area is on the northern section of the Swedish heavy haul line with axle load of 30 metric tonnes and annual load of about 30 MGT. The focus in this study is on the sharp curves with radius between 476 and 521 m. Figure 3 shows the location of the studied curves on the heavy haul line while Table I gives a highlight of some essentials features of the curves. Basically, the rail type on these curves is head hardened rail with 60E1 rail profile that has been modified to provide stress relief at gauge corner.\n6. Result and discussion: The result of the case study is presented in this section. First, exploratory data analysis of the wear KPIs is presented to give insight on the evolution of natural wear on the nine curves. Thereafter, the result of two approaches for anomalous wear detection is presented and discussed.\n7. Conclusion: A shift from conventional to advanced rail management requires appropriate condition monitoring, data analytics and enhanced decision support system. This study presents a framework for rail diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics that is suitable for management of rail and similar linear infrastructure. The paper emphasises the use of PCA model with T2- and Q-statistics to detect anomalous wear occurrences using field measurement data. The presented anomalous analytics will help to extract useful information from measurement data that are needed to facilitate effective maintenance planning and other detailed analysis.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for maintenance analytics that is useful for the assessment of rail condition and for maintenance decision support. The framework covers three essential maintenance aspects: diagnostic, prediction and prescription. The paper also presents principal component analysis (PCA) and local outlier factor methods for detecting anomalous rail wear occurrences using field measurement data.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach used in this paper includes a review of the concept of analytics and appropriate adaptation to railway infrastructure maintenance. The diagnostics aspect of the proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study using historical rail profile data collected between 2007 and 2016 for nine sharp curves on the heavy haul line in Sweden.\nFindings: The framework presented for maintenance analytics is suitable for extracting useful information from condition data as required for effective rail maintenance decision support. The findings of the case study include: combination of the two statistics from PCA model (T2 and Q) can help to identify systematic and random variations in rail wear pattern that are beyond normal: the visualisation approach is a better tool for anomaly detection as it categorises wear observations into normal, suspicious and anomalous observations.\nPractical implications: A practical implication of this paper is that the framework and the diagnostic tool can be considered as an integral part of e-maintenance solution. It can be easily adapted as online or on-board maintenance analytic tool with data from automated vehicle-based measurement system.\nOriginality/value: This research adapts the concept of analytics to railway infrastructure maintenance for enhanced decision making. It proposes a graphical method for combining and visualising different outlier statistics as a reliable anomaly detection tool.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Reliability considerations in the design of cellular manufacturing systems: A simulated annealing-based approach
|
[
"Machining centres",
"Simulation",
"Cellular manufacturing",
"Change management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As documented by various studies (e.g. Askin and Estrada, 1999; Wemmerlov and Hyer, 1989), the benefits of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) include reduction of set up times, reduction of material handling time, and improvement of quality. Given their benefits the CMS have been established as an appropriate choice for discrete-part manufacturers who need to face many challenges of the present competitive market, including small lot sizes, quick delivery and the lowest costs. However, while machine reliability influences the performance of a manufacturing system, its impact is more prominently felt in CMS than in a job-shop environment. The dedication of machines and part families to cells provides advantages in terms of reducing the set up times, material handling cost, etc., but it also reduces scheduling flexibility, particularly when machine failures occur (Seifoddini and Djassemi, 2001). Because of the proximity of similar machines, job shops can reroute parts very easily in the case of machine failure. In contrast, the rerouting of parts to handle machine failures in CMS, unless preplanned in the design, is very difficult. A good deal of research has been conducted in the past 30 years to develop effective CMS design models by considering various costs, component process relationships, and technological constraints. However, the effect of machine reliability has not been given much attention in these design approaches, causing CMS to come under increasing scrutiny because of their unimpressive performance (Agarwal and Sarkis, 1998).Machines are the major components in CMS. Maintaining redundant copies of machines to alleviate the machine failure problems is not economically viable. Often, a failed machine cannot be repaired/maintained within the expected time. Therefore, these machine reliability-related uncertainties establish the importance of appropriate reliability planning during system design. An effective CMS design approach would consider machine reliability in the allocation of parts to machine routes in order to achieve the highest possible system reliability among the available machine route. In addition, the provision of routing flexibility is to be considered during cell design in order to reroute the parts in case of machine failures. The approach will reduce the impact of machine failures during part processing and make the system more robust. Needless to say, considering only reliability often increases the system cost. Consequently, an effective CMS design methodology needs to consider simultaneously both the reliability requirements and the cost performance criteria.A large body of research on the techniques of part family and machine cell formation has been published in the past three decades (Wemmerlov and Hyer, 1986; Joines et al., 1996; Selim et al., 1998; Mansouri et al., 2000). Many heuristic-based algorithms have also been proposed to solve the cell formation model. However, only a limited number of researchers have considered machine reliability as a design factor, and there are very few works that formulate the design problem as a multi-objective multiple-process plan model.The effect of machine reliability on CMS performance, has been studied by Seifoddini and Djassemi (2001). Considering the series configuration of CMS and the parallel configuration of a job shop, the study compared the performances of the two systems and concluded that the impact of machine reliability is more prominent in CMS. The parallel configuration of a job shop enables a part to be easily reloaded on to a nearby similar machine in case of machine failure. On the other hand, in CMS, rerouting should be pre-planned in the design phase to address this reliability issue. The study did not include a mathematical model or algorithm to develop a reliability-based design approach.Logendran and Talkington (1997) conducted a simulation study to compare the performances of CMS and job shops by including machine breakdown as one of the environmental factors with mean work in-process and mean throughput time used as the performance measures. Mean throughput time was found to be better in CMS only when preventive maintenance was performed. The study demonstrated that machine reliability and maintainability (repair policy) are important considerations in CMS design to ensure better performance.Jeon et al. (1998) proposed a CMS design model with the objective of minimizing the waiting cost, inventory holding cost, late finish and early finish penalty cost. The study assumed that each part had alternative process routes. This will improve the cell performance, as parts can be allocated to an alternative process route in the case of machine failure. Other CMS design models (Caux et al., 2000; Wicks and Reasor, 1999) have included alternative routes to reduce costs, develop good cell configuration, and balance part flows, but not to handle machine failures, a fact that should the considered during the cell design by using routing flexibility to handle the uncertainty resulting from machine non-availability (Jeon et al., 1998).Diallo et al. (2001) proposed a CMS design model considering alternative process plans for parts to reduce intercell interaction and to handle machine non-availability situations. After considering all the possible process plan assignments to fulfill the demand for a part type, the model selected the plan, which would reduce intercell interactions, and the cell configuration provided options to reroute the parts in case of machine failure.This paper focuses on a CMS design approach, which considers the conflicting objectives of minimizing system costs and maximizing system reliability, and on the development of an efficient heuristic procedure to solve the model. Mathematical models for solving realistic-sized cell formation problems with such conflicting requirements are often computationally expensive, if not intractable. The partitioning of manufacturing systems into cells has been identified as a NP-complete problem in several studies (Garey and Johnson, 1979; Zolfaghari and Liang, 1998; Sofianopoulou, 1997) and the problem may not be solvable by the traditional optimization methods. Vakharia and Chang (1997) pointed out that most CMS design models in literature are computationally intractable for large size problems; thus, there is a need for heuristic methods to obtain reasonably good solutions within an acceptable amount of time. In recent years, heuristic methods such as simulated annealing (SA), genetic algorithms (GA), and tabu search (TS) have been widely applied to CMS design problems.Jayaswal and Adil (2004) developed a CMS design model and proposed a simulated annealing-based algorithm to solve it. The study combined a local search with a simulated annealing algorithm for further improvement of the solution quality, which was fairly high compared with the optimal solution to the problem.Vakharia and Chang (1997) proposed a cell formation model and used simulated annealing and tabu search based heuristics to solve it. The paper concluded that the simulated annealing-based heuristic performed better than the tabu search based algorithm. Asokan et al. (2001) solved three CMS design models selected from the literature using genetic algorithms and simulated annealing. Comparing the solution quality for different size problems, the study concluded that simulated annealing performed better for the type of models under consideration.Based on the above observations, this paper proposes a combinatorial search-based heuristic to solve the model. The heuristic combines the inherent advantages of simulated annealing to escape local optima, and the improved solution generation procedure of genetic algorithms to obtain near optimal solutions within acceptable computational time limits. The next section presents the basic machine reliability considerations using the exponential distribution approach, followed by a description of the mathematical model. Section 3 outlines the heuristic-based solution procedure for the multi-objective model. An example is included in section 4 to illustrate the application of the model, and some final remarks and conclusions are given in section 5.\n2. Machine reliability consideration and the mathematical model: 2.1 Availability consideration. In the following discussions, the following assumptions are made:\n3. Heuristic solution method: In this section, we present a heuristic solution approach which incorporates the basic steps of simulated annealing to solve the proposed multi-objective model for large practical-sized CMS design problems. The solutions are further improved in terms of quality and computational time by applying the crossover and mutation operations of the genetic algorithms to generate better solutions or neighboring solutions from a pair of good solutions. The proposed algorithm can generate near-optimal solutions for fairly large size problems within acceptable amounts of CPU time. It may also generate global optimum solutions for reasonable size problems but at higher levels of computational effort.3.1 Simulated annealing\n4. Illustrative example: The algorithm has been coded in C++ and run on a PC (Pentium 4, 2.26 GHz, 760 MB RAM) to solve a numerical example involving 14 machines and 24 part types. Table III shows the machine related information for the problem. Part type demands, processing times and costs, operation sequences and process plan information are presented in Table IV. The machine and part related information is generated randomly by considering similar data from examples in the literature. The machine reliability related information, MTBF and MTTR, are generated using uniform distributions of (160-360 hours) and (eight to 48 hours), respectively, to maintain machine availabilities of about 80 to 95 percent, considering similar availability data in the literature (Askin et al., 1997). According to the input information, each part can be processed by either one of two process plans, each operation of a part type may be performed on more than one machine in most cases, and each machine can perform more than one operation. As a result, each part type is associated with several process routes. To illustrate, using the information in Table IV we observe that part type 1 may be processed via four process routes as shown in Table V. The sequence of operations, operation times and the total cost for each route are also given in Table V. For example, for process route 1201, the machine sequence under process plan 2 is M1-M7, the operation times on these machines are, respectively, three and six hours (as can also be seen from Table IV), and the total processing cost for the operations of the part type is ($8 + $4)=$12 as computed from Table III. The number of cells and the maximum number of machines allowed in a cell are assumed to be three and five, respectively.4.1 Performance evaluation\n5. Conclusions: The paper presented a mathematical model, and a simulated annealing-based solution algorithm, for the design of cellular manufacturing systems by considering machine reliability in a multi-objective model which takes into account multiple part types, multiple machines and alternative process plans for each part type. The algorithm solves the CMS design model efficiently within reasonable limits of CPU time to give near optimal solution. The algorithm incorporates an efficient neighboring solution generation procedure, using genetic algorithm-based operators, which improves the solution quality and reduces the computational time.Although the proposed heuristic has the capability of generating solutions for large CMS design problems, it is expected that the computational time will increase as the problem size increases. However, without further experimentation with the heuristic, it is difficult to predict the level of extra computational effort needed to solve larger problems. The same is true of the quality of the solutions generated by the heuristic. Although the present evidence indicates that the heuristic is capable of generating solutions that are fairly close to the optimal, more experimentation with larger problems would be needed to evaluate this aspect of the heuristic performance, especially as it relates to the selection of the weight factors as the problem size increases.The proposed algorithm is easy to implement and as such it can be applied to solve practical-sized CMS design problems to obtain a reasonably good solutions.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to: develop an effective cellular manufacturing system (CMS) design methodology by simultaneously considering system costs and individual machine reliabilities; and propose a combinatorial search-based solution procedure to solve large-sized problems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper presents a multi-objective mixed integer-programming model for the design of CMS with the objective of minimizing costs and maximizing system reliability. The approach optimizes inter-cell material handling costs, the variable cost of machining operations, and the machine under-utilization costs. It also maximizes the system reliability by selecting process routes for the part types with the highest system reliability for the machines along the routes. To solve the multi-objective, multiple process plan model, a simulated annealing (SA)-based algorithm is developed. The algorithm follows the basic steps of SA, but also incorporates the genetic algorithm (GA) operations of crossover and mutations to generate better neighboring solutions from the current good solutions.\nFindings: - The algorithm in the paper solves the multi-objective CMS design model and generates near optimal solutions for medium to large-sized problems within reasonable limits of CPU time.\nPractical implications: - In the paper the CMS design approach can be implemented to improve reliability performance of the CMS.\nOriginality/value: - A new CMS design methodology in this paper, which minimizes system costs and maximizes machine-related system reliability, is developed. The proposed algorithm, which combines the basic steps of SA and crossover and mutation operations of GA, will enable CMS designers and users to obtain near optimal solutions for practical-sized problems within reasonable time limits.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Implementation of marketing concept and organizational culture in SMEs in Al Buraimi - Oman
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Economy",
"Oman",
"Small-to-medium-sized enterprises",
"Economy",
"Al Buraimi",
"Marketing concepts"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Marketing is a significant contributor to the survival of any business, especially in small and medium enterprises, because it is dealing with the commercial activities that create value to gain customer satisfaction and translate that value to profit at the end stage of sales transactions. Marketing starts with products or service processes from the manufacturer (factory) all the way to the final consumer. Kotler and others define marketing as the relationship between the value of the product (goods or services) and customer satisfaction. Marketing concepts differ from selling concepts (even a sale is considered as small function of marketing) because marketing results in profit through customer satisfaction. On the other hand, selling results in profit only through sales volume (Kotler and Kevin, 2011). Some research identifies marketing from two aspects: the first one is marketing as a type of management approach concentrating on customer satisfaction, and the second is marketing as a series of activities meant to implement the company's marketing philosophy (Habibi, 2013).\n2. Problem statement: The SME culture is new for the Omani society, which can be an explanation of why many Omani citizens seek to obtain government jobs rather than start their own businesses, in addition to the challenges and difficulties involved in starting up an SME. The government has established a number of bodies and authorities to cultivate an SME culture and to finance the SME sector. There has been a noticeable increase in the size of the SME sector in Oman in recent years, but we need to analyze the impact of the culture of SMEs in the Omani context on the implementation of marketing concepts in the current economic policies to determine the extent to which they comply with an entrepreneurship orientation. The study of the implementation of marketing dimensions in terms of culture of an SME is a step in the direction of furthering the understanding of the impact of these dimensions in the SME sector development on the Omani economy, and the relationship between marketing policies aimed at instilling entrepreneurship and economic development.\n3. Relevance of the study: The study is significant for many reasons. First of all, it will help to identify the impact of the culture of the SME on the implications of marketing in the SME sector on the Omani economy in light of the new orientation on the part of decision makers in terms of increasing the importance of non-oil activities. In addition, it will analyze the dimensions of marketing in SMEs in Oman related to the economic policies and strategies designed to promote the SME sector in Oman. This will give a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges relating to this sector and of the necessary environment for encouraging entrepreneurship and an SME culture. The study will determine the contribution of culture of organizations to the implementation of marketing concepts in SMEs in terms of economic development, such as increasing business performance and innovation.\n4. SME landscape in Oman: Omani's economic landscape has experienced considerable transformation in the last 20 years. The Omani government looks for a diversified economy especially on the recent declining in oil prices which effect the economy development (Chinnasamy et al., 2017). The economy's growth in Oman has been driven oil production revenues and the government expenditure which has led to significant improvements in the economic recovery. The recent decrease in number of SMEs in Oman in the beginning of 2017 can be explained by the dramatic drop in oil prices (Saqib et al., 2017). On the other hand, the volume of government expenditures was decreased as a response of drop in oil prices which lead to the postponement of a number of large-scale projects in Oman which consequently impact on SME sector growth (Al-Lawati, 2017).\n5. Research framework: Previous studies of the impact of organization culture on the implementation of marketing concepts, such as those by Kohli and Jaworski (1990), addressed the adoption and implementation of marketing concepts impacted by the culture of organizations. Some other research treats the culture of the organization as internal variables that affect the implementation of marketing concepts (Wasmer, 1994).\n6. Literature review: It was long believed that the organization is a closed entity. More recently, due to experience and the dynamic environment of the market, opinions changed to reflect the advent of a market orientation and new trends in marketing concepts. Peter Drucker was one of the first authors in management to emphasize that the main objective of any project is to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers (Maciariello, 2011). In fact, to understand the needs and wants of the consumer, we have to use marketing tools to deliver satisfaction and value to those consumers. The marketing process is not of less importance for the SME sector than the importance of production process; there is no value for production without marketing activities and the selling process. The marketing concept can affect consumer behavior - by creating external stimuli for their needs, and competitive volume - by creating new distribution channels to impact the marketing environment. By implementing marketing concepts, the SME sector insures the availability of goods and services by studying customer needs, wants and demands, and provides solutions for consumer problems.\n7. Methodology: This section explained procedures that are necessary to execute the analysis of this study, in addition to the ethical issues that are required in this type of study. Simple random sampling was used for the sample distribution and the data sets are summarized and processed by IBM analysis program Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The quantitative approach was used to explore the impact of organizational culture on the implementation of marketing concepts on SMEs; to achieve the objective of this study, the researcher will use a questionnaire (based on Likert scale, which is the most commonly used scaled-response format of measurement in social research. The five-point Likert scale format in this study used standardized response categories). However, all analysis and findings of this study will be oriented to the impact of organizational culture on the implementation of marketing concepts on SMEs in the Al Buraimi Region in Oman. The reliability of the framework of this study is conducted by using Cronbach's a, which was 0.82. Validity analysis of this study was done by experts in the field to make sure it actually measures what it was anticipated to measure.\n8. Analysis and findings: Table I and Figure 1 depict the demographic properties in this study. The title (position) ratios of the respondents for all 240 of the participants are fairly close, noting that the CEO position is the lowest ratio (29.2 percent). However, most participants in this study were the owners of their enterprise, which is why they considered themselves in manager positions. Males comprise the majority with 91.7 percent of the total respondents. In the age variable, most of the research sample is between 31 and 40 years old (approximately 76 percent of the total respondents). In the experience level, the highest ratio is for experience from six to ten years (60.4 percent), and in the educational level context, well, more than half (59.6 percent) of the research sample has a diploma or below.\n9. Limitations of the study: This study was restricted to small and medium enterprises in the Al Buraimi region in Oman, and all the participants in this study belonged to the SME sector in the Al Buraimi region. The main source of the secondary data was the National Statistics Center in Oman. However, most of the respondents in this study are not in marketing positions, which may not be the correct representative of the real marketing situation in the Al Buraimi region. In addition, this study focused only on one region in Oman, which may be different in a cultural context from other regions in Oman.\n10. Ethical consideration: Ethical framework principles were employed in the study based on the professional care practice of research. The ethical issues involved in conducting this research are informed consent, respect of confidentiality and anonymity, beneficence (doing no harm) and respect for the privacy of the participant (Fouke and Mantzorou, 2011). Hair et al. (2011) suggest that the participants need to understand the purpose of the study and how it would help improve knowledge.\n11. Further study: The implementation of marketing concepts in the SME sector in Oman still needs further study to cover other dimensions in this area. Culture is only one dimension that is considered in this study. As well, this study was conducted in the Al Buraimi region in Oman, which is only one of the 52 regions in Oman. Further studies can be carried out in other regions, which may reveal more explanations of how to implement marketing concepts in the SME sector. Further study on the impact of organizational culture on the implementation of marketing concepts could be extended to other sectors such as large sized organizations, not-for-profit organizations, etc.\n12. Conclusion and recommendations: The findings of this study support the argument about the positive relationship between the implementation of marketing concepts and organizational culture. The findings of this study yield abundant results that are consistent with previous studies on the same issues. In the Omani context, organizational culture is related to the whole society's culture, which has changed over recent years due to changes in lifestyle and consumer behavior. All of this affects the SME sector and its ability to create new ideas for the marketing process. The key recommendations by this study is to focus on the corporate culture, which plays a significant role in boosting the organization members' engagement and their performance in the case of implementing new strategies and cultivating and maintaining a marketing culture. The organizational culture is the main factor in understanding organizational behavior, and it is the basis of organizational function. Therefore, all individuals' values in the SME should be integrated with organizational practices .The organizational culture of the SME sector in Oman should apply \"value creation strategies\" to provide high innovation performance, such as new marketing ideas for products and services. On the other hand, it should function in the context of a market orientation approach to face the dynamic and competitive environment. Due to the variance of Omani society culture from one region to another, SME owners should be careful in each region to be consistent with the organizational culture measurement based on cultural dimensions, such as group culture, development culture, hierarchical culture and rational culture. The organizational culture of the SME sector in Oman should be based on the customers' needs and wants, and should be followed by a suitable feasibility study. The SME sector should engage the culture of market orientation as the main factor, which enhances the ability of organizations to create competitive advantage.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of relationship between implementation process of marketing concepts and the culture at the small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) level of the Omani economy. The marketing culture and behavior provide a comprehensive insight into the implementation process of marketing concepts in SME sector in Oman. This paper seeks to explore the marketing culture of the firm's members and to what extent they can support or create barriers to the successful implementation of the marketing concept in Al Buraimi region - Oman.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative approach was used to explore the impact of organizational culture on the implementation of marketing concepts on SMEs; to achieve the objective of this study, the paper based on a sample of 240 of SME sector in Al Buraimi. Simple Random Sampling was used for the sample distribution. The IBM analysis program Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used to process the data sets.\nFindings: The findings of this study support the argument about the positive relationship between the implementation of marketing concepts and organizational culture. In the Omani context, organizational culture is related to the whole society's culture, which has changed over recent years due to changes in lifestyle and consumer behavior. All of this affects the SME sector and its ability to create new ideas for the marketing process.\nOriginality/value: The paper finds that there is a logic and structure to the culture and the implementation process of marketing concepts. It helps to identify the impact of the culture of the SME on the implementation of marketing in the SME sector on the Omani economy in light of the new orientation on the part of decision makers in terms of increasing the importance of non-oil activities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Service receivers' negative emotions in airline and hospital service settings
|
[
"Negative emotions",
"Service receivers",
"Service providers",
"Recovery",
"Customer complaint",
"Complaint handling",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Critical incident technique",
"South Africa"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: It is necessary for service providers to ensure that service receivers experience positive service encounters as service receivers will communicate negative experiences to others. Due to the complexity of the service encounter and the involvement of service receivers in the service encounter (i.e. co-creators), service encounters exhibit the risk of service failures (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008). This implies that all service encounters runs the risk of dissatisfaction and therefore requires the need for service recovery. Service recovery refers to the handling of complaints and the complain behavior process, and represents a critical moment of truth for service providers in attempting to satisfy and retain customers. The importance of understanding services receivers' behavior and their complaint behavior is depicted through the expanse of literature and research studies on the subject (e.g. Tronvoll, 2011; Stauss and Seidel, 2004).Recent studies in the service industry indicate that the negative emotions service receivers experience during the service encounter will influence their loyalty levels (e.g. Roos et al., 2009; Wong, 2004). Furthermore, research studies indicate that negative emotions not only influence loyalty levels service receivers show to the service provider, but their word-of-mouth efforts, complaining behaviors (e.g. White and Yu, 2005; Bougie et al., 2003; Liljander and Strandvik, 1997), re-purchase intentions and their general attitude toward the service provider (e.g. Davidow, 2003). These studies indicate that negative emotions can cause extensive damage to service providers' relationships with customers and their overall reputation. Although studies have been conducted in the field of negative emotions, it seems as these studies do not consider the broader aspects of negative emotions and show a lack of consistency in the measurement of negative emotions.Previous studies conducted on the topic have used single or limited sets of negative emotions, indicating the need for a deeper understanding and examination of negative emotions experienced in service encounters. Bagozzi et al. (1999) specifically mention that more research in the field of negative emotions pertaining to how these emotions should be measured and how they relate to one another should be conducted. Wong (2004, p. 366) supports this idea by stating that it is necessary for researchers to focus on the role of negative emotions within service encounters. In their study on the Norwegian tourism industry, Svaeri et al. (2011) identified three dimensions pertaining to emotions in service encounters, namely emotions related to self, those related to others as well as those related to the situation.Although there has been research on negative emotions, research has not focused on service receivers' negative emotions in two diverse service settings such as at an airport and hospital concurrently. The authors therefore aimed to close this gap through studying the negative service receivers experience in both airline and hospital service settings. The paper thus focuses on investigating the negative emotions service receivers experience in both an airline and hospital setting. Furthermore, the paper also aimed to identify the similarities and differences of negative emotions between these two service settings. In essence, the focus of the article is on an issue within the field of service recovery that has so far greatly been ignored. The article thus expands the knowledge about the role emotions play in service marketing (e.g. Svaeri et al., 2011; Bagozzi et al., 1999).The paper is structured as follows:1. a frame of reference for service experience and emotions through a theoretical review is presented;2. methodology and empirical findings are described;3. research and managerial implications of service receivers' negative emotions are addressed; and4. conclusions, limitations and suggestions for further research are provided.\nTheoretical framework: Researchers are continuously debating the precise definition of human emotions and how to measure them (Plutchik, 1991). According to Izard (1991, p. 14) an emotion refers to a feeling an individual experiences, and that subsequently assists in motivating, organizing and guiding perception, thought and action. Emotion is furthermore seen by Oately and Jenkins (1996) as a phenomenon that causes mental states, physical changes, facial and vocal expressions, and is usually followed by actions. Emotion is also viewed by Lazarus (1991) as something that disrupts the mundane nature of daily live, and it gets an individual so far as to react and adapt in a crisis situation.Service receivers' experiences and emotions\nMethodology: The population for this study included South Africans who experienced a service failure (a negative incident during the service encounter) in either the airline and hospital industries in the last year. A descriptive research design was followed, with a self-administered questionnaire being used to collect the data from participants. Furthermore, a convenience sampling method was used and a screening question was included in the questionnaire to ensure the prospective participant qualified to take part in the study. The screening question aided in identifying prospective participants who had experienced a negative incident at either an airport or at a hospital within the last year. The items used to measure emotions were adopted from several studies on emotions (see Table II). A measurement scale was used including a \"not relevant\" option (since it was likely that a respondent would not experience each negative emotion listed during the negative incident) where respondents could rate the extent to which they experienced each emotion. The survey followed the process from identifying the negative incident experienced by the service receiver to identifying the emotional responses of the incident. A total number of 288 useable questionnaires were obtained for the airline and 294 for the hospital industries. To account for missing values, pair wise deletion was utilised and this is reflected in the results where the count varies according to the number of missing values for the variable concerned.\nEmpirical findings: The results of each item used in the questionnaire are shown in Table III, which shows the results for each of the two service settings:1. airport; and2. hospital.Respondents were asked to rate the extent they experienced each emotion (items in Table III) during the negative incident on a seven-point Likert-type scale which were anchored at (7) strongly agree and (1) strongly disagree.The findings presented in Table III indicate on almost all items that there is a significantly lower level of negative emotion in the tourism industry than within hospitals (see columns of independent samples t-test). However, there is on each item a significant correlation between the negative emotions from the negative service encounters in two service settings. This indicates that negative service encounters in hospitals creates stronger negative emotions than at an airport. This is not surprising, considering that most often more is at stake at a hospital.Exploratory factor analysis\nImplications: The aim of this study was to determine the negative emotions service receivers' experience during negative service incidents as well as the pattern of dimensions of negative emotions in both airport and hospital settings. The aim furthermore was to examine similarities and differences of negative emotions between the two service settings. The study provides insights on how service providers may examine and evaluate the negative emotions their service receivers experience during a negative service encounter which can aid in service providers developing better service recovery strategies. Three contributions of the study are described below.First, the empirical findings provide both theoretical and practical implications. The empirical findings indicate that service receivers' negative emotions can be classified into three dimensions across two service settings. Furthermore, additional emotions identified in other and more recent studies may be classified into these three dimensions. For example, negative emotions related to service receiver's \"sadness\" will most likely be related to the \"self\"-dimension. Emotions related to \"irritation\" are likely to be triggered by errors made by the service provider (i.e. \"external\"), while emotions related to \"fear\" are most likely to fit into the \"situational\" dimension. These results imply that the wide range of emotions suggested in recent studies may be categorized into the classification presented by initial studies of emotions in service encounters between service receivers and service providers. Three different dimensions of negative emotions can be expected as a reaction to negative incidents, depending on whether it is the service provider, the service receiver, or the situation that is to blame. Thus having one standardized way of service recovery might not be enough from a managerial point-of-view.Second, strategies to manage service recovery should be aimed at solving the three different dimensions of negative incidents, namely those that are caused either by the service receiver, the service provider, or the situation. For example, when a negative incident is caused by the service provider, the service provider should be prepared to handle angry or aggressive service receivers, focusing on calming down both them and the situation. If the service receiver is to blame, there will still be an emotional reaction. Having unhappy service receivers struggling with regret, sadness or depression after interacting with the service provider is not appropriate for the service encounters in focus, so even when the service receiver is to blame, there should be a strategy to recover from the negative situation. Then there are situations outside the service receiver's or the service providers control; fear, worry, anxiety, and nervousness are to be expected as a reaction. The service provider should therefore have a strategy ready for making sure its service receivers are not worried unnecessarily. Being prepared for these three dimensions of emotion related to self, other and situation should enable the service provider to have more successful service recovery. The service provider should be aware that the results of blaming the service receiver, or a situation outside the service receiver's control, may trigger a range of unexpected and unwanted negative emotions, and thus make the service recovery process more complicated or, at worst, in vain.Third, based on the findings in the current study, one can deduce that even though emotions vary in strength across both service settings, the dimensions of negative emotions do not change. Several emotions have been added since the initial three dimensions were suggested by Westbrook (1987), but the logic of relating negative emotions to the dimensions of \"self\", \"other\" and \"situational\" turns out to be valid and reliable, even with the much wider range of emotions, suggested by more recent work in the field, that have been tested in the current study.The applicability and usefulness of the proposed dimensions of negative emotions in research efforts and business practices may be characterized and summarized as follows:* The three dimensional pattern of negative emotions shows that there are three significantly different sets of negative emotions that can be expected, depending on who or what the cause of the situation in the service encounter is.* When the negative incident is related to the service receiver (i.e. \"self\"), the negative emotions will share the characteristics of having an internal focus. Shame, guilt, regret, embarrassment, sadness, loneliness, unhappiness, and depression are the emotions that most likely will occur when the service receiver blames him/herself for the incident.* The negative emotions related to incidents caused by the service provider (i.e. \"other\") have significantly different characteristics. Irritation, discouragement, frustration, disempowerment and distress (and potentially rage and anger) will most likely be expected when the service receiver blames the service provider for the situation.* When neither the service provider nor the service receiver is to blame (i.e. \"situational\"), the negative emotions that are most likely to occur are fear, worry, anxiety, and nervousness.\nConclusions and suggestions: This paper provides results on a study based on the negative emotions service receivers experience during service encounters at an airport and in a hospital in South Africa. Specifically the three dimensions of negative emotions were examined consisting of the dimensions of \"self\", \"other\" and \"situational\". The findings indicate a satisfactory validity and reliability. The examined service settings may be seen as a foundation for future research in refining and extending the efforts of managing critical incidents in service encounters. Furthermore, the findings may also be relevant to negative emotions in other service settings.While the outcome of the exploratory factor analyses has provided a foundation for negative emotions indicating a satisfactory validity and reliability, there are still some research limitations that need to be acknowledged. For example, it should be noted that the service receivers' negative emotions have only been examined based on a sample consisting of service encounters between service receivers and service providers within airport and hospital settings in South Africa, which may indicate less applicability and generality in other service settings. However, similar findings in other countries (e.g. Svaeri et al., 2011) indicate a similar pattern across cultures, but studies that specifically address emotional constructs across cultures remains lacking. Furthermore, the service receivers' negative emotions were only examined between consumer-firm service encounters, whereas other kinds of service encounters, like business to business, may possess other patterns and findings.Nevertheless, these research limitations provide opportunities for further research in examining the items and dimensions involved in service receivers' negative emotions. One proposal for further research would be to test the service receivers' negative emotions in other contexts that differ from, or alternatively are similar to, the one surveyed in the current study. It would be valuable to examine whether there are any similarities among other service settings of similar characteristics and/or if there are similarities or dissimilarities across other service settings that are decidedly different from the two settings in focus. Further research as to how to identify which negative emotion is being experienced which will aid in determining the correct recovery strategy will be beneficial.Finally, like most survey research on a selected sample, we are confident that the findings are accurate for the sample of those service encounters examined in the current study, but potentially it may well be a valid and reliable pattern for other samples, service encounters, cultures and countries too. As determined from this study even in different service settings (e.g. high hedonic and high involvement), the same results were observed. In summary, we contend that the negative emotions examined contribute to complementing and fortifying previous theory and research in the context of negative emotions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine service receivers' negative emotions in two different service settings, namely at an airport and in a hospital.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A descriptive, convenience sampling survey method was used to collect data in South Africa consisting of a sample of 294 respondents at an airport and 288 respondents in a hospital. Data analysis included an exploratory factor analysis, and the results reported in this paper are based on the critical incident technique.\nFindings: - The findings indicate both similarities and differences in service receivers' negative emotions between the two service settings. Furthermore, the results were found to be valid and reliable.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The results obtained pertaining to the negative emotions that service receivers experience in two service settings in South Africa may provide the foundation for further research and replication in other countries. Furthermore, the results can aid in refining and extending service providers' efforts of managing critical incidents in different service settings in airline and hospital service settings.\nPractical implications: - Three main aspects of negative incidences in service encounters should be considered in strategies to manage critical incidents, namely those that are caused by: the service receiver; the service provider; or the service encounter context.\nOriginality/value: - This study complements and reinforces existing theory pertaining to the negative emotions service receivers' experience in negative service encounters.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Food plate waste: factors influencing insinuated intention in a university food service setting
|
[
"Gender",
"Intention",
"Behaviour",
"Waste",
"Plate",
"Portion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the UK, one-third of consumer expenditure is in the food service sector (National Archives, 2007). On average, one in six meals is eaten outside the home (British Nutrition Foundation, 2016) with consumption increasing (Public Health England, 2017). In UK food service, the cost of food waste is reported as PS3bn per annum (GOV, 2017), which is unnecessary for society, the environment and the economy (Bond et al., 2013). Multiple definitions of food waste exist (see Buzby et al., 2014; FAO, 2016; Stenmarck et al., 2016; FSA, 2017; Clark and Manning, 2018, and others). Food waste can be differentiated between edible food which could be eaten in the future (avoidable), leftovers or discarded food perhaps on plates, e.g. potato skins, i.e. possible avoidable or in cooking utensils and food that is inedible (unavoidable), such as sour milk, banana skins (Wenlock et al., 1980; Parfitt et al., 2010; Quested et al., 2011; Kranert et al., 2012). Over-nutrition and diverting food away from human consumption to animal feed is also seen by some as a source of wasted food (Parfitt et al., 2010). Food waste can also be described as recoverable for human consumption or non-recoverable (Kantor et al., 1997). In this study, food waste is determined as the unconsumed edible item that is safe and nutritious, and is rejected by customers either as plate waste or via other activities and interactions during food service.\n2. Situational factors influencing food waste behaviour: Situational factors include communication within the food service environment and choice architecture and choice design such as plate size (Brian and Koert, 2013) or portion size. Communication including the welcome to the food area, and any repeated messaging and logos focusing on food waste may influence individuals (Ferreira et al., 2013; Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2015). Similarly, in an educational setting, peers, teachers and canteen staff may influence unfavourable food intake or alternatively sometimes encourage behaviour that contributes to less food waste (Heikkila et al., 2016; Kuo and Shih, 2016). Although participants who have a bigger plate eat 45 per cent more, they also have 135 per cent more food leftovers than those that have smaller plate (Wansink and Ittersum, 2013). Similarly, offering a large plate size may influence perceived behavioural control regarding eating all food on a plate (Berkowitz et al., 2016). Therefore, varied portion sizes and plate sizes, palatable food and providing food waste related information in the canteen serving area may reduce consumer-related food waste (Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2016; Lorenz et al., 2017).\n3. Individual factors influencing food waste behaviour: Individual factors such as palatability (Eertmans et al., 2001; Gase et al., 2014; Betz et al., 2015), acceptability, knowledge and awareness (Principato et al., 2015; Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2018), price or value, gender and age are now considered.\n4. Methodology: This study is grounded in the literature and seeks to consider the themes that arise in the context of a food service setting. The unit of analysis is therefore \"the student\", although the rationale for the research recognises that the student does not exist in isolation, but is also influenced by the environment in which they purchase a plated meal in terms of both the physical facilities, and also the other individuals with whom a person may consume food. A quantitative approach was employed using an online survey (Bristol Online Survey), distributed by e-mail and by Facebook to the student group pages, which, although it is a rigid and formal approach (Saunders et al., 2012), enables the examination of relationships between variables using both descriptive and inferential statistics (survey available on request). Based on the consideration of the total number of staff (n=650) and students (n=4,800) at the university of study to achieve a 90% confidence level with a 5 per cent margin of error, the ideal sample size is 258. Convenience sampling was used (between February and March 2018) and the sample (n=260) was split into four age groups (18-26, 27-35, 36-45 and above 46) as staff were also considered. A pilot study (n=26) found clarity of response and minimum changes were required to grammar within the questionnaire. The design and analysis of each question was based on the review of secondary literature (Lusk and Briggeman, 2009; Ferreira et al., 2013; Cohen et al., 2016; Kuo and Shih, 2016; Silvennoinen et al., 2015; British Nutrition Foundation, 2016; Heikkila et al., 2016; Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2017; Plazzotta et al., 2017; Public Health England, 2017; Zepeda and Balaine, 2017).\n5. Results and analysis: The results section is structured using four themes: demographic description, eating habits, knowledge of food waste and insinuated intention to waste food.\n6. Discussion: The secondary research reviewed in this paper identified a number of causes and factors that influence food waste in a food service and in some instances within an educational setting. These factors are considered here in light of the empirical data analysis and synthesised into a conceptual map (Figure 2). The causes of food waste (in blue), the influencing factors on food waste (green) and the solutions (red) circles combine within the map.\n7. Conclusion: The aim of this research was to consider the factors that influence plate waste in a university food service setting and the insinuated intention to waste food among staff and students. The study demonstrated that the insinuated intention to waste food is influenced by multiple factors including gender, different categories of food, plate size, portion size and palatability. The data set meant that the factors of age and knowledge awareness could not be assessed in detail, but this is worthy of further study. Two recommendations to reduce food waste in the university food service setting include providing a variation in plate size and pricing strategy by portion rather than a whole meal, and communicating with staff and students in the food service setting.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the factors that influence food plate waste in a UK university food service setting and the insinuated intention to waste food among staff and students.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study conducted empirical research using an online questionnaire (n=260) at the university. The data were analysed descriptively and inferentially by IBM SPSS Statistics version 22.\nFindings: Multiple factors influence the level of food plate waste including gender, different categories of food, plate size, portion size and palatability. Two recommendations to reduce plate food waste in the university food service setting include providing a variation in plate size and pricing strategy by portion rather than a whole meal, and communicating with staff and students in the food service setting.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research contributes, along with previous studies, by focussing here on participants' food waste intention in food service settings and evidencing the factors of influence.\nOriginality/value: The research contributes to understanding on participants' food waste intention in food service settings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An innovative form of credit enhancement for securitized reverse mortgages: Finding paths of cross-over points isolated from changes in interest and inflation rates
|
[
"Reverse mortgages",
"Cross‐over",
"Securitization",
"Longevity risk",
"Credit enhancement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Reverse mortgages are loans made to owners of properties in which they live. The loan is backed by the property and requires no payment from the borrower until he/she either moves out of the property or passes away. The amount of the loan is never equal to 100 percent of the property value. It is always equal to a percentage (p) of it. During the life of the loan, the borrowers make no principal or interest payments to the lender, so the periodic unpaid interest is added to the outstanding balance of the loan, which increases over time. This is what we call \"negative amortization\". There is no such thing as credit default risk because the borrower cannot default on the loans as no payments are required. It is only when the borrower leaves the property that the lender sells the property, to recover the outstanding balance at that point in time. The main risk to the lender is that the value of the property is less than the outstanding balance at that time. At time zero, when the reverse mortgage is issued, its value is always below that of the property, however over time, because of negative amortization, it increases, and can surpass the value of the property being mortgaged.In 2012 the FHA estimated that they would endorse $20 billion of HECM loans. Integrated Financial Engineering, Inc. in its 2011 review of the HECM program for the FHA forecasted that insurance in force supporting HECMs calculated as the sum of the maximum claim amounts (MCAs) will be $190.024 billion by 2019. (An Actuarial Analysis of FHA Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Loans in the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund: Fiscal Year 2011 Prepared for US Department of Housing and Urban Development by Integrated Financial Engineering, Inc., October 12, 2011.)It is the FHA that bears the credit risk and longevity risk embedded in the HECM and it is the responsibility of the FHA to insulate the US taxpayer from this risk while still promoting a vibrant market in reverse mortgages. The FHA manages the Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) Fund which funds the insurance liabilities associated with FHA mortgage programs including HECM. The MMI stands between the US taxpayer and the current and future stock of HECM.The guarantee of the FHA covers both sides of the HECM transaction. The guarantee protects the borrower who has a commitment from a lender. The FHA guarantees that these funds will be available when called for. On the other side the FHA protects lenders by attaching a put option to the HECM that gives the lender/investor the right to exchange the reverse mortgage for cash after the balance on the loan either reaches 98 percent of the MCA or to recover the difference between the MCA and the value of the home when the loan terminates. The MCA is the lesser of the appraised value of the home or the FHA lending limit. The lending limit is currently $625,000.For example, let us assume that the MCA is $100 and the home value is $50 when the loan terminates and the appraised value of the home is 80 at origination. For simplicity let's assume that the loan amount at origination is $80. The mortgagor sells the mortgaged property at 50 and the loan amount at that time is 90, the mortgagor owes $40 more than the value of the home. The lender would be made whole by the FHA. 98 percent of the MCA is $98 in our example. This means that if the mortgagor lives in the mortgaged property to the time where the loan amount reaches $98 the lender could put the loan to the FHA which would fund the purchase out of the MMI.The FHA charges the borrower fees for this insurance at origination and limits the amount of the loan that is based on the age of the borrower, the interest rate, the value of the home and the insurance premium. FHA currently has two options in terms of insurance premiums: the HECM Standard and the HECM Saver. The Saver program has lower insurance fees but also reduces the principal limit. In both cases there are both initial insurance premiums and annual premiums. It is clearly the incentive of the FHA to keep structure the HECM so that the put option stays out of the money and to have rigorous screening in place that prevents marginal lenders from originating HECMs.Hui writes in 2009 that the HECM reverse mortgages constitutes over 90 percent of the reverse mortgage market. This fact does not seem to have changed since. The HECM is a market that is supported by the Federal Government. The FHA bears unique risk, the longevity risk that is embedded in reverse mortgages.Investors in HECM are also exposed to the uncertainty around the longevity/tenure of the borrower. The following excerpt from SEC filing made by WSFS Financial Corp makes this clear:Investment in Reverse Mortgages We account for our investment in reverse mortgages in accordance with the instructions provided by the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (\"SEC\") entitled \"Accounting for Pools of Uninsured Residential Reverse Mortgage Contracts,\" which requires grouping the individual reverse mortgages into \"pools\" and recognizing income based on the estimated effective yield of the pool. In computing the effective yield, we must project the cash inflows and outflows of the pool including actuarial projections of the life expectancy of the individual contract holder and changes in the collateral value of the residence (March 15, 2012, XML of 10-K for WSFS Financial Corp at: www.sec.gov).An HECM (a reverse mortgage guaranteed by the FHA) is a complex financial instrument. Our paper is general enough to cover various types of reverse mortgages but since the current US market for reverse mortgages is the HECM market, we refer to this instrument. There is also a growing market for Ginne Mae mortgage-backed securities (MBS) backed by HECMs. The HECM is issued by senior citizens (home owners who are 62 1/2 or older) to liquidate equity that is embedded in their home. Borrowers have the option of taking funds at origination, a line of credit, an annuity or a combination of the three. It is a complex choice. The terms of the loan change the amount that can be borrowed. In return for a loan the homeowner mortgages his property to the lender who may decide to retain the reverse mortgage or sell it. The loan is due when the borrower sells the property or the property is sold by the owner's estate or the property is no longer the primary residence of the borrower. Reverse mortgages are complex because when the home is appraised and the loan is extended the time when the loan will be repaid is unknown, the future value of the home is unknown and the future course of interest rates over the loan's uncertain term are unknown. These risks lower the value of the loans.Risks embedded reverse mortgages are borne by lenders and insurers which in the case of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage is the FHA. By building in margins that cover anticipated uncertainty in longevity, interest rates and home prices the lenders are more certain to receive an adequate yield and the MMI will not require a subsidy to fund the HECM risks.The value of the reverse mortgages can also increase or decrease as the interest rate changes accordingly, because the periodic unpaid interest becomes principal and is added to the outstanding balance. The value of the property increases as inflation rate increases. Before the value of the reverse mortgage increases above the value of the property, there is a cross-over point, at which both values, that of the reverse mortgage and that of the property value, are equal.In this paper we develop a model that calculates paths of cross-over points that remain constant for any pairs of interest and inflation rates. The structurors of reverse MBS will be able to use these computed paths of cross-over points as a tool that provides credit enhancement to investors in such MBS. Computing these paths allows to construct pools of reverse mortgages such that for any pairs of interest rate and of inflation rate, specific paths are avoided.\n2 Model: 2.1 The setup\n3 Conclusion: When pooling together a group of reverse mortgages, for the purpose of securitization, it is possible to meet some of the investors' requests. More specifically, knowing that the value of a reverse mortgage increases above that of the property value once it goes beyond the cross-over point t*, it is possible to construct a pool of reverse mortgages, such that for any pairs of inflation rate and interest rate (x, r), these reverse mortgages move along lines of constant cross-over points t*.These known lines give the advantage to a structuror of reverse MBS to reverse-engineer by first determining the possible lines of t* he wants those mortgages to move along, as the pairs of x and r (inflation and interest rates) change after origination.More specifically, this approach can be a new tool of credit enhancement, which provides the guarantee that investors will never face a situation of reverse mortgages exceeding the property value, due to changes in interest rates or inflation rates.Overcharging for credit financed with a reverse mortgage will keep borrowers in need of funds out of the market and undercharging will burden the public through the MMI with unfunded risks. The FHA estimated that at the end of fiscal year 2012 there would be $54.8 billion of insurance in force supporting the HECM portfolio.The structuror can use different t* paths determined by the original proportion of loans relatively to initial property values (p). The uncertainty of longevity risk, which is the risk that a borrower lives too long, and therefore that the value of the reverse mortgage exceeds that of the property, can be isolated from the interest rate risk and from the inflation rate risk, once the different paths of t* have been determined for the possible pairs of interest rates and of inflation rates.Future research should focus on the computations of specific paths in which the value of the property is always above that of the reverse mortgages.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - One of the main risks to investors in securitized reverse mortgages is that the value of the reverse mortgage exceeds that of the property. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that determines paths of constant cross-over points across any pairs of interest and inflation rate.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To study the behavior of hyper-surfaces, multivariate calculus was used.\nFindings: - Knowing that the value of a reverse mortgage increases above that of the property value once it goes beyond the cross-over point t*, it is possible to construct a pool of reverse mortgages, such that for any pairs of inflation rate and interest rate (x, r), these reverse mortgages move along lines of constant cross-over points t*.\nOriginality/value: - The paper develops a model that determines paths of constant cross-over points across any pairs of interest and inflation rate, which can be used when structuring pools of reverse mortgage-backed securities, to credit-enhance investors.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Challenges in transdisciplinary technology foresight: cognition and robotics
|
[
"Robotics",
"Cognition",
"Technology led strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nTransdisciplinarity in technology foresight studies: Modern societies have a strategic interest in research and technological development; and in addition governments have a legitimate interest in the overall priorities of public expenditure on research and technological development. The strategy processes relate to the political goal of improving national economic competitiveness through the establishment of long-term planning strategies and robust priority-setting for science and innovation based on an understanding of global technological trends combined with an analysis of economic and societal interests and the evaluation of scientific competences at a national level. However, priority setting alone does not create innovation, and therefore foresight studies need to collect and disseminate information about results and outcomes, and related visions and policies, between actors within the different levels of the innovation system (national, sectoral and regional).Different approaches and traditions have been established for long-range strategic planning in uncertain futures. One tradition is based around corporate strategy, with a focus on the management of emerging technologies and on firms' future strategic directions (e.g. Slaughter, 1998). Another tradition draws on science and technology policy-making at a governmental level and is closely related to traditions of evolutionary economy (e.g. Martin, 1995). More recent foresight definitions reflect the increasing demands on foresight activities leading to research strategies, engagement and innovation. The European Commission (2002) gives the following definition:Foresight can be defined as the application of systematic, participatory, future-intelligence gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building processes to informing present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions. Foresight brings together key agents of change and various sources of knowledge in order to develop strategic visions and anticipatory intelligence.Furthermore, according to Cariola and Rolfo (2004), the concept of foresight in Europe has to a large extent diverged from forecasting and increasingly focuses on managing uncertainties and ambiguities. Human action is interpreted not in its singularity, but rather as the interaction of a number of actors, interests, perspectives, disciplines, needs, and levels of power. Foresight is a holistic approach that at the same time considers the interaction between not only technological, but also social, economic, political and cultural variables.Looking at the development in foresight objectives from a social science perspective, foresight challenges traditional monodisciplinary research communities (or Mode 1-oriented research) in at least two dimensions. First, foresight exercises include future societal and economic needs and possibilities in the priority-setting process, whereas traditional research priority-setting focuses on \"scientific quality\", which is usually measured in terms of novelty in the field, publication rates, citation indexes, and so on. In foresight, the focus is moved from evaluating past historical performance to identifying possibilities for the future. Second, foresight exercises usually include actors other than scientists in the priority-setting discussion. In some cases, only industry representatives are included in the process, but usually foresight involves cross-societal inputs on needs, predictions and possibilities (Dannemand Andersen and Borup, 2006).Cross-disciplinary research: concepts and definitions\nTechnology foresight on cognition and robotics: Background\nMethodology: The overlap and intersection between robotics and cognition is a relatively unexplored research area. Therefore, the foresight study was of a more preliminary nature than other Danish technology foresight studies. The study did not attempt to set agendas for research and innovation in robotics, but focused only on the possibilities at the crossroads where robotics and cognition meet.The process was conducted as a broad dialogue between users and producers of robot technology solutions, as well as researchers and experts in cognitive and robotics research. The goal was to lay down a robust and broadly accepted foundation that could be used to identify promising prospects for innovation associated with the development of robotics. Approximately 100 stakeholders and scientists participated in the process in one way or another. The separate components are discussed below. Their interrelations and sequence are shown in Figure 2.\nDocumentation and knowledge provisions: Reports and sub-analyses\nDevelopment agendas: Ten areas were identified at the outset where cognitive robots could promote innovations relevant in a Danish context: industrial automation; agriculture, horticulture and forestry; entertainment, play and learning; personal service and care; health and hospitals; handling of hazardous substances; offshore and underwater systems; building, installation and construction; military, defence and contingency; and transport.According to the mandate for the technology foresight, a significant deliverable was the formulation of three to five promising development agendas for Denmark. The steering committee adopted the following four criteria for priority setting:1. Megatrends. Understood as general, these are the international trends for social development that will influence promising application- and business-related potentials, e.g. the importance of globalisation.2. General importance of area to society. That is, areas where the use of robots with cognitive capabilities can alleviate critical, societal problems or challenges, e.g. environmental issues.3. User needs in the area. This refers to application areas where robots with advanced cognitive capabilities can lead to improved problem-solving and quality of life for users, e.g. enhanced self-sufficiency for people with physical disabilities.4. Research and business opportunities. In terms of the competitiveness of Danish companies, there are three underlying criteria - new products, new markets, and new production systems. Special consideration is given to areas where Danish companies can, through user-driven innovation, utilise existing technology and already lucrative niche markets.This steering group identified five particularly promising development agendas for Denmark:1. Industrial automation. This included flexible robots and production systems for various types of automation in the manufacturing and food industries; for instance materials finishing, pallet picking, welding, painting, cutting, and item handling.2. Agriculture, horticulture and forestry. This included robots for plant and animal production in conventional and organic agriculture, horticulture, nurseries, tree plantations, and cultivation of crops for energy production or for medicinal purposes.3. Entertainment, play and learning. This covered leisure and entertainment activities for both children and adults, including cognitive robots in relation to quality of life, leisure activities, home entertainment, play and education.4. Personal service and care. This included care for the elderly, assistance for people with physical disabilities, personal care and services, home security, and domestic cleaning.5. Health and hospitals. This included diagnostics, surgery, rehabilitation, laboratory analyses, patient care, and internal transport at hospitals.\nNeeds-driven innovation for future cognitive robotics: One way to realise the aspirations of the development agendas is to start with the ideas and suggestions that attract the most interest from present and future end-users of robots. Therefore, the study included a broad dialogue with users and experts with specialist knowledge within the five areas in question. The following list gives some impression of the many and varied requirements that users have for future cognitive robots. It also indicates that we are dealing with a comprehensive research and development challenge that requires a transdisciplinary approach:* easy and simple to operate;* able to interact intelligently with their surroundings;* very flexible and easy to adjust;* portable;* safe (without protective screens) for people to use;* reliable, precise and robust;* an integral part of other systems, e.g. product quality, communication;* operable within a small working area (only a few cm3);* able to monitor and interact with animals;* able to function in corrosive environments and unstructured surroundings;* of high aesthetic quality;* able to perform functions selected by the user;* mobile and capable of positioning themselves;* able to reach out and operate in all directions;* able to perform surgery over a telemedical connection;* able to perform tasks that are dangerous;* able to perform tasks in inaccessible or dangerous locations;* able to function in cordless and flexible ways with other types of technology;* able to recognise and make adjustments according to each individual user (product personalisation);* able to provide the user with an intelligent and meaningful challenge;* self-regulating and able to plan the next step in a process; and* able to improve functions within the body (implanted or injected).The list contains only generic statements of user needs and wishes. In practice, user requirements always have a specific content in relation to the particular context within which the robot will be used. For instance, the generic requirement that robots should be able to interact intelligently with their surroundings can have an entirely different content depending on whether we are thinking about an industrial robot interacting with the operator and other devices in a factory, or a service robot performing a specific task at a hospital in interaction with patients and staff. Moreover, the list contains user requirements which are mutually exclusive. That robots should be able to perform functions selected by the user is therefore an important requirement in terms of robots that assist people with physical disabilities, but the requirement for robots used for play may be the exact opposite, because the desire here is for the robot to challenge the user.\nResearch themes and innovation initiatives: The list above is not directly translatable into future research themes and initiatives. Therefore, the foresight study, in dialogue with users and experts, has pinpointed two general aspects that can help establish a framework for future transdisciplinary research and innovation:1. Degree of unpredictability. How predictable/structured or unpredictable/un-structured are the situation and surroundings within which the robot operates? For industrial robots, for instance, the robot's surroundings are probably relatively predictable and well-defined. For a weeding robot, on the other hand, which moves about in a field, the surroundings are not as well defined. And for a robot that is to perform a care function in relation to people, the situation is characterised by a high degree of unpredictability.2. Degree of cognitive complexity. How advanced do the cognitive capabilities need to be in relation to the situation within which the robot operates? For instance, the industrial robot's working areas and tasks will often be pre-programmed reaction patterns with well-defined cognitive requirements. In contrast, a service robot interacting closely with humans must be able to interpret and react to complex human actions and reactions.The steering committee found it useful to distinguish between short-, medium- and long-term initiatives, as well as distinguishing between initiatives that focus on innovation, application orientation, and basic research (see Table I).\nResearch, education and innovation policy recommendations: A transdisciplinary perspective balancing the interaction between needs- and research-driven innovation was recommended by the steering committee. Instead of the highly ambitious \"man-on-the-moon\" focus seen in many international robot technology initiatives, the Danish initiative should instead focus on user needs and practical experiences and on the need of research to be able to regularly define its research agendas and redefine its critical problems.From this perspective, the following actions are specifically recommended:* Improving opportunities for transdisciplinary research. The Board of the Danish Councils for Independent Research and its scientific research councils are recommended to improve the prospects of transdisciplinary-research-initiated (bottom-up) projects to obtain funding.* Strengthening transdisciplinary strategic research. The setting up of future ICT-related strategic research programmes for transdisciplinary projects on cognition and robotics is recommended. The Danish Council for Strategic Research should also incorporate cognitive robotics into its innovation-accelerating research platforms.* Incorporating cognitive robotics as an element in ICT strategy. The Danish High Technology Foundation is recommended to include cognitive robotics as an element in its ICT strategy.* Improving opportunities for networking and innovation. The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation is encouraged to consider how to support networking and innovation within the development and utilisation of cognitive robotics.* Exploiting funding options, forming networks and formulating specific transdisciplinary research projects. Organisations within the five application areas need to consider how to support networks among users, researchers and manufacturers of robot technology solutions.* Debating possibilities within cognitive robotics and considering educational initiatives. The Danish Board of Technology is recommended to initiate a project on the ethical and societal aspects of cognitive robotics, and the managing bodies and staff of universities and research institutions should discuss the needs and possibilities in terms of research and educational initiatives within and across cognitive and robotics research.* Establishing a separate research and development programme in the longer term. Earmarked funding is recommended, as an extension of the Danish Government's globalisation strategy, for a separate research and development programme in robot technology and cognition.\nLessons learned: Transdisciplinary approach\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report on experiences and reflect on challenges in transdisciplinary technology foresight as exemplified by cognition and robotics research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study was conducted as a broad transdisciplinary process involving users and producers of robot technology solutions as well as scientists and other experts in cognition and robotics. Transdisciplinarity is understood as the transcendence of disciplinary modes together with the involvement and participation of non-scientists in problem formulation and knowledge provision. The study focuses on the possibilities for innovation at the crossroads where robotics and cognition meet.\nFindings: - The paper reflects on the following methodological issues: medium- and long-term research and innovation possibilities and barriers in a transdisciplinary context; the classification and framing of transdisciplinary fields; the facilitation of technology foresight processes; and the trustworthiness of the foresight process and its recommendations.\nPractical implications: - The results have been disseminated among relevant advisory and grant-awarding bodies within research and innovation, relevant knowledge institutions and universities, and companies on both the development and user sides of the technologies.\nOriginality/value: - The paper contributes to European experiences on national-level foresight exercises. The conceptual findings of the case study are of value to science and innovation policy makers, foresight practitioners and scholars within the field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The effect of response scale type on cross-cultural construct measures : An empirical example using Hall's concept of context
|
[
"Cross‐cultural studies",
"Psychometric tests",
"Communication",
"International marketing",
"Scale measurement",
"Context",
"Response styles",
"Edward T. Hall"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Despite the plethora of research and methodological advances in international business, several challenges in cross-cultural scale development seem recurrent. Standard psychometric issues such as reliability, unidimensionality, and measurement invariance are complicated by language and culture in multinational studies (Hult et al., 2008; He et al., 2008). Validity concerns due to the choice of etic vs emic perspectives is pervasive throughout the literature (cf. Watkins, 2010). Cultural differences in the construction of meaning and the assumption of universal concepts across cultures (an etic perspective) often cloud the interpretation of results. Also, there is significant potential for response style patterns to undermine measurement validity (Dolnicar and Grun, 2007; Baumgartner and Steenkamp, 2001; DeJong et al., 2008).\nLiterature: Douglas and Craig (2006) provide an overview of the salient shortcomings in multicultural research, focussing especially on the conceptual underpinnings instead of the instruments used. They note three critical areas in need of improvement - conceptual framework, unit of analysis, and construct - then provide detailed suggestions on how to resolve each of the issues at hand. Hult et al. (2008) followed up in this vein by discussing both the necessity and prevalence of cross-cultural measurement issues dealing with construct, measurement, and data collection equivalence.Psychometric issues in cross-cultural scale development\nComparison of response scale types: In order to determine the effect of response scale type on cross-cultural measures, this study will compare three types of response scales - Likert, semantic differential, and a new one we term \"conceptual metaphoric\" (CM). The first two are by far the most adopted in the literature (cf. Bearden et al., 2010; Bruner et al., 2007). Hall's concept of context was chosen as a basis of comparison. This construct has several advantages for this research, particularly because the construct itself is intertwined with and inseparable from language and communication, hence prone to the methodological problems at the heart of this research. Yet, this construct is perhaps one of the more fully developed constructs at a conceptual level, appearing in nearly every textbook and having a host of research related to the concept and its effects. In addition, previous attempts at measuring this construct have been largely unsuccessful (Kittler et al., 2011).Following Churchill's scale development paradigm, the scope and domain of Hall's context construct is defined within the current literature. Then we develop a Likert-type scale using standard scale development procedures (Churchill, 1979; Douglas and Craig, 2006). From this base, a semantic differential scale type was developed. Finally, we independently developed the CM scale. The response scales were then compared on the basis of psychometric properties (reliability, unidimensionality, and invariance); potential for response style effects; and c) basic validity (face and nomological).\nContext definition: The quintessential discussion of communication context in international business research was offered by Hall (1976), who introduced the concept and defined it by example. Hall (1976, p. 35) describes high-context cultures as those in which \"simple messages with deep meaning flow freely.\" High-context communication, therefore, is when there is relatively little information contained in the explicit part of the message. At these higher context levels, communication is more of an art form, with indirect messages sent that require a great deal of cultural programming to decipher. The environmental context in which the message is delivered or the person's demeanor determines the true meaning of the message. For example, Chinese words require a knowledge of the proper radical and tone before they can be written. Furthermore, because the characters themselves are an art form, the language is decidedly high context because \"good art is always high context\" (Hall, 1976, p. 80).Context is further refined by Heylighen and Dewaele (2002) as \"everything available for awareness which is not part of the expression itself, but which is necessary to correctly interpret the expression\" (p. 297). They also specify the continuum of low- to high-context communication using formality/contextuality. Formal (low context) communication avoids ambiguity and includes as much information as possible in the message by explicitly stating all that needs to be known to correctly interpret the message. Low-context messages are readily discernible from the explicit portion of the message and do not demand training in cultural nuance to understand what is being communicated (i.e. are more literal). Contextual (high context) discourse has less need for precision and occurs where the expression would be ambiguous without the additional information provided by context or cultural training. For example, an e-mail written in German could be decoded by anyone reading German, anywhere in the world with only minimal loss of information. However, the same is not true for an e-mail sent in Japanese or Chinese, which would require more information to be properly interpreted.Context is often treated as either dichotomous (e.g. east vs west) or as a vague ordinal continuum in which countries are ranked or positioned on the basis of face validity. Such approaches risk a self-referent bias that does not reflect impartial evaluation in the rankings (Cardon, 2008; Dolnicar and Grun, 2007). A review of global/international marketing textbooks reveals that there is broad agreement related to the rankings of certain countries and characteristics of high- vs low-context communication. Most of these can be traced either to Hall's (1976) original rankings or to Copeland and Griggs (1986) and Hall and Hall (1987, 1990). Kittler et al. (2011) have an excellent review article showing inconsistencies in the relative ranking of countries across the context continuum and in a dichotomy. However, none of these studies actually measure context empirically - they judge it based on their own cultural norms compared to other cultures they studied. Though satisfying on some level and easy to apply, such methods satisfy neither the demand for rigor in academic research nor the need for precision in applied marketing research (He et al., 2008; Hult et al., 2008; Watkins, 2010). We suggest that this may be parallel to the inability of researchers to adequately measure this construct in previous attempts.Attempts in the past to define and measure context more precisely all have encountered difficulties or conflicting outcomes when compared to Hall's original conceptualization. One of the most rigorous of these efforts was by Gudykunst et al. (1996), who examined dimensions of high and low context. They derived the dimensions (i.e. precise vs ambiguous information, revealing true intentions vs maintaining harmony, dramatic vs reserved, precise vs understatement, and person-based vs group-based information) empirically and inductively rather than theoretically and deductively from four countries. Kim et al. (1998) examined five categories of context in their three-country study: social orientation, responsibility, confrontation, communication, and dealing with new situations. However, only two of these items focussed on communication at all. Moreover, the results from their survey ran counter to expectations based on Hall's conceptualization.Ohashi (2000) pursued the argument that context is a continuum and therefore she suggested that it should be studied using countries that represented extremes from Hall's perspective. In her study of the USA and Japan, she used an instrument that determines the degree to which a listener would infer meaning not directly stated. She concludes that Japan is high context and the USA is low context, but her results show that both were near the midpoint of her seven-point psychometric scales. Richardson and Smith (2007) find a similar outcome, in that both the USA and Japan were near the midpoint of the psychometric scale rather than showing any degree of polarization. In part, these results may arise from broadening the scope well beyond Hall's original construct - often post hoc, inductively to justify several resultant empirical dimensions from the attempted measure.We adopt context as a unidimensional continuum, in keeping with Hall's (1976) original conceptualization. Thus, context is succinctly defined as the culture-bound breadth of interpretation and range of meanings that can be attributed to written or oral communication. At one end of the continuum would be Swiss/Germanic, wherein the message is explicit and literal, with little or no room for alternative meaning or misinterpretation. At the other end would be Japanese and Chinese, where the text of the communication is interpreted based on subtle cues from the environment, relative roles of sender and receiver, nuance in word choice and potentially a host of other factors. While not independent of the text, the breadth and scope of the interpretation of the meaning of the message is not limited to the literal text itself, thus the text itself is not independently explicit.The linguistics literature provides more support for the continuum of low- to high-context language and hints on how to form a continuum. Language is the most reasonable factor to test, as it is an integral reflection of culture. The degree of explicitness in communication can be seen directly in the structure of a language. For instance, the degree of specificity of pronouns and the verb forms succeeding them reflects the explicitness of a language. German ties the pronoun precisely to the verb and its tense, suggesting German is more explicit and repetitive and therefore lower context. Heylighen and Dewaele (2002) note that pronouns can be inferred from verb inflection in Spanish and are therefore absent, but German retains the pronoun.Tagalog (Filipino) does not distinguish between \"he\" and \"she\" in speech, hence moving toward more high context. Chinese goes further by often dispensing with gender, number, and person, as well as plurals and most verb conjugation. The evolution of classifiers in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese is further evidence of high-context communication. These suffixes on modifiers place nouns in categories and must be used properly if one is to be understood (Schmitt and Zhang, 1998). Speakers of languages with classifiers may not necessarily even understand each other - for example, Chinese classifiers are not identical to Japanese in terms of scope or items covered by a particular classifier, thus indicative of high-context languages.Initial scale development\nResponse scale comparison and validation: Data collection/sample\nNomological validity: In this section, we examine the face validity of the measures when compared with previous propositions (cf. Cardon, 2008; Hall and Hall, 1990; Koeszegi et al., 2004) on which countries are high and low context. In addition, we examine theoretical/proposed relationships between related constructs to establish and compare convergent validity.Face validity\nConclusion: Overall, the new CM scale performed somewhat better than AL and SDA on all criteria. The reliability of the CM measure was above acceptable in all countries. Although there were slightly more CFA error correlations in the CM- than SDA-type scale, these are largely correctable issues in implantation by removing an item or using the more recent methodological advances developed by DeJong et al. (2008). The SDA scale was metrically invariant across six countries, which is unusual in the marketing literature. The CM scale also shows a lower tendency to be influenced by stylistic response patterns. Finally, and most important, the CM scale shows the best nomological validity with related measures of culture (i.e. collectivism and UA).Although the importance of context studies is widely accepted, the means to conduct an empirical study of the construct was heretofore limited. With the introduction of the context scale developed herein, intercultural communications researchers will be able to determine discreet differences among countries and better explain their results. Links between context and related topics, such as UA, collectivism, and power distance (Hofstede, 2001), can be scrutinized as well.An important contribution beyond the context scale itself is the introduction of the idea of using a CM with nouns instead of the traditional adjectives. This brings with it the advantages of fewer translation errors and more precise conceptual presentation across a variety of countries. Such an approach may pave the way for revisiting previous studies with new instruments that can reconcile conflicting results across various studies. The results here indicate that the new response scale type is superior for measuring Hall's (1976) concept of context and might be advantageous for measuring other cultural communication phenomena.Future research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Methodological advances in cross-cultural scale development have addressed many concerns regarding the development of valid scales. However, several issues remain to be examined - including the potential problems of using language to measure communication phenomena using self-reported studies and addressing the effect of response scale type on the validity of resultant measures. The purpose of this paper is to expand the cross-cultural measurement paradigm by comprehensively examining these issues and suggesting a new response scale type that may potentially produce more valid cross-cultural measures of communication-based phenomena.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Measures of Hall's concept of context were developed using three types of response scales - Likert, semantic differential, and conceptual metaphoric. The last response scale type is developed within this research. Samples were gathered in 23 countries using existing scale development procedures. The response scales were compared for psychometric properties and validity based on reliability, metric invariance, response styles, and face validity.\nFindings: - Overall all three response scale types adequately measured the construct of context. The newly developed conceptual metaphoric scale performed marginally better on most comparative metrics.\nPractical implications: - International marketers measure a host of variables related to culture for many purposes. The new response scale type may provide slightly better measures to more accurately reflect communication based constructs - many of which are central to marketing.\nOriginality/value: - The findings indicate that the new conceptual metaphoric response scale type may overcome some existing biases inherent in standard response scale types. In addition, this research provides the first viable and parsimonious measure of Hall's concept of context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Achieving automotive suppliers' mass customization through modularity: Vital antecedents and the valuable role and responsibility of information sharing
|
[
"Supplier relations",
"Supply chain management",
"Mass customization"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Under intense global competition, fast technological change and demanding customer requirements, automotive suppliers face an increasingly complex and uncertain market environment. Successfully dealing with this environmental complexity and uncertainty calls for a customer-oriented strategy where all supply chain participants actively achieve flexibility and responsiveness (Zhang et al., 2006a). Flexibility is the ability of a firm to adapt to internal or external changes (Zhang et al., 2006b). Responsiveness refers to how fast a firm positively reacts to its customer demands (Holweg, 2005). A supplier's mass customization (MC) capabilities have been suggested to help achieve flexibility and responsiveness to meet manufacturers' requirements derived from end customers' changing demands (Liu et al., 2010).\n2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses: A supply chain can be viewed as a competitive weapon since it comprehensively integrates information flow and material flow to achieve global optimization and improve long-term performance (Feldmann and Muller, 2003). Their dynamic and inherent complexities have attracted much attention, with supply chain practices often defined based on research purposes, experiences and perspectives (Min and Mentzer, 2004).\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 The sample\n4. Results: A two step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was followed to assess the measurement models and the hypothesized research model. Adequate reliability, unidimensionality and discriminant validity for measurement models help build the confidence in the subsequent interpretations of path coefficients from the theoretical model through SEM (Segars, 1997). Otherwise, the estimates of path coefficients in the research model can be confounding (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988).\n5. Implications and conclusions: This study develops, tests and presents a comprehensive model, based on resource dependency and 3D concurrent engineering theories, that captures the drivers and supply chain practices that achieve MC capabilities for suppliers. Operational alignment and postponement orientation are shown to drive product design, process design and the supply base as a system using modularity to achieve MC, and the significant role and responsibility of information sharing is revealed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Previous literature tends to combine postponement and modularity or view them as parallel factors to achieve mass customization (MC) while ignoring the sequence of a firm to design and implement operations and supply chain strategy. Based on a customer-oriented strategy and theories of organizational information processing theory, three-dimensional (3D) concurrent engineering and resource dependency, the purpose of this paper is to propose a sequential model reflecting the sequence of practices as well as an overview picture for a firm to achieve MC.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The model links three company antecedents - postponement orientation, operational alignment and information sharing, to three company supply chain practices - product and process modularity and supplier segmentation. These practices, in turn, lead to the company's MC capabilities. The proposed model is tested with a data set collected from automotive suppliers in China and in the USA. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the data and test the model.\nFindings: The results suggest that, for suppliers to achieve MC, postponement orientation and operational alignment are vital antecedents. The results also reveal the important responsibility and role of information sharing practices in coordinating suppliers' modularity practices.\nOriginality/value: This research provides three findings that are of value to both academicians and practitioners of supply chain management. First, this study originally proposed and empirically tested that a postponement orientation is an antecedent of product and process modularity and supplier segmentation to achieve MC in the automotive sector, contrary to the traditional view of parallel relationships for both. Second, it developed and verified measures of operational alignment and supplier segmentation for future research use. Third, the vital role of information sharing to coordinate internal and external supply chain practices to achieve MC is empirically supported.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An organizational engagement model as a management tool for high school principals
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Job design",
"Engagement",
"Career development",
"Organizational theory",
"Management roles",
"Educational planning and administration",
"Principals role",
"Organizational needs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Employee engagement has received a lot of attention in recent years (e.g. Belogolovsky and Somech, 2010; Harter et al., 2002; Kahn, 1990; Xanthopoulou et al., 2009), partially because \"engaged employees are more likely to stay with the organization, perform 20% better than their colleagues and act as advocates of the business\" (Robertson-Smith and Markwick, 2009, p. v). In general, engaged employees are beneficial for the business, and in particular, engaged teachers are essential for the school's success since schools are low-budget organizations that aspire to accomplish their targets with limited resources. Therefore we asked: how can an organization foster the professional development of its engaged employees, and in our case specifically, how can a school promote teacher engagement?\nLiterature review: Engagement\nResearch structure: The research objective was to examine the HRT role design process from the HRTs' perspective, through an organization lens. The following research question was formulated accordingly: what organizational school elements and what personal elements are expressed in the design process of the HRT role and how are they manifested in the HRT role design?\nThe OEM: In this section we first present the OEM and then we explain its components and characteristics. Finally, we discuss each of its levels and illustrate how it can help high school principals cope with challenges they face.\nDiscussion: This paper presents the OEM, according to which one aspect of the design process of the HRT role is expressed by a hierarchical organizational engagement ladder that is nourished both by the organizational culture and by the HRTs' organizational needs. In this design process, the school principal plays a special role in the development and maintenance of the organizational culture and in the fulfillment of the HRTs' organizational needs. As can be seen, the OEM highlights the HRT role form an organizational perspective, rather than from the class perspective, despite the fact that a significant portion of the HRT role is expressed on the class level. Nevertheless, in most cases, roles do have this dual nature: on the one hand, employees are professionals who are expected to accomplish their specific skills and expertise; on the other hand, all employees must also deal with being organization personas (Gavish and Fridman, 2004). Based on this working assumption, we highlight the organizational facet of the HRT role; this discussion, we suggest, highlights the fact that the application of the OEM to other roles in (educational) organizations should be explored.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an organizational engagement model that highlights the design process of the homeroom teacher (HRT) role in Israeli high schools.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The model was constructed as a grounded theory during a qualitative research work conducted during 2007-2011.\nFindings: The model is based on Maslow's and Schein's frameworks of personal needs and organizational culture, respectively, as well as on the principal's role.\nOriginality/value: The authors propose that the model contributes to the literature on organizational behavior and leadership in general and to the study of educational organizations in particular, in three ways: first, it stresses the principal's role in the design process of leadership roles; second, it deepens the understanding of the concept of engagement by examining it through a qualitative lens; and third, it suggests a hierarchical organizational engagement ladder for the HRT role.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Monological practices, authoritative discourses and the missing "C" in digital classroom communities
|
[
"Digital literacy",
"TPACK",
"Authoritative discourse",
"C-TPACK",
"Critical digital literacy",
"Dominant discourse"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The extension of classroom communities to include the social and cultural contexts of students' lives is foundational to the concept of a democratic education (Dewey, 1938; Freire, 1970). As digital environments are increasingly integral to the ways students communicate and represent themselves outside of the classroom (Leinhart, 2015), educators must consider the valuable role that digital spaces can play in the development of classroom communities. Importantly, to enact this democratic extension of classroom communities, we must ask ourselves, how can we honor student voice as foundational in digital environments? To address this question, we propose adapting the Technological, Pedagogical, Content Knowledge (TPACK; Koehler and Mishra, 2009) framework, which emphasizes the connection of digital technology use to pedagogy and content, to incorporate the engagement of a critical digital lens (Watulak and Kinzer, 2013) resulting in the Critical, Technological, Pedagogical, Content Knowledge (C-TPACK) framework. The C-TPACK framework effectuates opportunities to critically examine local, cultural, and global identities, representations, and perspectives and promotes the critical and meaningful integration of digital tools and spaces in our classroom communities to support students' deeper understanding about the social, cultural, and political meanings and resulting uses of texts.\nMonological practices and authoritative discourses: Sara is a Nationally Board Certified, 24 year veteran Spanish teacher at a midwestern, suburban high school with 612 students, three per cent of whom are low-income and 73 per cent identify a Caucasian. Her school is one-to-one with laptops and allows students to \"bring your own device\" (BYOD) to classrooms. She entered her Advanced Placement classroom filled with twenty, sixteen and seventeen year old male and female students seated in groups of three and four at tables facing the front of the classroom where Sara's desk and whiteboard were located. She began the fifty minute class period speaking only Spanish and requiring her students to do the same. Immediately, she had students log on to their devices and individually take a Kahoot vocabulary quiz that she had prepared for them. After the quiz, each question and answer was viewed on the SmartBoard, and then the students were told to put away their technology and pull out their paper worksheets they completed the night before.\nMonologic and dialogic teaching pedagogies: At a middle school of 200 students, the majority of which is Caucasian and 22 per cent are considered low-income, Diane, a Physics teacher whose classroom is one-to-one with Chromebooks, stood at the entrance to her classroom as her 22 students lined up outside. Her class had just completed an activity within a series of lessons during which she had them divide into teams and apply Newton's Laws to the design and building of a protective container for an egg. The students dropped the contained eggs from varying heights and recorded the results in their notepads. Once the activity was complete, the students met in their groups and analyzed their results through discussion and application of Newton's Laws.\nAuthoritative discourses create barriers for dialogic digital communities: Andrew, a practicing high school History teacher for 25 years at a rural school with a largely Caucasian student population with a low income percentage under six percent, utilizes his one-to-one classroom environment by employing a flipped classroom model where the lecture and materials pertaining to a lesson are accessed and reviewed by students outside of school, (usually the night before) allowing class time for active engagement and discussion of the material students have already seen and/or reviewed (Abeysekera and Dawson, 2015). The class LMS houses all of the materials and lectures and is filled with embedded primary source documents, videos, artwork and photos. On the day of this lesson, Andrew welcomed his 21 students as they entered the classroom and sat down at round tables with three students each. He asked his students to open their Chromebooks and log in to their class LMS where they would find a Kahoots online quiz about World War 2 that they would take as teams. The quiz was projected onto a large wall at the front of the room. For the next 45 minutes, Andrew had the groups briefly and quietly discuss and enter an answer for each question. After each question was answered, he told them the correct answer. At several points during the quiz, Andrew played videos with historic content and show images of artwork, propaganda, and photos from the era that he embedded. Each time, he provided connections between what was happening during the war and how that related to current events. At two points, he asked his students if they had any questions, and none did. Andrew chose this lesson for observation as he believed it contained a high level of both technology integration and required his students to recruit CDL to their work.\nProfessional development: including the critical \"C\": Kate, a middle school Language Arts teacher at a school one-to-one with Chromebooks, considers herself and her 23 students lucky to have largely unlimited access in her classroom to online platforms including YouTube. Her school includes 690 students, 65 per cent of whom are Caucasian and 27 per cent of whom are considered low income. She receives strong technical support from a technology specialist who troubleshoots technical issues and offers one-to-one help whenever requested. Unlike the protectionist policies at Diane and Andrew's schools, the policies at Kate's school encourage teachers to include online student participation in their lessons. However, the PD at her school is \"tutorial-based and short\" without a critical dimension. In an interview after being observed, she explained that she had little to no exposure to CDL which caused her to question her ability to develop the CDL of her students. This also caused her to selfimpose her own protectionist policies. She stated: \"CDL is really difficult to teach, and more experience would be amazing.\"\nFuture directions for research and practice: In their development of the TPACK framework, Koehler and Mishra (2009) placed importance on context which does support the potential application of both sociocultural and critical theory when determining digital literacy. However, in current research that uses the TPACK framework, critical factors such as socio-economic power structures and dominant ideologies present in digital environments are not closely examined and their impact on student voice and representation is not considered (Chai et al., 2010; Hofer and Grandgenett, 2012; Koh and Divaharan, 2011; Schmidt et al., 2009; Young et al., 2012). TPACK studies typically focus on quantitative measurement (through surveys) of preservice teachers' TPACK without following them into their subsequent classrooms to observe how TPACK is recruited to digital classroom community decisions and practices. Observing the actual practices of teachers can provide valuable information about what supports and/or hinders meaningful and critical technology use with students (Hosek, 2018).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine teacher decisions surrounding opportunities for student voice, experiences and beliefs in digital classroom communities. The teachers' decisions reflect monologic rather than dialogic teacher pedagogies which prompted the authors to ask the following question: What led to these teacher-centered practices in digital environments?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Authoritative discourses in school policies and a missing connection between critical pedagogies and teachers' technology practices are examined in light of teachers' decisions to engage in monologic and/or dialogic teaching practices. The authors propose professional development and research that emphasize pedagogy that supports student voice as foundational to practices involving digital literacies.\nFindings: Examination of the teachers' decisions showed monologic practices void of student opportunities to critically engage in digital environments. Dominant discourses imposed through protectionist and digital citizenship policies of schools as well as lack of opportunity through professional development to connect critical pedagogy to technology impacted the teachers' decisions.\nOriginality/value: Current research surrounding teachers' digital literacies uses the TPACK framework to examine technology integration practices. Missing is a critical component that addresses and works to dismantle the dominant discourses and power structures in digital communities (Author, 2018). The authors build on research in critical digital literacies to argue for adding the critical missing \"C\" into the TPACK framework (C-TPACK) to move researchers and educators to consider pedagogies that examine ideologies at work in digital communities to provide opportunities for student voice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Knowledge transfer between projects within project-based organizations: the project nature perspective
|
[
"Knowledge transfer",
"Structural equation modeling",
"Project natures",
"Project-based organizations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the advent of the knowledge-based economy age, knowledge has been recognized as a powerful asset for organizations (Liebowitz, 2008) and has been gaining more and more attention. An organization with a rich fund of knowledge is more likely to maintain sustainable competitive advantages and achieves commercial success (Gonzalez-Loureiro et al., 2015). Organizations need to acquire new knowledge to develop new technology and survive (Argote and Fahrenkopf, 2016). Knowledge transfer, defined as \"exchanges of organizational knowledge between a source and a recipient unit\" (Szulanski, 1996), is one efficient way to help organizations expend knowledge. Successful knowledge transfer among members allows an organization to make good use of knowledge, fostering its development and prosperity (Argote and Ingram, 2000).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 The nature of projects and knowledge transfer\n3. Hypotheses and research model: 3.1 The nature of projects\n4. Methodology: The proposed research model is evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM), a contemporary common multivariate technique for exploring causal models. The SEM method is selected because it has the advantage of integrating both factor analysis and path analysis compared to traditional multiple regression method. It is regarded as a hybrid model with two components: the measurement model and the structural model. The measurement model shows the relationship between each indicator and its corresponding latent variable, while the structural model estimates the relationship between each pair of independent and dependent latent variables through a series of multiple regressions. The SEM technique has been widely used in recent years in the management disciplines such as knowledge management, project management and strategic management (Leal-Millan et al., 2016).\n5. Results: 5.1 Measurement model\n6. Discussion and implications: The purpose of this study was to test the effects of project nature (geographical distance, similarity, urgency and temporality) and IT on the effectiveness of knowledge transfer between projects. For this, a research model was proposed and empirically tested through a survey administered to construction sector. According to the empirical results, the study made a full discussion and provided meaningful implications for PBOs to enhance inter-project knowledge transfer effectiveness.\n7. Conclusion and limitations: The focus of this study is to examine how the project nature affects knowledge transfer effectiveness between projects in PBOs. We develop this study by a literature review and find that project natures have impact on knowledge transfer, but few studies have systematically investigated the impacts of these natures. Then from the project nature perspective, this research analyzes the relationship among four natures of projects, inter-project communication, transfer intention, IT and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer, and develops a research model covering these factors of knowledge transfer. Next, we collect data from the construction sector by using questionnaires, and an examination is conducted with SEM. Finally, we conclude that these natures of projects have various effects on knowledge transfer through different paths. Results indicate that IT could increase the openness of communication and make knowledge transfer more convenient and efficient, which may help overcome the restrictions of geographical distance. The urgency of projects prevents teams from spending precious time on communication and decreases the intention of knowledge transfer, thus obstructing knowledge transfer. At the same time, temporary projects are difficult to form organizational memory and routines, which greatly impedes communication between projects. The similarity of project provides more possibilities for temporary projects to transfer knowledge because project teams are more willing to communicate experience and absorb exchanged information when solving similar problems. Furthermore, inter-project communication and transfer intention play positive roles in knowledge transfer, thereby ensuring the quality and effectiveness of knowledge transfer. Therefore, the findings of this study not only help scholars better understand knowledge transfer between projects but also help practitioners adopt right intervention strategies for more effective project management.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how project nature affects the effectiveness of knowledge transfer between projects in project-based organizations (PBOs) and to analyze the roles of inter-project communication, transfer intention and information technology (IT) in the influencing process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper adopted a questionnaire survey method to collect data from construction enterprises in China and subsequently proceeded to structural equation modeling analysis with a total of 261 samples.\nFindings: The results indicate that the similarity of projects could promote the inter-project communication and improve transfer intention, which further influences knowledge transfer effectiveness positively within PBOs. The urgency of projects has a negative impact on inter-project communication and transfer intention. The temporality of projects also negatively affects inter-project communication. They consequently hinder the knowledge transfer behaviors between projects. Additionally, the application of IT improves the frequency of communication and makes up for the negative impact of geographical distance between projects on knowledge transfer.\nPractical implications: Based on the results, a series of strategies is recommended to improve knowledge transfer effectiveness between projects, including standardizing project management, promoting information construction, establishing a post-project evaluation system and creating a shared culture, so that the competitive advantages of PBOs could be improved.\nOriginality/value: The study explores the factors influencing knowledge transfer between projects from the perspective of project nature and provides guidance for enhancing knowledge management and project management practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Focus-group evaluation of nutrition education displays by Hispanic adults who live in the USA
|
[
"Hispanics",
"Nutrition",
"Health education",
"Family",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Hispanic population is growing rapidly in the USA. According to the United States Census Bureau (n.d.), Hispanics accounted for 14.8 percent of the total population and between 2000 and 2006 one-half of the nations growth. This growth is expected to continue. Hispanics are more likely to live in disadvantaged households, have more food-related problems (Serrano et al., 2000; Mazur et al., 2003), have lower literacy rates, and are more likely to participate in special supplemental nutrition programs such as the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC; see www.fns.usda.gov/wic/) program (Briefel et al., 2006).Nutritional knowledge and information are gaining more attention as the lifetime consequences of inadequate pre-natal or childhood nutrition become better known to the general public (Gale et al., 2004). This area is one in which all individuals should have a basic core of knowledge to enhance their own health and well-being, as well as to promote the health of their children and other dependents of all ages (Lorenz et al., 1996; Rivera et al., 2003; Gordon-Larsen et al., 2003). Because not all individuals receive nutrition information in the course of their formal schooling it is necessary to provide relevant information to children, adults, and seniors on an ad hoc basis, in an attempt to ensure that they are adequately informed about appropriate food choices, food safety measures, and the need for certain vital nutrients in their diets throughout their lives, as well as at various important points in the life cycle (i.e. pregnancy, lactation, old age) (Guthrie and Smallwood, 2003).The presentation of health-related information, in general, has suffered from a dearth of clearly written, readily comprehensible, and appropriately targeted media - media that take into account cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic variables (Borra et al., 1998; Berland et al., 2001). This failing is so severe that in the USA, Federal authorities have issued mandates for this type of material and have released standards intended to facilitate production of more effective methods of communicating information about health to various demographic groups (Calderon and Beltran, 2004). Low-income individuals constitute one of the most vulnerable subpopulations, and they bear disproportionate burdens of chronic disease and inadequate nutrition in our society (Patterson et al., 1995; Mazur et al., 2003), which is thought to be partially as a result of the lack of adequate methods of communicating such information to these particular socioeconomic groups.Dissemination of nutrition information can be accomplished in a number of ways. Methods that have proven successful in advertising and marketing can and should be incorporated into nutrition education programs (Wechsler and Wernick, 1992; McClelland et al., 2001) to enhance the attention given to the material by consumers, as well as to facilitate retention of the information. Unfortunately, it has not proven easy for social agencies, who are the ones usually charged with distributing nutrition education materials, to assimilate and utilize effective marketing techniques (Novelli, 1983).In a previous study (Chambers et al., 2004), we examined the efficacy of a series of visual displays of nutrition information by using focus groups composed of low-income Caucasian adults residing in the state of Kansas, USA. One group consisted of women aged 18 to 30 years, who were mothers participating in food assistance programs. A group of older subjects (primarily women >=60 years of age, who were participating in food assistance programs) also evaluated the display materials. Both groups were presented with a selection of educational displays on nutrition topics and were asked to evaluate the displays according to their acceptability and effectiveness in transmitting information. Most subjects had suggestions as to how the displays could be improved and what kinds of presentations would be most helpful to them and most likely to be used and retained.These focus group sessions were repeated using the same basic study design. Two of the three nutrition education displays were the same as in the study with Caucasians (Chambers et al., 2004), but translated into Spanish. Participants were a representative group of low-income Hispanics living in the state of Kansas and participating in food assistance programs. As with the previous groups, most of the subjects were women. The same types of questions were asked of this group as were asked of the Caucasian subjects.The objectives of this study were to determine whether low-income Hispanics had different perceptions of the same nutrition education displays or expressed different needs, compared with low-income Caucasians. In parallel with the previous study, we hoped to gain information about the most effective manner of presentation for nutrition education information to low-income Hispanics in food assistance programs.\nMethods: Researchers from the Sensory Analysis Center at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA, conducted six 90-minute focus groups with low-income Hispanics, mostly women over the age of 18 years (Mexican descent), who were participating in food assistance programs (e.g. the WI C program; food stamps; other social and rehabilitation services (SRS) programs in the state of Kansas - Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, 2008) and had lived in the USA for one year or less. Colby and Haldeman (2007) indicated that nutrition information is important for Mexicans coming to live in the USA. The methods used in this study have been published previously (Chambers et al., 2004).Focus groups\nResults: Subjects indicated that their usual sources of nutritional information included WIC staff, physicians (especially pediatricians), family members, and friends, as well as food labels, magazines, television news and other programs, and information their children received in school. Subjects' tendency to believe the information they were given depended in large part on the source of that information (for example they tended to trust doctors, nurses, and WIC staff). Advertisements and advertising claims were distrusted, as was any information that went against what they knew to be true from their own culture or experience.These individuals were generally enthusiastic about the material that was presented to them in the displays. They indicated that they had not seen the displays previously, although they mentioned that they may have been exposed to some of the information presented therein. They thought that nutrition information would help them decide on what was best for their families, as well as to become more knowledgeable about the nutritional content of various foods in order to choose items that were best for their families. However, some subjects expressed displeasure in hearing that some of their favorite foods (sodas, \"junk food\") were \"not good\" for them. In addition, some mentioned a dislike for the apparent contradictions that often occur in public presentations of information about nutrition - as when some food is reported as \"bad\" one week but \"good\" the next week by news media.Other possible locations that were suggested for this type of display included stores and supermarkets, WIC program headquarters, clinics and physicians' offices, libraries, parks, private homes (handouts), or schools (with appropriate modification of the display for younger persons). Modifications suggested for children were things such as use of clever cartoons, brighter colors, more simplified text and more pictures.Participants identified specific positive characteristics of the displays that aided them in the understanding of the nutritional message that the display was intended to convey. They also suggested ways improve the understanding of the educational displays. Key points identifying positive aspects and aspects that could be improved upon in the displays are summarized in Tables II and III, respectively.Components\nDiscussion: This study presents the results from six 90-minute focus groups with 47 low-income Hispanic adults in four cities in Kansas who were participating in Federal (WIC) and/or state of Kansas food assistance programs (SRS). The focus groups evaluated three nutrition education displays with respect to design, content, and usefulness of the information in their daily lives. Participants were encouraged to voice their opinions on these topics during the focus groups, and analysis of their responses was used to formulate guidelines that could increase the effectiveness of future nutrition education displays.The importance of design and presentation\nImplications for research and practice: The results of this study show that displays of nutrition information such as the ones included in the study are effective means to present such information to low-income Hispanics participating in food assistance programs at the state or Federal level (Trenkner and Achterberg, 1991). Although some changes are warranted to make the displays more effective (Clark et al., 1999), the general format was well received by these focus groups, and their interest was stimulated enough that they requested more information on nutrition. Participants were clearly very interested in usable nutrition information and saw it as a way in which to improve the health of their families by acquiring knowledge that would benefit all family members. Also, these low-income Hispanic mothers wanted their children to have the advantage of education about nutrition, whether in school or by the use of displays such as the ones used in this study. Thus, the perceived benefits of this information were readily acknowledged by this group of subjects.More interventions are needed with respect to information about nutrition, particularly in low-income demographics where such knowledge may be minimal, and the need for effective use of available food resources is quite high (Murphy et al., 1990; Contento et al., 1993; Macario et al., 1998; Palmeri et al., 1998; Hart et al., 2003; Cullen et al., 2000; Gans et al., 2002),Many subjects also requested information about the possibility of future sessions on these topics that they might attend.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the acceptability and effectiveness of visual displays of nutrition educational information for low-income Hispanic adults in the USA and to determine whether this population have different perceptions of the same nutrition education displays or express different needs than low-income Caucasian adults. Visual displays include information on calcium, folic acid, and fruits and vegetables.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Six 90-minute focus groups are conducted with 47 Spanish-speaking Hispanic adults living in the USA for less than one year.\nFindings: - The results indicate that displays of nutrition information are an effective means to present information to low-income Hispanics and to teach basic nutritional concepts. Participants are excited about receiving the information and using it for their families' benefit. Positive key characteristics of the displays are: pictures, bright colours, simplicity, text's characteristics, information relevance, and accompanying handouts.\nPractical implications: - The results show that displays of nutrition information such as the ones included in the study are effective means to present such information to low-income Hispanics participating in food assistance programs. Although several changes are needed to make the displays more effective, the general format is well received, and participants' interest is stimulated enough that they request more information on nutrition. Participants want usable nutrition information and see it as a means to improve the health of their families.\nOriginality/value: - These data suggest a need for interventions with respect to information about nutrition, particularly in low-income demographics where knowledge may be minimal, and the need for effective use of available food resources is quite high.\n",
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Towards Mode 2 knowledge production: Analysis and proposal of a framework for research in business processes
|
[
"Research",
"Process management",
"Methodology",
"Problem solving"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the modern business world, the global competition and the increasing expectations of customers require companies to achieve increased levels of efficiency. One requirement is to maintain the flexibility to adjust to the accelerating changes in the environment in which they are inserted (Sidorova and Isik, 2010). This nature and diversity of disciplines makes it difficult to monitor the progress of all research fronts in business processes, leading to several focus ramifications (Sidorova and Isik, 2010). The literature reviews performed, although well structured, cannot fight effectively the development of these ramifications (Ngai et al., 2008). This is due to the limited scope of their proposal and the non-expertise in focused or initiative issues of the business processes. An integrated approach toward the research in business processes is a necessary condition to avoid a functional and disciplinary vision of an object that does not have these characteristics (Sidorova and Isik, 2010).\n2. Theoretical framework: To theoretically sustain the topics covered in this paper, this section presents the concepts related to issues arising from this research. The review starts with the knowledge production models and the discussion regarding the class of problems. Finally, the literature reviews related to the research in business processes are presented.\n3. Research method: The research in question is classified as being basic in nature, because it aims to generate new and useful knowledge for science to advance, but without practical application envisaged. The research issue was addressed in a qualitative and quantitative way. The creation of clusters based on lexical analysis characterizes the research as quantitative and the content analysis of these clusters characterizes it as qualitative. These steps are presented in the work method, as shown in Figure 2. With respect to the technical procedure, this research is characterized as a bibliometric research that, according to Saunders et al. (2012), seeks to lead the researcher to have contact with what has been said or written about a certain subject, allowing the study to be conducted with a new approach and with new findings on this subject.\n4. Results: In this section, the results of this research will be presented. It begins with the presentation of the classes of problems defined for the research in business processes and, subsequently, the proposal of the framework for the production of Mode 2 knowledge in the development of the research in business processes. It is worth mentioning that the classes of problems have been defined from the grouping of similar research issues arising from the cluster (quantitative) and content (qualitative) analyses.\n5. Final considerations: The study reached its main goal which was to propose a framework for the Mode 2 knowledge production in the development of research in business processes. Thus, it is important to highlight the critical analysis of the proposal of conceptualization of classes of problems and of the framework for the production of knowledge of Mode 2 in business processes. At this point, some considerations regarding the survey should be addressed. To begin with, as the refinement of the research was qualitative, there may be disagreements with respect to the rating of research issues of some articles. Keeping that in mind, some articles could be classified into another class of problems, but within the given classes.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Research in business processes has been developed around a disciplinary approach toward the production of traditional knowledge, known as Mode 1. The problems studied with this approach are solved in a context in which academic knowledge prevails, with no major concerns regarding its practical applicability. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose a structure for knowledge production based on Mode 2 for business process researches.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A bibliometric research was conducted to define and conceptualize the classes of disciplinary problems, by assessing the years 2007-2012 of the Business Process Management Journal publications.\nFindings: A framework for the Mode 2 knowledge production was proposed in the development of research in business process and conceptualized classes of problems related to this issue.\nResearch limitations/implications: This work was carried out with specific focus on research in business process, so the defined classes of problems cannot be generalized.\nOriginality/value: The studies identified by this research are in the form of a disciplinary approach toward the production of traditional knowledge, known as Mode 1. This paper aims to fill the gap of a transdisciplinary production of knowledge and practical application, known as Mode 2 in the context of business process.\n",
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Developing a decision-making framework for implementing purchasing synergy: a case study
|
[
"Procurement",
"Purchasing",
"Decision making",
"Airlines"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and objectives: This paper presents a case study on developing purchasing synergy in a European-based firm operating as a service and support business to the international airline industry, which hereafter is referred to as CaterCo. The company provides catering and in-flight services to airlines and at the time this study was undertaken had an estimated share of 24 per cent of the EUR 10.5 billion global airline catering market. It generates almost all of its revenue from the provision of in-flight meals and produces or assembles worldwide approximately 550,000 meals per day. Owing to an intense acquisition and expansion strategy in the late 1990s the company grew to a conglomerate consisting of largely independent business units (BUs) with a high level of local authority. During this period the primary task of purchasing was to find appropriate, mostly local, suppliers and no explicit company-wide purchasing strategy was in place.By early 2001, danger signals in the airline industry were becoming evident and the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 deepened the crisis, with some leading airlines declaring bankruptcy. CaterCo was forced to cut costs in its own business in response to the general industry pressure on prices. A new supply chain management division was created in 2003 to capture synergies from the European spend of EUR450 million. Particular emphasis would be placed on cross-unit collaboration, building compliance with centrally negotiated contracts, and capturing the benefits from co-ordination and purchasing synergy within the group. In order to achieve this, the company required a structured analysis of synergy opportunities, leading to a framework for implementation. In this context, the following research objectives were established:1. Identify factors influencing item selection for bundling[1] through:* a review of the literature; and* data collection from within the company.2. Create a model for item selection, specific to the company situation.3. Design a decision-making framework for purchasing pooling in the form of a flowchart, which could be used by managers to select and implement strategy.In undertaking this research we divided the project into two distinct stages and this paper is structured around those two stages. In stage 1 we address the first two objectives and describe the methods used in evaluating synergy opportunities, leading to the development of a hierarchy for item selection in relation to a purchasing pooling (or bundling) strategy. Stage 2 addresses the third objective through the presentation of the process for creating the decision-making framework, which could be used by the company to implement synergy in its purchasing divisions. In our discussion, some illustrations are provided of how CaterCo began this process, demonstrating the viability of the framework we developed and the value of the study to the business.\nStage 1: Literature review: purchasing synergy\nStage 2: Our third research objective required the creation of a decision-making framework for the selection of items for bundling, evaluating the different purchasing strategies available and a guide for implementation. The development and application of the DMF would allow us to address these issues, and here we discuss the methods used in its design and provide examples of its application.Research methods for stage 2\nConstruction of the decision-making framework: The MAH shown in Figure 1 identifies the six criteria which need to be considered in relation to item selection for bundling. In order to create an integrated decision-making framework, those criteria must be integral to the framework and it was designed to include the criteria at appropriate steps in the decision flow. We recognised that a key element in this multi-dimensional framework would be the portfolio matrix and from the literature it was possible to select the matrix designed by Vizjak (1994) as the most relevant to the business situation. His approach, which identifies critical relationships, harmonisation in the value stream and resource overlaps, can logically be extended to include sharing of suppliers. Whilst the concept of affinity was identified as crucial in the CaterCo context, one of the axes of our matrix was modified to \"affinity of purchase locations\" from Vizjak's \"market affinity\" so as to more accurately reflect the drivers and attributes identified in our research.Use of the adapted portfolio matrix was included as one of the key steps in our process. We designed the framework as a logical sequence of steps which could be followed, allowing the structured analysis of items suitable for bundling and leading to the selection from one of four identified buying strategies, through to eventual supplier selection. The DMF is shown in Figure 3 and here we explain the logic of the steps involved.Step 1\nApplication of the decision-making framework: In order to illustrate the principles of the DMF described above, in this section we provide examples of items which were analysed using the framework. These items passed the initial criteria of being above the spend level of EUR 1.5 million. Equally they were relevant to several business units, being items in common usage across a number of customers.Salmon\nConclusions: The first stage of our analysis demonstrated that CaterCo had some specific issues to address in its progress towards purchasing synergy: decentralised purchasing decisions; a large number of suppliers providing duplicate or similar items to different BUs; lack of harmonisation in product descriptions and perhaps most importantly, an absence of a method or model for identifying opportunities for synergy. One of the aims of this paper has been to demonstrate that there can be valuable lessons for both researchers and practitioners in taking examples from academic studies and literature and applying them in the commercial context. The managers in the business were at first cautious in their response to this new approach, but once they were able to contribute through the workshops and cognitive mapping sessions, which demonstrated the importance of their participation, the benefits were recognised. We were able to devise a mixed method approach, based on well defined methodologies, whereby greater understanding would be created, leading in turn to well grounded solutions. Through the workshop iterations, involving managers in the business, a hierarchy was produced depicting the key criteria in item selection which were specifically relevant to the company situation. Equally, it can be seen from the commentary on the design of the DMF that the criteria and attributes identified in the first part of the study were used at relevant stages of the framework. This justifies the use of a complex methodology, using multiple approaches, as findings in the first stage became essential to the framework devised subsequently.Whilst a number of authors have suggested benefits in mixed method approaches, little evidence has been provided of how mixed methods can be used in the purchasing context to create a more robust framework or model for assisting decision-making. This paper has sought to demonstrate that such an approach is possible and that as a result a framework can be designed for use by practitioners in strategic purchasing decisions. The strengths of the portfolio technique, especially the simplicity and ease of understanding of its application have been illustrated in our review of the literature. However, we also seek to address some of the criticisms and limitations of portfolio approaches, outlined by authors such as Dubois and Petersen (2002). Our view is that in achieving purchasing synergy, a more sophisticated approach is required, especially where one is dealing with complex purchasing environments in multiple BUs. The decision framework developed here enables an integrated process and addresses the issue of portfolios alone being overly simplistic.Further, the decision-making framework presented in this paper intends to address the gaps identified in the literature by capturing relevant item selection criteria to be considered when making decisions on how and where to exploit purchasing synergies. It then provides a graphical flowchart depicting how such decisions should be made. The initial MAH allows a structuring of criteria and strategic alternatives for the business; the portfolio matrix uses a trusted method for classifying items and deriving strategies. By combining the methods of the MAH and portfolio matrix some weaknesses inherent in these methods when used in isolation can be overcome. The framework has been designed with specific relevance to the firm under study, however, we contend that it can be applied in many different organisational situations. The criteria and attributes of the MAH and the axes in the portfolio matrix may differ within alternative environments, however, the principle of combining them in a framework for decisions has been proven to be valid, and can be customised according to the context.There is a need to take lessons from manufacturing and production into other business and commercial environments, where purchasing practice is less advanced. This case has shown the potential for operationalisation of purchasing synergy in CaterCo, which we suggest is likely to be replicated in a range of other service environments, or companies where purchasing practice is not well developed. Our approach would be particularly valuable in widely dispersed organisations where decentralised purchasing is common, as a means towards structured, coherent decision-making and achievement of synergistic benefits. Equally it could be used to bring clarity to decision-making within organisations where purchasing pooling is already an established goal.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report on research undertaken within a European-based airline services firm. As a result of pressures within the airline industry the firm embarked on a cost reduction programme, recognising the need to achieve more synergy from its procurement spend, located in semi-autonomous business units (BUs). The paper describes sequentially the two stages of the author's involvement in the project and the outputs and results realised.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The aim was to design a practical tool, based on academic inputs, which could be used by the business to achieve purchasing synergy. The research is reported in a case study format and develops an original mixed method approach. This approach combines interviews, a focus group, cognitive mapping and portfolio analysis and leads to the production of a decision-making framework for implementing purchasing pooling.\nFindings: - The results illustrate that prior to the study, procurement was highly fragmented with little co-ordination between BUs. The company needed to standardise many of its item specifications to facilitate purchasing pooling. A hierarchy is created as a valuable tool for understanding the various and conflicting factors in item selection for pooling initiatives. In addition, four purchasing strategies are identified, to support synergy in the firm.\nPractical implications: - The decision-making framework developed for the business is used to illustrate how the firm achieved purchasing synergy across its BUs. The approach can similarly be adopted in organisations with a high level of fragmentation in their spend.\nOriginality/value: - The research demonstrates the value of applying academic knowledge and multiple methods in creating practical solutions for managers. It also addresses some of the weaknesses identified in using single methods of analysis such as portfolios.\n",
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] |
Processing of CSR communication: insights from the ELM
|
[
"Social responsibility",
"CSR communication",
"Involvement",
"Elaboration likelihood model",
"Target-group specific CSR communication",
"High vs low corporate social responsibility involvement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Stakeholders' skepticism toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities has been identified as a major problem in CSR communication (Du et al., 2010). Therefore, a key challenge for companies is to persuade stakeholders to believe in their CSR activities and consequently to overcome any barriers in terms of their trustworthiness. As a result, intense discussions have ensued, both in the practitioner community as well as among academic researchers, how CSR communication can create a sense of trust. So far, CSR communication research has mostly focussed on the effectiveness of CSR communication strategies in general and information-oriented vs emotional CSR communication in particular. On the one hand, Morsing and Schultz (2006b, p. 155) evaluate information-oriented CSR communication, for example CSR reports, \"as a more appropriate and sensitive means of CSR communication rather than corporate advertising and campaigns.\" On the other hand, Reisch (2006, p. 198) argues that \"an 'ecotainement' [...] approach, i.e., the use of social marketing concept based on positive emotions and entertaining features, is more effective than the hitherto predominant fact-oriented style of consumer information.\" Despite the ongoing discussion of CSR communication strategies, the role that stakeholders' specific characteristics - for example their personal relevance of the topic, their prior-held beliefs concerning the company, or their general social value orientation - play in determining which CSR communication strategy should be chosen has not been thoroughly investigated. It is generally assumed that specific stakeholder characteristics influence how CSR communication is processed and evaluated (Du et al., 2010); so far, however, little is known about the cognitive processes that influence the processing of CSR information and the underlying psychological variables (Wang and Anderson, 2011).\nConceptual framework: The ELM\nMethod: Procedure\nResults: Manipulation checks\nDiscussion: Based on the ELM, this study examined if stakeholders with high vs low involvement differ in their processing of CSR communication, which could influence companies to adapt their CSR communication to the different processing routes (peripheral route or central route). The results support this study's overall assumption that the processing of CSR communication is different based on stakeholders' involvement levels.\nImplications: In terms of practical implications, the findings suggest that CSR involvement can be used as a basis for target-group specific CSR communication in order to improve communication effectiveness (Dawkins, 2004; Du et al., 2010). This could allow companies to better assess the different expectations of stakeholders and thus more successfully align their CSR agenda as well as their CSR communication with their needs and expectations (Colleoni, 2013).\nLimitations and further research: Overall, the study's findings show that the use of the ELM as a psychological theory has practical implications as well as potential for a more theoretical reflection on CSR communication research. For this purpose, this study offers preliminary insights, but also suffers from some limitations. First, the study used a student sample, which leads to some limitations in terms of external validity (cf. Peterson, 2001; Druckman and Kam, 2011). However, at the same time, a homogenous sample increases internal validity and is therefore preferred in theory testing (Calder et al., 1981). Thus, a homogenous sample can be seen as quite appropriate in this context because the main goal was to test the ELM-theory in a CSR context. Further studies on theory application that focus on testing ELM-based interventions would require a sample that includes individual differences, which might influence the success of the intervention. In case of ELM-based interventions, this involves a sample with differences in CSR involvement as well as ability, particularly domain knowledge level. Second, in terms of research design, it would be desirable to use an experimental design, including, on the one hand, the manipulation of the level of involvement and, on the other hand, the manipulation of ability.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), the purpose of this paper is to examine if stakeholders with high vs low corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement differ in their processing of CSR communication, which could influence companies to adapt their CSR communication to the different ways of processing (central route vs peripheral route).\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, 107 participants received information about a fictitious company. In the first phase, participants were given initial information about the company. In the second phase, participants were given the company's CSR newsletter. To compare the differences in information processing dependent on the CSR involvement, the sample was split at the median.\nFindings: The study found that dependent on their CSR involvement, people differ in their processing of CSR communication as well as in their expectations for persuasive CSR communication.\nResearch limitations/implications: To further examine how involvement influences information processing and thus persuasion, an experimental design should be used including the manipulation of the level of involvement as well as the manipulation of ability.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that CSR involvement can be used as a base for target-group specific CSR communication in order to improve communication effectiveness.\nOriginality/value: So far, CSR communication research has often focussed on the effectiveness of communication strategies in general. In contrast, the application of the ELM offers a theoretical basis to better understand which moderator variables influences stakeholders' processing of CSR communication and the persuasion process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Neuroticism and the psychosomatic model of workplace bullying
|
[
"Bullying",
"Workplace",
"Employee behaviour",
"Stress"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The psychosomatic model of bullying states that bullying leads to negative affect which, in turn, leads to physical symptoms. Although some characteristics of victims have been examined with respect to the psychosomatic model of bullying (e.g. self-efficacy: Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002), the role that neuroticism plays has not been examined. This is surprising because neurotic victims would arguably suffer more from bullying than would emotionally stable victims. The notion that neuroticism should be included in the psychosomatic model is supported by research showing neuroticism has strong positive correlations with anxiety, depression, and medically unexplained physical symptoms (e.g. De Gucht et al., 2004; Hendryx et al., 1991). The central research question of this paper is therefore whether the effects of bullying on negative affect are independent of, or are moderated by, neuroticism.There have been several definitions of workplace bullying provided in the literature. Einarsen et al. (2003) defined workplace bullying as behaviors that adversely affect the work of the victim. These behaviors include harassing, offending, or socially excluding the victim. In order for such behaviors to be classified as bullying, they need to occur continually (e.g. daily or weekly) and over an extended period of time (e.g. six months).Although it is difficult to provide an exhaustive list of bullying behaviors (Rayner and Hoel, 1997), there are several taxonomies of direct and indirect behaviors that can be regarded as bullying (e.g. Einarsen and Raknes, 1997; Leymann, 1990; Rayner and Hoel, 1997; Zapf et al., 1996). Rayner and Hoel (1997) developed a five-category taxonomy of workplace bullying behaviors that incorporated the major themes of the other taxonomies. The five categories, based predominantly on a review of the English-language bullying literature, are:1. destabilization (e.g. assigning meaningless tasks or repeatedly reminding the victim of his/her mistakes);2. isolation (e.g. preventing access to training or deliberately withholding important work-related information);3. overwork (e.g. setting impossible deadlines or disrupting the victim unnecessarily);4. threat to personal standing (e.g. insulting or teasing the victim); and5. threat to professional status (e.g. publicly humiliating or accusing the victim of lack of effort).Various factors render a workplace conducive to the occurrence of bullying. For instance, competition and economic rationalism increase workplace pressures and encourage the use of a hard management style that can inadvertently lead to the use of intimidation and undue criticism of employees (McAvoy and Murtagh, 2003; McCarthy, 1996; Sheehan, 1996). The victim's perspective is critical, however, in determining whether a behavior is inappropriate (Hoel et al., 1999; Liefooghe and Mackenzie Davey, 2003). Furthermore, contextual factors influence perceptions of behaviors in that in some contexts a specific behavior may be acceptable whereas in another context it would be unacceptable. For example, shouting orders at a subordinate is more likely to be considered acceptable within a paramilitary environment than in an office environment (Archer, 1999).\nThe psychological and physiological effects of workplace bullying: Prolonged stress at work is associated with psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression (Weinberg and Creed, 2000). Stress contributes to the development of disease because it disrupts the body's equilibrium. There is strong evidence that negative psychological states are morbific. For example, there is a high degree of comorbidity between anxiety and medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) (De Gucht et al., 2004; Fink, 1995; Simon and Von Korff, 1991). Furthermore, prolonged stress leads to chronic cardiovascular overactivity, which is an aetiological factor for cardiovascular disease and hypertension (McEwen, 1998).Workplace bullying has been shown to cause various psychological and physical symptoms (e.g. Fox and Stallworth, 2005; Hoel et al., 2004). The psychological symptoms include generalized stress, anxiety, depression and difficulty concentrating (Leymann and Gustafsson, 1996; Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002; Vartia, 2001). The physical symptoms include sleep disruption, stomach disorders, headaches, body ache, exhaustion, and rapid heart rate (O'Moore et al., 1998; Vartia, 2001). Workplace bullying is thus an aetiological factor for many mental health problems and can render victims susceptible to serious physical conditions such as cardiovascular disease (Kivimaki et al., 2003).\nThe psychosomatic model of workplace bullying: According to the psychosomatic hypothesis (Watson and Pennebaker, 1989), negative affect causes physical health problems. It seems plausible that victims of workplace bullying would suffer psychological distress and consequently suffer physical symptoms. For example, anxiety arising from threats made at the workplace could, over time, lead to stomach disorders. There is evidence supporting the psychosomatic hypothesis in that negative affect has been shown to predict physical health (e.g. De Gucht et al., 2004; Dua, 1994).Negative affect primarily reflects negative emotionality such as anger, anxiety, distress, guilt, or nervousness (Watson and Clark, 1984). Trait negative affect is a mood disposition and is thus relatively stable whereas state negative affect is situationally dependent and is thus more variable than trait negative affect (Watson and Pennebaker, 1989). Individuals with high trait negative affect tend to be distressed and view themselves and others negatively (Watson et al., 1988). There is a high degree of comorbidity between negative psychological states (e.g. anxiety and depression) and the presentation of MUS (Fink, 1995; Simon and Von Korff, 1991).The psychosomatic hypothesis has been applied recently to workplace bullying and is included in the psychosomatic model of bullying. This model is shown in Figure 1 and states that the effects of bullying lead to negative affect which then leads to physical symptoms. There is evidence supporting the psychosomatic model of bullying in that exposure to bullying correlated strongly with negative affect while negative affect partially mediated the relationship between bullying and somatic complaints (Djurkovic et al., 2004; Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002).According to the psychosomatic model, negative emotions render one susceptible to physical symptoms. People experience negative emotions when they encounter behaviors and/or outcomes that fail to meet their preferences or expectations. In other words, negative cognitive states cause negative emotions due to a type of cognitive dissonance between external events and personal ideals.There is considerable evidence to support the psychosomatic model of bullying. In a sample of Danish manufacturing employees (Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002) and in a sample of employed Australian university students (Djurkovic et al., 2004), the effects of bullying on health complaints were mediated by state negative affect.\nNeuroticism: Many of the consequences of bullying, such as ill health, are associated strongly with the victim's own evaluation of the situation (Salin, 2003), which would undoubtedly be influenced by personal factors such as neuroticism. It is therefore pertinent to investigate individual mediator and moderator variables when examining differences in the reported stress following exposure to workplace bullying (Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002).Neuroticism pertains specifically to a tendency to experience negative mood states (Bolger and Zuckerman, 1995; Suls et al., 1998) and has been defined as a tendency to experience distressing emotions (Costa and McCrae, 1980). Neuroticism has been linked to many maladaptive outcomes, including psychological distress (Suls et al., 1998) and increased susceptibility to anxiety and depression (Clark et al., 1994).Neuroticism needs to be included in the psychosomatic model of bullying because it predisposes individuals to negative affect (Meyer and Shack, 1989; Watson and Clark, 1984). Furthermore, this contention is supported by findings that have shown the effects of neuroticism on MUS are mediated by negative affect (De Gucht et al., 2004). Given that neuroticism influences both negative affect and physical symptoms, neuroticism could provide a supplementary explanation for the psychosomatic effects of bullying. Consequently, when considering the psychosomatic model of bullying, it is important to include neuroticism.\nIndependence or moderation?: As mentioned earlier, the major objective of this study is to examine whether the effects of bullying on negative affect are independent of, or are moderated by, neuroticism. It is important to compare these alternative propositions on the role of neuroticism in the psychosomatic model of bullying for not only theoretical reasons but also the practical implications for countering this insidious phenomenon. The proposition that bullying and neuroticism act independently on negative affect assumes that bullying increases negative affect regardless of the victim's level of neuroticism. In other words, although neuroticism predisposes victims to experience negative affect, being exposed to bullying increases their negative affect. That is, neuroticism and bullying independently increase negative affect. The following hypothesis is therefore proposed:H1. Neuroticism and bullying will each contribute a significant proportion of unique explained variance with respect to negative affect.\nMethod: Participants\nResults: The results are presented in three sections. The first section contains descriptive statistics of the key variables measured in this study. The second section contains results of confirmatory factor analyses and internal reliability analyses that were conducted on each of the scales measuring the key variables. The third section contains results of the partial least squares (PLS) analyses conducted to test the hypotheses.Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: The major objective of this study was to examine whether the effects of bullying on negative affect are independent of, or are moderated by, neuroticism. The results revealed that neuroticism does not moderate the relationship between bullying and negative affect, and that bullying and neuroticism have independent effects on negative affect. Furthermore, the effects of bullying are greater than the effects of neuroticism. The results provide clear support for the psychosomatic model. The neuroticism of victims partly determines the extent to which they experience negative affect.Practical implications of the findings\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To examine the role of neuroticism in the psychosomatic model of workplace bullying.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey approach was used in this research. Partial Least Squares analyses on data from 127 participants were used to determine whether the effects of bullying on negative affect are independent of, or are moderated by, neuroticism.\nFindings: - Revealed that neuroticism does not moderate the relationship between bullying and negative affect. Bullying and neuroticism were found to act independently on negative affect. The results supported the psychosomatic model of bullying.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Limitations are the nature of the sample, the use of self-report and cross-sectional data. Future research could use a larger sample, include multi-rater data, and a longitudinal research design.\nPractical implications: - Dealing effectively with bullying is a concern for individuals and organizations. The findings highlight the need for anti-bullying policies. Management need to be trained in the prevention of bullying and in how to deal effectively with bullying. Victims should not be held accountable for the psychosomatic effects of bullying, the onus remains on managers and employers to prevent bullying from occurring.\nOriginality/value: - This paper extends the psychosomatic model of workplace bullying by examining the role of neuroticism. The findings have both theoretical implications for researchers in increasing understanding of the psychosomatic model of bullying, and practical implications for managers in organizations in terms of developing strategies for countering workplace bullying and its effects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of corporate identity in the higher education sector: A case study
|
[
"Corporate identity",
"Corporate image",
"Higher education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The globalisation of business has finally been embraced by the higher education sector in which education is seen as a service that could be marketed worldwide. Universities and other institutions of higher education have to compete with each other to attract high quality students and academic staff at an international level. Hence, competition is no longer limited within national borders. As education and training become a global business sector, education marketing is developing standards more akin to consumer goods marketing. This presents several challenges for UK universities such as the development of a more customer orientated service approach to education and an increased emphasis on corporate image.In a market where students are recognised as customers, universities have to implement strategies to maintain and enhance their competitiveness. They need to develop a competitive advantage based on a set of unique characteristics. Furthermore, universities need to communicate these characteristics in an effective and consistent way to all of the relevant stakeholders (refer to Figure 1). Under these circumstances, universities have finally realised the role of corporate identity (CI) as a powerful source of competitive advantage. They understand that if managed strategically CI can help them develop a competitive edge over competitors (Olins, 1995). As a result, a growing number of universities have started to develop and implement CI programmes as part of their strategic growth and expansion (Baker and Balmer, 1997).The University of Warwick is one of these universities. In May 2002 University of Warwick launched a new CI (www.warwick.ac.uk/services/publicity/id/index.htm) programme. The new CI focuses on the corporate visual identity (CVI) and includes changes in the university logotype, typography and colour. The objective of this paper is to review the new CI of the University of Warwick. Information gathered from the interview with Ian Rowley, Director of Communication at the University of Warwick is presented in support of the arguments. In addition, the paper refers to two further documents: \"University of Warwick: reputation audit\" (Jones, 2001) and The Corporate Identity Guide (2002) (www.warwick.ac.uk/services/publicity/id).In the first section, the discussion revolves around the University's CI programme in the context of the CI model developed by Melewar and Jenkins (2002). The analysis examines each section of the model vis-a-vis communication and visual identity, behaviour, corporate culture and market conditions (refer to Figure 2). The second section discusses the changes that are taking place within Warwick's CI. We address issues such as why Warwick felt the need to change its visual identity and what were the motives for this change.Furthermore, the paper discusses whether a visual identity-focused CI programme was the appropriate approach to close the gap between the University's brand values and perception. At this point, the paper discusses as to whether a more balanced approach to CI, where elements besides CVI, should have been considered by the University.\nThe corporate identity model: CI requires the presentation of the organisation as a whole and consists of several components, referred as the CI sub-constructs. Melewar and Jenkins (2002) identify four sub-constructs:1. communication and visual identity;2. behaviour;3. corporate culture; and4. market conditions.The model adapts a multidisciplinary approach in the analysis of CI. It unites the psychological, graphic design, marketing and public relations paradigms of CI. In this way the model represents different views and school of thoughts of CI, aiming for a balanced combination between these different disciplines. Furthermore, in terms of its application, the model presents a practical tool for analysis with its simple structure summarised in a comprehensible graphic presentation.\nCommunication and visual identity: Corporate visual identity\nBehaviour: Management behaviour\nCorporate culture: Organisational culture has been an important focus of academic management since the early 1980s (Wiedmann, 1988). Culture is the commonly held and relatively stable beliefs, attitudes and values that exist within the organisation (Williams et al., 1993). Warwick's culture according to the research conducted by Jarzabkowski and Wilson (2002) is based on the following tenets:* success-orientated;* entrepreneurial and competitive;* intra-organisational competition;* low tolerance for non-performers;* pioneering;* competing at the highest level of sectoral environment, (Harvard, Berkeley, Cambridge and Stanford); and* \"strong centre, strong department\".However, in an academic institution agreement on a single value set is difficult to achieve. Baker and Balmer (1997) in their study about the CI of University of Strathclyde identify that the problem arises mainly from the fact that each member of the university is an expert in a specific area and has therefore a very strong view about how to proceed in this area. In the absence of a general direction for the academic community to proceed in, this sub-cultures and multiplicity in identities may harm the successful implementation of a CI programme.Nationality\nMarket conditions: Nature of the industry\nDiscussion: Why do organizations need to change their CI? Van Riel and Balmer (1997) claim that CI mix is influenced by various factors such as the developments in the external environment, corporate reputation and organisational performance (refer to Figure 9). Furthermore, this diagram indicates that CI is not enduring as claimed by Albert and Whetten (1985). On the contrary, Balmer (2001, p. 19) talks about the \"identity wheel of change\" where change is a constant feature of organisational life.The need for a CI change programme arises \"when there is a lack of alignment between corporate rhetoric and reality\" (Margulies, 1970, p. 31). Such a lack of alignment can have various reasons. Expansion into new areas of operation, industry pressure and even the change of management can trigger the need for an identity change programme. In the case of Warwick the need for change arises mainly because of the mismatch between its identity and reputation. The University of Warwick has a reputation of being an innovative and radical institution which was not reflected in its CVI system. The existing CVI not only lacked a fashionable appearance but also consistency across departments and services. Over the years there existed more than 20 different departmental logos and various types of university vehicle insignia in use. The Opinion Leader Research's reputation audit suggests that there is general consensus between stakeholders about what Warwick stands for even though this was not particularly represented by the existing CVI (Jones, 2001). Having identified these problems in the Opinion Leaders Report, 1 October 2002, the University of Warwick introduced a new CI. The corporate identity changes were an attempt to close the gap between appearance and (perceived) reality.The Vice Chancellor views the new CVI as an essential development for Warwick. He explains that \"these changes are an important step towards bringing our image in line with our reputation\" (www.warwick.ac.uk/services/publicity/id). As stated by Ian Rowley the new VC is not just interested in the logo. At the same time he wanted to strengthen the internal communication channels in which he appointed the first internal communications officer working in a UK university. At Warwick the management of the visual identity is perceived as \"equally important as the management of other business assets such as finance or human resources\" (www.warwick.ac.uk/services/publicity/id). This shows that the university is aware of the power of CI as a strategic tool to develop differential advantage. Furthermore, Warwick expects to secure its place within the top five in the crowded UK higher education sector which will become even more challenging after 2006 with the introduction of the increased tuition fees.However, the new Warwick CI programme is focused on the visual aspects of the CI mix. On this basis, one can argue that Warwick's new CI programme is one dimensional since it does not consider the remaining elements of the identity mix. Van Riel and Balmer (1997) criticise this approach. They state that the role of symbolism is now assigned a greater role and has grown from its original purpose of increasing organisational visibility to a position where it is seen as having a role in communicating corporate strategy (Van Riel and Balmer, 1997). Nevertheless, Warwick is not the only example where CVI is treated as the centre of CI. Balmer (2001) admits that \"many identity change programmes are one or at best two dimensional\". This two dimensional approach to CI raises concern about the underlying motives of the CI change programmes in the higher education sector. Gioia and Corley (2002, p. 109) state that \"business schools are often confronted with a forced choice between being good and looking good\".This trend can be explained in several ways. The most common of these explanations is the nature of the CI consultancies. Many of these consultancies have a graphic design background and lack competency and expertise in organisational behaviour, strategy and corporate communication (Balmer, 2001). Thus, they emphasise the graphic design aspect of CI as a mean in projecting the CI of the company. Another explanation is based on the conflicting views about the content of CI. The CI literature emphasises the mix and claims that each element of the mix is equally important, whereas the industry and the professionals prioritise CVI over the rest of the elements.The literature on CI sees corporate identity management (CIM) as a combination of various variables. CIM should take into account an organization's historical roots (Moingeon and Ramanantsoa, 1997), its personality (Balmer, 1995; Birkight and Stadler, 1986; Olins, 1978), its corporate strategy (Wiedmann, 1988) and the three parts of the corporate identity mix (behaviour of organizational members, communication and symbolism) in order to acquire a favourable corporate reputation (Fombrun, 1996) which results in improved organizational performance (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990). In theory, CVI is only one element of the CI mix (Melewar and Jenkins, 2002; Baker and Balmer, 1997).Yet, some theorists sympathise with the industry's enthusiasm with CVI. They agree that \"a change in logo can signal a fresh outlook on the part of the firm and its brand\" (Kapferer, 1992). CVI is much easier to manipulate than the other elements of the mix. Therefore, CVI is one aspect of organisational life where senior managers can have absolute control, achieve consistency and bring about change relatively quickly. Moreover, they point out that CVI is an important motivator for change in other organisational areas as well (Olins, 1995; Topalian, 1984). Gioia and Corley (2002 p. 1111) state that:... when organizations design and launch a planned change effort, they frequently employ a visionary projected future image as an impetus and a guide for achieving some desired vision in their structure, process, performance, and prestige.For these reasons it is not surprising to find that managers tend to perceive CI synonymous with visual identity. Research revealed that:... only 4 per cent of British managers equate corporate identity with \"culture, values and philosophy\" while 44 per cent associate it with only \"visual presentation and logotype\" (Schmidt, 1995).In their study of the Strathclyde University, Baker and Balmer (1997) examine whether visual identity is the most important aspect of CI mix and if so in which way it differs from other elements of the mix. They come to the conclusion that \"graphic design can be more than mere trapping\" (Baker and Balmer, 1997, p. 381). A similar conclusion is reached by Gioia and Corley (2002). They suggest a \"substance-image-substance\" strategy, where image can transform substance as much substance can transform image. In this sense, image is not worthy without a solid substance, but at the same time a positive image plays a crucial role in developing the organisation further.However, for image to be the source of organisational development other elements than the visual communication of the CI mix has to be taken into account. In this sense, a change in CVI has to be followed by changes in the other elements of the mix. The question of which elements of the mix should be considered and in which order depends on the gaps that has to be filled between actual and the desired identity at a given time. This implies that not every stage along in CI development process requires the same set of CI elements.Resembling the concept of product life cycle, the development of a CI has stages varying from introduction to maturity. Some of these stages might need to focus primarily on CVI whereas others require emphasis on different aspects of the CI mix. For instance, at an early stage the programme attention can be drawn to the organisation's new CI through a striking change in CVI, while in the more mature stages a change in CVI might be less convincing. It should be remembered that a continuous transformation of CVI can be seen more as a sign of insecurity and inconsistency than a motivation for improvement. Thus, in this case the organisation should consider operational elements of the mix such as management or employee behaviour.\nConclusion: This paper has demonstrated that CI is an amalgamation of several elements. From a management point of view it would be a failure to assume one single element as being more important than the others. The management of CI should grasp the complex and multidisciplinary character of CI. Moreover, as Christensen and Askegaard (2001) state that CI should uncover the true \"character\" or \"responsibility of the organisation behind it's various appearances\". In relation to this, management of CI at the University of Warwick with its focus on harmonising the relationship between corporate communication and visual identity can be seen as one dimensional and thus not sufficient in expressing the multidisciplinary construct of CI.However, the change programme is not without strategic intent. The fact that the degree of change is kept at a minimum shows that the university management wants to avoid possible resistance from the various academic and non-academic departments. It also signalled a quick win for the new VC to stamp his own mark on the way Warwick presented itself both internally and externally. These changes brought Warwick's visual identity into line with other aspects of the University's communication and branding strategies.Warwick's new CI is the reflection of the new management strategy, which is the move from a decentralised towards a more centralised management style. In this respect the changes at Warwick represent not a one dimensional perspective to CI but rather the first step of an evolving CI programme.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper analyses the strategic intent behind the University of Warwick's corporate identity (CI) programme by using the four components of the corporate identity model developed by Melewar and Jenkins.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Information gathered from the interview with Ian Rowley, Director of Communication at the University of Warwick, is presented in support of the arguments. In addition, the paper refers to two further documents: \"University of Warwick: Reputation Audit\" and \"The Corporate Identity Guide\".\nFindings: - Warwick's new CI is the reflection of the new management strategy which is the move from a decentralised towards a more centralised management style. In this respect the changes at Warwick represent not a one-dimensional perspective to CI but rather the first step of an evolving CI programme.\nOriginality/value: - Application of the Melewar and Jenkins identity model in the context of a higher education sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
CGIJ review
|
[
"Social responsibility",
"Risk management",
"RADICAL framework",
"Defining clinical governance",
"Tonsil and adenoid health status instrument",
"Clinical supervision",
"Voice recognition software",
"Health care"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nEthical corporate responsibility and clinical governance in Vietnam's private hospital sector: In today's healthcare, quality is the key to the delivery of safe and effective patient care. The clinical governance agenda was designed to provide a framework for quality assessment in all aspects of healthcare provision. Cost effectiveness, staff training, clinical audits and patient satisfaction all come under the umbrella of clinical governance.Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the ten central pillars of clinical governance. Its four key areas are: profit generation, obeying the law, acting ethically and practicing philanthropy. Ethical CSR, with its commitment to incorporate ethical principles into safe practice includes many of the precepts of clinical governance when applied to healthcare institutions.In Vietnam, the importance of incorporating ethical CSR into the healthcare sector has become increasingly important with the introduction of private hospitals. This is particularly evident in the area of knowledge transfer. Experts exist within many fields in Vietnamese hospitals, but often, knowledge becomes isolated within departments or institutions. Sharing knowledge requires trust and this can be lacking where commercial or intellectual rivalries exist. However, knowledge sharing actively benefits everyone as it enhances access to knowledge for both individuals and institutions. When knowledge is shared, each partner gains; this process of mutually beneficial collaboration elevates CSR from a legal and economic focus to one based on ethics and philanthropy. Carroll (1991) identifies this as the pyramid of CSR with finance at the base and philanthropy at the apex.A recent survey of 168 randomly selected Vietnamese hospitals tested whether effective communication sharing, based on the principles of ethical CSR was being implemented. The data collection tool was constructed from the Department of Health Framework for Clinical Governance (DH, 2003) and used a seven-point Likert scale to measure results. Luu (2013) discusses the results and their implications in a pertinent article, which has relevance beyond the local setting of Vietnam.\nWhen personal responsibility seems radical: Risk management is at the heart of clinical governance. Preventing risk saves lives, reduces litigation and promotes public confidence in the healthcare sector. All too often however, safety initiatives are reactive rather than proactive. This often causes poor design and haphazard implementation. One of the factors responsible for poor safety standards and inadequate risk management planning is the move from the blame culture to a systems management approach to risk. While there are many good aspects to this culture shift, including a reduction in bullying or horizontal violence, it has had the effect of making individuals less aware of their own responsibility in risk prevention. According to Edozien (2013), health professionals are no longer trained to recognise risk, to take responsibility for identified problems, or to report the risk behaviours of others.To facilitate the implementation of effective risk management, Edozien proposes the adoption of the RADICAL framework. The framework aims to Raise Awareness of risk situations and behaviours; to Design healthcare environments and interventions with safety in mind; to Involve service users in line with the current patient and public initiative; to Collect and Analyse patient safety data and to Learn from incidents involving patient safety. This simple yet comprehensive common sense approach can help healthcare practitioners to maintain an awareness of risk and safety at all times, to act accordingly and to learn from mistakes that occur. Returning responsibility to the individual makes risk management a personal issue and if everyone takes safety personally healthcare risks can be reduced.\nConfusion rains when an umbrella can be a mindset, model, culture and a framework: Of course, confusion, or any other state of mind might reign, in terms of ruling the thought processes of an individual or of a group of people. However, when healthcare professionals are gathered under the clinical governance umbrella, confusion over the mixed metaphors used to describe this quality improvement initiative might be described as \"raining\" on the healthcare quality parade.Brennan and Flynn (2013) identify a gap between the theory of clinical governance and its implementation in practice. One of the reasons for this, they hypothesise, is confusion over the exact definition of clinical governance. Not only does it cover everything from governance to management and clinical protocols, the structure supporting clinical governance has variously been described as the classic umbrella, or as a framework, mind-set, culture or model. Brennan and Flynn attempt to deconstruct clinical governance in order to clarify its meaning and advise that a more rigorous distinction needs to be made between the governance, activity and management aspects of clinical governance\nJust stick out your tongue and say \"Aaahhhh\": Once upon a time having your throat examined might have been the start of a childhood rite of passage: the tonsillectomy. Tonsils were seen as useless pieces of flesh and having them out was an excuse to eat lashings of ice cream.Today's children no longer have their tonsils routinely removed; in fact gaining authorisation to have a tonsillectomy on the NHS is almost impossible in some areas. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has classified tonsillectomy as a \"low clinical value\" operation, while the audit commission suggest that reducing spending on \"low value\" treatments could save the NHS 500 million GBP per annum. Clearly, there is little financial incentive to treat children with recurrent tonsillitis by removing their tonsils.However, tonsillectomy may not be perceived as a \"low value\" treatment by children with recurring infections or by their parents. Recurrent tonsillitis can have a similar impact on children and their families as chronic conditions like juvenile arthritis or asthma, resulting in poor appetite, lethargy and disrupted school attendance. The tonsil and adenoid health status instrument (TAHSI) has been used to evaluate children's quality of life before and after tonsillectomy, clearly showing reduction in frequency of infection and antibiotic prescription along with improved school attendance. The NHS next stage review (Darzi, 2008) suggested that the patient reported outcome measure (PROM) be used to judge the success of treatments, tying in with the current service user focus in contemporary healthcare. When children are denied a life-enhancing operation on a strict cost-benefit calculation the service user perspective is being ignored.\nClinical supervision: what is it, and what does it achieve?: Clinical supervision an important aspect of clinical governance; at its best it supplies clinicians with a supervisor who can provide guidance and mentoring and who can assist them in improving their own practice. In her famous deconstruction of nursing expertise, Patricia Benner (1984) envisages a development line where a nurse starts out as a novice and moves through stages of knowledge acquisition until she becomes an expert practitioner. According to Benner, some nurses never achieve that desired \"expert\" label but become stuck somewhere during the process. A clinical supervisor's guide is to assist in that journey toward expert status and to facilitate a practitioner in overcoming barriers along the way. Midwifery has a long-established model of supervision where every registered midwife is required to have a supervisor. While this role is not seen as clinical supervision it is a model that other health professions have considered implementing. The midwifery supervisor acts as a critical friend who discusses areas of good and poor practice with the supervisee. An annual supervisory review is mandatory but there is otherwise no set pattern to meetings.However, the million-dollar question relating to supervision is: does it make a difference? The clinical governance initiative requires institutions and individuals to implement quality measures that are cost effective and efficient. Little evidence exists that clinical supervision, as currently practiced, makes a difference to clinical outcomes This makes it difficult to evaluate supervision and to know whether all healthcare practitioners should adopt the midwifery supervisory model, develop a more clinically focused model, or scrap clinical supervision all together.Pearce et al. (2013) have completed a systematic review of articles discussing clinical supervision to answer some of these questions. Their review reveals three recurring themes: reflective practice, task-orientation and stress management. Some authors report that supervision is simply a tick-box exercise with little real potential to change practice while others describe the purpose of supervision as helping clinicians to manage stresses associated with practice such a shift patterns, bullying and poor staffing levels. A more comprehensive interpretation is that supervision facilitates reflection on practice in a structured fashion, thereby enabling clinicians to become reflective practitioners able to monitor and evaluate their own practice. However, it is unclear whether any or all of these models actually improve the delivery of healthcare to the patient, therefore the authors conclude that more research is required to answer the question of whether or not supervision improves practice.\nImproving reporting of VTE using voice recognition software: Venus thromboembolism (VTE) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in modern healthcare. Risk factors associated with VTE include prolonged immobility, pregnancy and childbirth, major surgery and malignancy.Preventing serious complications including death requires prompt action, however correct diagnosis is essential because the treatment, long-term use of anticoagulants, is also associated with serious risks. Therefore, treating a false positive may be as dangerous as withholding treatment.Until recently, examination, reporting and notification was a staggered process with different players involved at each stage. Today, the introduction of voice recognition software enables radiologists to review and authorize scans with little delay. This reduces mistakes in interpretation of results and facilitates a rapid turn around in reporting. This is significant because if a pulmonary embolism is present, rapid treatment will save lives, but a misinterpreted scan can mean a lifetime of unnecessary and potentially risky treatment. Rao et al. (2013) recommend the use of CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) in any uncertain scan results to provide guidance rather than rushing to commence treatment for this reason.This study demonstrated, that using voice recognition software increased the same day reporting rate from 64 per cent to 84 per cent. While not quite reaching the target figure of 90 per cent this still represents significant improvement.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to enable busy health care professionals to gain a quick overview of the current articles in CGIJ.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper takes the form of a review.\nFindings: - Clinical governance continues to be an important issue in contemporary healthcare and the concept is being applied to many different facets of healthcare provision.\nPractical implications: - The papers in the issue recommend changes to: knowledge sharing, risk management, defining low value/high value treatments, use of voice recognition software and clinical supervision.\nSocial implications: - Knowledge sharing and considering patient quality of life (QOL) rather than basing treatment decisions on cost alone are considered.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides an overview of current subjects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Changing career attitudes and corporate governance in Japan
|
[
"Careers",
"Corporate governance",
"Organizational change",
"Japan",
"Employee behaviour",
"Stakeholder analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As the pressures of globalization continue to spread across borders, they often come into conflict with strong domestic institutional practices. These conflicts and the subsequent social and economic changes that occur are crucial indicators of shifts in a particular institutional field.A number of theorists have suggested using the institutional perspective to examine shifting market and institutional boundaries. They point out that an institutional field approach is very appropriate for studying change during turbulent times when new industry segments, business practices, and institutions tend to proliferate (North, 1991, 2005; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Davis and Marquis, 2005).Institutional theory states that organizations are influenced by various economic pressures as they try to gain legitimacy and access to resources needed to survive and prosper. This occurs because companies are both economic and social entities and their stakeholders are influenced by institutional rules and belief systems. Institutional theory focuses mainly on the converging tendencies of organizational strategies, structures and behaviors as they respond to external social, regulatory and legal pressures (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Lewis et al., 2004).Since career management attitudes can be considered a key byproduct of the dominant corporate governance system in a national environment, this paper will examine whether external forces are causing any shifts in Japanese career management attitudes and the associated corporate governance arena. This examination of shifts in the corporate governance arena will use employee level perceptions to detect any significant shits in employees' attitudes towards work, careers and stakeholders in the Japanese work environment.Traditionally, the Japanese business environment has been characterized by a stakeholder orientation in which employees as well as the community have been considered important stakeholders. In this Japanese stakeholder environment, we generally have had cordial labor-management relations, more investment in employees, and more durable organizational commitment attitudes. Consequently, most employees have generally adopted a within company success orientation. However, a ten-year recession and globalization pressures have put a strain on many aspects of the country's view of employee relations and corporate governance. Many Japanese companies have been forced to become more market oriented and this has pushed some Japanese employees to adopt a more personal career success orientation (Freeman and McVea, 2001; Bhasa, 2004).The main goal of this paper is to investigate attitudinal and institutional change by examining the perceptions and expectations of an important stakeholder in the Japanese corporate governance arena. In this bottom-up approach to institutional analysis, this paper will examine the employees' perceptions of national and firm level developments and then ascertain to what extent these views have an impact on their career management orientations. Factor analysis and multiple regression techniques will also be used to test a number of hypotheses.\n2. Linking corporate governance and career management attitudes: Corporate governance can be defined as the set of policies, customs, regulations and institutions that influence the way the corporation is controlled and managed. In addition, it influences the way in which corporations relate to the stakeholders who impacts their business and community objectives (Bhasa, 2004; De Wit and Meyer, 2004). Broadly speaking, there are two contrasting approaches to corporate governance: the Anglo-American perspective (shareholder view) and the Japanese-German (stakeholder view).2.1 Corporate governance: shareholder vs stakeholder views\n3. Japanese corporate governance and institutional change: 3.1 Strong stakeholder environment\n4. Methodology: data collection and conceptual variables: Surveys were collected from 488 respondents in 2005 and 2006. One hundred students from a top ranked Japanese university assisted in the collection of these surveys of Japanese employees. The students collected surveys from their friends, relatives, neighbors and others.The respondents were all full-time employees who were working mainly in the Tokyo area in Japan. Since firms in Tokyo dominate the economic activities of the country, it was possible to get the participation of respondents in a wide variety of important sectors of the economy. This convenience sample included male and female workers at all levels (top, middle, lower) of their firms and covered a wide range of administrative and technical capabilities (Table VI).The questions and scales used were all developed by the author for the purpose of capturing career management attitudes and perceptions of business and economic developments. Factor analysis was used to help determine the construct validity of certain conceptual grouping of variables. Studies have pointed out that a Kaiser Meyer Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy should be greater than 0.5 to be considered appropriate for factor analysis (Tsai, 2006). The groups of variables used in this research had KMOs ranging from 0.66 to 0.85; all significantly greater than the suggested threshold level. Principle components analysis was used to extract the factors and simplify the data. Subsequently, varimax rotation was applied to determine the factor loading for each factor. A key indicator in the factor analysis process is the eigenvalue. The eigenvalue is the sum of squares of each variable's factor loading in specific common factor. The eigenvalues for each key conceptual scale derived from the factor analysis were included in the tables.4.1 Dependent variables\n5. Regression analysis and data analysis: In examining the dependent variable within-company success orientation, the paper looked at how the employees views of national and corporate image and strategies influenced their approach this stakeholder view of the firm. We can see in Table V that the employees who held the view that their firms had a \"good market reputation\" and \"good motivation and training strategies\" were those who supported a within company success orientation. More than younger workers, older workers tended to have this view. These employees showed no significant support for pro open-market policies or for efficiency improving strategies. These results provide strong support for H2.In the analysis of personal career success orientation (Table V), we can see quite different results. Employees who held pro open-market views and were very aware of their firms outsourcing and efficiency improving strategies were more likely to have a personal career success orientation. Moreover, younger workers, female employees and more educated employees preferred a personal career success orientation approach. These results support the claims of H3 and H4.Since this was an examination of possible shifts in institutional attitudes in Japan, the paper also investigated to see which factors would influence employees to support American management style strategies (Table V). The results here closely parallel those for personal career success orientation. Employees who were supported open-market policies and a company efficiency orientation were significantly more supportive of American style management. It is interesting to note that female Japanese employees were significantly more supportive than males of this approach to management.In order to get a deeper understanding of the dynamics behind employees career management orientation decisions, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also used to look at rank and gender difference for the dependent variables (Table VI). What became apparent was that there are significant differences in career management approaches among the top executives, middle managers and general staff. For within company success orientation, top executives, mid-level managers, and general staff reported means of 32.5, 29.7 and 28.6, respectively. This shows that the higher up the organization, the more likely the support for within company success orientation. For personal career success orientation, the general staff have the highest mean of 26.6.It is possible to say that in general there is preference in Japan for the within-company success orientation because all the means for that category are higher than the means for the personal career success orientation (Table VI). The average for the former variable is 29.37 while the latter is 25.98. Even though women show a higher mean (27.20) for personal career orientation than men (25.63), they still register a higher mean (29.83) for the within company success orientation. These results provide strong support for the first hypothesis.\n6. Concluding observations: Davis and Maquis (2005) and others have strongly supported the idea of more research being done with the institutional field as the focus of analysis (North, 1991, 2005). They point out that this approach can be especially insightful when examining organizations, institutions and business practices under conditions of major economic and social change. Moreover, they see institutional theory as a good perspective for understanding change in institutional fields. One particular research strategy that is very pertinent is an examination of global market or institutional incursions into previously protected institutional fields (Kitaura, 1996; Buhner et al., 1997; Lewis et al., 2004).This paper chose the institutional field of domestic corporate governance practices to examine potential changes in attitudes towards career management preferences. The analysis was based on the contrast between the stakeholder and the shareholder views of the firm. The goal was to understand institutional change by examining the shift in attitudes or expectations of important participants in the institutional field. The paper chose a bottom-up approach because of the view that the employees of the firm are the stakeholders most sensitive and most vulnerable to the long-term fundamental changes in business practices of the institutional field. The expectations were that after a decade of intensifying global pressures, domestic restructurings, and new corporate strategies, one might see a shift in the attitudes of Japanese employees' view of the most desired career management approach.The findings confirmed that since Japan represents a strong stakeholder environment there was a general preference for the within-company success orientation. Most employees would still prefer to remain and excel within a company that has a good reputation and has good strategies to perform well in a competitive market. This was especially true for older and mid-career male employees. However, the results also show that there is a significant shift in attitudes with many younger employees preferring to focus on a personal career success orientation. Female employees were also more likely than their male counterparts to want to focus on building their career skills even if they had to change companies.As globalization intensifies market pressures, local institutional environments need to adjust in one direction or the other. The changing employee career expectations in Japan signal that, in some degree, a convergence of business practices is taking place. This paper can also be considered as one of those examining the process of de-institutionalization of local business practices. The results point to a slow demise in a belief in longer-term or life-time employment in the Japanese business environment. The increasing role of employment agencies (hakken gaisha) and greater hiring of mid-career workers also indicate a more flexible external labor market (Cheng and Kalleberg, 1997; Ahmadjian and Robbins, 2005). Since this is only a cross-sectional study of the career management orientation of Japanese employees, future research should examine these developments over time to confirm the long-term direction of change in the business practices. A more direct comparison of Japanese and American employees would also provide more confirmatory evidence. However, as the Japanese economy recovers and company performance improves, it has been suggested that we may see a return to more traditional expectations and attitudes. Careful observation of the trends over time and in various business environments will be necessary to make a definite claim of long-term and fundamental changes in the Japanese corporate governance arena.Opens in a new window.Table I\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - Japan is well known for having a strong stakeholder environment. However, a more than ten-year recession and globalization pressures have put a strain on many aspects of the country's approach to corporate governance. The main goal of this paper is to investigate institutional change by examining the perceptions and expectations of an important stakeholder in the Japanese corporate governance arena.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this bottom-up approach to corporate governance analysis, surveys were collected on employees' perceptions of national and firm level developments in order to verify to what extent their views had an impact on their career management attitudes. Factor analysis and multiple regression techniques were used to test a number of research propositions.\nFindings: - The results showed that although there is still strong support for a within-company success orientation (stakeholder view) in Japan, there are a growing number of employees who prefer a personal career success orientation (shareholder view) in Japan. Research limitations/implications - Since this is a cross-sectional study of the career management orientation of Japanese employees, future research should examine these developments over time to confirm the long-term direction of change in the business practices.\nPractical implications: - Human resource managers, recruiters, and firms in general need to reevaluate their views of the future career management attitudes of Japanese employees.\nOriginality/value: - This paper contributes to the global convergence-divergence debate in corporate governance practices. It can also be considered as an important examination of the process of de-institutionalization of local business practices.\n",
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