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Impact of perceived organizational support, psychological empowerment and leader member exchange on commitment and its subsequent impact on service quality	[ "Service quality", "Empowerment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the last two decades in emerging economies like India, hotel industry has showed consistent growth. Presently, the market size of Indian hospitality and tourism industry stands at $120 billion and might exceed $420 billion by the year 2025 (Indian Brand Equity Foundation, 2013). The Indian hotel industry grew by almost 14 percent in 2010-2011 and is expected to maintain the same rate of growth in coming years (Vardharajan and Rajan, 2013). Service quality (SQ) in the hospitality industry has been a subject of extensive research since the late 1980s (Barrington and Olsen, 1987) and has drawn attention of academics and practitioners alike (Lassar et al., 2000). Also, customers today have become more aware and vocal about their expectations regarding the quality of service they get. This makes it all the more important for hotels to ensure that the service delivered by them is of the highest quality. SQ is also the basis for gaining a competitive advantage since the quality of services rendered influences the perception of consumers and their decision to visit a hotel again (Chen, 2013). Therefore, delivering service that meets expectations has always been a major concern of the hotel industry (Clark et al., 2009).\n2. Theoretical foundation and hypothesis formulation: 2.1. OC\n3. Research method: 3.1. Sample selection and data collection\n4. Results: 4.1. SEM\n5. Discussion: This paper identifies the factors that influence OC and SQ in context of the hotel industry. Since this industry is labor intensive, its success depends on SQ, skills, OC and attitude of employees (Edvardsson and Gustavsson, 2003; Dhar, 2009). Also LMX, PE and POS play a very important role in determining final SQ delivered.\n6. Theoretical implications: This study contributes to organizational behavior and services marketing literature. It examines the relationship between antecedents (LMX, POS and PE) and outcome (SQ) so as to observe the cumulative effect of antecedents on outcome through an integrated model. The paper considered the findings of Luo et al. (2013) by examining the relationship between OC and SQ, and supports their findings that higher OC leads to better SQ.\n7. Practical implications: This study holds great significance for academics and practitioners alike. In the hotel industry, many managers believe that delivering the best SQ is the only means to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Managers and employers should regularly encourage employees to deliver a high level of OC to ensure high SQ. Managers and employers need to build trust, support and develop a better understanding of employees by giving them an opportunity to participate in decision making so they feel more psychologically empowered (Spreitzer, 1995), thereby increasing SQ to customers. Managers can ensure the delivery of better quality service by understanding the needs and psyche of their employees and making conscious efforts to lead them, make them feel empowered and cared for, thereby increasing their commitment levels toward the organization. By ensuring employee commitment, managers can to a great extent, guarantee delivery of high-quality services. This study would help practitioners understand the significance of the antecedents considered, and their significance to the outcome, paying attention to which, they can incorporate practices that lead to greater commitment of employees, thus resulting in greater SQ. Academics on the other hand, will get a deeper theoretical understanding of the antecedents considered in the paper, and their influence on employee behavior as well as outcome. This study has implications for entrepreneurs, managers and policy makers in the service industry who tend to give less importance to employee-oriented issues, especially the relevance of the OC of employees and its impact on SQ.\n8. Limitations and areas for future research: Like other studies, this study also has limitations. First, even though to check the common method biasness of the data, Harman single factor test was used and the results were in favor, yet some other method to confirm the results of Harman could also be applied. Second, the study only considered hotels having star ratings between one and three in Uttarakhand. Hotels with higher star ratings have been excluded. The authors suggest studies be carried out with samples comprising hotels having higher star ratings to validate the findings of this study. Third, this study considered three antecedents - POS, PE and LMX, and their influence on outcome (SQ) with and without a mediator (OC). The authors reason that there might be other antecedents and mediators also affecting outcome that need to be identified and their influence on outcome established. Further research may be carried out to validate the results of this research in other service sectors such as banking, airlines, financial services, etc. However, while conducting a study of this kind, gender and its impact should be considered to keep the study relevant to industries with a greater number of females (e.g. nursing staff in hospitals).\n9. Conclusion: The hotel industry faces the perpetual challenge of providing peerless service to customers. High SQ delivered by the hotel's workforce is key to satisfying and retaining customers. This paper examines the factors that influence the commitment levels of hotel employees which in turn, leads to better service delivery. The study emphasizes LMX, PE and POS as antecedents to SQ, while OC acts as a mediator. It highlights the importance of good relations between superiors and subordinates, autonomy and freedom to employees in performing their jobs and support and guidance from superiors in increasing commitment levels of employees which results in employees delivering high-quality service to customers. Hotel administrators may use this study as a guide to manage their workforce in a way that maximizes SQ and contributes to organizational growth.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of perceived organizational support (POS), psychological empowerment (PE) and leader member exchange (LMX) as antecedents on the commitment level of employees working in the hotel industry and their subsequent impact on service quality (SQ).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 436 employees and 1,320 customers from 34 hotels with the help of a structured self-administered questionnaire. The analysis of data were done by applying a confirmatory factor analysis along with a structural equation model.\nFindings: The findings of the study indicate that organizational commitment acts as a full mediator between: POS and SQ; and leader-member exchange and SQ. On the other hand, it acts a partial mediator between PE and SQ.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to organizational behavior and services marketing literature. It examines the relationship between antecedents (LMX, PE and POS) and outcome (SQ) so as to observe the cumulative effect of antecedents on outcome through an integrated model. The study suggests the managerial as well as theoretical implications on the basis of the findings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A proactive decision making framework for condition-based maintenance	[ "Decision making", "Condition-based maintenance", "E-maintenance", "Proactivity", "Real-time data", "Recommendations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In manufacturing, equipment maintenance is a significant contributor to the total company's cost, so having an optimal maintenance policy in terms of cost, equipment downtime and quality is an important efficiency enabler (Waeyenbergh and Pintelon, 2004; Garg and Deshmukh, 2006). Maintenance is related to all the processes of a manufacturing firm and focusses not only on avoiding the equipment breakdown but also on improving business performance, for example, in terms of productivity, elimination of malfunctions, etc. Various maintenance policies have been examined in both the academic and industrial realms and a multitude of maintenance strategies have been recommended in an effort to develop a holistic approach for maintenance management, which supports both reactive and proactive support maintenance actions (Waeyenbergh and Pintelon, 2004).\n2. Decision making for maintenance operations: 2.1. Types of maintenance\n3. Review of CBM methods and techniques: There are three main steps in CBM: diagnosis, prognosis and decision support (Voisin et al., 2010; Peng et al., 2010). Diagnosis has to do with the actual monitoring of a system and detection of failures, while prognosis has to do with prediction of the RUL of the system based upon its actual health state (Venkatasubramanian, 2005). Although diagnosis, which is usually mentioned as the step before prognosis, is not always prerequisite, it can efficiently complement the proactive maintenance DSS in cases when an undesired effect which has not been predicted occurs (Jardine et al., 2006; Peng et al., 2010).\n4. Proactive decision making framework for CBM: In this section we present a conceptual framework for supporting CBM decisions within an e-maintenance/real-time data infrastructure. As shown in Figure 6, our framework represents the sequence of steps, which need to be followed in order to support decision making in e-maintenance. The framework is based on the OSA-CBM framework (Lebold and Thurston, 2001) and the prognostic process outlined by Voisin et al. (2010), as outlined in Section 2. The conceptual framework of Figure 6 extends the aforementioned works in two ways: first, the CBM constituents are identified and structured in two categories and second, the decision support constituent is further analyzed according to the types of decisions that can be provided. Specifically, the two categories are the information space and the decision space. The former consists of diagnosis and prognosis and provides information about the current and the future health state of the equipment, respectively, while the latter consists of maintenance actions, both reactive and proactive ones. An integrated view of the information and decision spaces is a prerequisite for providing timely and reliable recommendations because the input of the decision space relies on the predictions made within the information space.\n5. Practical demonstration of the proposed framework: In this section we present a practical application of the proposed proactive decision making framework for CBM in the oil and gas industry. We describe the practical role and use of the proposed framework focussing on how it can support proactive decision-making ahead of time on the basis of real-time observations and predictions about future undesired events, through a real maintenance scenario.\n6. Discussion: Although decision making methods based on predictions about the health state of the equipment has been proposed in the last years, not all of the capabilities of proactive computing have been exploited. The proposed framework allows embedding in the CBM concept e-maintenance capabilities in conjunction with proactive decision making in order to allow the provision of more detailed recommendations. In this way, the decision maker is based less on his/her personal judgement and is able to take proactively informed decisions. At the same time, the time window for taking decisions about how to resolve a problem is increased, as the decision epoch starts upon the prediction of the problem instead of upon its occurrence. So, on the one hand the probability of human error is decreased while, on the other hand, there is more time for planning and undertaking other manufacturing operations that are closely related to maintenance (e.g. logistics issues, such as the ordering of spare parts). Furthermore, based on the proposed framework, the optimal time for maintenance can be accompanied with the appropriate action according to the predictions, the user requirements and the company policies. Therefore, the higher the level of proactivity is achieved, the more efficient the maintenance becomes, because undesired events are eliminated or mitigated and all the business functions that are related to maintenance, such as production, ordering of spare parts, etc., operate seamlessly.\n7. Conclusions and future work: Our literature review of CBM methods indicates that there are combinations of machine learning and decision making methods used in order to provide recommendations based on predictions. These predictions are derived from the analysis and processing of real-time sensor data. For each paper examined, the methods as well as their inputs and outputs were identified. Based on previous research works regarding modeling CBM concept and on the literature review of methods and techniques that are used for prognosis and decision making, a framework for maintenance decision making is proposed. This framework enriches others existing in literature by structuring the information and the decision space and by focussing on the latter. Moreover, the proposed framework embeds the concepts of proactivity and e-maintenance to CBM in order to enable the provision of timely and reliable recommendations. Finally, reactive actions for immediate implementation based on diagnostic information are recommended when an undesired event that has not been predicted occurs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to perform an extensive literature review in the area of decision making for condition-based maintenance (CBM) and identify possibilities for proactive online recommendations by considering real-time sensor data. Based on these, the paper aims at proposing a framework for proactive decision making in the context of CBM.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Starting with the manufacturing challenges and the main principles of maintenance, the paper reviews the main frameworks and concepts regarding CBM that have been proposed in the literature. Moreover, the terms of e-maintenance, proactivity and decision making are analysed and their potential relevance to CBM is identified. Then, an extensive literature review of methods and techniques for the various steps of CBM is provided, especially for prognosis and decision support. Based on these, limitations and gaps are identified and a framework for proactive decision making in the context of CBM is proposed.\nFindings: In the proposed framework for proactive decision making, the CBM concept is enriched in the sense that it is structured into two components: the information space and the decision space. Moreover, it is extended in a way that decision space is further analyzed according to the types of recommendations that can be provided. Moreover, possible inputs and outputs of each step are identified.\nPractical implications: The paper provides a framework for CBM representing the steps that need to be followed for proactive recommendations as well as the types of recommendations that can be given. The framework can be used by maintenance management of a company in order to conduct CBM by utilizing real-time sensor data depending on the type of decision required.\nOriginality/value: The results of the work presented in this paper form the basis for the development and implementation of proactive Decision Support System (DSS) in the context of maintenance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The double-edged sword of having a unique perspective: Feelings of discrimination and perceived career advantages among LGBT employees	[ "International", "LGBT", "Career advantages", "Unique perspectives" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) employees often face a double-edged sword when it comes to how they relate to their work environments. Having cognitive diversity in an organization can be an advantage and has been linked to higher team creativity and innovation (Hoever et al., 2012) as well as increases in productivity and market share (Hambrick et al., 1996). There are great advantages to leveraging LGBT perspectives, as well. Cunningham (2011) found that when employers actively integrate and value LGBT employees' unique perspectives, they can outperform less diverse teams by up to seven times. Sexual minorities in the workplace, however, are often subject to unfair employment environments, unequal rights, and discrimination.\nLGBT employees' unique perspective: The estimates of LGBT employees in the workforce around the world compared to the prevalence of discrimination suggest that if companies fail to encourage an inclusive and accepting workplace atmosphere among LGBT employees, they could \"miss out on the opportunity to attract top talent from this segment of the workforce\" (McPherson and Clise, 2012, p. 10). As stated previously, a diverse workforce can be very valuable for the organization, increasing creativity and productivity (Hambrick et al., 1996; Hoever et al., 2012), but diversity is increasingly valuable when LGBT employees' unique perspectives are included and valued (Cunningham, 2011).\nPerceived career advantages: While the bulk of the LGBT literature tends to focus on the negative aspects of being LGBT (i.e. see Croteau, 1996; Gates, 2012; Rabelo and Cortina, 2014; Ragins and Cornwell, 2001; Ragins et al., 2007), little research has examined the positive sides. That is, some LGBT individuals have not only accepted that they are different from non-LGBT individuals, but think that their difference gives them a different perspective that in some work contexts provides an advantage. One of the earliest examples of this argument is Crenshaw's (1991) intersectionality construct. She argued, specifically in the case of women of color, that \"ignoring differences within groups contributes to tensions among groups\" (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1242). At the same time, \"[...] the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of social empowerment and reconstruction\" (p. 1242).\nSocial identity and perceived discrimination: Another relevant aspect of SIT is the concept of identity centrality, which explains that while humans relate to many different types of identities and social groups, only a few at a time are formative or meaningful (Cameron, 2004). Environmental, social, and contextual factors are important in determining which identity is important, or central, to a person at any given time, and these central identities guide behavior, self-concept, and social perception. Even though a central identity theme may be similar in two people, SIT suggests that some individuals more closely relate to the identity than others, based on factors such as the person's self-definition, unique life experiences and beliefs, and the frequency with which the person is reminded about their attachment to the group (visibility of the identity; Cameron, 2004; Ng, 2014).\nPOS: If LGBT employees believe that their organization appreciates, engages, and encourages their unique perspective, they could become more invested in the outcomes of the organization and may perceive less discrimination in the workplace. This POS is thought to be a product of an employee's tendency to anthropomorphize the organization as a whole, and affects the employee's interpretation of manager or supervisor actions as indicative of widespread organizational beliefs (Eisenberger et al., 1986). A high level of POS has been associated with a high sense of obligation to help the organization achieve its long-term goals (Eisenberger et al., 2001), lower rates of absenteeism (Eisenberger et al., 1986), lower rates of intentions to resign, and lower rates of actual turnover (Allen et al., 2003). Organizations with LGBT supportive policies communicate a sense of fairness and equality that can lead to a positive and productive workplace climate for all employees, not just LGBT workers (Pichler et al., 2017).\nMethods: Participants\nResults: To better understand our respondents' perceptions, the survey provided opportunities for comments. Half of the respondents used the opportunity to explain their perceptions in more detail with 677 comments in total (range: 0-12; median: 4). The number of comments and perceived discrimination were correlated (r=0.21, p=0.01); however, a median split did not reveal differences between those making four or fewer comments (n=77, M=2.41, SD=1.19) compared to those making five or more comments (n=73, M=2.76, SD=1.24, Cohen's d=-0.288; t (148)=-1.74, p=0.083) in terms of discrimination. In the following, quantitative results will be presented and representative responses will be used for clarification when necessary.\nDiscussion: This study examined LGBT employees' experiences and perceptions of their workplaces in relation to perceived support, discrimination, and career advantages. We drew from SIT (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) to predict that LGBT employees, as members of a low-status group, will perceive discrimination, and argued that to enhance self-esteem, LGBT employees will believe that they have a unique perspective to offer (Turner and Reynolds, 2001). We investigated the negative and positive aspects of having a unique perspective in terms of perceived discrimination and career advancement, and tested the effects of employer appreciation for this perspective. We hypothesized that having a unique perspective is associated with increased career advancement on the one hand, and increased perceived discrimination on the other hand. Based on the concept of POS (Eisenberger et al., 2001), we further posited that if LGBT employees perceive their perspective to be appreciated by the organization, they will perceive less discrimination and higher career advancement.\nLimitations and directions for future research: Our study has three general limitations: the lack of internal consistency between items resulting in the use of single-item measures, and the self-selected sample. Single-item measure deficiency may have been partially alleviated by the rich open-ended responses many respondents provided; however, in the future, using more validated scales will mitigate those limitations. Although our sample is uniquely international, it is small and respondents may not be representative of the international LGBT population. Additionally, because this study was exploratory and the sampling was a purposive and self-selected convenience sample, the results may have limited generalizability.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Drawing on social identity theory and the concept of perceived organizational support, the authors conducted an online, exploratory survey of 150 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workers in 28 countries to examine whether being LGBT provides a unique perspective in the workplace, if they perceive their employer appreciates this perspective, and what effects this has on perceived discrimination and perceived career advancement. Collectively these questions have implications for work engagement and career prospects of LGBT workers. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Multiple regression and qualitative analyses were used to analyze Likert scale questions along with open-ended options.\nFindings: The majority of respondents agree that being LGBT offers a unique perspective compared to heterosexual workers. The more respondents agree that they have a different perspective, the more they feel discriminated against. After controlling for demographic variables as well as education, tenure, job level, and disclosure, hierarchical linear regression analyses showed offering a unique perspective increases perceived career advantages. Results also showed increased perceived career advantages if the employer appreciates this perspective. Results of a second regression analysis also showed that a unique perspective is associated with more perceived discrimination, unless their employer appreciates this perspective.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although single-item measures and a small international sample limit generalizability, rich qualitative responses provide insights into LGBT attitudes across multiple countries.\nPractical implications: This study can be applied to future understandings of the diverse nature of LGBT perceptions and attitudes in the workplace.\nSocial implications: This is one of the first studies to examine LGBT perceptions that they possess a unique perspective that should be valued by employers.\nOriginality/value: This exploratory study is one of the first to recognize unique LGBT perspectives and examine the relationship between their perspectives and perceived discrimination and career advantages.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Design standard for inclusion: tactile ground surface indicators in China	[ "Design standard", "Public design", "Inclusion", "Tactile ground surface indicators", "Visually impaired persons", "Design", "China", "Disadvantaged groups", "Facilities", "Buildings" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Tactile ground surface indicators (TGSIs) are common in public environments today. They are given different names by different organisations and professional bodies, such as tactile walking surface indicator, tactile paving surface indicator, tactile paving, tactile guide path, truncated dome, detectable warning and warning paver. Regardless of what they are called, their commonly recognised and direct objective is to guide visually impaired persons to where they want to go (Department for Transport, 2011; Hong Kong Buildings Department, 2007; Osamu, 1999; Standard Australia Committee, 2004; Transport and Road Research Laboratory, 1983).TGSIs users are a specific group who have lost their vision either wholly or in part (National Rehabilitation Centre for Persons with Disabilities, 2003; Sueda et al., 2005). As stated by theInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO) (2010)), when people who are blind or who have low vision (i.e. visually impaired persons) travel alone, they may encounter problems and dangers in various situations. As vision is the primary sense used to orient oneself and to distinguish objects, particularly at a distance, deficiency of vision means that visually impaired persons need to rely on other senses to orientate themselves (Faruk et al. 2008; Schillmeier, 2008; Sueda et al., 2005; Udo and Fels, 2010). Their ability to distinguish objects, in particular those located far away, is in general less than a sighted person's; they experience slower reaction times, due to the limitations of hearing and smell, which are relatively slower ways of transmitting information. Although visually impaired persons are more familiar with and sensitive to their senses of hearing, smell and touch than sighted persons, they face many difficulties in their daily lives - possibly more than persons with other types of disabilities (Chiaki et al., 2006; Giudice and Lege, 2008; Siu, 2007). Persons with impaired vision have to put more effort into being independent in their daily routines (Faruk et al. 2008; Osamu, 2003a; Udo and Fels, 2010). Therefore, TGSIs offer convenience to visually impaired persons and can also enhance their self-confidence and encourage them to engage in more meaningful outdoor activities (Hiroaki et al., 2000; ISO n.d.; Osamu, 2003b). TGSIs should not only facilitate the independent travel of visually impaired persons to places they frequently travel, but also to places they visit for the first time (ISO, 2010; Transport and Road Research Laboratory, 1983; Udo and Fels, 2010).When moving around a pedestrian environment, visually impaired persons seek and make use of the tactile information underfoot. Contrasts in surface texture are particularly detectable. However, as pointed out by the Technical Committee ISO/TC 173 when they were preparing the draft of ISO 23599 (Assistive Products for Blind and Vision Impaired Persons - Tactile Walking Surface Indicators), the ability to detect differences in tactile patterns through the soles of the shoes or with a white cane varies among individuals. Thus, if TGSIs cannot be distinguished clearly, easily and consistently, they cause difficulties for some visually impaired persons, which can even lead to serious trouble and danger (Duckett and Pratt, 2001; Faruk et al. 2008; Hiroaki et al. 2000; Mizukami, 2005; Osamu, 2003b). Moreover, people are now living in a global world in which visually impaired persons who live in cities or even small communities expect to visit different places. (This includes those living in the cities of many developing countries). Different incompatible versions of TGSIs with confusing and sometimes contradictory standards can inconvenience visually impaired persons visiting a city that is foreign to them (Faruk et al. 2008; Sueda et al., 2005). Beyond all doubt, the best possible way to overcome the problems and limitations of existing TGSIs is to establish a consistent, comprehensive and good standard that is also universally compatible (Osamu, 2003b; Siu and Lu, 2009).Design standards are an acknowledged measure of comparison used when assessing either the quantitative or qualitative value of designs, e.g. plans, systems, environments, objects, images, messages. They are very important not only in the production process, but also in the design phase, since design is the first step of manufacture. If there are poor or inadequate specifications and requirements in the first stage, the resulting design will offer no assurance of quality in the final stage. Peter Zec, President of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (2005-2007), argues that design quality becomes calculable if binding rules for design and the assessment of design are successfully established. In principle, this is how design standards are developed, so that right from the outset it is possible to calculate and plan the entire production process (Zec, 2006). In addition, design standards are significant when they can ensure the quality of the design - especially designs of public facilities. Due to the particular nature of public facilities, which is that they are for public use, design standards assume even greater importance in these cases. They should be known and recognised by the public, and should also function adequately (Department for Transportation, 2006; Goldsmith, 1997; Siu, 2009). Therefore, as highlighted in the introduction of the ISO's (2010) document on international standards for TGSIs, we need to seriously consider and carefully design standards to show how society has extended care and love towards visually impaired persons and to the idea of human equality.\nA study of tactile ground surface indicators: case study in the Chinese mainland: From 2005 to 2009, to have a greater understanding of access issues and to promote equal opportunity in our society, a research project was conducted into the needs and preferences of visually impaired persons. In the project TGSIs in the Chinese mainland were taken as a case study, while information about TGSIs in other countries/cities was used for supplementary reference. The five selected cities for the case study were Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. These cities were chosen because they claimed to have established TGSIs for the needs of visually impaired persons. They are also the metropolitan cities in which the central government, regional governments and private property companies are most likely to develop public environments and facilities. Moreover, the China Association of the Blind, the major recognised non-governmental association providing services to visually impaired persons in China, has local representatives in these cities, and could facilitate their members' participation in the case study.Public places including streets, open spaces (parks, playgrounds), transportation terminals, shopping centres and universities in the selected cities were taken as case study sites for in-depth study. The research activities included intensive site visits, field observations and direct interviews. The China Association of Blind and other associations working with visually impaired persons introduced persons with different levels of visual impairment (e.g. totally blind, mild grade visually impairment) to researchers who invited them to be research participants and to visit the selected sites. The number of participants in each of the five cities ranged from 10 to 16, depending on the number of visually impaired persons introduced to researchers by the associations. The numbers of male and female participants in each city were approximately the same, and at least four participants were totally blind. According to the definitions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) (2011a, b) and the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) (2002), total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as no light perception (NLP). In the case study, the definitions of \"legal blindness\" as defined in North America, most of Europe, Japan and China were adopted. This meant the participants with visual acuity of 20/200 (6/60) or less, in the better eye with the best possible correction were defined as blind for this study (ICO, 2002).Different types of TGSIs were reviewed using product analysis methods, including the assessment of the overall system and network, configuration, construction, form, dimension, visual contrast, material and surface finishing. The project team attempted to promote participatory research in the project. Thus, the team members maintained a close working relationship with the visually impaired participants, their related organisations and other social organisations.Standards in China\nThe major issues of existing design standard of TGSIs in China: According to this case study and with reference to the three perspectives (i.e. policy, implementation and management), the main problems in the design standards of TGSIs in China can be summarised as follows:* There is no well-organised policy and plan to review and ensure the planning, establishment, design, implementation, management and maintenance of TGSIs with reference to the standard.* The design standard of TGSIs is considered part of the requirement for barrier-free standards in China. However, there is no specific standard for TGSIs.* The section on TGSIs in China's barrier-free standards is not detailed enough. There are insufficient details on the appropriate type, pattern, visual contrast and implementation of TGSIs.* Compared to the standards for other facilities and environmental settings in the JGJ50-2001, Standards for the Barrier-free Design of Urban Roads and Buildings, the descriptions of the standards for TGSIs are relatively short and written in more general terms. The requirements for TGSIs are also not identified in detail. Taking the colour of TGSIs as an example, the colour standard (requirements) of the surface and raised strips and dots is only briefly described as \"medium yellow\" (i.e. in a general Chinese term). The commonly used professional specification of colour in pantone or RGB (red-green-blue) format is not provided. In fact, the meaning of the Chinese words \"middle yellow\" does not imply any RGB colour percentage or meaning. In other words, this description of the requirements is based on a feeling and approximation, and is not really a specification. Particularly as China is a big country with a great deal of territory, a large number of people, variation in of the development of different districts and an unbalanced quality of population, this kind of abstract, non-specific description of a \"standard\" is very difficult to implement in a standardised way.* There is a lack of implementation examples (i.e. specific situations) provided in the TGSI standards documentation. In the standards of many other countries these kinds of examples are very important. In the Japanese Standards and the ISO standards, the clearly defined TGSIs with detailed dimensions allow professionals (e.g., planners, designers) and management (e.g., local authorities, property developers) to execute and ensure high quality TGSIs (FPPMET Japan, 2002; ISO, 2010).* The implementation quality is poor (e.g. installation, materials selection, degree of compliance with the specifications and requirements). There are two common reasons for this problem. First, there is a lack of installation guidelines. Second, professionals in different disciplines, as well as implementers, interpret the standards in different and inconsistent ways. Clear and detailed installation guidelines are important to maintain a high quality of implementation. One-third of the main pages of ISO/DIS 23599 describe the installation guidelines. In short, the current standard in China is not clear enough or detailed enough.* Poor management of TGSIs leads to failures in maintaining the specifications and requirements outlined in the standard. This situation occurs for two major reasons. First, some managers do not fulfil their responsibilities. Second, the general public does not consider the importance of maintaining the quality of TGSIs. Instead, many non-visually impaired persons only consider their own interests and benefits. For example, some people park their cars on the pavement, so that the weight of their cars damages the TGSI tiles. Some people make unauthorised changes to public environments that do not accord with the requirements listed in the standard.\nConclusions: This study provides insights and references for public and town planners who need to be aware of the needs of visually impaired persons and the active role they play in society. There are three key design elements in TGSI standards that need attention: type, pattern and visual contrast. Types and patterns must have strictly defined dimensions and physical forms that are easy for visually impaired persons to understand; the visual contrast, in terms of luminance contrast and difference in colour, must be customized to different environments to be effectively used by persons with low vision. Moreover, there are three perspectives to ensure the quality of design standards: policy, implementation, and management. An appropriate plan is half of a successful job. Creating a design standard for TGSIs is a professional job that needs professional knowledge and skills for the policy to have the expected results. A good TGSI design standard also requires clear and detailed specifications and examples of the implementation of the standard. As stated, implementers require these kinds of details to achieve the standard in a correct, consistent and non-confusing way. If implementation is considered the first step in establishing TGSI standards, then management is responsible for maintaining the standard at the specified quality. Today, many TGSI plans and initial construction are of good quality. However, the management and maintenance of these TGSIs are unsatisfactory in many ways. As in the above example, TGSIs in many urban areas are obstructed by objects put there by people who do not realise that they are violating the requirements of a TGSI standard, which can cause problems for both visually impaired persons and other people. Thus, clear management requirements are a necessary provision in the documentation of TGSI standards - as they are in other legal documents.TGSI standards are still new in China and some of the elements still lag behind those of other countries. However, being new and lacking experience should not be an excuse for government and professionals to not put sufficient effort into these matters. Instead, the government and professionals should work promptly with the general public to establish good standard for TGSIs. On the one hand, China needs to seriously review and then develop TGSI standards that match the country's particular environmental, social and cultural needs. On the other hand, the TGSI standards of other countries can be considered important references to help China develop its own standard. Finally, as the TGSI standards of different countries are so varied, now is a good time for China to communicate with other countries to establish a set of more commonly accepted international standards for the benefit of visually impaired persons all over the world.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to: identify the importance of a design standard for tactile ground surface indicators (TGSIs); discuss the problem of the existing standard of TGSIs in China; and advocate an all-round approach that the consideration of a design standard of TGSIs should be on policy, implementation and management perspectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - TGSIs in China were taken as a case study, while those in other countries/cities were used as supplementary reference cases. Intensive field observations on the quality of TGSIs in various public places were carried out in the Chinese mainland between 2005 and 2009. The public places included transportation terminals, shopping centres and universities. The research activities included intensive field observations and direct interviews. Different types of TGSIs were reviewed by using product analysis methods.\nFindings: - For inclusion, a standard for TGSIs is important. It is an effective tool in design quality assurance. There are three perspectives to ensuring the quality of a design standard: policy, implementation, and management.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Further case studies are expected to be conducted in other cities in order to generate a more comprehensive understanding related to the topic. Continuous studies are also necessary since the living environment is changing all the time. The general public's participation to establish a good design standard for TGSIs is important.\nPractical implications: - The findings provide reference and direction for an all-round approach consideration in a design standard for TGSIs; and for social inclusion.\nSocial implications: - The findings illustrate how inclusion can be achieved by setting up a design standard of TGSIs in China (as a case study) by considering an all-round perspective.\nOriginality/value: - The work and study are new in China. The findings provide insights for China and other countries, and individual cities, to review the needs of visually impaired persons.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strengthening sustainability leadership competencies through university internships	[ "Education", "Community", "Experiential learning", "Competencies", "Systems thinking", "Sustainable actions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is well documented that education provides a robust and durable foundation for journeying toward more sustainable communities, whether at the local, regional, national or global level (Barth et al., 2007; Dieleman and Huisingh, 2006; Brundiers and Wiek, 2013; Juarez-Najera et al., 2006). Furthermore, there is general agreement that declarative knowledge (how sustainability works) is necessary but insufficient to attain the end objective. To increase the probability that students of all ages will become to some extent agents of change, other types of knowledge are also critical. Procedural knowledge (how to take action) is important to support change. Furthermore, behavioral aspects of effecting change are necessary at the implementation stage. Therefore, effectiveness (how perceptions and beliefs affect actions) and social (how social norms affect actions) are types of knowledge which complete the knowledge set (Frisk and Larson, 2011). From these four types of knowledge (declarative, procedural, effectiveness and social), various competencies can be created to achieve sustainability goals, specifically the 17 United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals. Sipos et al. (2008) supported the concept of using different types of learning and suggested balancing cognitive (head), psychomotor (hands) and affective (heart) learning to realize truly transformative sustainability education. Furthermore, there is general agreement from the literature that these competencies are best acquired in a context that incorporates some form of experiential learning (Orr, 1991; Sterling, 2010; Wiek et al., 2015; Brundiers and Wiek, 2013; Senge, 2014), such as community-based, applied learning experiences (Sipos et al., 2008).\nThe internship program: In 2016, ten student interns from the Master of Science graduate program in Sustainable Energy Development (SEDV) participated in an internship in Ecuador after completion of their 16-month course-based program, just prior to their graduation approximately one month later. The SEDV program is an inter-disciplinary program in which Master of Science students take courses in engineering, business, environmental design and law with energy and the environment as a focus of each course, culminating in a final capstone project. This program of study is offered by the University of Calgary, which is guided by six principles identified in its institutional sustainability strategy: social responsibility, engagement, experiential learning, capacity-building, diversity and entrepreneurialism. To apply these six principles, faculty and staff create experiential learning opportunities by using the campus as a learning laboratory with the intent to develop competencies similar to the UNESCO ESD program and, ideally, extend these for practical application at the community level. Six foundational competencies are the focus for sustainability education at the University of Calgary (University of Calgary, 2018, p. 33):\nTheoretical framework: Capra (2007, p. 13) defined a sustainable community as \"one whose institutions and practices co-operate with the processes by which nature sustains life.\" Building sustainable communities starts with a strong theoretical foundation that is laid in the classroom, helping students to comprehend the complexity of interrelated and interdependent systems. Capra (2007, 2009) suggested including a study of how systems and their interconnected elements work. Therefore, comprehending \"networks, nested systems, interdependence, diversity, development, cycles, flows, and dynamic balance\" is essential (Capra, 2007, p. 13). According to Hudson (2001), formal classroom education focuses on the harm we have done to our planet and therefore is not visionary. Although this knowledge is an important first step, it should be coupled with learning outside the classroom in the community to take positive steps forward: to envision a more sustainable future.\nMixed methods: Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to determine the extent to which high school students can potentially become agents of change in their local communities as a result of participating in a formal internship program. The quantitative data were collected through a 15-item scale that provided a broad assessment of the overall impact of the internships. The qualitative data were collected through journals and on-line interviews, which added depth and insight to the quantitative results. The methods of data collection are described in more detail below.\nResults: Factor analysis results\nDiscussion: The results of this paper offer five key contributions:\nConclusions: This research has advanced knowledge by investigating the ways that university internships can help achieve the UN sustainable development goals through partnerships that bring education for sustainability to high school students in developing countries. By statistically testing a model of leadership competencies, based on previous work, our research has shown that both systems thinking that addresses complex problem constellations and sustainable actions that evolve from sustainability transition strategies are essential to develop anticipatory thinking for visions of a more sustainable planet in the future. This is consist with the theoretical work of Capra (2007), Sterling (2010) and Orr (1991) and others that advocate not only for a strong theoretical background in sustainability competencies but also for action-oriented, community-based learning that is more closely tied to the development of sustainable communities. Our research offers empirical evidence for the necessity of both approaches to education for sustainability.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to determine whether high school students can become agents of change in their local communities by participating in a formal internship program implemented through a partnership between academia (high schools and universities), nonprofit organizations and key community stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Pre- and post-assessments, activity journals and on-line interviews are used to measure the impact of internships on high school students' sustainability leadership, using a train-the-trainer intervention led by university interns. A conceptual problem-solving framework is proposed and empirically tested to explore the linkages between complex problem constellations, sustainability transition strategies and sustainability visions.\nFindings: The five core leadership competencies (systems thinking, strategic, anticipatory, normative and interpersonal) may not be as uniquely discrete as suggested in the literature. An effective learning experience depends on students' developing competence in their ability to implement a strategic intervention, which is better acquired through hands-on experience rather than a classroom setting.\nPractical implications: Students need experiential learning outside of the classroom to make sustainability come alive as a viable option for their communities.\nSocial implications: The principles of social responsivity, engagement, experiential learning, capacity-building and entrepreneurialism can be executed by transforming the campus into a learning lab, which includes the local community.\nOriginality/value: This study empirically demonstrates that students need involvement in strategic interventions to imagine and conceptualize sustainability visions. It also shows how academia can help fulfill the United Nations sustainable development goals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Children and their brands: how young consumers relate to brands	[ "Children", "Brand relationships", "Mixed method", "Brand relationship reconciliation", "Relationship breakup" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"They are tomorrow's consumers, so start talking with them now, build that relationship when they're younger, and you've got them as an adult\" (Lucy Hughes, Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood).\nConsumers relate to brands: In recent decades, a growing body of knowledge has developed within brand-consumer relationship theory (for a recent review of this line of literature, see Macinnis and Folkes, 2017). As relationships with brands have been an important part of consumer development, we can find research focusing on it. One of the first empirical studies conducted in this domain is the seminal work of Susan Fournier (1998), in which she offers empirical evidence from three adult women about the existence of consumer-brand bonds. In her work, Fournier presents a typology with 15 different types of relationships a consumer can have with a brand. Almost 20 years have passed since Fournier's work, and research has expanded in many different topics such as brands as relationship partners, brand relationship types, brand attachment, aversion to betrayal and brand relationship norms (Macinnis and Folkes, 2017). The present research project builds upon this body of literature and aims to extend these findings to a new unexplored context: children as consumers.\nHow children relate to brands: Children's consumer behavior is a well-studied topic in the marketing discipline. One fundamental premise in this area is that children differ from adults in many marketing phenomena. For example, consumer socialization is one of the most studied issues regarding children's consumer behavior. John (1999) developed a conceptual framework that identifies age-related patterns across areas, describes major characteristics of knowledge and reasoning at different ages and identifies developmental mechanisms behind these changes. In addition, Moschis and Churchill (1978) conducted an empirical study concerning children's consumer socialization processes and found that family, mass media, school and peers are the most important socialization agents for children. More recent investigations have found that reverse socialization also exists, whereby consumer socialization occurs from children to parents (Ekstrom, 2007).\nStudy 1: qualitative: Methodology\nStudy 2: quantitative: Methodology\nDiscussion: This paper has addressed an important gap in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study that has investigated child consumer behavior regarding brand relationship formation, dissolution and reconciliation. This paper explored how child consumers conceptualize and understand brands. Consistent with previous findings, this research has found that children are aware of the branding components salient in the marketplace (John, 1999; Arnas et al., 2016). This research is different, however, because it shows that these visual branding components not only are relevant to children but that children understand and conceptualize brands according to them. Brand characters (a specific visual branding component) have been found to encourage young consumers to develop relationships with those brands (Hemar-Nicolas and Gollety, 2012). This research extends these findings by showing that these brand characters can also help children understand and conceptualize brands.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand and explain the process by which child consumers form relationships with brands. Specifically, the authors attempt to understand how child consumers conceptualize brands, why and how they decide to engage in relationships with brands and why they decide to breakup with brands though sometimes reconcile with them.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mixed methodology was followed in this research. On the basis of an ethnographic approach, ten in-depth interviews were conducted among 8-12-year-old girls. Subsequently, a survey was completed by 122 children (boys and girls) to quantitatively examine the hypotheses formulated after the qualitative phase.\nFindings: Findings from both the qualitative and quantitative studies highlight and confirm that children conceptualize brands according to visual branding components, signs and promotional activities. Furthermore, children make moral evaluations of brand behaviors and judge them as \"good\" or \"bad\". More importantly, the authors propose two typologies: one for the reasons children decide to engage in a positive relationship and another for why children engage in a negative relationship with a brand. Additionally, the authors found that children report having an active or passive relationship role according to the characteristics of the brand relationship. Moreover, despite their young age, children report having broken up relationships with several brands; the reasons are categorized into positive and negative breakups. Finally, the authors found that positive breakups lead to more probable brand relationship reconciliation than negative breakups.\nOriginality/value: Despite a vast body of literature in the child consumer behavior field, there is scarce research regarding brand relationship phenomena. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical research conducted with child consumers, addressing brand relationship formation, dissolution and reconciliation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Application of the Delphi technique in healthcare maintenance	[ "Critical success factors", "NHS", "Delphi", "Case study", "Healthcare maintenance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This research centres on the performance of healthcare maintenance services in the control of hospital-acquired infections in the National Health Service (NHS). In addition to examining the different research processes in the formulation of the research and interview questions, a rationale is provided about the application of the Delphi technique investigating the control of HAIs in maintenance services in the NHS. The level of iteration between the infection control (IC) members and healthcare maintenance managers resulted in consensus in the refinement and identification of the critical success factors (CSFs) and key performance measures to control maintenance-associated infections in hospitals.\nLiterature review: HAIs are a major cause of deaths and increased morbidity, especially in immune-compromised patients (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, 2003). Of all the healthcare facilities management services (i.e. cleaning, waste management, etc.), healthcare maintenance, despite its strong association with HAI, is one of the least investigated. It has been shown, for example, that the malfunctioning and contamination of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems because of dust and moisture, increases the risk of the spread of environmental fungi and bacteria in hospitals (Joseph, 2006).\nThe document selection and analyses: The first part of the literature review process involved the selection of relevant research materials for the grounded theory analysis. The research materials were scrutinised for authenticity, credibility and meaningfulness. Appropriate criteria were also applied in the search of relevant documents from the different databases. The researchers identified 27 research documents for identifying performance related issues to control maintenance-associated infections in hospitals.\nOpen coding to identify CSFs in maintenance-associated infections: After the selection process, the next step was to conduct open coding to identify issues related to the performance of maintenance-associated infections in hospitals. The process of open coding was carried out using QRS NVivo8.\nAxial coding to identify the performance measures: During axial coding, \"child nodes\" were developed for some of the \"parent nodes\". For example, for the \"parent node\" IC practices, six \"child nodes\" were identified i.e. cleaning practices, hand hygiene and maintenance staff practices, etc. On several occasions during axial coding, the newly developed child notes were refined or deleted altogether. The Child nodes offered clarity about the understanding of some of the parent nodes.\nAn exploratory case study - justification of the Delphi technique: The exploratory case study provided an overall insight about the performance measurement of maintenance-associated infections in the NHS. It was also about making sure that the research focussed on the main issues intended for investigation. Employing the exploratory case study does not mean that it will be used to investigate the final research questions and hypotheses (Yin, 1993). The exploratory case study makes it possible for a research topic of this nature to be seen through many lenses.\nThe Delphi technique: The Delphi technique can be defined as \"a qualitative, long-range forecasting technique that elicits, refines, and draws upon the collective opinion and expertise of a panel of experts\" (Gupta and Clarke, 1996, p. 185). Named after the Greek oracle, the Delphi technique has grown in popularity following the work of Dalkey and Helmer (1963). Currently the technique is widely applied across many disciplines in the private and public sectors (Gordon, 1994). Since 1963, the Delphi technique has undergone a number of modifications. According to Hanafin (2004), significant modifications have produced three types of Delphi: classical, policy and decision. The word \"hybrid\" Delphi is also used by Faucher et al. (2008) to describe any combination of these three types of Delphi.\nThe construction of the Delphi instrument: Figure 1 show the various processes involved in the application of Delphi in this research study. There are three Delphi rounds for identifying the CSFs and performance measures in healthcare maintenance in IC. The first round of the Delphi exercise solicits qualitative responses, while the second and third solicit quantitative responses from the Delphi participants. As there are few studies focussing on the area under investigation, the Delphi questions were developed mainly from different sources of literature, i.e. government documents, peer-reviewed IC documents and HMPs. This method saves time, and acted as a stimulus for the Delphi participants to identify new CSFs and performance measures.\nThe method for arriving at consensus: In the current research, for a performance measure to be retained in a Delphi round, it needed to be interpreted as either very important or important in IC. Unimportant performance measures in IC were not retained. In the second and third rounds, participants were given the task of rating the level of importance of the different performance measures in healthcare maintenance in IC. The rating was based on a four-point Likert scale. Scales 1 and 2 (\"very important\" and \"important\") represented the positive category, while scales 3 and 4 (\"unimportant\" and \"very unimportant\") represented the negative category. Thus, the following criteria were used to interpret the performance measures:\nThe selection of the Delphi participants: In this research, the Delphi participants were purposively selected on the basis of their experience and knowledge of healthcare maintenance and IC. Since Delphi relies on expert opinion for credibility, stringent criteria were used for the selection of prospective Delphi participants. Prospective Delphi participants were considered eligible if:\nThe first round of the Delphi exercise: The first-round Delphi instrument was designed to elicit qualitative responses from the Delphi participants. The Delphi instrument was divided into three main sections. In the first section, the Delphi participants were asked questions about their professional experience and area of specialisation. The second section contained a list of 56 performance measures (identified in the literature), which were categorised according to the eight CSFs in healthcare maintenance in IC. To provide better understanding and clarity, some of CSFs were divided into sub-categories. For example, under the CSF called \"infection control practice\", the performance measures were grouped into three sub-categories: cleaning, transport, and administrative requirements. The Delphi participants were provided with a list of CSFs and performance measures and given the task of identifying new ones. Section three of the round-one Delphi instrument solicited feedback from the Delphi participants on the design, presentation, and wording of the Delphi instrument. The first-round Delphi instrument was distributed with detailed instructions on how to complete and return the Delphi instruments. Because the Delphi participants came from varied professional areas, the instruction notes also contained definitions of the key words (i.e. CSFs and performance measures) used in the Delphi instrument. To allow the Delphi participants enough time to complete the first-round Delphi exercises, they were given two weeks.\nSubsequent Delphi rounds: The results of the first-round Delphi exercise were used to modify the second-round Delphi instrument. The Delphi participants identified 11 new performance measures in HM in IC. However, it was possible to add only six of these in the second round of Delphi questions as some of the round-one Delphi instruments were received only after the second round had started. The other five new performance measures were then included in the third-round questions. Therefore, in round two of the Delphi exercise, there were sixty-two performance measures grouped under eight CSFs.\nResults and discussion on the Delphi rounds - a synopsis: Provided with a list of CSFs and performance measures (refer to Table II) in healthcare maintenance in IC, the Delphi participants were given the task of identifying new ones. In total, the Delphi participants were able to identify and categorise 11 new performance measures under some of the CSFs.\nMaintenance resource availability: There were four performance measures under maintenance resource availability (Table II). On the provision of adequate maintenance resources in IC, an IC member commented that \"[...] funding will never be available to resource all [maintenance] needs [...]\" \"This is difficult as there are no national standards to indicate what is adequate in this context\". For example, \"the Code of Practice (Health Act) states that healthcare providers should provide adequate isolation facilities, but adequate is not defined\". One healthcare maintenance manager even criticised the fact that guidance on the provision of resources to the healthcare maintenance unit in IC was an emerging issue. According to this participant, \"the condition of the estate in relation to infection control needs to be risk assessed by the healthcare maintenance unit and the IC department [...] for resource needs\". On the other hand, one of the healthcare maintenance managers noted, \"I take guidance from IC [team] who will have confirmed costs and funding\". Because the maintenance unit is not responsible for its budget, it equally does not directly handle the business of purchasing maintenance materials and products. According to one maintenance manager, this has \"been outsourced by the procurement and logistics department to the EROS e-Procurement system\". In another case, it was noted that the \"purchasing department was often driven by lowest cost [...] but in relation to infection control, not all of the cheapest products are the best\".\nMaintenance strategies: There were initially five performance measures under maintenance strategies. On the performance measure concerning the daily check of all critical maintenance activities posing risk of HAIs, an IC member thought it \"might not be good use of resources, as it may overkill the healthcare maintenance unit\". However, other microbiologists thought that a daily check of critical maintenance systems posing the risk of HAIs might be useful, but that it was currently unavailable. A healthcare maintenance manager pointed out that \"[...] all critical maintenance systems are monitored through a BMS system\". A Building Management System (BMS) is a computer-based system that is installed in a building to monitor the building's mechanical and electrical equipment, e.g. heating, ventilation. According to this healthcare maintenance manager, it is important that \"preventive maintenance in the BMS be conducted according to various frequencies to meet manufacturers' maintenance requirements and compliance with statutory requirements [...]\". The Built Environment Group is responsible for keeping records of the effectiveness of all critical maintenance equipment/assets that may cause HAI.\nIC practices: The CSF \"infection control practice\" was divided into cleaning, transport, and administrative requirements. In total, there were 17 performance measures under this CSF. On the prevention of dust contamination, a microbiologist noted that \"any building site/or building should be double screened to stop dust entering hospital streets and wards\". Before commencing any maintenance with the potential of generating dust, contractors should be familiarised with dust abatement techniques, and provided with personal protective equipment. Besides protecting healthcare maintenance staff from HAIs, it is also necessary to prevent healthcare maintenance staff from transmitting HAIs in hospitals. At the moment, according to one of the healthcare maintenance managers, there is no system in place for preventing \"contracted staff with the symptom of an infection e.g. diarrhoea [from] working in a clinical area\". One of the healthcare maintenance managers, with over 32 years of experience working for the NHS, doubted the value of the performance measure concerning the immunisation of maintenance staff to prevent the spread of HAIs. According to this official, \"the cost of this immunisation programme would be significant and also impossible to manage and control given the number of contractors on site every year\". An IC member noted that \"[...] good infection control practice and hygiene practice in [maintenance] should be sufficient to ensure adequate HAI controls\". Analysis of Delphi round one resulted in the identification of three new performance measures under IC practices. All the three newly identified performance measures were under the sub-category \"administrative requirements\". The following performance measures were identified:\nLiaison and communication with the ICT: Most Delphi participants agreed that \"liaison and communication with the Infection Control Team\" is an important CSF in healthcare maintenance to control HAIs. One healthcare maintenance manager even suggested for \"estates staff and infection control staff to meet on a weekly basis to review all estates works programmes and agree all HAI control measures during all works\". This could also allow them to \"review trends or concerns in relation to microbiological monitoring\". The organisational structure for healthcare maintenance in IC has to be led by the ICT, since they are the experts in the field of IC. Under liaison and communication with the ICT, the Delphi participants did not identify any new performance measure.\nSLA: In order to draw up SLAs that consider IC, healthcare maintenance managers and IC members should work closely together. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. According to an IC nurse, \"[...] infection control team members are rarely informed about maintenance contracts\". One healthcare maintenance manager suggested that because \"the selection of contractors is based on European legislation, all contracts will no doubt meet the requirements of the areas mentioned\". Presently, issues relating to arrangements to respond to emergency calls, procedures to supervise maintenance work and variables, contractors' safe record keeping are currently, according to one healthcare maintenance manager, not being considered in SLAs. Instead of selecting contractors based on strong technical, resource, managerial, and communication capabilities, NHS Trusts always \"[...] run for the cheap option\", says a microbiologist.\nCustomer satisfaction: The Delphi participants did not engage in much discussion about the performance measures that were categorised under the CSF called customer satisfaction. However, they identified two new performance measures:\nConclusion: This research shows the different processes leading to the application of the Delphi technique to identify the CSFs and performance measures in the control of maintenance associate infections. For example, in-depth literature was conducted to identify the pertinent research issues about the research topic under investigation. The document analyses process resulted in the identification of the relevant documents, to identify the research and interview questions. These questions were used to conduct an exploratory case study with Acute NHS Trust. The results of the exploratory case study suggested that the Delphi technique as suitable research method for conducting further investigation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the research design, issues and considerations in the application of the Delphi technique to identify, refine and rate the critical success factors and performance measures in maintenance-associated infections.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In-depth literature review through the application of open and axial coding were applied to formulate the interview and research questions. These were used to conduct an exploratory case study of two healthcare maintenance managers, randomly selected from two National Health Service Foundation Trusts in England. The results of exploratory case study provided the rationale for the application of the Delphi technique in this research. The different processes in the application of the Delphi technique in healthcare research are examined thoroughly.\nFindings: This research demonstrates the need to apply and integrate different research methods to enhance the validity of the Delphi technique. The rationale for the application of the Delphi technique in this research is because some healthcare maintenance managers lack knowledge about basic infection control (IC) principles to make hospitals safe for patient care. The result of first round of the Delphi exercise is a useful contribution in its own rights. It identified a number of salient issues and differences in the opinions of the Delphi participants, noticeably between healthcare maintenance managers and members of the infection control team. It also resulted in useful suggestions and comments to improve the quality and presentation of the second- and third-round Delphi instruments.\nPractical implications: This research provides a research methodology that can be adopted by researchers investigating new and emerging issues in the healthcare sector. As this research demonstrates, the Delphi technique is relevant in soliciting expert knowledge and opinion to identify performance measures to control maintenance-associated infections in hospitals. The methodology provided here could be applied by other researchers elsewhere to probe, investigate and generate rich information about new and emerging healthcare research topics.\nOriginality/value: The authors demonstrate how different research methods can be integrated to enhance the validity of the Delphi technique. For example, the results of an exploratory case study provided the rationale for the application of the Delphi technique investigating the key performance measures in maintenance-associated infections. The different processes involved in the application of the Delphi technique are also carefully explored and discussed in depth.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How a systematic approach to innovation can bring radical improvements to organisations by liberating the staff	[ "Innovation", "Quality management", "Organizational change" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: To survive and prosper in the current economic climate, organisations will need to develop fast to stay ahead of the competition. A positive way to do this is to unlock the creative power of your employees and a structured approach to engaging staff in improvement and innovation can bring about radical change.\nLiberate creativity!: What you are trying to do is liberate the innate creative instincts of your staff - everyone has a view on how they could improve what they do, the trick is to encourage them to contribute their input and put in place a process to action them. Liberating creativity and turning that into innovation requires a combination of analytical methodology and strict observation, with a focus on creative thinking. Goals must be defined, performance measured and ideas evaluated, but imagination also needs to be applied to encourage staff to contribute and to capitalise on their contribution. Establishing a system and a strategy that screams involvement and commitment will encourage everyone to get on board and harnesses the enthusiasm of staff. Look for ideas to improve the way they work and your organisation may well be able to evolve fast enough to make real progress, even in the most challenging environment.A key aspect of this process is to recognise everyone who contributes ideas to improve; a letter of thanks from the CEO and the certainty that every idea will be considered in detail is what is needed. If in fact any ideas assessed are subsequently not implemented, the reasons why need to be clearly explained to the individual who came up with the idea. If it is not clear to employees that these ideas are being recognised and measures taken to assess their suitability, the creative tap will dry up immediately.\nAn innovation system: An \"innovation system\" needs to be built where individuals are encouraged to develop ideas within a collaborative environment, which allows every individual to contribute at every level.This methodology of initiating creativity and turning this into real innovation can be defined as a quality improvement approach, providing a planned and structured approach to ensure that all creative ideas are properly evaluated and, when appropriate, implemented. This is not difficult to implement and in fact serves as a channel to free up and encourage creativity.Encouraging everyone to contribute in the first place is the initial challenge faced by organisations - particularly those who do not have a tradition of collaboration or of welcoming proactive suggestions from staff. In these cases organisations need to develop creative methods to unleash the creative potential from their staff. Imaginative, creative environments are recommended, providing a comfortable, informal space that is open and fun.A good example of such creativity is found in the London Probation area, as its creative approach to innovation and learning was recently recognised at the CQI London Excellence Awards. Its Model Borough Pathfinder Project focussed on promoting innovation and creativity amongst their employees. Enthusiasm and commitment to organisational innovation was welcomed as staff members were invited to take part in a \"Dragons Den\" exercise, mimicking the format of the novel TV programme, to champion innovative ideas designed to achieve the model probation borough. This imaginative format proved to be extremely popular, with staff participation levels at a high. As a result, a number of well thought through ideas were presented and argued, which also gave an added benefit over the common brainstorm methods that are subject to first thought suggestions, offered at the spur of the moment, often off the top of ones head. Ideas were taken on board and subsequently implemented in an effort to achieve a better working environment and probation area.Another great example of an informal learning environment is the growing phenomenon of Harrison Owens' Open Space gatherings, which delve into new dimensions of learning and creativity. Open space sessions take place in a room with no speakers, agendas or presenters, where a number of people with a common interest take to their seats. The group then decide what they would like to discuss and are essentially able to contribute, learn and freely participate, encouraging a fun, proactive, experience that empowers all who take part.Many quality processes have their origins in manufacturing and commercial enterprises, however, the principles also transfer into not-for-profit, public sector organisations. Rekha Bhakoo, Head teacher of Newton Farm First and Middle School, for example, took innovation and quality principles to a new level when she made a deliberate effort to look to the business world and engage in specific techniques that are generally equated with the business community, and applied them to her school. The school is very successful at a national level because it pushes these boundaries.Rekha explains:OFSTED do provide a valuable framework but the outstanding and cutting edge schools like ourselves look beyond that for other things to improve their service. I started at the school 17 years ago and back then things were not right. I worked with the staff to build up the standards and got to the point where high quality teaching and learning is embedded. We now look beyond this point.Rekha's vision for Newton Farm is ever evolving and the staff are constantly striving to introduce the most innovative mechanisms to the school.Newton Farm uses existing standards and recognised quality processes as a framework but adapts them to its own particular environment. An important management principle stems from the school considering itself to be service provider, believing that the recipients should be looked upon and treated as customers; bringing about the distinctive ways the teachers work both inside and outside the classroom.One example of this approach is demonstrated through Newton Farm's community initiatives, which focus on engaging with the external school community and inviting feedback from these groups. Pupils from the school were encouraged to visit the local shops to ask them what they think about the school, creating two-way communication between the external community and the school children that are often viewed with suspicious expectation. Local community workers are also invited into the school to talk to the children about their careers. This helps to build relationships and break down the barriers between the school and the communities that can sometimes feel isolated, making sure that each are getting the most out of the service the school supplies.Rekha continues:Our customers are not only the pupils, but also the teachers, the parents and the wider community. Everyone within the school community is consulted about how and what they want to contribute to help Newton Farm reach our goals. We require everyone's involvement and are very clear about why this is needed, and therefore we ensure that we supply rigorous evidence which proves the results of their contribution.To further illustrate their accomplishments Newton Farm has also been awarded outstanding in the latest OFSTED report, and recently won the esteemed award for Results Focus at The London Excellence Awards presented in partnership with the CQI.Leading sports and entertainment company, AEG Europe, has also recognised and addressed these successful customer service processes by incorporating the core principles into the organisation.Customer focussed organisations design their services in response to the current and future needs of their customers: much can be achieved if staff groups are approached with the same attitude. AEG Europe has established this innovative mindset and regards every member of staff within each company as a customer. With a number of very different companies under the AEG Europe umbrella including The O2, Thames Clippers and The David Beckham Academy, AEG employs a flexible personnel management approach to staff providing both an internal and external focus on quality customer satisfaction.Under the guidance of Genevieve Glover, Executive Director for Human Resources, AEG has developed bespoke systems specifically designed to meet the different requirements of the varied groups within AEG, recognising their different cultures to ensure they work together as a whole, whilst being part of the same organisation.For the opening of The O2 in Greenwich, Genevieve needed to ensure that their extensive people requirements were fulfilled and in keeping with the drive for innovative thinking, local recruitment was employed also contributing to AEG Europe's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) remit. With the vision for The O2 centred on it being bigger and better than any other arena or entertainment venue, AEG Europe had to be in no doubt that the people who worked there were also first-class.Genevieve discovered a wealth of local pride and enthusiasm for this exciting venture and implemented a pre-employment training scheme focusing on those hard to reach people who have been out of work and often find it hard to gain employment. This externally accredited training scheme enabled AEG to ensure quality and consistent customer satisfaction. The high level of enthusiasm found elevated the level of customer service, and as a result 43 percent of staff recruited were from the surrounding local area. AEG Europe has essentially established an innovative way of getting great people into its organisation, great people whom many others would deem to be un-employable, and retain their commitment to quality throughout all aspects of their organisation. The company has since repeated this innovative process regarding local recruitment for subsequent projects including The Tutankhamun exhibition and the Body World exhibition 2008, exceeding their CSR remit.Possessing this level of commitment to quality improvement and introducing an innovative culture of learning through training, enables an organisation to harness and highlight the abilities of staff that otherwise might have remained invisible.WHSmith Tools has recognised first hand how an innovative culture of learning and the maximisation of the potential of its employees can bring about major change, with the additional benefit of quality and total commitment to the organisation. Bob Hughes, Quality Manager at WH Smith Tools, providing injection-moulded plastic components to the automotive industry, is a clear example of how this innovative culture, training provision and support from top-level management can bring about major change.Bob left school with no formal qualifications and spent many years performing manual labour jobs. He later moved to WH Smith, where he was introduced to a new culture of learning, self development and improvement, and was subsequently encouraged to undertake formal training and gain the qualifications which led him to his current position. Bob is now responsible for delivering components of a high standard to a demanding customer base, and expected to mix with senior managers and board directors. In addition to the formal training schedules, WH Smith engages staff with formalised training provisions including an allowance of one hour per week, per employee, to spend on training in a range of disciplines from computer skills to languages. With this innovative commitment to pursuing improvement and development, it is no wonder their annual turnover amounts to PS20million.Colin Sarson, Managing Director of WH Smith says, \"The long term investment in our people is an investment which pays for itself many times over. Our employees become more integrated within the company, they increase their skill level and the fact that they tend to stay with the company helps us to stay ahead of our competitors.\"An organisation is only as good as its workforce, as it is of course the work force that delivers the service to the end user. Much in the same way, a manufacturer is only as good as the quality of its key components. They are the experts so encourage them to focus on their own processes and create ideas for improvement.The use of innovative approaches will enable organisations to get the best out of staff. By supporting individual thinking staff members focus on their own processes and concentrate on how they could be improved. If everyone does just this, it benefits the whole organisation. A collaborative environment publicly supported by top-level management will consistently communicate that every individual at every level is encouraged to contribute. It is essential to establish a structure/tangible work frame where innovative thinking is encouraged and ideas can be reviewed in a timely manner, however if there is no business case, and this is clearly explained, staff members will accept this and acknowledge that they have been taken seriously.Finally, and critically, improvements must be formalised within a quality management system and measured so that success can be evaluated. Visibly showcasing successful improvements communicates to employees that their ideas are making a difference and will encourage them to be more forthcoming with future innovative ideas, whilst promoting innovative behavior elsewhere in your organisation. Remember collective knowledge, commitment to innovative thinking and enthusiasm from within your organisation is key to realising radical change.\nTop innovation tips: 1. Ensure the drive to innovate comes from the top.2. Develop an environment to liberate creative thinking.3. Develop an innovation system to review creative ideas and turn them into meaningful innovations.4. Make improvement part of everyone's personal objectives.5. Support the process with improvement focused learning, such as:* problem solving techniques;* data analysis techniques;* process improvement techniques;* Six Sigma;* benchmarking; and* cross functional team working/project management.6. Celebrate and reward effort and success.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate ways in which innovative thinking can bring about radical change to organisations. It aims to identify some of the many creative ways this innovative thought can be liberated from staff members using quality processes, and argue that a structured, quality approach to engaging staff in improvement and innovation can bring about this radical change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper consists of a combination of case study based material and includes the author's opinion and interpretation. The integral focus is on encouraging innovation from within, implementing ways to involve staff members and introducing structured, gradual, change. The paper uses examples of organisations across varied industries to showcase how they have accomplished this task.\nFindings: - Developing collaborative environments and encouraging employee contribution to facilitate innovative thinking can liberate not only employees but the whole organisation. The case study organisations featured have found that introducing new methods of innovation can provide a manageable process, which over time can result in significant change.\nOriginality/value: - This paper sets out the systematic approach organisations should follow to unlock the creative power of their employees, develop fast and stay ahead of the competition. It argues that in the current economic climate, organisations will need to make these radical improvements in order to survive and prosper.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Practices of subjectivity: the informal economies and the subaltern rebellion	[ "Neoliberalism", "Resistance", "Informal economy", "Subjectivity", "Legal pluralism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nResistance and informality: The aim of this paper is to investigate the connection between \"informal economies\" and \"resistance.\" At the center of the analysis there will be, above all, those informal and not too profitable activities that characterize the lower classes and segments of the urban population - the same that grapples with periodical campaigns of law and order, and experience stigma and incarceration. On the basis of mainly ethnographical information, it is possible to say that petty kinds of informal economies - especially, but not only, those small illegal activities related to public space and streets, such as the vending of counterfeited goods, food, and also soft drugs (all of them, ultimately, at the center of periodical campaigns that aim at providing a type of city characterized by the Disneyfied ideals of \"security\" and \"cleanliness\") - are part of a wider struggle between individuals and social classes with different powers and status, within the worlds of life and production. This paper also suggests that these struggles are not only a means for acquiring the necessary resources for subsistence, but that they are essentially a political practice, a form of strategic interaction that often involves real conflict, either between society and state or between classes.\nPublic order and legal change: Over and above its criminal nature or the way in which it originates, informality is a political, symbolical and rhetorical process that creates reactions, arrests, and various forms of political and civil activism. Rudolph Giuliani's \"Zero tolerance\" policies in New York in the 1990s, for example, were emblematic of the government's fight against so-called forms of \"incivility,\" from illegal sales to any other form of irregular street activity (Wacquant, 2010; Duneier, 2001). The number of arrests carried out during those years was, as we know, extreme (Jacobson, 2005). But Mayor Giuliani's policies were aimed at producing a sanitized urban environment that served the interests of commercial chains, leisure entrepreneurs, and real estate owners. This type of public order management in the interests of economics soon became the example for a large number of states and cities both in Europe and elsewhere.\nInformality and neoliberalism: In short, what stems from the previous sections is that a discussion of the informal economy at a given time should insert such objects within the organizational, political and ideological framework active in the considered moment. For such reasons, as well as being a form of resistance and evasion from power, informality should also be seen a sign of the state's inability - or perhaps lack of will - to bring some classes of citizens into its sphere of influence and protection (Shapland, 2009). This statement is embedded in the framework of \"neoliberalism,\" which emerged toward the end of the 1970s with the aim of promoting an agenda that was more focused on global and domestic market relations. To summarize rapidly what the reader already knows perfectly well, this movement considers market freedom as a model and even a substitute for political freedom. Neoliberalism is an attempt to extend the range of market logic, by applying it as an organizing principle for all the other social and political relations. It is also an attempt to mobilize the state to the benefit of the market and to give it the appearance of a \"quasi-market.\" Contrary to classic liberalism, in fact, neoliberalism does not perceive the market as the natural result of human relationships, but as something that needs to be actively constructed; in the same way, the behavior that is compatible with this type of market needs to be learned, and then extended to other areas (Soss et al., 2011, 20 passim). Moreover, this occurrence would be a precursor to political and social changes, which range from the democratization of nations to the emergence of a new ethic based on individual empowerment and the substantial privatization of social provision (through the liberalization of these services, allowing the \"private social\" to supply them, and an economic assessment of the services provided).\nAutonomy, subject, and resistance: In analytical terms, an issue that emerges from the previous section relates to the forms of reaction and adjustment, openly oppositional or \"tactic,\" generated by the neoliberal transformations of policies in the matters of labor, mobility, crime, and welfare. Another issue concerns the emergence of the \"willing subject\" meant here as the process that leads individuals \"to believe\" and \" to build\" - that is, to build themselves as thinking subjects, \"constituted in the datum\", inserted within structures of opportunities, and \"practical\" in their being in the world (Deleuze, 1991).\nConclusion: In an enlightening book about the informal city, which will guide us toward our conclusions, Laguerre (1994, p. 24) observes that \"informal practices provide a corridor for the protection of the self against regulatory structures.\" This is, however, an optimistic point of view which does not take into account the fact that informality can also be a trap. It may, in fact, represent the space in which exploitation practices reproduce those found in the formal sector, with no indication of resistance and freedom. However, despite the risks, informality certainly implies the possibility of a liberation \"not so much against a certain class or group but against forms of power which deny the individuality of the subject\" (Laguerre, 1994, p. 2). More especially, though, \"its meanings [of informality] can be constructed in terms of both its genealogy and its relations to the contextual condition of the formal system\" (Laguerre, 1994).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between \"informal economies\" and the concept of \"resistance.\" The author argues that the petty illegalities of the dominated and subaltern classes should be seen in their connections to the illegalism of the elites and the state. Within this framework, the informal economy is seen as both the outcome of a set of material conditions aiming at the subordinated inclusion of entire classes of citizens, and the mark of the willingness by these same subalterns to evade the bonds imposed on them by the legislations and the social hierarchies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A review of the ethnographical and socio-economical literature on the issue of informality, accompanied by ex-post reflections on pertinent studies conducted in the past by the researcher.\nFindings: Against the dominant public rhetoric, the informal economy is here seen as a particular space of enactment by the dominated and subalterns aimed at self-producing paradoxical forms of inclusion within social contexts characterized by barriers to access integration within mainstream society. It is argued that in consideration of the power relations that structure the \"field,\" researchers themselves become part of the struggle counterpoising individuals and institutions, and should thus make a choice among the clashing parties.\nOriginality/value: The paper draws on a vast body of literature that appears to go in the same direction. However, it radicalizes the instances proposed by previous authors and studies, and draws conclusions concerning the nature of the object and the ethics of research, that are opposed to the prevalent approaches to the subject.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of gender and culture on networking and venture creation: An exploratory study in Turkey and MENA region	[ "Gender", "Turkey", "Culture", "Networking", "MENA region", "Women’s entrepreneurship" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: More women everywhere are becoming entrepreneurs than ever before. Despite the increasing number of women's participation in entrepreneurial activities around the world (Brush et al., 2010), the majority of entrepreneurship research is still focused on male entrepreneurs, and the role of female entrepreneurs is still undervalued and underplayed (Marlow et al., 2009).\n2. Literature review: Entrepreneurship is a socially embedded activity. Understanding the contextual factors that play an important role is crucial to obtain a holistic view of the entrepreneur (Brush et al., 2010). Institutional theory is key to understand the driving forces behind entrepreneurial success and more specifically about the entrepreneur's environment (Bruton et al., 2008) given that entrepreneur's behaviors are affected by social rules, norms, and routines.\n3. Methodology: To focus on entrepreneurial process and networks, we employed a multiple research case study (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2013). This qualitative approach is particularly appropriate for a study that deals with the complex social phenomenon of the relationships of entrepreneurs, which can only be gathered through interactions with the respondents in order to obtain richness of data (Hoang and Antoncic, 2003). In addition, a study on culture and network ties and their development requires detailed data, which are difficult to acquire through quantitative methods (Patton, 2002).\n4. Research findings: The findings are discussed under the following themes: gender, culture, and networking. First, the findings state what it is likely to be a woman in a highly patriarchal society which identifies the primary role of women with family and domestic responsibilities. Then, the motivations of women entrepreneurs are stated, such as what motivates them to start a business and what cultural and legal barriers they face like access to capital and networks of information. Third, the role of networking in overcoming these barriers in a male-dominated society is presented.\n5. Conclusion: Women in Turkey and the countries from the MENA region have the lowest rate of total entrepreneurial activity in the world (Bosma et al., 2009; Bosma and Levie, 2010) Fostering the participation of women in entrepreneurial activity will contribute to economic development and can be a source of political, economic, and social innovation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: To date, little research has been focused on the nature and dynamics of female entrepreneurial networking activity. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine how gender and culture affect business creation, how women perceive social capital, and how important their personal networks are for their businesses, especially in the context of patriarchal societies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs living and operating businesses in Turkey and in four countries of the Middle East and North African region, namely, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt.\nFindings: The results indicate that being a woman entrepreneur in a highly patriarchal society limits entrepreneurial activities due to culture and social norms. However, networking appears as the key factor for these women entrepreneurs to overcome the barriers that they face, such as access to capital, financial information, resources, and new business opportunities.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study has limitations that tend to be commonly found in exploratory studies, so you cannot make generalizations. However, the findings lay the groundwork for future studies to examine the role of networking activity in female entrepreneurship in the context of patriarchal societies.\nPractical implications: The findings are helpful for policymakers and other social groups interested in improving the conditions for female entrepreneurship. Governments and other economic actors need to provide training in both management and networking skills, encourage local businesses and associations to provide their venues for networking opportunities, and also provide support to women business organizations.\nSocial implications: Women's entrepreneurship is growing, but still there is a scarcity of scholarly literature on the women entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial activity.\nOriginality/value: This research provides empirical evidence of the nature and dynamics of female entrepreneurial networking activity in the context of patriarchal societies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Quality improvement of a categorical response with weight effect consideration	[ "Process management", "Quality improvement", "Neural nets", "Control system analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Rapidly enhancing the quality of product/service had been viewed as an important activity to survival during the competitive environment for most manufacturers. Except for the on-line quality control techniques, the off-line quality control is also a cost-effective method to achieve the improvement in support of on-line quality control. Among those relating off-line quality control techniques, the design of experiment or Taguchi method are two techniques to be applied into the relating issues (Phadke, 1989; Montgomery, 1991; Fowlkes and Creveling, 1995).Owing to the complexity of product/service gradually increases, the quality response with the qualitative (or linguistic description) characteristic will be frequently met for the real applications. The qualitative quality response is commonly represented in a percentage form or it is classified into several categories since performing the parameter optimization. For instance, evaluating the surface quality of a wafer, it is frequently evaluated as no defect, slightly defect, and heavily defect, etc. However, parameter optimization of a qualitative quality response has seldom been mentioned (Nair, 1986; Jean and Guo, 1996). Taguchi (1966), Nair (1986), Jean and Guo (1996) and Hsieh and Tong (2005) had proposed the relating techniques to achieve the parameter optimization of the categorical response. But the concept of the equal weight effect for those categorical responses will be held in their studies. However, during the real applications, the weight effect on quality improvement may be significantly different for those categorical responses. Generally, the evaluations from several experts or experienced users will be performed in the real application to address the weight effect. How to represent the consistency and difference of weight effects among several evaluations and how to effectively include such information into the parameter optimization may significantly affect the performance of quality improvement.Reviewing previously developed approaches, three possible drawbacks limit their applications:1. Only the optimum categorical level settings (i.e. using -1, 0, 1 to denote the low, median, and high levels) can be obtained no matter what forms of control factors for most studies.2. The huge amount of the statistical computations will be difficult to use for those practitioners with limited statistical training.3. The weight effects for the different categorical responses with the consistency and difference characteristics do not be included into the optimization analysis.Hence, the objective of this study is to develop a parameter optimization approach to address the categorical response with the weight effect. The proposed approach will utilize experimental data to model the complexity interrelation among a quality system and, determine the optimum continuous settings of the control factors during the aggregation weight condition.\n2 Literature review: Taguchi (1966) developed the accumulation analysis to solve the parameter optimization of the ordered categorical response. Taguchi also recommended using the Omega (O) transformation, which transfers the accumulation probability of factor level to a corresponding O-value and the detailed method can refer to Taguchi (1966). Nair (1986) presented two scoring schemes (SS) to separately identify dispersion and location effects of each control factor. The contribution of dispersion and location effect of each control factor can be computed based on the mean square. However, the engineers need to use their subjective judgement to trade off the dispersion and location effect during making the compromise. It is difficult for those have limited experience to use. In a later work (Jean and Guo, 1996), they modified Nair's SS drawbacks and developed a weighted probability scoring scheme. Although the above three methods can achieve parameter optimization of process, they can only determine the optimum categorical level setting no matter what form of control factors. That is, they cannot determine the optimum continuous setting of control factors. Hsieh and Tong (2005) also proposed a parameter optimization to address the categorical response in Taguchi's dynamic system, the weight effect for different categories of response can be studied by using the fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) technique. However, the consistency and difference of weight for several evaluations cannot be addressed well and the continuous parameter setting of the control factors cannot be obtained. It will limit the possible flexibility of the real applications.The choice of the weight values for several criterions, and the difference comparison will be the problem to the issue of multiple criterions decision making (MDCM) (Zeleny, 1982, 1992). As for the choice of weight value, it will be more difficult to be determined during the multiple criterions consideration for those practitioners. Hence, AHP (Saaty, 1994, 1996, 2001; Lai et al., 1999; Rammanathan and Ganesh, 1995; Ngai, 2003) was developed to overcome such issue by dividing those criterions into the primary and secondary criterions with hierarchy. However, the test of consistency frequently limited its real applications (Nishizawa, 1995). As for the summation of the weight value, the practitioners will face the problem of how to summarize the weight effect of each criterion with the case of several experts. The average concept was the method frequently been used to compute the weight value of each criterion. However, the variation between different experts will be omitted by using the average concept to compute the weight value. Restated, it can be viewed as meeting the problem of common consensus during those experts. Generally, the larger degree of importance of criterion will denote the corresponding weight value to be set a larger value. Tong and Su (1997) proposed a procedure, which applied fuzzy set theory to MADM for optimizing a multi-responses problem. Although their method can reduce the uncertainty in determining each response's weight, it is still computational complicated to be practically used. Shen et al. (2006) had proposed a fuzzy weight aggregator to address the decision-making about the weight values with different experts. The consistency and difference between several experts can be included in their proposed approach. Hence, it will be included into our study.After reviewing the relating literatures, most studies were separately addressed the issue like as the parameter optimization of a categorical response or weight effect on multiple categories of response. Until now, no any methodology was directly proposed to address parameter optimization problem with weight effect on the categorical response. Such gap can be regarded as the mentioned focus in this study.\n3 Artificial neural networks: A neural network consists of a number of simple, highly interconnected processing elements (PE) or nodes and is a computational algorithm (NeuralWare, 1990). A neural network can model the non-linear relationship between the system's input and output, and it had been employed into many applications (Sanjay et al., 2005; Mandal and Roy, 2006; Chen et al., 2007; Vassilopoulos et al., 2007; Barletta et al., 2007). The hidden structure of the non-linear relationship can be learned by passing the training pairs through the network. Among the several conventional supervised learning neural models include perceptron, backpropagation neural network (BPNN), learning vector quantization, and counter propagation network, the BPNN model is frequently used (Su and Miao, 1998) and, therefore, is selected herein.A BPNN consists of three or more layers, including an input layer, one or more hidden layers, and an output layer. Figure 1 graphically shows a prototype of BPNN. To develop a BPNN, the training, and testing data set are first collected. The data sets consist of both the input parameters and the resulting output parameters. The backpropagation learning algorithm employs a gradient- or steepest-heuristic (Rumelhart et al., 1986) that enables a network to self-organize in such ways that improve its performance over time. This forward pass through the BPNN begins as the input layer receiving the input data pattern and passes it to the hidden layer. Each PE calculates an activation function in first summing the weighted inputs. This sun is then used by an activation function in each node to determine the activity level of the processing node. In training this type of network, an input pattern is presented and the network adjusts the set of weights in all the connecting links such that the desired output is obtained at the output node. The output generated by the network is compared to the known target value. If there is no difference, no learning takes place. If a difference exists, the resulting error term is propagated back through the network, using a gradient- or steepest-descent heuristic to minimize the error term by adjusting the connection weights. In training this type of network, an input pattern is presented and the network adjusts the set of weights in all the connecting links such that the desired output is obtained at the output node. On accomplishing the adjustment, the next pair of input and output target value is presented and the network learns that association. The overall training process for the network using the gradient descent technique can be referred to the relating literatures (Rumelhart et al., 1986; NeuralWare, 1990).\n4 Proposed approach: The proposed decision-making procedure (it can be graphically shown in Figure 2) about achieving parameter optimization based on ANN technique with the weight effect for different categorical responses will be given as follows.Phase I. Determine the weight values of each category of response according to several experts\n5 Illustrative case study: Problem description\n6 Concluding and remarks: With an increasing complexity of manufactured products, assessing a product may no merely be the quantitative response. The trend of employing the qualitative assessment is gradually formed. This study proposes a novel approach based on the ANN technique to effectively achieve process improvement for a quality system with a categorical response under the consideration of different weight effect. By performing the necessary parameter optimization, the quality of process can be improved. An illustrative case demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The obtained result denotes the yield of downset process in L/F increasing from 48 per cent to about 80 per cent after using proposed procedure. Several advantages can be made in this study:* The proposed approach does not require a complicated computation. In addition, an analyst with limited statistical training would find it relatively easy to comprehend the proposed approach. Engineers can directly apply the neural network software either to develop the required model or to design an appropriate neural model by themselves.* By employing the proposed approach, the optimal continuous setting values of experimental factors can be obtained when the control factors have a continuous form. Therefore, quality improvement can be achieved.* The affection effect on quality improvement may be significant different for the different categories of response. And, such information can be included into parameter optimization by using the proposed procedure. The consistency and difference among those categories can be considered well by the proposed approach.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - No methodology has been directly proposed to address the parameter optimization problem with weight effect on the categorical response. The aim of this paper is to propose a suitable procedure to address such a problem.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The computation of aggregation weight and neural network modeling technique were employed into forming the core architecture of the proposed approach. The consistency and difference of the weight effect between several experts or professionals can be included into the weight computation. The backpropagation neural network model is chosen to model the non-linear relationship among the control factors, the probability, and the accumulated probability of categories for a qualitative response.\nFindings: - Weight effect for different categories of a qualitative response significantly exists in L/F manufacturing process. Including such weight effect into the L/F manufacturing analysis can achieve the parameter optimization and enhance their quality improvement.\nOriginality/value: - This paper can be viewed as the first to address the parameter optimization problem for the categorical response with the weight effect consideration. The proposed approach can aid engineers making necessary decisions about quality improvement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The supply chain crisis and disaster pyramid: A theoretical framework for understanding preparedness and recovery	[ "Supply chain management", "Disasters", "Contingency planning", "Research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is September 10, 1993, and Dick Rogers drives frantically to the local Shalimar Florida hospital. The hospital is rated to handle the force of a Category 3 hurricane. Unfortunately, Hurricane Opal has just been upgraded to a Category 4 and the municipalities in the strike zone are being completely evacuated. As an MD Intern at the hospital, Dick expects that he will be one of the key people relied upon to evacuate the hospital. He arrives and searches frantically for his superior. Dick finds his boss and tells him, \"I am here to help with the evacuation of the patients.\" His boss laughs and says:We aren't moving anyone. The only way to move these patients out of the hospital is using EMS (emergency medical services) and we can't tie EMS down to an evacuation procedure when we need them to bring patients here.This is just one example of the situation dependent complexities that managers experience when supply chain crisis situations arise. A similar situation that many US citizens remember occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. You may remember images on Fox, CNN, and the BBC of a parking lot full of yellow school busses that were not being used to evacuate the Katrina flood victims. As water deluged into the 9th Ward, talking heads on the networks chided federal, state, and local officials for not having those busses in operation. Why did the busses not move to save the distressed? The truth is that the busses remained out of service because the drivers had evacuated from the municipality with their families as was recommended to all those in the New Orleans area.Supply chain management research is increasingly focusing on supply chains in times of crisis. The depth of related research is impressive for such a young area. Recent key topics in supply chain disaster and crisis management-related supply chain strategy and logistics operations include: agility (Oloruntoba and Gray, 2006), risk management/insurance issues (Kleidt et al., 2009), humanitarian issues (Gibbons and Samaddar, 2009; Kovacs and Spens, 2007), inventory management (Beamon and Kotleba, 2006), facility location (Balcik and Beamon, 2008), collaboration/networks (Gibbons and Samaddar, 2009), and multi-level partner/non-partner integration (Perry, 2007; Rathbun, 2007). These studies have initiated a building of ideas and propositions that need to be explored for the betterment of business and mankind alike. Yet, extant research has no common string or grounding framework from which to draw in order to define the parameters of future studies. This research looks to begin the development of a framework for defining those boundaries. I title this framework the supply chain disaster and crisis pyramid (DCP).Supply chain disaster and crisis situations can arise in nearly any area of the world in multiple forms. Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean; tornados in Oklahoma and Texas; forest fires in California, Mongolia, and Central Africa; tsunamis in India and Indonesia; terrorism in London and Cairo; war in Iraq and Cashmere; swine flu in Mexico and Australia; AIDS in Africa and the USA; pirates in Somalia and on the internet; and the list goes on and on. The common thread with all these events is that we as supply chain managers and researchers must develop plans to get people out of harm's way and get aid into the impacted areas. I cannot think of a more important area of research in our field. Thus, there needs to be an ongoing call for the development of research streams focusing on the supply chain disaster and crisis domain. This study integrates a multiple theoretic perspective with the hope of grounding, uniting, and in some ways structuring the complexity that has become supply chain disaster and crisis research. This research will begin by discussing the capstone of the pyramid and then relate the capstone to the base. After the pyramid is conceptually developed, I will address some approaches to grounding research and addressing acceptable outcome variables. I will conclude by discussing a few avenues of research that are vital to improving supply chain management in times of disaster and crisis.\nTheoretical foundations: Every good research domain needs a solid theoretical base. In the development of the three \"Supply chains in times of crisis\", special issues of International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, I required myself to canvass the literature. My early expectations were that the task would not be all that difficult. As the manuscript submissions increased, I found myself reading across multiple disciplines and techniques. The literature was quite broad. Unfortunately, it was also quite theoretically shallow. Much of this can be attributed to two things:1. the immediacy of ground level operational need related to the topic; and2. the broad dispersion across multiple fields.Still, I was able to define three specific cornerstones of the discipline to date: collaboration, communication, and contingency planning. Ultimately, the interconnection is one of stakeholders:1. finding ways to effectively partner and develop improving collaborative relationships built of long-term commitment;2. fostering information development and exchange for facilitating strategic planning based in limited safeguarding; and3. developing contingency programs that incorporate the flexibility for responding to the inevitable changes in expected events while pursuing sometimes inconsistent goals.Figure 1 is a graphic representation of the DCP.The DCP is built on a foundation of the three Cs discussed above. This base can be theoretically explained by relationship management theories (collaboration), communications theory (communication), and competing values theory (contingency). Additionally, the top of the pyramid is related directly to the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. In the following section, I will very quickly explain each of these theoretical pillars and then make some suggestions as to how they might be employed in future studies.The capstone of the pyramid - resource management\nResearch planes of the DCP for grounding future research: In this section, I will make just a few suggestions about how the discussed theories could be combined to both improve and expand future research in the area of supply chain disaster and crisis recovery. This is not to suggest that these are the only theories or the only combinations available. My goal is to open research and provide basic suggestions. I should also note that the discussion below is not research I have started. The ideas are fully open for other researchers to embrace and grow. Each \"section\" below is displayed as a plane on the DCP.Section 1 - the reactive independents perspective\nConclusion: This paper was written to encourage authors to:* continue their disaster and crisis-related research;* consider including more theory in their work and likewise impacting theory itself; and* grow their research on the support of multiple theories.The field is open and of the utmost importance of all in the area of supply chain and logistics management. It would be a shame if more in our area do not choose to add this area to their research agenda. I applaud those who have embraced the area and especially those who have published in these supply chain disaster and crisis-related special issues. It is also important to note that this topic area is extremely relevant to international business. As such, data may be available in secondary form from any number of public sources.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The research on supply chains concerning disaster and crisis situations is in its infancy, but rapidly expanding on the backs of top researchers in the field. As with most young research streams there is very little theoretical grounding in extant studies. The purpose of this research is to integrate four prominent existing theoretical perspectives to provide a concise yet holistic framework for grounding future research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The development of the disaster recovery pyramid is completed following an extensive review of the resource, risk and crisis/disaster recovery, and preparedness literature. Additionally, literature from the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, communication theory, competing values theory, and relationship management theory are canvassed. Business professional and academics are also interviewed to validate the pyramid.\nFindings: - The proposed framework is a call for future studies in the supply chain management and logistics disaster, and crisis management arena. The findings suggest that much of the work in supply chain disaster and crisis preparedness and recovery can be theoretically supported in combination of four mature theoretical perspectives: the RBV of the firm, communication theory, competing values theory, and relationship management theory.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first attempt to theoretically support the areas of supply chain disaster and crisis preparedness and recovery. The motivation of this paper is to both develop a framework and support a drive for growing multiple research streams in the area. Avenues of future research and theoretical grounding are suggested in a graphic representation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cross-sector organizational engagement with ethics: a comparison between private sector companies and public sector entities of Sweden	[ "Public sector organizations", "Private sector organizations", "Ethics", "Sweden" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Since the early 1980s there has been a growing focus of the research on the engagement with ethics in private sector companies (e.g. codes of ethics). A number of studies have been conducted in the private sector in the USA (e.g. Cressey and Moore, 1983; Mathews, 1987; Weaver et al., 1999; Berenbeim, 2000; Chonko et al., 2003), in the UK (e.g. Langlois and Schlegelmilch, 1990; Le Jeune and Webley, 1998), in Ireland (O'Dwyer and Madden, 2006), in Canada (LeFebvre and Singh, 1992; Schwartz, 2002; Singh, 2006,) in Sweden (Svensson et al., 2006), in Australia (Kaye, 1992; Farrell and Cobbin, 1996; Wood, 2000; Wood and Callaghan, 2003). Studies of the organizational engagement with ethics have also been conducted on the largest multinational corporations operating across a range of jurisdictions in the world (Bethoux et al., 2007; Carasco and Singh, 2003; Kaptein, 2004).Stajkovic and Luthans (1997) see codes of ethics as one of the key antecedent factors that interact together to influence the engagement with ethics by people and organizations. Berenbeim (2000) sees codes of ethics as having a pivotal importance in making an organization more engaged with ethics. Nijhof et al. (2003) suggest that once a code has been developed and written that it is not enough by itself to ensure the organizational engagement with ethics in the marketplace and society. They go onto say that ensuring that the values of the code are embedded in the organization can, one hope, ensure not only responsible behavior by individuals but also responsible behavior by organizations. Codes of ethics therefore have a major part to play in enhancing the engagement with ethics of organizations (Wood, 2000). The public sectors in many societies have been deregulated and therefore confronted with conditions that resemble their private sectors (Svensson and Wood, 2004). This dichotomy appears to be a relatively unexplored field of research, which we contend justifies the relevance of the research reported in this paper.Public sector entities around the world have evolved from providing basic services to the society (in a non-competitive environment) towards direct competition in the marketplace with traditional private sector companies (particularly in deregulated environments). This evolution has led to a need within public sector entities to embrace an ethos that takes greater cognizance of their organizational engagement with ethics than may have been the case in the past (Svensson and Wood, 2004; Svensson et al., 2004). It is expected that one of the major manifestations of this change would be evidence of public sector entities adopting the same engagement practices with ethics as the private sector entities have done.To our knowledge there is limited research that has been dedicated to the organizational engagement with ethics in public sector entities in Sweden (e.g. Svensson and Wood, 2004). It also appears to us that the only research that has compared the engagement with ethics in private and public sectors is a descriptive approach that was performed a few years ago by Svensson et al. (2004). That study was limited to the collection of mostly non-metric data.Our research provides a refined approach of their research effort where we introduce a different conceptual framework to measure the organizational engagement with ethics carried out in private sector companies and public sector entities. It consists of four principal areas:1. ethical bodies;2. ethical tools;3. internal and external ethical usage; and4. ethical support procedures and ethical performance measures.This research also represents an extended approach, in terms of the collection and measurement of metric data, enabling the statistical testing of similarities and differences between private sector companies and public sector entities. The objective is to describe and compare similarities as well as differences in the organizational engagement with ethics between the two sectors. The research question has been formulated as follows: Are there differences in the organizational engagement with ethics between private sector companies and public sector entities? Our research question is addressed through a series of hypotheses, all of which are introduced in the next section. This section is dedicated to presenting the underlying frame of reference and previous research over the course of the past few decades. Subsequently, each hypothesis is derived from an area of research dedicated to an organizational engagement with ethics.Based on the \"Partnership model of corporate ethics\" (Wood, 2002), our study examines the measures in place to communicate the organizational engagement with ethics of private sector companies and public sector entities in Sweden. Sweden has been selected as it is a society that in many ways is different to many developed capitalist societies in the world especially in respect to the relative size and dominance of its public sector as compared to its private sector. The concept of the welfare state in Sweden is constructed around the intimate involvement and expectation of its public sector organizations to provide the requirements for such an ethos (Svensson and Wood, 2004). As such Swedish public sector organizations are powerful entities in Swedish life and they often drive societal issues that impact on the way that business is conducted in Sweden. They are not merely just perceived as a service function to business or the wider society, therefore, this paper examines the measures put in place by the private sector companies and public sector entities in Sweden in order to communicate the ethos of their codes to their employees.\nFrame of reference: As mentioned previously, the organizational engagement with ethics may be structured around four principal areas:1. ethical bodies;2. ethical tools;3. internal and external ethical usage; and4. ethical support procedures and ethical performance measures.Each one is described in the following paragraphs of this section. Each area may consist of a number of components all of which are also described under each heading. Aggregated research hypotheses are formulated and provided at the end of each paragraph.Ethical bodies\nMethodology: The methodology of this research is based upon two sectors, namely the private and public sectors of Sweden - that is, a dual sample. The need for some methodological adaptations were required, all of which are described in this section.Cross-sector\nEmpirical findings: A selection of univariate and bivariate statistical techniques (e.g. Norusis, 1993 and 1994) was used to analyze the dual-sector sample of data collected and to describe the selected private sector companies' and public sector entities' organizational engagement with ethics. The outcomes are summarized in Tables I-V.The dual sample is dominated by large organizations according to the selection procedures applied (see Table II). More than 93.5 percent of the Swedish private and public sector samples have an annual turnover of more than 2,500 millions SEK. This figure provides support for our research focus on the organizational engagement with ethics of large private sector companies and public sector entities in Sweden.The largest interval in the dual sample regarding equivalent full time staff is in the interval 1,001-5,000 employees (see Table III). For example, 42 percent in the sample belong to this interval. The second largest one is 501-1,000 employees (i.e. 21 percent). Approximately 90 percent of the sample have more than 500 employees. This finding also provides support for our research focus on the organizational engagement with ethics of large private sector companies and public sector entities in Sweden.Table IV indicates that half of the organizations in the dual sample possess a code of ethics (49.8 percent). It should be noted that the research reported in this paper is based upon those organizations that have a code (i.e. n=140) and accordingly are able to provide insights and share their views on their organizational engagement with ethics.Univariate analyses\nImplications: The private sectors and the public sectors in developed countries have traditionally been different, yet over the last few years, with the deregulation of marketplaces, the public sector in particular has tended to adopt many of the attributes of the private sector in terms of its orientation towards conducting its business. One such area that has attracted increased interest from both sectors is the area of ethics.An important implication of this research is that it appears that the differences in organizational engagement with ethics between the private sector companies and public sector entities in Sweden have diminished in recent years in comparison to our findings in previous research (e.g. Svensson et al., 2004). The differences between the public sector and the private sector in Sweden show a convergence, rather than a divergence of practice, in respect to business suggesting that the deregulated market paradigm, evident in other marketplaces around the world, may have entered the Swedish business psyche forcing changes in approach across both sectors of Swedish business.This change to a deregulated marketplace has been a major change for Sweden as the deregulation paradigm is one anchored in Anglo-Saxon tradition rather than in Nordic tradition. This new deregulated marketplace has posed new challenges for the public sector entities and forced them to confront changing conditions that impact on the way that they need to manage their operations. This realization may have led them to adopt practices that they have witnessed in the Swedish private sector.An important implication for private sector companies when trying to benchmark the best practice of organizational engagement with ethics could be to examine the approaches of the public sector entities. As stated earlier, historically the environment in the public sector has been different and the approach taken nowadays by the public sector entities regarding one's organizational engagement with ethics may provide innovative and valuable insights into how to enhance the efforts of private sector companies. Likewise, the public sector entities may gain valuable knowledge by examining the best practices in the private sector. As each sector has become more convergent rather than divergent in their approaches to ethics then each may be able to learn valuable lessons from the other to enhance their respective engagements with ethics in their sector.A further important implication of this research is the development of a framework of organizational engagement with ethics, based on the observations made during this study. This framework has been created for the use of both researchers and practitioners in private and public sector organizations in this area (see Figure 1).Private sector companies and public sector entities may structure their efforts to improve their organizational engagement with ethics by examining the principal areas of importance illustrated in Figure 1. The first step, labeled as (i), is for private and public sector organizations to have \"Ethical bodies\" in place, consisting of an ethics committee, an ethics ombudsman and an ethics training committee, as they provide monitoring and guiding structures. This area provides initial support for organizational engagement with ethics. This then may be complemented by the second step, labeled as (ii), \"Ethical tools\" evident in provision of a more hands-on approach to the organizational engagement with ethics through the training of staff in ethics, using ethics to guide strategic planning, ethical audits of the organization's activities and employee appraisal of ethical performance. The third step involves an emphasis on the communication of the organization's engagement with ethics, labeled as (iii) \"internal and external ethical usage\". This area focuses on the importance of communication with employees, providing ethics based information to new staff, informing customers and suppliers of the organization's commitment to ethical performance, and resolving ethical dilemmas in the marketplace/society. The final step (iv) may enhance the organizational engagement with ethics as it is dedicated to creating \"ethical support procedures\" and emphasizing the implementation of \"ethical performance measures\". This step focuses on monitoring, managing and following-up on the other areas (i.e. steps (i), (ii) and (iii)) through stipulating consequences for violations, forming guidelines to support whistle blowers, performing revisions of the code and estimating the effectiveness of the organizational engagement with ethics.\nConclusions and suggestions for further research: This paper has reported a research effort to develop and describe a cross-sector comparison of organizational engagement with ethics, based upon a dual sample in private sector companies and public sector entities of Sweden. This research is distinct from previous studies in the area, in that most research usually focuses upon either the private sector or the public sector. The authors contend that this research is particularly valuable as it is boundary spanning in nature through its comparison of both sectors.We believe that this research makes a valuable contribution to the theory and the practice in the field as the empirical findings serve to outline the current level of engagement with ethics and this will serve to benefit other researchers working in both private and public sectors as these findings provide a benchmark and a point of reference for future work. We also believe that the findings are of managerial interest as they have provided a grounded framework of areas to be considered in the implementation of the supporting measures in respect to codes of ethics in both private sector companies and public sector entities. To facilitate this understanding, a framework based on the findings, has been developed for use in the examination and enhancement of one's organizational engagement with ethics.A suggestion for further research is to examine the organizational engagement with ethics in other countries/cultures, particularly those that differ from Sweden's private and public sectors. Ideally, research focused on a culturally different society to Sweden with a public sector would be particularly valuable for comparison to this study. Further, the framework developed may stimulate other researchers to make refinements and extensions beyond the few principal areas, and their related components, detailed in this paper.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to describe and compare similarities as well as differences in the organizational engagement with ethics between private sector companies and public sector entities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey was conducted in order to examine the organizational engagement with ethics in the largest private sector companies and the largest public sector entities in Sweden. Two adapted questionnaires were developed for each sector. The outcome of this research procedure is reported in this paper.\nFindings: - There are both minor and major differences between the private sector and public sectors, where the private sector companies overall tend to be more engaged with ethics than the public sector entities in areas such as: ethical bodies, ethical tools, internal and external ethical usage, and ethical support measures and ethical performance measures.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper makes a contribution to theory as it outlines findings for the benefit of other researchers working in private and/or public sectors in the field. A suggestion for further research is to examine the organizational engagement with ethics in other countries/cultures that differ from the ones in this research effort performed in the private and public sectors of Sweden.\nPractical implications: - The research may be of managerial interest as it provides a grounded framework of areas to be considered in the examination of organizational engagement with ethics in both private sector companies and public sector entities. It may be used as a benchmark by either sector.\nOriginality/value: - It reports a research effort to develop and describe a cross-sector comparison of the organizational engagement with ethics between private sector companies and public sector entities of Sweden. A framework is also introduced and illustrated. It also makes a contribution to theory and practice in the field as it is based upon a dual sample that provides insight into cross-sector organizational engagement with ethics.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Who owns the gap? (Part one): Appreciative Inquiry as a diagnostic tool	[ "Appreciative Inquiry", "Organizational development", "Learning design", "Development", "Learning", "Learning methods" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and background: This paper presents evidence of the value of Appreciative Inquiry to individual and organisational development. A collaborative approach to diagnostics was taken with the top 72 managers in a college of Further and Higher Education in UK. The data generated by this management population resulted in a one-year management development programme between 2011-2012. An Appreciative Inquiry approach was used to structure the diagnostic process and engage managers in decisions about their own development and to ensure that development priorities were aligned to the strategic priorities of the college.\nRationale for an Appreciative Inquiry approach: Ready and Conger (2003) define three pathologies that impact an organisation's ability to achieve measurable returns on investment from development programmes; \"ownership is power\" mindset, productization of leadership development and make believe metrics. The practical implications of this research have been shaping our approach to learning design for some years. When we discussed diagnosis and design with key college stakeholders, we were confident that an Appreciative Inquiry approach would give us a wider level of engagement with management development before the programme started. Appreciative Inquiry stimulated a collaborative ethos from the onset and delivered an evaluation framework that ensured quality impact data charting individual, team and organisational performance.\nWhat was the role of the facilitators?: Traditional methods of diagnosis tend to start and finish with a gap. The role of the consultant/development professional is to establish a performance gap and related development needs. This may involve interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and consultation with key organisational stakeholders etc. Traditionally, one of the benefits of employing an external has been seen as neutrality. In practice the external is not neutral and their expert power has an impact on the ownership of subsequent development initiatives. Groups of managers view learning and development as an additional burden in an over stretched work load. Or worse still, develop distrust and cynicism for the consultants intervening in their world.\nWho owns the gap?: The case study illustrates a paradigm shift in diagnosis and learning design from development providers to participants. The design outcome is an integrated organisational development programme that addresses individual and team needs. The practical outcomes of our approach mirrors the contribution of Tate (2009) who maps a critical shift from development programmes that focus on individuals to interventions which develop the organisation and the business its members are engaged in.\nAppreciative Inquiry as a diagnostic tool: In 2011, three workshops, on different days, were delivered to accommodate the operational realities of running a large educational establishment. The population of 72 managers were allocated to a core team of between six to eight members. Each workshop ran over a day and involved a series of practical exercises conducted in the core teams. The first exercises involved practising dialogue skills as a practical method to promote collaborative working. All members of the teams were encouraged to have a voice and the facilitators modelled the skills and behaviours required by the groups to conduct the Appreciative Inquiry.\nTangible outcomes: The Appreciative Inquiry outcomes from, all teams, were mapped against strategic priorities. This ensured that content and approach of the management development programme was fit for purpose. This alignment mapping also delivered a clear evaluation framework. The alignment process was later communicated back to the core teams and this consolidated the level of engagement in individual, team and organisational development. The key outcomes were:\nReflections and lessons learned: The quality of involvement of all managers during the workshops was very good. Participants enjoyed working in teams and sharing their ideas. The participants responded well to a process that appreciated them and their organisation. Our style was facilitative and reflective to avoid the trap of \"telling\" from an expert position. Appreciative Inquiry gave us the structure to stay back from advising on development needs or highlighting gaps in performance.\nConclusions: The application of Appreciative Inquiry to the diagnostic phase of a management development programme generates motivation and interest across a broad set of organisational stakeholders and reduces later cynicism to management development. The outcomes brought confidence in the programme design both for us as providers and the participants involved.\nLimitations: We have been challenged on the time and cost of adopting a collaborative approach to diagnosis with a substantial group of managers. The evidence indicates that Appreciative Inquiry is a more cost effective use of time and resource and ensures that the investment in development is wisely planned.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on the impact of Appreciative Inquiry on the diagnostic phase of a management development programme. A case study of an organisation delivering both further and higher education will be used to illustrate how the involvement of a management population in the diagnosis and design of the programme resulted in individual, team and organisational learning. The use of Appreciative Inquiry challenges conventional methods of diagnosis and evaluation. One year later a second Appreciative Inquiry was adapted to become an evaluation tool. The outcomes of this work will be reported in part two of this article.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Appreciative Inquiry workshops involving 72 managers were used to encourage a collaborative approach to diagnostics prior to the launch of a management development programme. The workshops followed a four-stage structure. Small self-managed teams, with representation from different departments and levels of management, engaged in a diagnostic process with support from Lancaster facilitators.\nFindings: Participants discovered new working practices for exploring and solving organisational issues and challenges. Individuals learned from the teamwork and established new networks and sources of innovation. The benefits of a collaborative approach included greater clarity on strategies, priorities and rigorous alignment of management development needs to the mission of achieving outstanding status.\nResearch limitations/implications: Participants of the management development programme were actively engaged in the diagnosis of learning and development needs. The diagnostic phase accelerated engagement with learning across a broad spectrum of managers and key organisational stakeholders.\nPractical implications: The use of Appreciative Inquiry as a diagnostic tool ensures that management development is firmly rooted in strategic priorities of the organisation. The approach ensures that all contributions are respected and this results in a higher quality dialogue across different parts of the organisation.\nOriginality/value: The paper is original in presenting a management development programme diagnosed and evaluated by organisational members. The result was practical, cost effective and sustainable development which transferred capability to the organisation. Part two of this article will report on Appreciative Inquiry as an evaluation tool and provide evidence of the sustainability of individual, team and organisational learning.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A collaborative action research project towards embedding ESD within the higher education curriculum	[ "Professional development", "Education for sustainable development", "Engagement", "Higher education", "Academics", "Action research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Research in the area of academic staff in higher education for sustainable development (ESD) has mainly focussed on identifying academics' understandings, beliefs, values, attitudes and visions towards ESD (Cotton et al., 2007; Jones et al., 2008; Reid and Petocz, 2006; Shephard and Furnari, 2012). From the existing literature on staff perceptions and attitudes some common strands and concerns can be outlined: diversity of views and understanding of sustainability; uncertainty on how to embed it in teaching and the curriculum; and time as a limitation. Thus, different levels of engagement with the idea of ESD exist, related to the suitability to their subject area and the ability to embed it in it (Cebrian et al., 2015a; Cotton et al., 2009). So far, little research exists that has studied in-depth staff understandings, attitudes and challenges faced when thinking about embedding the principles of ESD within their professional practice (Cotton et al., 2009). In the interview-based research focusing on academic staffs' views on ESD, Jones et al. (2008) identified limiting factors such as staff interest, lack of awareness, time and capability. Other inhibitors in curriculum development and innovation towards sustainability are academics tend to see sustainability as an imposed matter and not connected to their discipline; academics think that they do not have enough knowledge and competencies to integrate sustainability issues in their subjects; the ethos of higher education (HE) institutions are seen as an obstacle to embedding ESD holistically in the curriculum; disciplinary silos; lack of incentives or individual priority; limited institutional commitment and support; crowded curriculum; and limited commitment from external bodies and stakeholders (Jones et al., 2010; Policy Studies Institute et al., 2008). Factors conditioning attitudes towards sustainability can be linked to misconceptions about the term, knowledge, background, previous experiences and personal values and beliefs (Filho, 2011).\n2. The principles and dimensions of action research: Research for sustainability in HE has, over the past decade, become more focussed on interdisciplinarity; in transforming rather than informing; on having social impact; on social and structural change; on the researcher as a partner; and on research with people rather than on people (Tilbury, 2012). So, for example, McMillin and Dyball (2009) used an action research approach to look at what education and operations' benefits are gained from campus sustainability projects, with the purpose of enhancing participation through forums, discussions and surveys and envision sustainability creating organisational change. Moore (2005) used a participatory action research approach to examine ESD programmes' implementation at the University of British Columbia. Action research is also emerging as an increasingly used methodology in leadership and in training programmes for leaders to create sustainability processes in the context of their organisations or companies (Marshall et al., 2011).\n3. Research method: The research project was undertaken at the University of Southampton. This University is located in the south-east region of the UK. It is one of the top-research universities in the UK and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. It has over 22,000 students and around 5,000 staff members. The profile of sustainability at the University increased over recent years in strategies and actions such as the approval of a second Carbon Management Plan in 2011, the Environment and Sustainability Strategy in 2012 and the creation of the Environment and Sustainability Advisory Group in 2012. Moreover, the University of Southampton was part of the EcoCampus, a UK Environmental Management System (EMS) scheme for the HE sector, and achieved its silver award in December 2012 whilst the institution support to a group of practitioners who engaged in the HEA Green Academy programme \"Curricula for Tomorrow\". The HEA Green Academy programme was an innovative initiative to help institutions achieve sustainability in the curriculum goals. Environmental management of the estates and operations has seen more progress than the curriculum. In terms of curriculum, the elective interdisciplinary modules dealing with global challenges offered since the academic year 2011/2012 and the option of sustainability minors offered to students since 2013/2014 are the main achievements of the university in terms of embedding ESD within the curriculum.\n4. Outcomes of the action research process: 4.1 Opportunities and challenges to embed education for sustainable development within the curriculum\n5. Conclusions: Action research allows researchers to become active participants in different sustainability projects and activities taking place at the university, engaging key individuals in participatory process and challenging existing organisational practices. Action research allows improving real problems and situations, generating knowledge and action through the research process itself. This paper shows the contribution of facilitators and second-order action research in acting as a catalyst for critical reflection, creating a shared vision and supporting learning and action within communities of practice or teams working towards embedding ESD within HE curriculum. The framework of critical action research for ESD was suggested as the method to address academics' needs for developing strategy and action in their teaching practice. This method has enabled reflection and action, alongside with the identification of specific needs of academics and the factors influencing their engagement and action in ESD. The potential of using these approaches to rethink current practice and to lead to new practices and actions of academics is evident. The use of a critical action research approach contributes to empowering academics to take ownership of sustainability and to connect it to their discipline. More empirical studies using second-order action research are needed because they empower academics and motivate action. Action research contributes to better decision-making in terms of sustainability because it questions practice and current assumptions and worldviews.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to present a collaborative action research project conducted at the University of Southampton with the aim to promote curriculum and professional development in education for sustainable development (ESD) and learn from everyday practices of academics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An action research approach guided by participatory and emancipatory approaches was used. An interdisciplinary group of five academic staff members from different subject areas (education; archaeology; electronics and computer sciences; biology; and health sciences) was created with the aim to support the group's critical reflection and action towards embedding ESD in their teaching practice.\nFindings: The main outcomes of delivery of sustainability teaching achieved through the project and evidences of the impact of the facilitator role are outlined. The facilitator role has enabled reflection and action, together with the identification of specific needs of academics and the factors influencing their engagement and action.\nOriginality/value: This research demonstrates the potential of using action research to rethink current practice in embedding ESD and to lead to new practices and actions of communities of practice. The facilitator role and second-order action research can contribute to better decision-making of sustainability as it questions practice, current assumptions and worldviews.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Competence development and work-family conflict: Professors and gender	[ "Competencies", "Work-family conflict", "Professor" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Only very recently, especially with the publication of the Workforce 2000 Report and other publications presuming a more diverse workforce throughout the entire world (Fullerton, 1991; Johnston and Packer, 1987; Johnston, 1991; Knomo and Cox Jr., 2007), has diversity received attention as a theme in organizational studies.\nMethodology: This research discusses a case study about work-family conflicts in the academic career. The case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present in a single setting (Eisenhardt, 1989). For Stake (2005) and Merriam (2009), a case is singular, and can be an organization, a group, a community, an institution or a specific policy. In this study, the case involves a group of professors in graduate management programs (MS and PhD/stricto sensu) in the city of Curitiba (one of the most important Brazilian capitals).\nPresentation of the research and data analysis results: This section presents the results of the data analysis and is structured as follows:\nImplications and research avenues: We believe that this study contributed with knowledge on this theme when gathering the categories of competencies and work-family conflict related to gender and the teaching profession. This paper highlights the importance and current theme of gender and career for researchers and academy. Thus, this paper contributes so society can reflect on the roles men and women hold in the distribution of the responsibilities, highlighting the importance of balancing their division between couples, in family routines and in childcare. Such balance can improve a family's life, providing better conditions so women can manage their careers. Likewise, this paper supports public policies that improve the life quality of women or those who will adopt children, such as policies that incentive public and private organizations to extend maternity leave for mothers and adoptive couples, and public policies that contribute so women can proceed in their careers and therefore can contribute to the advancement of society and their own bio-psycho-social development. This paper also brings implications in order that organizations design special policies for people who need to take care of little children, and even policies that allow all employees, with or without children, to better balance work-time and other life activities in general.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to understand how the development of teaching and research competencies affects graduate (MS and PhD level - called stricto sensu courses in Brazil) management professors' work-family relations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research is a case study about work-family conflicts in academic careers. The data collection and analysis occurred during the period between June 2009 and January 2012. The population is composed of 45 professors: 33 men and 12 women, corresponding, respectively, to 73 and 27 per cent of the professors in the programs. Eleven female professors and 26 male professors were interviewed in this research. Analysis of work-family conflicts was performed by means of open questions based on three conflict dimensions: time, strain and behavior.\nFindings: Investment in the development of teaching competencies brings conflicts into work-family relations. Among the three conflict dimensions considered, time stood out. When the conflict dimension was analyzed, more specifically in terms of behavior, it was evident that men perceive the effects of work-family conflicts to a lesser extent, as women suffer more from the triple impact (work, family and studies).\nResearch limitations/implications: Context of a sector within a determined place.\nPractical implications: This text highlights the importance and current theme of gender and career for researchers and academy. Thus, this paper contributes so society can reflect on the roles men and women hold in the distribution of the responsibilities, highlighting the importance of balancing their division between couples, in family routines and in childcare. Such balance can improve a family's life, providing better conditions so women can manage their careers.\nSocial implications: Likewise, this paper supports public policies that improve the life quality of women or those who will adopt children, such as policies that incentive public and private organizations to extend maternity leave for mothers and adoptive couples, and public policies that contribute so women can proceed in their careers and therefore can contribute to the advancement of society and their own bio-psycho-social development. This text also brings implications in order that organizations design policies that allow all employees to better balance work-time and other life activities in general.\nOriginality/value: By selecting the graduate MS/PhD (stricto sensu) educational sector in particular, it was possible to learn the challenges, difficulties, achievements and limits inherent to the profession (professors), just as it was possible to verify existing conflicts, many times experienced and debated in organizational routines but not identified and shown by academic research in this sector.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Conquering in emerging markets: critical success factors to enhance supply chain performance	[ "Performance management", "Emerging markets", "Critical success factors", "Agility", "Flexibility", "Supply chain management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Volatile demand and high level of competition coupled with umpteen opportunities are the hallmarks of emerging markets along with dynamic business environment. In such scenario, managing the material and information flow in a supply chain is critical. Businesses try to design a supply chain that can provide the highest degree of customer satisfaction at the lowest possible cost. In such markets, the supply chain is centered on keeping the operations Lean in order to improve the overall performance. The study theorizes and tests a model of supply chain performance (SCP) in the emerging market context. Emerging markets are the growth harbingers for manufactured products and technology. For instance, the textile machinery industry in India, oil and gas exploration in Russia and agriculture in China have promoted the emergence of merchandizing and branding, cosmetics markets and fertilizer markets, etc., respectively. Avittathur and Jayaram (2016) reported that China is today the second largest economy in the world and it is also having the largest purchasing power parity. India has recently overtaken China as the fastest growing large economy. Emerging markets have long served as platforms for manufacturing by multi-national enterprises. Historically, emerging markets are known to reside in the countries with low economies and high populations. Pelle (2007) explained \"Emerging markets represent attractive markets and low-cost manufacturing bases; they also tend to have inadequate commercial infrastructure, evolving legal systems, and a high-risk business environment.\" In these markets, firms are always on the lookout for growth opportunities. Intense competition among the firms results in low elasticity of demand, leading to compromised quality of products and other malpractices. In addition, planning, forecasting and aligning end-to-end supply chain diligently are ways to gain competitive advantage in these markets (Leach, 2013). The survival of firms directly depends on efficiency and effectiveness of its supply chain. In order to be sustainable, firms need to continuously rethink, refocus, redesign, revaluate and recognize potential capabilities and operation of its supply chain. In this respect, Deman and Tuyishime (2009) have said \"Emerging markets present major challenges like poor infrastructure, overstretched capacity, a highly fragmented supplier base, the lack of traditional retail channels and point-of-sales data, ineffective usage of information technologies and communication, a very complex system of taxes and restrictive government regulations, many logistics and distribution models.\" Jayaram et al. (2016) examined the key role of logistic service providers in the service supply chain management (SCM) in the emerging economy context. Hsu et al. (2016) showed the results of firms that implement sustainable supply chain initiatives can realize positive reverse logistics outcomes. Further, their study also provides new insights into eco-innovation and eco-reputation strategic orientations as theoretically important antecedents of sustainable supply chain initiatives.\n2. Theoretical framework and research hypotheses: In this section, the theoretical framework and related literature have identified several arguments. All are positive, in postulating the nature of relationship the CSFs with agility, flexibility and SCP. We propose a theoretical model where the implementation of supply chain CSFs has positive influence on the agility, flexibility and SCP; and the empirical study was designed to decipher these relationships.\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection and measurement scale\n4. Results and discussions: The results show that the \"ICT\" and \"PS\" variables have the greatest influence on the FSC and SCP (dependent variable), respectively, with both of them have the same b coefficient of 0.237 (p=0.001 and <0.001, respectively). Therefore H3 and H14 are supported. With a b coefficient 0.221, the variable \"TLP\" has the second largest influence on the SCP (p=0.001). Subsequently, H17 is supported. The results reveal that \"CCD\" (b coefficient=0.217 and p<0.001), \"ASC\" (b coefficient=0.206 and p<0.001), \"FI\" (b coefficient=0.183 and p=0.002), \"FSC\" (b coefficient=0.131 and p=0.024) and \"ICT\" (b coefficient=0.131 and p=0.028) have moderate explanatory power of SCP. Therefore these are positively and significantly related to SCP. However, H11, H1, H8, H2 and H5 are supported.\n5. Conclusion and implications: India is a developing country where shifting policies, unstable economics, lack of basic infrastructure and limited application of enterprise management technologies are the norms. In spite of these challenges and pitfalls, it has a huge potential to address the emerging needs of the people, and supply chain plays an important role (Singh, 2014). Based on this, the study tries to answer as: how to enhance SCP in emerging markets; and identify which factors play a conducive role to enhance its performance in emerging market scenario.\n6. Limitations and future research: Like every study, the present study has its own limitations, where the research study is carried out with some constraints such as the number of companies, available resources, areas of industry, etc. Some limitations of this study should be underscored, which can be taken care of in later studies. Further, verified the hypotheses; and this study lent good support to our hypotheses. It is difficult to say that our results generalize to different industries. Thus, we encourage further research to examine the applicability of our findings to service sectors. The study with the large sample size can possibly generalize our findings further and gives global solutions for the current organizations that provide good insights on the effectiveness of SCP. Moreover, the results would be verified with more accuracy. The sample size included only 80 percent manufacturing firms so we can consider this study for only manufacturing firms. However, no claim of generalizability can be made beyond that.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the context of emerging economies, the purpose of this paper is to seek the critical success factors (CSFs) of supply chain and identify their relationships to enhance the supply chain performance (SCP) in a sample of Indian manufacturing firms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: On the basis of a comprehensive literature review, the authors conducted this study and proposed a new model of antecedent and outcomes for SCP in emerging markets. The empirical data for this study were drawn from a survey of 227 Indian firms, resulting in a response rate of 52 percent. The method of confirmatory factor analysis was applied to refine the CSFs and SCP scale for empirical analysis. The data were analyzed by employing the structural equation modeling technique.\nFindings: The results reveal that all the identified CSFs, namely, agility, flexibility, flexible innovation, information and communication technology, collaboration among conglomerate divisions, process structure, and training and leadership programs, are positively associated with SCP. The empirical study of 227 Indian firms lent good support to the hypotheses and validates it by the data analysis. Consequently, these findings highlight the prominence of these factors of supply chain for gaining a sustainable competitive advantage in emerging market scenario.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study emphasizes on CSFs in emerging markets that will help to boost the organization's SCP through agility and flexibility in supply chain. This study is applicable for growing markets in which there is ample amount of resources.\nOriginality/value: As economic growth stagnates in developed economies, emerging markets grow at near double-digit rates. Somehow, this study is pioneer in terms of enhance SCP in emerging market scenario. Moreover, the outcome of the study could provide empirical evidence of the effects of CSFs on SCPs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Global energy challenges and the national economy: stress scenarios for Russia	[ "Energy", "Scenario", "Energy market forecasting", "Global energy trends", "Stress scenarios", "Technological shifts" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Only ten years have passed since the Russian economy, against the background of rising world oil prices, not only recovered from long and difficult structural economic transformation but also demonstrated excellent gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and impressive dynamics of per capita income. It would be hard to deny that these achievements were inconceivable without huge earnings from export of energy resources. Nor it would be possible for Russia to join Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), the informal privileged club of the most dynamic emerging economies. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, many analysts started to view Russia as the \"energy superpower\", hinting at the country's ambitions to use its near-dominant position on some regional oil and gas markets as a new instrument of political pressure in foreign affairs (Hill, 2002; Juneja, 2010; Rutland, 2008).\n2. Conceptual framework and methodology: The conceptual basis for analysing global energy challenges as a source of stress scenarios for the Russian economy has emerged from two main research streams. The first stream is focused on the methodological and practical issues of applying scenario analysis to the global energy sector. It looks very indicative that it was exactly the oil shock of 1973 that triggered special attention to scenario analysis in the global macroeconomic context (Chermack et al., 2001). Clearly considered to be the industry of strategic importance in most industrialised countries, the energy sector became one of the main focus areas of scenario analysis in the following decades. At the same time, major energy corporations, and first of all Shell, took a pioneering role in integrating scenarios into strategic business planning (Schoemaker and Van der Heijden, 1992).\n3. Global energy futures according to conventional forecasts: The most reputable long-term forecasts for the global energy sector are usually being developed by specialised multilateral agencies (first of all IEA and OPEC), government \"think tanks\" [like US Energy Information Agency (EIA) or Japanese the institute of energy economics, Japan (IEEJ)] and major international privately owned and state-controlled energy corporations (such as ExxonMobil, Shell and Statoil). These international forecasts could be defined as largely conventional in the sense that they are based on the assumption that the current or emerging socio-economic and science and technology (S&T) trends are going to remain valid for the long-term perspective. Thus, according to the above-mentioned forecasts, the global energy consumption structure will undergo more or less gradual changes in the period until 2040, without any dramatic shifts (Figure 1).\n4. Stress scenarios analysis: According to all identified characteristics of stress energy scenarios, one of such scenarios is actually developing right now, having a very significant destructive impact on the Russian economy.\n5. Discussion and conclusions: Despite significant differences between main factors, driving realisation of each of the above scenarios, they have one inherent characteristic in common: disastrous impact on the macro stability of the Russian economy because of an inevitable, sharp reduction of hydrocarbons' exports.\n6. Limitations and future research: The authors continue to work on the topic of global energy trends affecting the Russian economy and hope to discover other strong drivers capable to result in more optimistic scenarios as a part of future research. At the same time, we understand quite well some important limitations of our analysis. One of these limitations relates to the static position of Russia despite radical changes in the global environment (obviously negative for the Russian economy) in all stress scenarios presented. Though in the short-term perspective, this assumption could be quite valid (especially taking into account highly-inertial structure of the Russian economy); in the longer term, Russia might also undergo considerable changes, becoming more economically dynamic and flexible, and less dependent on oil and gas exports. In fact, certain signs of these potential economic shifts are already becoming visible. These shifts are increasingly pushed by the adaptive measures, though not always consistent, undertaken by the Russian Government. We feel that future research should overcome these limitations by taking the discussion beyond static Russia and being more specific in terms of suggestions to integrate stress scenarios in the national strategic planning activities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to study the ongoing and emerging technological changes in the global energy sector from the frequently neglected perspective of their potential destructive impact on the Russian economy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Having reviewed existing global energy forecasts made by reputable multilateral and national government agencies, major energy corporations and specialised consulting firms, the authors noticed that most of them are by and large based on the extrapolation of conventional long-term trends depicting gradual growth of fossil fuels' demand and catching-up supply. Unlike this approach, the paper focuses on the possible cases when conventional trends are broken, supply-demand imbalances become huge and the situation in the global energy markets is rapidly and dramatically changing with severe consequences for the Russian economy, seriously dependent on fossil fuels exports. Revealing these stress scenarios and major drivers leading to their realisation are in the focus of the research. Based on the Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Values (analytical framework) (STEEPV) approach, the authors start from analysing various combinations of factors capable to launch stress scenarios for the Russian economy. Formulating concrete stress scenarios and assessing their negative impact on the Russian economy constitute the next step of the analysis. In conclusion, the paper underlines the urgency to integrate stress analysis related to global energy trends into the Russian national systems of technology foresight and strategic planning, which are now in the early stages of development.\nFindings: The analysis of global energy market trends and various combinations of related economic, political, technological and ecological factors allowed to formulate four stress scenarios particularly painful for the Russian economy. They include the currently developing scenario \"Collapse of oil prices\", and three potential ones: \"Gas abundance\", \"Radical de-carbonisation\" and \"Hydrogen economy\". One of the most important conclusions of the paper is that technology-related drivers are playing the leading role in stress scenario realisation, but it is usually a specific combination of other drivers (interlacing with technology-related factors) that could trigger the launch a particular scenario.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study's approach is based on the assumption that Russia's dependence on hydrocarbons exports as one of the main structural characteristics of the Russian economy will remain intact. However, for the long-term perspective, this assumption might not hold true. So, new research will be needed to review the stress scenarios within the context of radical diversification of the Russian economy.\nPractical implications: This paper suggests a number of practical steps aimed at introducing stress analysis as one of the key functions within the energy-related sectoral components of the Russian national systems of technology forecasting and strategic planning.\nOriginality/value: The novelty of this paper is determined both by the subject of the analysis and approach taken to reveal it. In contrast to most of research in this area, the main focus has been moved from the opportunities and potential benefits of contemporary technology-related global energy shifts to their possible negative impact on the national economy. Another important original feature of the approach is that existing global energy forecasts are used only as a background for core analysis centred around the cases when conventional energy trends are broken.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A systematic literature review on green manufacturing concepts in cement industries	[ "Safety", "Cement industry", "GM process", "Resource usage reduction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Origin and overview of green cement industries\n2. Review of literature for GM in cement industries: In this section of the paper, an attempt is made to comprehensively and systematically review the literature on green cement industries and classify it, so that it can be easily comprehended and applied. In this review, approximately 80 papers from about five leading journals spread over the past 15 years have been considered.\n3. Global carbon dioxide emissions from cement making: Carbon dioxide emissions in cement manufacturing come directly from combustion of fossil fuels and from claiming the limestone in the raw mix (Hughes et al., 2005). An indirect and significantly smaller source of CO2 emission is from the consumption of electricity, assuming that the electricity is generated from fossil fuels. Roughly half of the emitted CO2 originates from combustion of the fuel and half originates from the conversion of raw materials. U. Kaantee R. Zevenhoven accounted CO2 emissions attributable to mobile equipment used for mining of raw material, used for transport of raw material and cement and used on the plant site (Kaantee et al., 2004). Current emission estimates for the cement industry are based solely on the assumed clinker production, and they exclude emissions due to energy use. According to Nicholas H. Florin, emissions from energy use are included in the estimates for emissions from energy use, and not allocated to cement making (Florin and Harris, 2007).\n4. Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions: 4.1 Energy efficiency improvement\n5. Future research directions: From the review, it can be considered that GM is a complete and holistic manufacturing approach, which involves strategies that do not have a negative effect on the environment. From the analysis, we primarily demonstrated the significance of CO2 emission reduction in the cement industry. Along with various economically viable measures for reducing CO2 emissions, dust emission and fuel emission allied with the cement plant also play a vital role. So, the current approaches lag in having a standardized GM model. Most of the research highlights are on material substitution, product innovation and cost reduction in cement industries. Very few works focus on studying the life cycle and green product design with the aid of GM processes. Moreover, the literary works lag in managerial concepts, i.e., exploiting the resources efficiently and effectively for manufacturing purposes. The review demonstrated evidence of a lack of models to illustrate the GM processes in the cement industry.\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the literature on GM in the cement industry. It categorized the content related to GM concepts that are to be applied in the cement industry, and hence it shall aid the researchers and cement industrialists to understand and integrate GM in the cement industry. The issues of global warming, gas, water and other wastages, and emissions at the time of cement manufacturing can be overcome through the GM style proposed in our paper with optimum use of resources. The utility concerns of the literature review reveal that an integrated assessment of green cement production processes under green, but also under technical and economic aspects, requires specific methods with minimum energy efficiency during the product manufacturing. Also it can help reducing the environmental impact of cement industrial activity without losing quality, reliability, performance, cost, etc. Thus, observing the energetic change of environmental organizational culture, green organizational identity and green competitive advantage under different stages of development of the cement manufacturing industry are reviewed. By demonstrating the investing resources and efforts to raise green cement organizational identity improves their green competitive benefit in the cement manufacturing industry on time. Along with the aforesaid outcomes, the review had also come with possible loopholes in the current literature, which are needed to be sufficiently overcome to ensure sole implementation of green cement manufacturing process.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to survey the technical performance of the cement industry including those related to procedures; groundwork of raw materials, fuels and semi-finished products for processing; accessibility of machinery, plant and equipment for various operations; arrangement and process control management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A broad range of survey and research was reviewed, and all revealed the methods to recognize the key influences for development of green technology. The study explores the present scenario of green manufacturing (GM) strategies of Indian cement companies and provides the industrial ecology, ways of reducing energy consumption, environmental impact data collection, design and control of manufacturing systems and integration of product and manufacturing system. It also reveals the problems in decision-making systems owing to the impact of the green product design. Here, in this paper, all information is obtained by the medium of internet, journals, articles, and magazines.\nFindings: This paper describes a problem of global warming, gas, water and other wastages emissions at the time of cement manufacturing and put forward a path that enables decision makers to assess the perception of GM in their organization and in prioritizing GM efforts.\nOriginality/value: This perspective survey is to provide an integrative outlook of performance methods for GM practices in the Indian cement industries. It gives important information, which expectantly will help in cement industry to adopt GM practices. This paper fills the gap in the literature on identification, establishment, and validation of performance measures of GM for Indian cement industries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An exploration of the key hotel processes implicated in biometric adoption	[ "Biometrics", "Hotels", "Switzerland", "Identification", "Customer information" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Most hotels have a certain minimum need for technology in order to satisfy their customers' needs as well as to support the daily operations. In general, technologies in hotels can be divided into two broad categories: customer-centered and support-centered technology applications. The former refers to all types of technology visible to the customer, e.g. in room guest entertainment, whereas the support-side refers to back-of-the-house applications, e.g. property management systems, electronic point of sales systems. However, the hospitality industry has been a laggard in terms of adoption of technology. Consequently, there is often a combination of \"state-of-the-art\" and \"legacy\" technologies that can be found in hotels. This contributes to issues of lack of interoperability, complex data views and poor inventory management. However, given that the proliferation of technology development is relentless and thus as new technologies, particularly biometrics, become used in strategic partners (e.g. destinations, airlines) hotels must also accommodate these technologies in their operations and processes both for seamless travel and with respect to increased security concerns for travelers. Furthermore, biometrics has seen a growth in the utilization since the 9/11 attacks and increase of terrorism in the USA and the UK (Osborn, 2005).Biometrics is the focus of many recent research projects, though these mainly investigate the issues from a business or a technical viewpoint, e.g. the accuracy, privacy, authentication issues. However, scant attention has been given to the consumer acceptability viewpoint, and even less from the hotel guest viewpoint. This research is conducted within Switzerland, which is of particular interest as biometric technologies are rarely used, unlike the USA and EU countries where biometrics have been introduced in airports, building security, retail check out, etc. It is critical that the end user is recognized and investigated in terms of willingness to use biometric technologies in order for them to be successfully deployed and that the end user is fully integrated in to the adoption process. Therefore, this research reviews the established models for consumer adoption of technology, the critical issues regarding biometrics and, further generates a conceptual model that attempts to demonstrate the significant determinants and issues that impact on the adoption of biometric technologies for the hotel guest. Therefore, the research question is: What are the preferred devices and specific hotel processes that impact on the consumers' willingness to adopt biometrics?\nLiterature review: Technology, specifically as a means of identification, plays a major role now and may become an important strategic tool for hoteliers in the future. Accurate (technological) identification/recognition of guests could lead to service quality enhancements and thus to an overall sustainable competitive advantage especially in service-driven organizations. Biometrics has been defined as \"the science of identifying, or verifying the identity of, a person based on physiological or behavioural characteristics\" (Chirillo and Blaul, 2003, p. 3). But Chirillo and Blaul (2003) also claim that the term biometrics refers to the \"automatic identification of a person based on his/her physiological or behavioral characteristics\" (p. 2). It thus seems there are two \"types\" of interpretations of biometrics; the first relying on the distinguished user characteristics (Chirillo and Blaul, 2003; Bolle et al., 2004) and the second by seeing biometrics as an automated system of identification (The Biometric Consortium, 2006; Biometric Research, 2003; Biovision, 2003). For the purpose of this study, the definition adopted is: an automated pattern recognition system relying on the distinctive characteristics such as physiological and/or behavioural features of an individual.Biometric devices and issues\nMethods: The conceptual model (Figure 1), is tested by data collected in a survey, which takes the form of a structured questionnaire and is cross-sectional as data are only collected at one point of time (Balnaves and Caputi, 2001). The questionnaire is developed from the work of Li (2006), Chirillo and Blaul (2003), Bolle et al. (2004), Jain and Ross (2004) who investigate biometrics issues, albeit in a wider context, and the work of Davis (1989) Wang and Namen (2004), Stavins (2001) and Walker et al. (2002) who examine demographic determinants, \"willingness to use\" and \"technology acceptance\". Additionally, it is modified by the authors to include the context of hotels and hospitality processes.These data collected are mostly quantitative, collected via quota sampling, stratified on the demographic profile of the Swiss population. From the 320 questionnaires that were distributed, 300 valid ones were obtained. The questionnaire follows a structured classification type and administration is self-completion. An informative cover letter was established containing relevant technical and introductive information. The questionnaire covered the key issues that were elicited from the literature review and contained the following sections from which the conceptual model: technology behaviour, holiday characteristics, hotel processes, biometric technologies and the \"willingness\" to adopt biometrics and used a five-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree) to rate the items in the dimensions. Means, and standard deviations are used to review the overall model dimensions and for the focus on hotel processes and biometric devices linear regression and ANOVA tests are performed to test the relationships between these dimensions/items of the model on \"willingness\". Confidence limits for all statistical tests are 95 per cent.\nFindings: Table II indicates the relative importance of the various items and dimensions, particularly the items of security and privacy are highly ranked by hotel customers. The overall mean value of the dimension of technology behaviour is 3.18 and reinforces the fact that they are familiar and comfortable with technology in general, which may then impact of their use of other \"unknown\" technologies. Additionally, the dimension of holiday characteristics has a mean score of 3.06, the most important of the independent items in this dimension being: the importance of settings, activities offered, and the need to use technology. This may be the result of not wanting to carry devices- cards- cash- identification while on holiday or while engaging in sports and therefore the minimalism of biometric identification may be further appealing.Biometric technologies mean score 2.97 shows that respondents are comfortable and already \"slightly\" willing to use biometrics. Additionally, the item of willingness is 3.11 to use biometrics is significant and may be because these respondents already trust in these technologies, e.g. they may be using biometric devices in other settings. The Hotel Process, mean score 2.03 is the lowest overall dimension score and may be as a result of the fact that these respondents do not see the value in a more rapid/secure/seamless transaction and biometrics is viewed by them as more of a business value driver for the hotel.The dimension of issues (which include privacy and security issues), mean score 3.57 is the highest as may be expected from the existing research and literature and confirms that these factors are still critical for the consumer. Table III looks further at the devices that customers prefer for specific hotel processes and shows that fingerprint is most commonly acceptable for payment, mean score 3.3, also confirmation of identity, mean score 3.29, for access mean score 3.27 and for activation mean score 3.15. For other processes, booking with voice/speech recognition has a mean score 2.41 and information request, mean score 2.3.These results indicate that customers are more likely to find less intrusive biometric devices more appropriate for hotel processes that do not include critical transactions, e.g. financial. Tables IV and V reveals that the most critical items in the regression model are payment and access, which are both statistically significant and that the R2 value indicates that hotel processes \"explain\" 18.2 per cent of willingness. This willingness to use biometrics devices, in general, may be due to the convenience, simplicity, and security proffered by biometric devices.\nManagerial implications and discussion: As this is a \"somewhat\" exploratory conceptual model, these results are tentative and subject to further exploration, testing and expansion. They do however indicate areas meriting further research and attention, e.g. the relationship between hotel settings and locations with adoption. They also suggest that hotels should focus on specific hotel processes and devices for successful assimilation of the customer into the biometric experience in hotels. Nonetheless, technology should be implemented in a way that is customer-centric, e.g. customers could be offered greater convenience and control, rather than taking the short term view of \"forcing\" new technologies on customers without consideration of the issues. Though other biometrics related research demonstrates the benefits that service-oriented companies might seek when using biometric technologies, i.e. on improving operational efficiency or security, it is the end user (i.e. customer) that is considered here, and his preference and needs for specific processes and devices that may lead to successful rollout of technology. Customers seek convenience and to avoid \"card clutter\", particularly in \"resort settings\", preferring not to carry keys and identification. The hotel manager might therefore anticipate the integration of biometric devices when purchasing new technologies.This research reveals that consumer resistance to this \"invasive\" technology is low, perhaps due to ongoing world-wide terrorism threats and, consequently, individuals may now be more sensitised to their own personal physical safety. For the hotel sector, they may be able to concentrate on those processes that are most preferred by the customer to ensure adoption (with future rollout of biometrics to more sensitive areas when the benefits are proven). The implications for the hotel manager is that, as guests travel more and are increasingly exposed to biometric recognition, they will come to expect the hotel to also utilise more secure devices to verify identity and validate vulnerable financial transactions. Additionally, as payment fraud and personal security threats continue to grow, and increased biometry is required in travel/visa requirements, it may propel a more widespread adoption, particularly for those who seek \"seamless travel\". To profit from these circumstances, hotel managers should seek from customers which features (e.g. security, speed of transaction, convenience) and devices (e.g. fingerprint, voice) they prefer from biometric recognition. These customers may even be willing to pay additional charges to enjoy these particular benefits.A further, future benefit is the deployment for customer tracking, securing and linking customer and hotel assets while mapping the customer journey within the hotel. This should enable the delivery of enhanced customer knowledge and targeted services.In terms of limitations, this model may not adequately reflect the constantly changing technology-security environment and is limited to a sample of respondents in Switzerland, which may make the findings difficult to generalise. Though this model's measures (dimensions and items) are derived form the generic literature, the academic literature and empirical research are still at an early stage and therefore limited. There may be additional factors to consider for the hotel sector, e.g. issues of integration into existing hardware and software, country-specific legislation on privacy and security etc, and therefore additional dimensions may need to be exposed to further assess the model. Finally, it is acknowledged that this paper focuses on only two of the dimensions, further examination of all dimensions and their inter-relationship will be the focus of future research. Additionally, the model will benefit from refinement in future research, however, it is a first step in contributing to the generic research of biometrics adoption by consumers in a domain lacking in empirical investigation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to review the determinants that influence adoption of biometric technologies, with particular emphasis on both devices and hotel processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The overall objective was to identify the critical hotel processes and devices. This was achieved by a quantitative survey of 300 hotel customers which focused on the key dimensions of technology behaviour, holiday characteristics, hotel processes, biometric technologies and the \"willingness\" to adopt.\nFindings: - The findings show that 87.3 per cent of hotel customers may be \"willing to use\" biometric devices and that there is some correlation between the different processes as well as the different biometric technologies.\nPractical implications: - Conclusions and recommendations are made as to which specific hotel processes might benefit from biometrics and also how hoteliers might anticipate the rollout of biometric technologies.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides a first, empirical study into customer adoption of biometrics. It reveals opportunities for hotels to profit from emerging biometric technologies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sectet: an extensible framework for the realization of secure inter-organizational workflows	[ "Security products", "Work flow", "Workplace security" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Sectet is a framework for the high-level development and management of security-critical, inter-organizational workflows based on web services. The framework supports business partners during the design, the realization and the management of a common global workflow - a decentralized collaboration between actors across domain boundaries (Aalst, 2000). Realizing the paradigm of model driven security (Basin et al., 2003), the framework targets the correct technical implementation of business-level security-patterns which are integrated at the abstract level into the specification of the global workflow.A global workflow specifies the message flow between partners in a distributed environment with no central control, by means of UML 2.0 diagrams. The models of this virtual process are translated into executable configuration files for workflow management systems (WFMS) and security components of target architectures located at every partner's node based on XML and web services standards and technologies. A target architecture encapsulates a set of core web services, which may access back-end services, orchestrates them through a WFMS, and guards them by imposing specified security policies to inbound and outbound service calls.In this contribution, we present the core components of our framework and illustrate the main concepts of our methodology for the systematic design and realization of security-critical inter-organizational workflows with a portion of a workflow-scenario drawn from e-government. We additionally show how the framework can be adapted to incorporate advanced security patterns like the Qualified Signature, which extends the concept of digital signature by requiring a natural person to sign (Austria, 1999).We organized our contribution as follows. Section 2 sketches the technical background of our framework and section 3 refers to related work. Section 4 introduces a motivating scenario and shows how to realize a secure inter-organizational workflow by applying the concepts of our framework to a specific case. Section 5 shows how the framework can be extended according to specific business requirements.For a comprehensive introduction to the Sectet framework and an in-depth presentation of single aspects, please refer to a series of accompanying papers, e.g. Hafner et al., 2005, 2006).\n2. Background: 2.1 Workflow standards\n3. Related work: 3.1 Centrally managed workflows\n4. The Sectet framework: In this section we introduce the conceptual foundation (Sect. 4.1), we then present the components of the Sectet framework (Sect. 4.2) and finally show how the framework is applied to a real-life case study, by modeling a global workflow that complies to three basic security requirements of the concept Secure Document Flow (Sect. 4.3).4.1 Conceptual framework\n5. Framework extensions: In many e-government applications a technical signature is not sufficient. In our case, the partners additionally specified that the notification sent by the Municipality have to be signed personally by at least two clerks (which corresponds to a \"Qualified Signature\" according to the Austrian E-Government Law (Austria, 1999). In this section we show how the framework is extended to incorporate this domain specific security requirement. Specifically, we show how the new requirement is integrated into the meta-model of the PIM (Sect. 5.1), how it is visualized in the PIM and how it is realized in the target architecture (Sect. 5.2). We close the section with a brief conclusion (Sect. 5.3).5.1 Platform independent model - the meta-model integration\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This contribution aims to present the core components of a framework and illustrate the main concepts of a methodology for the systematic design and realization of security-critical inter-organizational workflows with a portion of a workflow-scenario drawn from e-government. It is additionally shown how the framework can be adapted to incorporate advanced security patterns like the Qualified Signature, which extends the concept of digital signature by requiring a natural person to sign.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The framework is based on a methodology that focuses on the correct implementation of security-requirements and consists of a suite of tools that facilitates the cost-efficient realization and management of decentralized, security-critical workflows.\nFindings: - The framework has been prototypically validated through case studies from the healthcare and e-government sector. Positive results in pilot applications with industrial partners encourage further steps: the set of supported security requirements is continuously extended (e.g. rights delegation, four eyes principle), a testing environment for industrial settings is being implemented, and the requirements for the efficient management of inter-organizational workflows are being analysed systematically.\nPractical implications: - The framework caters to the needs of an industrial audience, in need of a cost-efficient support for the systematic and correct realization of secure, inter-organizational workflows.\nOriginality/value: - The contribution provides a description of the Sectet framework. It is shown how it can be adapted to incorporate advanced security patterns like the Qualified Signature, which implement a legal requirement specific to e-government.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Addressing the complexities of managing domestic and multinational corporate brands	[ "Corporate branding", "Corporate brands", "Domestic and multi-national corporations", "Multinational corporate brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Brands are actively managed at either the organisational level (i.e. corporate branding), or at the individual product level (i.e. product branding) (Xie and Boggs, 2006). Examples of corporate brands include Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, HSBC, Virgin Group and Nissan, whereas product brands include Lipton tea, Head & Shoulders shampoo and Pringles chips. Several studies have highlighted that as a result of globalisation there is a shift in emphasis from product to corporate branding (Douglas et al., 2001; Xie and Boggs, 2006; Hirsch and Shaukat, 2008). This is because corporate brands give marketers the ability to leverage organisational vision and corporate culture as part of the point of difference when targeting customers and other stakeholders (e.g. investors, internal employees, the public) (Hatch and Schultz, 2003). It is well-accepted in the literature that corporate branding plays a critical role for both domestic (i.e. local) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in establishing their competitive position and reputation in the marketplace (Foreman and Argenti, 2005; Hirsch and Shaukat, 2008).\nTheoretical implications: This paper draws on the literature related to corporate branding, corporate brands, and domestic and MNCs to propose a framework of six types of complexities associated with managing DCBs and MCBs (see Table I). The framework presented within this paper identifies that regardless of the scope and breadth of operation (i.e. DCs or MNCs) there are varying degrees of complexity involved in building and managing brands. The paper posits that managing MCBs involves greater degrees of complexity for all six issues identified: strategic role, organisational, organisational cultural, knowledge, positioning and extended responsibility. MNCs, therefore, need to understand these complexities if they are to build and manage a consistent and strong corporate brand reputation and image across markets.\nManagerial implications: At a product level, development of a new brand is possibly easier for MNCs, as firms can design a brand that is positioned and marketed similarly across countries or more easily adapt product brands for market conditions, although they still deal with issues of complexity. At the same time it needs to be acknowledged that there are differences in different regions and markets. For example, some Chinse brands operate as national within China (e.g. ZTE, Huawei) and due to the pressures of globalisation these corporate brands are moving towards internationalisation and thus may become MCB's. Thus, globalisation may reduce the impact and importance of DCBs. There are even examples of this shift occurring in the USA many years ago. For instance, at one point Coors beer was only a regional US brand rather than a national brand, whereas now it is an international brand (Keller, 1999). Unfortunately, the shift between domestic and international brand is not as easy for all brands as they expand from local or subsidiary brands into MCBs. In those instances, there will be a greater need to consider whether or not a global approach is applicable or even achievable. If the answer is yes, corporations may still need to be adaptive in regard to how they leverage their corporate brand globally (Fletcher and Crawford, 2011). For example, if they are using corporate spokespersons, these should possibly vary by country yet maintain similar positions, thus allowing for a consistent global corporate brand image. Regulatory environments could also result in changes when, for example, the promotional activities linked to corporate brands have different restrictions globally (Kashani and Quelch, 1990).\nFuture research: The paper draws together issues across the literature to identify six types of complexity. The research did not have explicit research questions, other than identifying how alternative types of complexity might impact MCB and DCBs. Future research needs to examine the degree to which the complexity factors affect brands' global performance. Such work is difficult as each market will have varying degrees of complexity; thus, a firm may face multiple issues in different markets simultaneously. Case study research might, therefore, be more appropriate to examine how alternative types of corporate brands manage complexity issues (Lindgreen et al., 2012), and whether they, in fact, seek to manage the issues across all markets or take a multi-domestic or regional approach. Future research may also look into developing a scale that measures the extent to which a corporate brand is internationalised and whether this is perceived differently by various stakeholders (e.g. international clients, employees, shareholders). This research could also examine which factors enable brands to be more global, thus enabling managers to better determine whether global brand strategies are appropriate.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the differences between managing domestic corporate brands (DCBs) and multinational corporate brands (MCBs), and presents a framework highlighting six types of complexity associated with managing both forms of corporate brands in an international business context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper proposes a framework addressing six types of complexity involved in managing DCBs and MCBs drawing on the literature related to corporate branding, corporate brands, and domestic and multinational corporations. The six types of complexity examined include: strategic role, organisational structure, culture, knowledge, positioning and extended responsibility.\nFindings: The research identifies that DCBs have a lower degree of complexity in regard to strategic role, knowledge and positioning, but have a higher level in regard to organisational structure, cultural and extended responsibility complexity. MCBs face more complexity than DCBs across all dimensions because they operate across business environments and need to coordinate activities while adapting to environmental differences.\nPractical implications: The findings highlight the importance of environmental complexity for firms managing brands globally. The issues of complexity identified in this paper need to be understood if firms are to effectively build and manage their corporate brands within and across markets.\nOriginality/value: The paper highlights the concepts of DCBs and MCBs, and identifies the factors that contribute to the complexity of managing these two types of corporate brands domestically and internationally.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An overview of construction procurement methods in Australia	[ "Australia", "Construction procurement", "Literature review", "Value for money", "Historical development", "Relationship-based procurement (RBP)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The project management professional has different lenses through which to view procurement methods. The term remains broadly defined and is used to describe a variety of entities such as functions, organisations, resources, systems, processes and strategies (McDermott, 1999; Rowlinson and McDermott, 1999; Palaneeswaran et al., 2003; Nissen, 2009; Love et al., 2012). The definition of procurement has also been evolving throughout the time as the activities incorporated with procurement have become significantly important to enterprise success (Nissen, 2009). Interestingly, the definition is changed and developed from time to time even by same authors, for instance, Mohsini and Davidson (1991) defined procurement as \"the acquisition of new buildings, or space within buildings, either by directly buying, renting, or leasing from the open market, or by designing and building the facility to meet a specific need\" (p. 86), while an updated definition was introduced almost one decade later describing procurement as \"a strategy to satisfy the client's development and/or operational needs with respect to the provision of constructed facilities or a discrete life cycle\" (Lenard and Moshini, 1998, p. 79). This evolution is explained by Nissen (2009) that \"procurement was once descriptive of the simple clerical activities associated with purchasing well-specified items, but it has evolved in some organisations to describe instead strategic partnering efforts made by senior executives\" (p. 247). Procurement is further referred to other features such as culture, management, economics, environment and political issues (Rowlinson and McDermott, 1999). As Rowlinson and McDermott (1999) describe, procurement is the acquisition of project resources to realise a constructed facility. This acquisition of resources is a part of the procurement system and can be referred to a process of combining these necessary resources together.\nHistorical development of procurement: Similar to the definition, different types of procurement systems have been introduced to the construction industry over the years. According to Rowlinson et al. (2008), project delivery systems have gone through different stages in their evolution. The vast majority of the construction projects before the Second World War (i.e. before 1939) were procured by conventional methods of procurement that had remained unchanged for over 150 years. The period from end of the war to the early 1970s was a time of sustained and almost uninterrupted economic growth and social progress, during which, in terms of construction procurement, conventional methods prevailed, with only a relatively small number of projects being carried out using non-conventional procedures (Greenhalgh and Squires, 2011). Management-oriented methods are fully developed in the 1970s in the UK due to the economic recession at that time (Dows, 1996), consultative design and build also developed in the 1970s and programme management emerged in the 1980s (Dorsey, 2004). Relationship-based methods such as partnering and framework agreements based upon the concepts of teamwork, integrated teams and collaborative working arrangements became more prominent during the late 1990s and early 2000s (McDermott and Khalfan, 2006) (see Figure 1).\nOverview of procurement systems: Hughes (2004) has argued that since there are so many variables to each of the commonly adopted procurement strategies, notwithstanding the commonly adopted nomenclature, there is a wide range of strategies available. Procurement strategies have become increasingly flexible, and the interchange that exists between them has made it essential to distinguish the different procurement systems from each other (Love et al., 2012). Masterman (2002) classified procurement systems broadly into four main groups:\nDiscussion and conclusion: This paper has attempted to investigate the evolution of procurement methods globally and specifically in the Australian context. It is evident that procurement systems in the Australian construction industry have been developed in a similar fashion to how they have been evolved in other parts of the world. The use of collaborative procurement methods in the past few decades has been significantly increased and Australia is one of the pioneers in utilising alliancing and ECI that can be defined as the purest RBP systems. However, this question may arise as to what direction the procurement evolution would take in the future and whether or not the construction industry will intend to adopt relational contracts or will be inclined to step backward toward transitional frameworks. Even though the anticipation of the future is not simple and many local and global variables can influence the industry as to which type of procurement system would predominate, the current academic studies and feedback from practitioners who have had direct first-hand experience of working in the industry could help to envisage the tendency in the future.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the use of various construction procurement systems in the past and present, specifically within the Australian construction industry and to overview the historical development of procurement both globally and in the Australian context through the existing literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is an in-depth literature review of various construction procurement systems used in the past and present, both in general and within the context of Australian construction industry.\nFindings: The findings suggest that even though relationship-based procurement (RBP) systems offer significant benefits to all project participants, they are unproved by many decision makers because of lack of robust theoretical concept and inability in demonstrating value for money (VfM) for public projects, which would be one of the factors causing move away from RBP in the future.\nOriginality/value: This review is one of its kind. There is no such review done before within the context of Australian construction industry in such a detail. This review is a part of a recently completed PhD study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Weights and substitution degree in multidimensional well-being in China	[ "China", "Poverty", "Entropy metric", "Maasoumi’s two-step measures of multivariate inequality", "Multidimensional well-being", "Urban" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: It is now generally accepted that well-being and policy are best viewed in many dimensions, and related indices. However, there is an inevitable lack of consensus on which attribute dimensions to include, the relative weights for each, and the substitution between the attributes. In Decancq and Lugo's (2013) paper, a discussion is given of different approaches to determine the relative weights in multidimensional indices of welfare, one of which is to infer information on weights based on self-reported \"happiness.\" Nardo et al. (2005) proposed a regression of life satisfaction on various variables to derive the relative weights. However, this approach suffers from a number of disadvantages. First, there is over reliance on self-reported indicator of \"happiness.\" Second, it is complex to take into consideration explicit non-linear relationships in regressions. Third, this approach does not handle the substitution relationship among different attributes in a satisfactory manner. In this paper we propose a different strategy. First, we adopt ideal aggregation functions that combine different attributes so as to minimize general entropic divergence between the aggregate's distribution, and the distributions of the constituent attributes. This procedure leaves the parameters of the aggregator function undetermined. But these parameters can be obtained to, again, minimize the entropic divergence between the distribution of the aggregates and the distribution of any desired measure of \"happiness.\" A metric entropy measure is a proper measure of \"distance\" and suitable to compare two or more distributions, with a minimand that identifies weights and other parameters uniquely. This offers an aggregation formula, as in Maasoumi (1986), which is extended in this paper by a numerical optimization routine to identify suitable numerical values for weights and other parameters. These numerically identified well-being measures provide a basis for multidimensional consideration of poverty and inequity.\n2. Multivariate measure of well-being and inequality: It has been widely accepted that only using one attribute (usually income or GDP) to measure individuals' or countries' welfare is insufficient. We should incorporate more attributes (especially non-tradable ones) to obtain more comprehensive information. However, including more attributes brings in the problem of aggregation, that is how to aggregate different indicators of well-being to represent the welfare level. Maasoumi (1986) proposed a two-step measure of multivariate inequality. In the first step, he used different attributes to construct a welfare aggregate or \"average,\" and in the second step, he calculated the inequality index using each person's welfare evaluation obtained in the first step. We now describe this two-step measures of multivariate inequality method in detail.\n3. Two metric entropy measures: The entropy measures of similarity or association we will introduce below are supported by a set of desirable axiomatic properties. These include invariance to non-linear (monotone) transformations, invariance to dimensionality, capability to reproduce correlation and other linear measures of linear association (when that is appropriate as for jointly Gaussian variables), metricness, normalization, and others. In Maasoumi and Racine's (2002) and Granger et al.'s (2004) paper, they proposed a metric entropy to test dependence of two univariate variable X and Y, which is \"Matusita-Bhattacharya-Hellinger measure of dependence\" (we call it metric entropy measure 1 later) given by:\n4. Numerical procedure: 4.1. Data\n5. Numerical results: The main task above is to find out relative weights for different attributes and their degree of substitution. Then we can interpret the findings in two contexts. The first is welfare analysis, which focusses on multidimensional index of well-being and, we use certain parameter sets to investigate the inequality in different groups. The second examination is a form of utility analysis, which explains the relative weights as contributions to utility for each attribute. We consider some historical and family characteristics to shed light on findings that help policy decisions.\n6. Conclusion: In this paper,with CHIPS2002 data, we combine multidimensional welfare analysis and entropy metrics to identify the best relative weights and substitution degree among five attributes which make individuals' welfare have the smallest distance to reported happiness for three social groups, urban residents, migrants, and rural residents. We use the obtained parameter sets to calculate inequality in the three groups. In addition, we compare the differences among the three groups and attempt to link them to institutional factors. Main findings in this paper are as follows: first, substitution among attributes matters for multidimensional indices of well-being; second, there are significant group differences in relative weights of attributes in China, which may be related to some social and institutional factors; third, inequality in calculated welfare from metric entropy measure 2 is less than reported happiness inequality. From this study, we learn that we should incorporate substitution among attributes and take into consideration group heterogeneity in multidimensional assessments of well-being and poverty. This would seem to suggest that one size-fits-all policies are not appropriate for China, and perceptions of well-being, objectively and as self-reported, reflect very different concerns, requiring very different approaches. For example, health issues dominate rural perceptions of well-being, whereas education and income are more prominent among other groups. Based on finite and different substitution values, it is safe to assume that different groups place very different monetary values on non-monetary attributes. This is quite significant for policy analysis going forward.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to combine multidimensional welfare analysis and entropy metrics to derive not only the best relative weights but also substitution degree among different attributes to construct multidimensional indices of well-being with Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002 data.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors follow Maasoumi's two-step measures of multivariate inequality to calculate the inequality for three social groups in China, urban residents, migrants, and rural residents. The two-step approach provides an aggregation formula which is numerically identified in this paper based on a metric entropy distance measure between the distribution of the aggregate well-being functions, on the one hand, and the distribution of the self-reported \"happiness\" indicator. The authors compare the differences in relative weights and substitution degree for the three groups, and link them to some institutional factors.\nFindings: The authors find that incorporating substitution among attributes, and taking into consideration group heterogeneity are very important in multidimensional analysis of well-being.\nOriginality/value: The two-step approach provides an aggregation formula which is numerically identified in this paper based on a metric entropy distance measure between the distribution of the aggregate well-being functions, on the one hand, and the distribution of the self-reported \"happiness\" indicator.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A trust-based approach to promote employees' openness to organizational change in Turkey	[ "Communication processes", "Employee participation", "Trust", "Change management", "Turkey" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past decades, organizations throughout the world have undergone a number of profound changes. As a reflection of these intense changes in the global environment, the past years have also marked a period of severe change in Turkey. Following the financial crisis in 2001, and elections in 2002, Turkey has managed to turn the tide of political and economic volatility to the current situation of relative stability and improved performance in a number of areas. At the same time, the painstaking requirements of future EU accession have necessitated a greater focus on initiating change attempts and securing long-term competitiveness for Turkish organizations. Because of the rising importance of becoming a member of the European Union, Turkey happens to be in the midst of a restructuring process in almost all sectors (Napier et al., 2004).In light of the overriding structural changes that under way, Turkey's future prosperity and welfare will crucially depend on the ability of its citizens, companies and institutions to be able to initiate, generate and utilize change. So, in the near future, change is considered to be unavoidable for Turkish organizations. Therefore, it is important for change initiatives to be managed successfully. According to Armenakis and Bedeian (1999), employee support for change initiatives is a key factor for successfully implementing change in more individualistic Western European types of societal and organizational cultures. Since change at some level will be an inevitable issue for most Turkish companies, how to foster employee support of change initiatives in a more collectivist culture, like Turkey, should be resolved for successful change management.Employees' openness to change\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Organizational vulture in Turkey\nMethodology: Sample and procedure\nResults: Factor analyses and reliabilities\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study examined the combined effects of managerial communication, employee participation and trust in supervisor on openness to organizational change. Specifically the study examined the potential mediating influence of trust in supervisor on the relationship between managerial communication, employee participation and employees' openness to organizational change.The findings show that all dimensions of managerial communication and employee participation are significantly and positively related to trust in supervisor. The findings also yielded that supervisory trust had a strong positive influence on openness to organizational change. The results further showed that effects of managerial communication on openness to organizational change decreased to an insignificant level when trust in the supervisor was considered as an antecedent of openness to organizational change. Thus, supervisory trust fully mediated the relationships between managerial communication and openness to organizational change. On the other hand, when trust in the supervisor was added to the equation, the effect of employee participation on openness to organizational change decreased but remained significant. This means that supervisory trust partially mediated the relationship between employee participation and openness to organizational change.This study provides empirical evidence that trust in the supervisor has a dominant effect on employees' openness to organizational change in Turkey. Thus, developing and maintaining a high level of trust among managers and employees might be a strong catalyst during change initiatives. This trust-based approach can speed up the change process, while decreasing employees' resistance to change.Similar to previous findings, employees' trust in the supervisor will increase when employees receive useful and sufficient information about what is expected of them during change and when they receive sufficient information about future opportunities and career advice (Pettit et al., 1997). Likewise, employee trust in supervisor was higher where employees perceive higher levels of communication responsiveness from their supervisor regarding the way in which they are informed. Also, when employees are given the opportunity to take responsibility for decisions that might affect their work and organization, employees' trust in their supervisors increase. In turn, results indicate a significant relationship between trust in supervisor and employees' openness to organizational change. As it is proposed regarding the paternalistic and collectivistic culture dominating the society, trust in supervisor was found to exert the strongest effect on openness to change of Turkish employees. Thus, organizations attempting to foster employees' openness to organizational change are advised to examine the level of trust throughout the organization.This study also suggests several theoretical and practical implications. The differential influences of the variables pointed out a need to conceptualize all dimensions of managerial communication to employ organizational trust foci. Findings also provide strong support for the basic postulate of this study, i.e. that supervisory trust will surpass the effects of traditional behavioral factors (i.e. managerial communication and employee participation) as they jointly influence openness to organizational change. The findings also reinforce the notion that it is important especially for managers in Turkey to discover how to manage trust effectively in order to successfully manage current and future changes within organizations. If organizations desire to improve the trust building capacity of their employees, they should formulate human resources practices that promote open and honest communication, and they should create opportunities for employees to participate in decision-making processes that might affect their work. The findings also revealed that among three managerial communication components, communication responsiveness has the strongest effect on trust in supervisor. So, managers who are seeking ways to increase employees' trust in them should focus on responding to employees' requests for communication and listening to them actively and effectively.Another important result of the study is that, in spite of the strong and robust mediating effect of trust in the supervisor in a paternalist and collectivist culture like Turkey, employee participation has a considerable and significant effect on openness to organizational change, both directly and through trust in the supervisor. Therefore, in order to build a climate in which change can thrive, managers should also concentrate on creating a climate throughout the organization that encourages all employees to demonstrate initiative, to participate in problem-solving processes and to participate in important decisions. Hence, one can conclude that, if employees are given the opportunity to participate in the implementation of change, and when they rely on trustworthy management, they will take on a more positive attitude towards change.Consequently, a trust-based model for facilitating change is demonstrated to be useful for organizations in Turkey. This research demonstrates that trust in supervisor plays a vital role among the other managerial and attitudinal factors in Turkish context. For that reason, managers should focus on managing employees' trust in their supervisors throughout the organization. Trust in the supervisor should be one of the foremost thoughts of top management to initiate, maintain and facilitate sustainable change in the organization. According to the findings of this study, one way to achieve a high level of trust between managers and employees is for managers not to ignore employees and reply to their appeals for information regarding their work, career and changes carried out. Also, they should spell out all procedures in writing and clearly communicate them before bringing them into action. Moreover, when a change initiative is launched in an organization, employees might have serious concerns regarding their future. In a paternalistic culture like Turkey, managers who show consideration and affinity for their subordinates should give adequate information to their subordinates regarding their future careers and training opportunities. However, it should be noted that the present study examined attitudes and not behaviors, and there might not be a strong correlation between attitudes and behaviors. Members of a collectivist culture are more likely to share similar opinions and beliefs and have less tolerance for a variety of attitudes and behaviors. Hence, it might be possible that employees will still behave in the best interests of the organization even if they do not agree with them because of the strong norms created in collectivist cultures.The present study has a number of methodological limitations that suggest areas for future research. First, our sample was from public service organizations in Turkey. This setting may not be generalized to all organizations in Turkey. Second, all data was collected at the same time, and results derived from cross-sectional designs may presume, but not confirm, causality. Furthermore, the design of this study could not rule out the effects of common method bias, since all data used in the study were acquired using the same questionnaire. Therefore, data related to all dimensions were acquired from the employees themselves through self-report. This procedure might have led to common-method bias that might have inflated or deflated the relationships among factors. However, correlations among the factors ranged from 0.26 to 0.71, indicating that the strong effect of common-method bias is very unlikely. Also, the results of Harman's single factor test provided evidence that common method variance was not a major threat to the validity of the results. Finally, any data collected by self-report measures may have been influenced by a social desirability response bias. Although one cannot rule out a self-serving bias as a possible influence, researchers have suggested that social desirability is generally not a source of bias in measuring organizational perceptions (Moorman and Podsakoff, 1992).Even with these limitations, it is believed that the study provides insight into understanding the important role of trust in the Turkish culture. Specifically, the strong mediating role of trust in the supervisor in a Turkish context was supported by the findings. In conclusion, our results indicate a significant relationship between trust in the supervisor and the openness to organizational change of Turkish employees. The findings of this study revealed, among other communication components tested, communication responsiveness to be the primary source of trust in the supervisor. Though other antecedents were not tested in this study, actions taken to promote trust and employee participation may be useful in creating an organizational climate facilitating organizational change. In the future, it would be useful to examine different dimensions of communication and human resource practices that could affect supervisory trust and the openness to change of Turkish employees. Also, other factors that could foster organizational trust should be examined. Therefore future extensions to this study should encompass such additional issues and the context of several different cultures.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to explore the role of managerial communication, employee participation and trust in one's supervisor in enhancing openness to organizational change of Turkish employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected via a structured questionnaire. A total of 878 employees from public organizations in Turkey participated in the study. The basic postulate of this study is that trust in one's supervisor will surpass the effects of managerial communication (i.e. task communication, career communication and communication responsiveness) and employee participation as they jointly influence employees' openness to organizational change.\nFindings: - The results indicate that trust in one's supervisor fully mediates the relationship between managerial communication and openness to change, whereas it partially mediated the relationship between employee participation and openness to change of Turkish employees.\nPractical implications: - This paper demonstrates that using a trust-based approach during change initiatives could be very effective for organizations in collectivist cultures like Turkey.\nOriginality/value: - This study contributes to the literature by investigating the combined effects of managerial communication, employee participation and openness to organizational change on employees' openness to organizational change in a different cultural context. Managerial and theoretical implications of research findings are also discussed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From WS-CDL choreography to BPEL process orchestration	[ "Worldwide web", "Markup languages", "Partnership", "Cross‐functional integration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The exchange of structured information between business partners is a crucial means to facilitate coordinated production of goods and services. The increasing use of web services for the implementation of inter-organizational scenarios underlines the need for a choreography description language. Choreography languages are utilized to define the rules of a collaboration between parties without revealing internal operations. They allow users to specify when and which information is sent to which party, and which options are available to continue the interaction.Several specifications have been proposed for defining choreographies. The web service choreography description language (WS-CDL) (Kavantzas et al., 2004), as the most recent proposal, is based on a meta model and an XML syntax. It is expected to be used in conjunction with the web service business process execution language (WS-BPEL or BPEL) (Andrews et al., 2003).There are two application scenarios in this context: first, business entities may agree on a specific choreography defined in WS-CDL in order to achieve a common goal. The WS-CDL choreography is then used to generate BPEL process stubs for each party. In this case, the WS-CDL choreography may be regarded as a global contract to which all parties commit. Second, a business may want to publish its processes' interface to business partners. In this scenario, a choreography description of the internal process has to be generated.WS-CDL has been criticized for its insufficient separation of meta-model and syntax, its limited support for certain use case categories, and its lack of formal grounding (Barros et al., 2005a). This was taken as a motivation to identify service interaction patterns (Barros et al., 2005b) that might build the foundation of a new choreography language. Besides, it is not clear whether all WS-CDL concepts can be mapped to BPEL (Barros et al., 2005a). Our paper discusses mappings between WS-CDL and BPEL. The contribution is two-fold. First, the mappings can be used to generate BPEL stubs from WS-CDL choreographies and WS-CDL descriptions from BPEL processes, which leverages the re-use of design artifacts as advocated, for instance, in the model driven architecture (MDA) approach. Second, the definition of mappings yields insight into potential incompatibilities of both languages. We implemented the mapping in an XSLT transformation program as a proof of concept.The article proceeds as follows. Section 2 introduces the concepts of choreography and orchestration, and gives an overview of related work. In section 3, we give an example of an inter-organizational workflow based on a real use case. Based on this workflow, we present the main concepts of WS-CDL and BPEL in sections 4 and 5. Section 6 defines the mappings between WS-CDL and BPEL, and it discusses how BPEL can be generated from WS-CDL. Finally, section 7 closes the paper with a conclusion, and gives an outlook on future research.\n2. Choreography and orchestration of web services: Web services define interfaces for software components that can be accessed via standard internet protocols. The web service description language (WSDL) is used to define, among others, operations and message types of a web service. The simple object access protocol (SOAP) provides the mechanism for concrete message interaction with a web service. Web services are stateless in nature, thus supporting only simple message exchange patterns like requestresponse. This means that web services are well suited for messaging in interorganizational business processes, but they do not directly offer state control.A key characteristic of inter-organizational business processes is the fact that they involve multiple parties (see van der Aalst and Weske, 2001). These parties perform different parts of the overall process, but no party has control over the global state. This situation is similar to multi-application business processes (see Bussler, 2005) whose parts are executed by different autonomous systems within one organization. In an inter-organizational setting, the different parties usually have to balance a need for coordination in order to realize the maximum efficiency with a need for privacy of their value-creating procedures. In order to deal with this requirement, a distinction is made between three interrelated views on the inter-organizational process: global choreography, local choreography, and orchestration (van der Aalst and Weske, 2001).Choreography refers to the message sequences between different parties in an inter-organizational business process (Peltz, 2003). In Alonso et al. (2003, p. 199) the term conversation is used similarly emphasizing web service message exchange. A choreography can be described from a global and a local perspective. The global model of a choreography specifies the message exchanges from an overall point-of-view. Alonso et al. (2003) speak of coordination protocols in this context. The local choreography model defines the message interactions from the perspective of one party. A local model is also referred to as interface process, public process, or abstract process (Bussler, 2005). These two perspectives imply that there are multiple local models (for each party one) that correspond to one global choreography. Several dedicated languages have been proposed for choreography including WSCL (Banerji et al., 2002), WSCI (Arkin et al., 2002) or BPSS (Clark et al., 2001). Recently, the World Wide Web Consortium has recommended WS-CDL (Kavantzas et al., 2004) as a new standard for the specification of global choreographies based on web services.Orchestration refers to an executable part of an inter-organizational process that is provided by one party. This executable process (or integration process (Bussler, 2005)) interacts both with external web services of the other partners and with internal services. Although it contributes to the successful execution of the global choreography, the state of the orchestration process is controlled locally. Several orchestration languages support the definition of executable processes based on web services like XLANG (Thatte, 2001), WSFL (Leymann, 2001), BPML (Arkin, 2002), and BPEL. Also XPDL (Workflow Management Coalition, 2002) supports web service interaction, therefore, it can be utilized for orchestration, too. Recently, BPEL gets the most attention from the industry. Therefore, it is likely to become the de facto standard for web service orchestration.Currently, there are several research groups working on general issues related to inter-organizational workflow management systems (see van der Aalst, 2000; Grefen et al., 2001). A number of contributions discuss standards for specifying service choreographies (e.g. Barros et al., 2005a)) and propose formal foundations (e.g. Barros et al., 2005b; van der Aalst, 2000; Brogi et al., 2004). A common engineering approach in this context is to achieve an agreement between multiple parties on the global choreography (see, e.g. (van der Aalst and Weske, 2001)). This global model can be used to derive the local choreography models for each party. Each of them can then implement its own orchestration process that complies with the overall choreography. In this article, we do not aim to contribute a novel approach to this field or to develop a new standard. Instead, focusing on web services technology, we use existing technology and standards to realize our vision of model driven architecture in the context of inter-organizational workflows. Our work can be regarded as an instantiation (see Hevner et al., 2004) of the engineering approach mentioned above by considering real-world choreography and orchestration standards. In this sense, we evaluate the feasibility of deriving BPEL orchestration processes from WS-CDL choreographies as described by van der Aalst and Weske (2001). We reported on the mapping from WS-CDL to BPEL (Mendling and Hafner, 2005). A recent extension of this work utilizes a knowledge base to look up private parts of an orchestration that are not explicitly modelled in the choreography (Weber, 2005; Weber et al., 2006).Some work has been reported in model-driven development of web service processes. Gardner (2003) describes an implementation, where a local workflow is modeled in a case-tool, exported via XMI-files to a development environment, and automatically translated into executable code for a BPEL engine. In contrast to this approach, we move up one layer of abstraction and start modeling at the choreography level. This is comparable to the approach promoted by Hofreiter and Huemer (2004) who start with a UML extension to generate BPEL. In Hafner et al. (2005b), we propose an approach for integrating security into the development cycle, starting at the choreography level and show how the requirements map through different levels of abstraction. In Hafner et al. (2005a), we link abstract domain-level models to their technical implementation, and show how requirements are realized through security components in a target architecture based on web services standards. In the following, we present the Sectino case in order to motivate the transformation from WS-CDL to BPEL.\n3. Example of an interorganizational process: This section presents a case study from e-government (Section 3.1). The example is first illustrated using a UML 2.0 Activity Diagram (Section 3.2). Then, we discuss how this diagram relates to a couple of basic and advanced interaction patterns (Section 3.3).3.1 The Sectino case study\n4. An overview of WS-CDL: In this section, we show how parts of the workflow descriptions can be specified with WS-CDL. We first describe the building blocks of a WS-CDL specification corresponding to the choreography in Figure 1 (Section 4.1), then we integrate control-flow activities (Section 4.2), and finally analyze the possibility of integrating the complex interaction patterns as specified before (Section 4.3).4.1 WS-CDL basic syntax and semantics\n5. BPEL implementation of the tax advisor: In this section, we show which parts of the workflow specifications can be specified with BPEL. We first describe the building blocks of a BPEL specification corresponding to the Choreography in Figure 1 (Section 5.1), we integrate control-flow activities (Section 5.2), and finally analyze the possibility of integrating the complex interaction patterns as specified before (Section 5.3).5.1 Standard workflows with BPEL\n6. Generating BPEL stubs from WS-CDL: While the previous sections illustrated how BPEL processes can be modelled in correspondence to a given WS-CDL choreography, this section presents transformation rules from WS-CDL to BPEL. We implemented a transformation program that also includes mapping rules that are not presented here due to space limitations as a proof-of-concept[1]. We use the namespace prefixes cdl: and bpel: to indicate to which specifications the concepts belong[2].6.1 Core concepts\n7. Conclusions: The core contribution of this article is to show how BPEL process definitions for parties involved in a choreography can be derived from a global WS-CDL model. We have implemented a prototype of the mappings as a proof of concept. The automation offers substantial speed-up of the engineering process. Additionally, the automatic generation of BPEL stubs minimizes the risk of inconsistent process implementations by the parties. The main transformation problems are related to blocking work units and choices.In Weber (2005), the transformation of blocking work units depends on the context. If it is nested in a choice, the work unit is mapped to a pick-branch. If it is nested in a parallel, the blocking is mapped to links from all sources from where the variable could be written. We propose to map such work units to a receive in BPEL, because it is not clear how a blocking work unit should be treated that is nested, for example, within a choice which is itself nested in a parallel element. For this reason, we advocate to let the BPEL engineer decide. The problem of WS-CDL's choice is that it may have event-based or data-based decision semantics, or even a mixture of both. In BPEL, both cases have to be mapped either to a switch or a pick. It is an advantage of languages like Petri nets that represent both cases as a place followed by a transition for each alternative branch.Furthermore, we integrate advanced interaction patterns into both specification languages. This allows us to intuitively depict some of the difficulties related to more complex interaction issues. We can observe, that the expressiveness of BPEL outbalances the semantics of WS-CDL when it comes to the integration of advanced interaction patterns. The structured activities of BPEL allow for a more straightforward integration, whereas the specification of the same patterns with WS-CDL's choice and work unit activities and related block conditions are a non-trivial task due to WS-CDL's focus on binary interactions.We did not analyze all complex service interaction patterns like One-to-Many Send, One-to-Many Receive or Racing Incoming Messages (Barros et al., 2005b) as this has been beyond the scope of this article. In Barros et al. (2005b), the authors partly show that BPEL lacks sufficient support, especially for advanced patterns. A comprehensive evaluation of WS-CDL with respect to the interaction patterns is still missing. As a resolution to this issue, we propose the modelling of choreographies with the help of a more abstract language - in the sense of being more independent of underlying technology - like UML Activity Diagrams. Although we only specified the advanced service interaction pattern Contingent Request by the help of an informal constraint associated to the document node in the UML Activity Diagram (Figure 1), it would be possible to specify the requirement in a formal way, for instance with OCL. It is obvious that UML provides enough expressive power to integrate these patterns. Its visual formalism adds significantly to the user convenience. The specification can subsequently be transformed into technology-driven standards like WS-CDL and WS-BPEL. This is part of ongoing research efforts of our research groups.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The web service choreography description language (WS-CDL) is a specification for describing multi-party collaboration based on web services from a global point-of-view. WS-CDL is designed to be used in conjunction with the web services business process execution language (WS-BPEL or BPEL). As WS-CDL is a new choreography language, there has been doubt about the feasibility of a transformation to BPEL. This article aims to show how BPEL process definitions of parties involved in a choreography can be derived from the global WS-CDL model and what the limitations of such a derivation are.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors implemented a prototype of the mappings as a proof of concept.\nFindings: - The automatic transformation leverages the quality of software components interacting in the choreography as advocated in the model driven architecture (MDA) concept. The mapping reveals that some information has to be added manually to the generated BPEL, in particular, choice conditions and private activities.\nResearch limitations/implications: - A comprehensive evaluation of WS-CDL with respect to the interaction patterns is still missing. As a resolution to this issue, the authors propose the modelling of choreographies by the help of a more abstract language - in the sense of being more independent of underlying technology - like UML 2.0 Activity Diagrams.\nPractical implications: - The automation of the mapping offers substantial speed-up of the engineering process. Additionally, the automatic generation of BPEL stubs minimizes the risk of inconsistent process implementations by the parties.\nOriginality/value: - The core contribution is to show how BPEL process definitions for parties involved in a choreography can be derived from a global WS-CDL model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Examining how context change foster service innovation	[ "Resources", "Service innovation", "Context", "Service ecosystem", "Institutional arrangements", "Dynamics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The movie Blade Runner 2049 presents a starkly different world, even offering a sci-fi vision of how consumers and companies interact. Consumers move between physical and virtual experiences freely, connected through smart technology to personalized solutions. For example, retail combines bricks with clicks into seamless experiences, where consumers can test products and services on avatars, browse preferred selections aided by artificial intelligence (AI), interrogate logistics channels to find convenient, often personalized solutions and crowd source consumer knowledge in real time. Healthcare involves regulating physical bodily changes through internal monitoring devices, specialist procedures are delivered remotely by AI enabled technicians and robots, including social robots (Wirtz et al., 2018) provide care functions anywhere at any time. Education is focused on individualized learning, with topics developed and accessed in global markets and designed by robots to equip individual students with required knowledge and skills, available on demand, instantly and in any place. While in banking, discrete providers of banking services cease to exist; instead consumer interactions are aggregated across multiple financial providers, with consumers determining, with the aid of blockchain and other technologies, how best to manage their assets and daily financial needs.\n2. Service innovation and context change: Much of the service innovation literature and conceptual frameworks are focusing on the innovation process and outcomes (Michel et al., 2008; Carlborg et al., 2014). Other frameworks focus on specific services (Ordanini and Parasuraman, 2011), on innovative business models (Storey et al., 2016), on the fuzzy front end and innovation performance (Alam, 2006) or on service innovation capabilities (Den Hertog et al., 2010). Overview articles (Carlborg et al., 2014; Witell et al., 2016) show that context change has not been theorized nor used to inform conceptual service innovation frameworks.\n3. Evolving conceptualization of context in services marketing and service design research: This section provides an overview of previous discussions on context by exploring the services marketing, service design and S-D logic literatures. A brief review, summarized in Table I, highlights the shortfalls in exploring the dynamic nature of context, with especially spatial and temporal dimensions largely neglected.\n4. Service ecosystems-informed conceptual framework of context: Building on the streams of service research reviewed earlier, dimensions that are helpful in exploring context are highlighted. In particular, the conceptualization includes two dimensions that are helpful in analyzing context change, including three elements and three trends. These two dimensions together form a useful approach when exploring how context change can inform service innovation.\n5. Exploring how the dimensions of context drive service innovation: Our conceptual framework consists of two dimensions: elements (space, resources and institutional logic) and trends (increasing speed, granularity and liquification) forming a matrix.\n6. Discussion: This paper highlights an imperative for understanding how context change fosters service innovation. Researchers have increasingly explored context and its relationship to specific in-use experiences, though these earlier discussions remain limited in their scope. In particular, exploring the dynamic nature of context can offer valuable insights for service innovation scholars; as such, analysis can reveal changes in conditions that provide novel opportunities for service innovation. An analysis focusing on dynamics require tools that can assist service designers in identifying how changes in context call for new service solutions. Use of analytical frameworks can highlight the limitations of existing solutions while revealing opportunities for new service innovations. The conceptual framework developed in this paper, offers these insights, allowing an analysis of context change, thus illuminating such potential for new services that respond to future challenges.\n7. Concluding remarks: In 2050, service ecosystems and service markets have emerged into a new service world. This context demands innovative ways to address novel challenges, with solutions involving the smart integration of resources that co-create value. The role of firms, consumers and public service providers has developed into collaborative interdependencies, enabled by a wide range of smart technologies. People move between roles (provider, consumers, collaborators, etc.) as well as between physical, social and virtual experiences, enabled by technologies. By 2050, self-customization and personalized services have for a long time been the norm. Consumers test-drive, or simulate services in virtual realities before purchase and consumption, utilizing avatars that are aided by AI. Blockchain technology has resulted in the disruption of banks and financial transactions have been taken over by the e-commerce giants and new wealth management providers. Andreassen et al. (2018) argue that Blockchain technology 2050 may for some transactions or services, eliminate the need for a middleman.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of context in service innovation by developing a conceptual framework that illuminates the key elements and trends in context change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper adopts a service ecosystem lens for understanding how elements and trends in context foster service innovation. A conceptual framework identifying the role of context change in fostering service innovation is developed and justified through illustrations across industry settings of health, retailing, banking and education.\nFindings: Context change is conceptualized by three trends - speed, granularity and liquification - that provide an analytical foundation for understanding how changes in the elements of context - space, resources and institutional arrangements - can foster service innovation. The analysis indicates emerging patterns across industries that allow exploring scenarios, grounded in emerging trends and developments in service innovation toward 2050.\nPractical implications: Managers are offered a framework to guide service innovation and help them prepare for the future. The paper also suggests areas for further research.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes with a new conceptualization of context change to identify and explain service innovation opportunities. Managers are offered a framework to guide service innovation and help them prepare for 2050. The paper also suggests areas for further service innovation research, zooming in on contextual changes to prepare for 2050.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Governing cutback management: is there a global strategy for public administrations?	[ "Cutback", "Organizational decline", "Crisis", "International cooperation", "Public sector policies", "Public sector organizations", "Public services", "Financial management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The literature on cutback management has emphasised the need for a holistic and long-term perspective rather than a short-term, reductionist approach. Financial austerity is expected to prompt several contradictions that public managers have to compose managing the equilibrium between demand and offer of public services.\nResearch objectives and methods: The article investigates the strategy and the contents of international/global public sector policies concerted between policymakers and administrators to address the current financial and economic crisis. It aims at improving our understanding of the role of public administration in the economic management of the crisis.Different streams of literature on public management and governance challenges emerging from crises are analysed: the public administration literature on cutback management of the late 1970s and 1980s; the contemporary literature on managing austerity; and, the more generic management literature on organisational decline.The theoretical framework is then compared to the practice of public management as informed by international co-operation. Although there is no guarantee that what is presented in international fora as a country's policy is actually adopted and implemented at home, this level of analysis remains valuable and of interest. Most of the challenges posed by the crisis are of a global nature. While there is some comparative literature on national policies, public management studies largely neglect what is discussed and moved at the global level. A possible limitation of our study refers to the risk that an aggregate international view may cover an unbalanced recovery between and within countries. Therefore, we integrate the global view with information from country experiences.Another methodological decision has been made in choosing the OECD Public Governance Committee (PGC) as the most meaningful international institution for the aims of our study. A preliminary analysis of other international institutions such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations did not returned a high interest of these institutions towards public sector policies. The same goes for the G20, G7, G8 etc. whose focus is mainly on macroeconomic policies. An explanation may be that these group the ministers of finance while the OECD PGC is unique in gathering the ministers and DGs of public administration.A case study analysis featuring a review of the PGC-OECD official documentation and meeting agendas and minutes is presented. One of the authors has been assistant to the chair of the committee for several years, thus possessing a good understanding of the operating and co-operation mechanisms.\nEconomic downturn and public governance challenges: Much has been written on the causes and expected consequences of the current crisis. It is worth reminding that the role of the public sector is essential to overcoming the crisis, to fostering sustainable development and for managing the equilibrium between public services supply and demand.There are three streams of literature on challenges for organisations emerging from crises. The literature referring to the 1970s crisis continued to develop all the way up to the most recent global collapse. There is now developing a contemporary public administration literature studying austerity. And, the general management literature has continuously produced research on how to cope with environmental shocks, considered as part of the organisational life cycle (Table I).Much of the 1970s PA literature on cutback management, analysed by Pandey (2010)[1], has been authored by Levine, who considered the topic as one in desperate need of theoretical direction and was concerned about the passive role of management in the conduct of cutback management. Other studies examined the effects of decline on management or leadership, budgeting and policy or program termination.The main conclusions reached by this body of literature refer to the difficulty in predicting the effects of cutbacks, short-term political influences, penalisation of efficient organisations, the inability to plan for the long term, and human resources concerns. One of the perceived risks of cutback management is that cuts will compromise organisational capacity for the present and disproportionately in the future. Key challenges include the organisational goal ambiguity that in presence of short-term political calculations will drive opportunistic behaviours and may determine trading short-term goals at the expense of long-term goals. There are also ethical concerns as cuts might disproportionally affect programs that serve the politically disenfranchised. Employee motivation is also at risk as job security and other values are weakened.Bozeman (2010) has criticised the early literature on cutback management as incapable of assuming a longitudinal and strategic focus, identifying in this one of the reasons of its decline. He highlights the strengths of the generic management literature on organisational decline and identifies some aspects that the public administration literature should assume such as embracing a holistic and long-term perspective and defying the pressures to succumb to reductionist measures. Viewing decline as part of the organisational life cycle has encouraged generic management researchers to take a longer view of organisations and their management, and, thus, an orientation that is more strategic than reactive. This stream of literature is focused on the implications of decline for human resources management, the effects of decline on organisational structure and design, the relationship between strategy and decline.The contemporary public administration literature on managing austerity retrieves some of the challenges and recommendations of the literature developed in the 1970s. Ethical and timing concerns remain and new issues arise such as the relationship between cuts and reforms and the need of principles for managing the new responsibilities of government. The acquisition of new assets in banks and other financial institutions by governments is a characterizing element of the current crisis, largely missing from previous economic downturns. Other key challenges include the misrepresentation of the impacts of the cuts, considering that the current crisis has come from the outside, and the need for leadership.Pollitt (2010) describes three broad strategies for managing public fiscal austerity that range from uniform cuts to prioritised cuts (Table II).It seems as this stream of literature, although recent, has been able to evolve addressing also revitalisation and after-crisis management. The impact of cutbacks on innovation and on the fundamental organisational capacities and social capital is also debated.In sum, the three streams of literature analysed and compared above suggest adopting an approach that is:* long term and strategic, avoiding the risks of compromising future organisational capacity and over-politicizing decision-making;* considers the post-crisis challenges; and* is pragmatic in the choice between centralized priority setting, which tends to leave decisions to politicians, and uniform horizontal cuts, which provides some more leeway to administrators.The literature does not provide further indications on how to address the crisis.\nThe role of public management international cooperation: The Public Governance Committee of the OECD\nDiscussion and conclusions: The literature on cutback management provides public managers with some indications on the approach - strategic and long-term - to be adopted for a successful recovery and highlights some risks in terms of compromising future organisational capacity and politicisation of decision-making.The analysis of the international policies discussed by public managers at the OECD level returns some positive results: there is a clear long-term forward-looking focus and attention is being paid to post-crisis challenges. Crises are considered to be opportunities for reform, creating a state of shock which facilitates bolder intervention. And public managers are aware that decisive executive leadership and broad public support are essential.On the negative side, it should be mentioned that discussions on the global crisis entered the public governance agenda at a later stage if compared to other policy areas.The national representatives raised concerns over the politicisation of the decision-making process. It would be interesting to investigate, in future research, if these perceptions correspond to an actual change of the actors involved in the budget process across the different countries. Moreover, the literature considers prioritised cuts as giving more power to political leaders, but country delegates attribute the choice of uniform cuts to the underdevelopment of performance management systems, another area of consideration that needs further empirical investigation. Political influence, of course, can be minimized when decisions are evidence-based.Finally, several countries raised concerns that the pressure to reduce levels of staff and services poses the risk that the public sector will not have the ability to manage future crises. Further empirical research is needed on the long term effects of cutback strategies as well as on the pre-requisites for their implementation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper aims at contributing to the cutback management and organizational decline streams of research by providing an in-depth analysis of the main challenges that public managers have to address in managing public spending and activity cutbacks as a response to the current financial crisis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - After a literature review of the field, an analysis of the activities of international cooperation between public managers is carried out and the strategies adopted at the global level are compared to the challenges and complexities identified by the literature.\nFindings: - Recovery policies adopted at the international level follow some literature indications such as the clear long-term forward-looking focus and the attention to post-crisis challenges. In turn, the crisis is perceived to have politicized decision making. There are concerns that the pressure to reduce levels of staff and services poses the risk that the public sector will not have the ability to manage future crises.\nOriginality/value: - Much of the discussion on the crisis focuses on macroeconomic policies and the business sector. Public sector policies are a powerful instrument to overcome the crisis. The article compares recommendations from the theory on crisis management, both in the public and in the private sector, with concrete strategies adopted at the international level.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Gendered beliefs about glass ceiling in Egypt	[ "Egypt", "Glass ceiling", "CPS", "Demographic and Work factors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite the increase in the number of women accessing the workplace globally, female participation in senior management posts remain relatively low (Chao, 2011). Chen (2005, p. 1) observed that women's progress in reaching higher positions \"while steady, has been painfully slow\". Almost ten years later, this \"progressing\" yet \"not fully achieved\" status of women reaching top hierarchies is still evident in the 2014 Catalyst census of women on boards (Catalyst, 2015). Ranked at the bottom of these Catalyst surveys are the Arab countries; Oman, for instance, having boards comprising 1.8 per cent women, and Saudi Arabia just 0.1 per cent. These figures clearly show that Arab women in senior managerial levels are still in limited numbers (Tlaiss and Kauser, 2011). Egyptian women managers' status is almost symmetrical (Assaad, 2014); according to the Gender Gap Report, Egypt ranked 136 of 145 countries in terms of gender gap (World Economic Forum, 2015).\nThe GC and the CPS development: In 1986, the GC term was coined by the Wall Street Journal to describe barriers preventing women and minorities from reaching the top of the corporate hierarchy (Pai and Vaidya, 2009). Since then, the GC has attracted attention in the management literature, which proffers three theoretical frameworks for its causes: human capital model, socio-psychological model and systemic model (Choi and Park, 2014).\nThe Egyptian context: Egypt is a significant economy within the Middle East and North Africa region. Despite the implementation of Economic Reform Structural Adjustment Programme in 1991, and a rise in the number of educated women; women's opportunities in the labour market remain among the worst in both the region and the world (Kandil, 2015). However, a number of evidences show that Egypt has secured steady steps towards women advancement. For instance, Elsaid and Elsaid's (2012) analysis to the trend of women participation in labour market concluded that Egyptian women not only have been increasingly participating in the labour force and are rising to managerial positions, but also have held cabinet ministry positions, served as judges, ambassadors, members of parliament and as presidents of national universities. Also, some governmental initiatives to support women's development, have been introduced, including the formation of Egyptian Business Women's Association and programmes to develop women's business and leadership skills (Burke and El-Kot, 2011). More importantly, the new Egyptian Labor Law no. 12 of 2003, and the recent amendments to the 2014 Egyptian Constitution stress women's equality to men in all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and included acts to guarantee women's right to occupy senior administrative positions and to be appointed in the judicial bodies and authorities without discrimination.\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nMeasures: GC beliefs\nData analysis: First, descriptive analysis was run with each of the demographic and work situation factors, and then exploratory factor analysis was run for the female and male groups separately to test for the four group configurations of the CPS measure. Third, k-means clustering classified observations under study, with similar observations partitioned into discrete clusters (Hair et al., 2003). Thus, observations were meaningfully defined according to their matching ceilings group. Fourth, Cronbach's alpha and factor analysis tested the CPS measure's reliability and content validity, respectively. Finally, chi-squared test assessed whether there was a significant change in beliefs with different demographic and work variables.\nResults: The CPS structure\nDiscussion: The results from both gendered samples supported the CPS four-part components; also, both samples agreed on almost the same items measuring these variables, suggesting that male managers in Egypt closely share female managers' perceptions regarding what comprises each of the four GC beliefs. The findings also flag the CPS's success in measuring GC opinions in a dissimilar culture from the context in which it was originally tested. However, some statements were excluded because of weak loading, suggesting that differentiation may be required between statements that will be generally workable in most cultures and those that might pertain more to particular contexts.\nConclusions: To conclude, this study confirmed that although viewed by their male colleagues to be resilient, Egyptian women seem to resign to GC challenges. Specifically those who are old, with lower education levels, married and with children, part-timers, in low-managerial posts, with long job tenure and in male-dominated organizations, would suffer the most.\nResearch limitations and future research: Although this study is one of the first to explore the CPS apart from its original authors, further validation is needed, because a number of statements failed to load. Additional research within the Arabic world is important to confirm this research's results. Moreover, the study was limited to examine the role of particular demographic and work situation factors; future work might benefit from studying these factors' relationships to men's attitudes; and with cause-and-effect relationship testing. Finally, although the present study attempted to differentiate between genders' careers within different areas, more fields such as finance, sales, health, etc., should be incorporated.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper explores gendered beliefs about the Glass Ceiling (GC) using a new measure, the \"Career Pathway Survey\" CPS, in an under-researched country, Egypt.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 438 employees in Egypt. Participants completed the CPS and other demographic and work measures. The CPS tests four GC beliefs: denial, resilience, acceptance and resignation.\nFindings: Factor analysis validated the configuration of the four factors of the CPS. Descriptive tests showed the female sample with resignation belief, whereas male sample views their females counterparts as resilient. The chi-squared test showed differences in beliefs with different age groups, education level, marital status, number of children, job contracts, job tenure and managerial levels. Moreover, there are evidences of more intensive GC barriers in male-dominant organizations.\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first to: re-validate the CPS measure, examine demographic and work factor roles and the CPS, test CPS on a male sample and analyse differences between male and female beliefs according to gender-dominated sectors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Appointment standardization evaluation in a primary care facility	[ "Standardization", "Appointment scheduling", "Appointment slot", "Provider preference" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Standardization has been widely adapted in many health systems to alleviate the inconsistency in performance metrics and practices such as operating room instrument use (Guzman et al., 2015) nursing practice education in emergency medicine (Jones et al., 2015), and treatment protocol (Brillantino et al., 2015). Some were required by the choice of electronic medical record used to improve quality of care (Adams et al., 2003; Kemper et al., 2006) and practice efficiency (Bates et al., 2003). Others believed that standardization could ease the implementation of a system or a policy (Hansen et al., 2015). In outpatient scheduling system context, some of clinics have attempted to be more consistent on appointment type and slot length across providers based on either commonly used language such as new patient (NP) or the length of treatment time (Huang and Marcak, 2013). However, standardization required tremendous amount of staff training and actually decreased appointment availability (Samaan et al., 2009). To address the problem of patient access to care, many studies developed policies and algorithms that considered patient no-shows as opportunities to increase access to care (Zacharias and Pinedo, 2014; Huang and Hanauer, 2014; Samorani and LaGanga, 2015). Others explored appointment slot allocation to either minimize patient wait time (Vanden Bosch and Dietz, 2000; Millhiser and Veral, 2015) and clinic cost (Cayirli et al., 2012; LaGanga and Lawrence, 2012; Tang et al., 2014; Tsai and Teng, 2014) or maximize patient services and revenue (Kim and Giachetti, 2006; Schutz and Kolisch, 2013; Berg et al., 2014). Open access scheduling method was identified to have the least no-show rate (O'Connor et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2013; Peng et al., 2014) and better patient access if a schedule opened only for a relatively short period of time (Keehl-Markowitz et al., 2008) or when the patient demand is low (Liu et al., 2010). Some studies developed cancellation (Huang and Zuniga, 2014) or urgent care (Huang et al., 2014) policies to mitigate the impact of no-shows to improve patient access to care. Most of these scheduling studies mainly focussed on individual provider schedule and believed that customized each provider's schedule provides better quality care without changing provider's practice. Only a few studies developed universal appointment template in multiple-provider environment (Wua et al., 2014; Huang and Verduzco, 2015). In spite of all efforts, most of studies did not discuss the impact of disregarding provider preference and practice difference on clinic performance and patient access to care within a specialty when developing scheduling systems.\nMethods: The study collected face-to-face actual treatment time data for four primary care providers in a clinic. Simulation modeling was developed to capture patient flow, generate performance measurements, and compare the impact on clinic performance to scheduling scenarios where appointment slots were standardized or individualized.\nResults: Some assumptions of the unit cost were required to calculate total cost. Let the cost of patient wait time (c\nDiscussions: Many efforts were made to improve outpatient scheduling efficiency and effective, but patient wait time and access to care were still problematic. One of the reasons was that appointment slot length was mostly determined by clinic or provider preference and experience not from the actual data, meaning the time providers actually spent with patients was not captured. Especially for providers who preferred to have multiple time slots for different patient types, the actual treatment time data were crucial. In this study, Providers B-D used 20/40-minute schedule, 20 minutes for ER/UC, FU and OV and 40 minutes for NP, PE, and WCC. According to the data collected over a four-week period, WCC did not take as long as they thought. WCC was typically used for newborn to 17 years of age and it was perceived to have high variation on actual treatment time. Due to the uncertainty of patients' condition, WCC appointment slot was usually designed for 30 minutes or longer. The finding indicated that WCC across providers should be scheduled in a 20-minute slot rather than a 40-minute slot. This discussion section would explore the impact of scheduled 20 minute for WCC on patient wait time, provider idle time, overtime, finish time, and the number of patients scheduled; see Table IV for summary results.\nConclusions: This paper demonstrated the impact of standardizing provider practice in terms of appointment slot length without accounting for provider's preference. A four-provider primary care clinic was studied and reported the difference on each provider's treatment time and practice preference. The simulation results indicated that enforcing the standardization on slot length for each appointment type could potentially increase total cost by as much as 57 per cent, patient wait time by 83 per cent, provider idle time by five minutes per patient, overtime by 22 minutes, finish time by 30 minutes, and most importantly decrease patient access to care by approximately 11 per cent. The results also showed the best scheduling scenario for each provider and for the best combined scenario for all providers considering their preferences. The findings suggested a 19/38 minute scheduling system for this particular clinic generated the lowest cost, a 4 per cent reduction from the current 20/40-minute systems. This paper concluded standardization of providers' clinic practice and preference negatively impact clinic service quality and access to care.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance on standardizing appointment slot length in a primary care clinic to understand the impact of providers' preferences and practice differences.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The treatment time data were collected for each provider. There were six patient types: emergency/urgent care (ER/UC), follow-up patient (FU), new patient, office visit (OV), physical exam, and well-child care. Simulation model was developed to capture patient flow and measure patient wait time, provider idle time, cost, overtime, finish time, and the number of patients scheduled. Four scheduling scenarios were compared: scheduled all patients at 20 minutes; scheduled ER/UC, FU, OV at 20 minutes and others at 40 minutes; scheduled patient types on individual provider preference; and scheduled patient types on combined provider preference.\nFindings: Standardized scheduling among providers increase cost by 57 per cent, patient wait time by 83 per cent, provider idle time by five minutes per patient, overtime by 22 minutes, finish time by 30 minutes, and decrease patient access to care by approximately 11 per cent. An individualized scheduling approach could save as much as 14 per cent on cost and schedule 1.5 more patients. The combined preference method could save about 8 per cent while the number of patients scheduled remained the same.\nResearch limitations/implications: The challenge is to actually disseminate the findings to medical providers and adjust scheduling systems accordingly.\nOriginality/value: This paper concluded standardization of providers' clinic preference and practice negatively impact clinic service quality and access to care.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A comparative study of regional innovative entrepreneurship in Russia and the United States	[ "Russia", "USA", "Barriers to business development", "Innovative entrepreneurship" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Innovative entrepreneurship, the process of commercialization of unique new concepts, is one of the main channels of transfer of scientific developments into viable products and technologies. Previous studies indicate that the potential for innovative entrepreneurship is not fully developed in modern Russia. Considering the high level of education and scientific knowledge prevailing in the country, it is surprising that few Russian entrepreneurs are able to fully incorporate innovations into their businesses. One possible method of identifying the factors that cause this low level of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia is to compare and contrast the innovative enterprises in Russia with those of another country with similar natural and educational resources. The goal of this study is to identify the characteristics of the system of innovations which provide the stimuli for the development of entrepreneurship and the institutional and financial barriers faced by the entrepreneurs in the Novosibirsk region of Russia and the state of Minnesota in the USA. The climatic and resource characteristics of these two geographical regions are similar and this comparison will possibly identify the factors that cause the low level of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia. This study was carried out in 2009-2010 by a group of Russian and American researchers who conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of the executives of comparative groups of innovative businesses using a specially developed survey instrument.\n2. Background for comparison: The region of study in Russia is Novosibirsk Oblast (an administrative region of the Russian Federation with its center in the city of Novosibirsk), and in the USA - the state of Minnesota. Novosibirsk Oblast is one of the leading scientific and technological areas in Russia (the largest beyond the Urals). It is in fourth place among the regions of the Russian Federation in terms of its innovation potential. The Novosibirsk Oblast hosts territorial branches of four academies of science, more than 20 universities and colleges and these are the main source of innovations in the region. The number of doctoral degrees awarded in this region in the year 2005 was 193, which is 16.6 percent of such degrees granted in the whole of Russia. The number of science, engineering, and health graduates from the region in 2005 was 1,207, which was 2.57 percent of the Russian total.\n3. Literature review: Successful development of innovative firms is determined by several factors, such as, the human capital and management system, availability of markets, product competitiveness, and the institutional environment. One approach to study these factors is to classify them into typologies of internal and external factors. Internal barriers include those related to resources, e.g., lack of internal funds, technical expertise or management, time and culture systems, and human resources limitations. External factors include supply, demand, and the business environment. Supply barriers include difficulties in obtaining technological information, raw materials, and funding. Demand barriers have to do with customer needs, their perception of the risk of innovation, and existing market limitations. Environmental barriers include various government regulations and policy actions. In developing countries the factors of corruption and unfair competition are often included in the set of environmental barriers (Molz et al., 2009).\n4. Research methodology: The study which serves as a basis for this paper was conducted in 2009-2010 by a group of Russian and American researchers. The sample consists of 60 Russian (since Novosibirsk is located in Siberia this group is called \"Siberian\") and 30 American (located in Minnesota) innovative firms. Empirical data were collected through questionnaires (18 questions) and personal interviews. Respondents were highly placed in their companies, typically being either the president or the owner. In developing the survey instruments, attention was focussed on the factors hindering the development of small innovative firms, perspectives of their growth, and the preferred forms of institutional support. Our approach included differentiation between the various stages of life cycle of the firm.\n5. Results: Some general characteristics of Siberian and Minnesotan companies in our sample are given in Table II. The mode of incorporation of both Siberian and Minnesotan firms are limited liability corporations or partnerships. Two-thirds of Siberian companies are younger than ten years, while about half of the businesses in the Minnesota sample are <10 years old. Nearly half of both Siberian and Minnesotan firms identified themselves at the growth stage of their life cycle. Even though many of the firms are already in the growth stage or beyond, the questionnaire asked the respondents to specify the barriers faced by them during their start-up and growth stages.\n6. Conclusions: Our survey shows that the initiation and development of small innovative firms have common features in different institutional systems: special technological knowledge as a base for competitiveness and similar ranking of the barriers for development. Successful companies demonstrate unique technical competencies with respect to their product/service. Small innovative business can be self-sufficient for the production of a single innovative product and also for its incremental improvement, but the transition to a new type of product/service and more radical innovations inevitably requires a new inflow of research ideas and human resources, which calls for support of research and educational institutions and establishment of effective channels of interaction with these organizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to conduct comparative research of small innovative entrepreneurship under different types of institutional environment in Russia and the USA.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was administered among small innovative firms in the State of Minnesota (USA) and Novosibirsk Oblast (Russia). Mann-Whitney test for median differences adjusted for multiple comparisons using Benjamini-Hochberg procedure is used to establish statistically significant dissimilarities between Siberian and Minnesotan populations.\nFindings: The results indicate that there are significant differences in the challenges faced by the Russian and American firms. The most important among them are the lack of legal structure for innovation and availability of qualified staff in Russia.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is limited to two regions with comparable economic and geographic environments.\nPractical implications: It is indicated in the results that significant changes in institutional business environment are necessary for the future development of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia.\nOriginality/value: This study is the first of its kind to compare the challenges facing small innovative entrepreneurship in Russia and the USA.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What makes a "good manager"? Positioning gender and management in students' narratives	[ "Gender", "Positioning", "Discursive practices", "Management", "Narratives" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Why would one want to explore the relationship between gender and management in the narratives of students, i.e. persons who in general have not had much managerial experience? There is no single answer to this question. One reason is to extend the widespread recognition that stories \"do gender\". They are not merely in vivo artefacts but are deeply embedded in all aspects of organizational culture and in our scholarship when we teach organization theory and management. Therefore students' representations of what counts as \"good management\" can yield insights into how management is perceived and appreciated (or not) in contemporary society by outsiders to the business community and by the next generation of people who will presumably have organizational and institutional responsibilities in the coming years.\n2. Positioning gender and management: The gendering of management has been historically constructed as a male subtext by producing images which are difficult to relate to femaleness (Alvesson and Billing, 1997) or by describing styles and models of female management which stand as alternatives to the traditional one (Loden, 1985; Hegelsen, 1990). A frequent stereotype holds that women display a management style which emphasizes relationality and seeks to foster positive interactions and trust relations with/among subordinates, to share power and information, and to encourage employees to subordinate their personal aims and interests to collective ends. In short, the positioning of a female management style is done by referring to a specific (natural or socialized) orientation of women towards communication, co-operation, affiliation and attachment, and to a conception of power as control not over the group but with the group (Fagenson, 1993; Fondas, 1997; Ely and Meyerson, 2000; Gherardi and Poggio, 2009).\n3. The study design: We used the method of stimulus texts (Bauer and Gaskell, 2000) to explore the ways in which students of the first and second year of a master course in sociology entitled \"Work, Organization, and Information Systems\" in Trento (Italy) discursively positioned gender and management while they wrote a fictional story.\n4. Dis/trust in management. Positioning male and female CEOs between business performance and relational competence: The analysis of students' narratives gives access to the ways in which they actively re-produce their historical and cultural context. In fact, every story involves the writer's positioning within the management discourse of the reference culture, following the rhetoric that is culturally available and normatively or stereotypically associated with one or the other sex. Some managerial practices are viewed as appropriate only for men, others only for women, although they are practicable for both (Gherardi, 1995; Martin, 2006).\n5. Discussion: In this paper we have sought to contribute to the literature named \"think manager-think male\" by reporting qualitative research based on a design in which gender and management consisted in a set of discursive practices situated in a specific historical and cultural context. The stories - about a fictive manager, either male or female - were written by undergraduate students of sociology, whilst most of the literature is based on students attending business schools. While students at business schools may expect to become managers and are exposed to studies that legitimize and/or celebrate economic activities like entrepreneurship and management, students of sociology do not have the same expectations in regard to their professional lives, even though many of them will manage people and resources in their jobs. Furthermore, their curricula take a critical approach, and when they arrive at the master level they have already been exposed to the discourse on gender and society. We therefore expected that their stories about either a male or a female manager would be critical of men as managers. Nevertheless, analysis of their stories highlighted not only the intrinsic ambiguity of the concept of gender but also the ambivalent and manifold nature of economic reality, which cannot be understood by being reduced to dichotomous categories, but instead requires interpretative keys and metaphors able to convey a plurality of differences (Gherardi and Poggio, 2001).\n6. Conclusions: We have presented the results of qualitative research aimed at eliciting short stories from university students of sociology regarding a fictive managerial character - Davide or Diana - whose performance and attitude they were asked to evaluate. We were interested in understanding whether and how the relationship between gender and management has changed in recent decades or whether the basic assumptions about \"think manager-think male\" so widespread among business school students in so many countries are still valid. While this result was obtained mainly through quantitative analysis (using Schein parameters), we wanted to design an alternative research strategy that focused on how gender and management are discursively constructed. Therefore the theoretical background of the research consisted of positioning theory, and we analyzed the texts in order to understand the positioning of the narrator, the positioning of the object of discourse, and the positioning of the audience. Since the stimulus text that we used to elicit the students' stories was constructed around a dichotomous category (either a man or a women manager), we first analyzed how the positioning of the manager was done by mobilizing gender categories. In fact, the managers were described as instrumental or caring, but it was significant that the association between maleness and management was judged negatively, while femaleness and management were portrayed in positive terms. We think that this association is somehow linked to an extra-textual factor, namely the severe economic crisis that has created distrust in the male manager and hope in an alternative female managerial style. Further research is necessary to test the influence of the historical moment on the reputation of management in society, since it may be that the \"think manager-think male\" formula has become less widespread as the consequences of the economic crisis have become more visible.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the relationships between gender and management in the narratives of students. More specifically, the authors discuss how the discourse on management is mobilized as a discursive practice able to make some form of that activity thinkable and practicable: who can be a CEO? What kind of managerial competencies are attributed to men/women CEOs? What kind of moral order is expressed in the stories told?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Stimulus texts have been used to elicit narratives. Students were asked to complete a short story regarding a fictive managerial character, either female or male, whose performance and attitude they were asked to evaluate.\nFindings: The paper discusses how the collected stories as a whole expressed a conception of what counts as a \"good manager\" and how management is gendered. In the analysis, the authors discuss whether and how the relationships between gender and management are changing, or the basic assumptions about \"think manager-think male\" are still valid. The paper illustrates a traditional positioning of gendered management along the lines of rationality vs care, and a third positioning in which the ideal of the \"good manager\" has both competencies.\nOriginality/value: The authors designed an alternative research strategy focused on how gender and management are discursively constructed within a context of economic crisis that affects management reputation. Particularly, the authors discuss the surprising results concerning how the written stories evaluating male CEOs distrusted the masculine way of managing and positioned the female managing style within a trustworthy context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Highly automated interviews: applicant reactions and the organizational context	[ "Innovation", "Selection", "Recruitment", "Human resource management", "Experiment", "Person-environment fit" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizations modernize their processes to stay up-to-date and to convey an innovative and attractive image (Chapman and Webster, 2003; Gatewood et al., 1993). This modernization affects many human resource (HR) processes as well as personnel selection procedures. For instance, organizations use digital interviews (applicants record responses to interview questions and send them to the hiring organization; Torres and Mejia, 2017) to show that they are attractive employers (cf. Chapman and Webster, 2003). However, previous research in the area of job interviews has predominantly found that technologically advanced interviews detrimentally affect applicant reactions (Blacksmith et al., 2016; Langer et al., 2017). Nonetheless, the technological evolution of the interview continues. Currently, the use of highly automated interviews is burgeoning (Langer et al., 2019). Within such interviews, sensors (cameras, microphones) in combination with algorithms and virtual visualization automate the entire interview process (i.e. acquire information about applicants, evaluate applicants' performance, implement actions such as automatic selection of follow-up questions, using virtual interviewers, cf. Langer et al., 2019).\nBackground and hypotheses: Automation of job interviews\nMethod: Sample\nResults: Manipulation check\nDiscussion: The aims of the current study were to further investigate applicant reactions to highly automated interviews, examine influences of the organizational context on reactions to technology-enhanced interview approaches, and explore potential differences between students and employees regarding reactions to highly automated interviews. On the positive side for highly automated interviews, they were perceived as more consistent than videoconference interviews. However, participants also perceived highly automated interviews to provide less social presence which negatively affected organizational attractiveness. Moreover, this finding was independent from the organizational context, implying that a match of the perceptions of an organizational and its selection procedures did not lead to better perceptions of innovative interview approaches. Lastly, the results tentatively indicate that there might be small differences between students' and employees' privacy concerns within the different interview formats.\nConclusion: As practice continues to develop innovative selection procedures, it is crucial that this drive does not outpace scientific understanding of these methods. This study showed that potential applicants perceive highly automated interviews and organizations using such interviews as rather negatively and raised questions about contextual and individual influences regarding applicant reactions. Yet it is merely a small step in catching up with the ongoing automation of management processes. Hopefully, this study encourages more scholars to research the emerging intersection between management and computer science.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The technological evolution of job interviews continues as highly automated interviews emerge as alternative approaches. Initial evidence shows that applicants react negatively to such interviews. Additionally, there is emerging evidence that contextual influences matter when investigating applicant reactions to highly automated interviews. However, previous research has ignored higher-level organizational contexts (i.e. which kind of organization uses the selection procedure) and individual differences (e.g. work experience) regarding applicant reactions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate applicant reactions to highly automated interviews for students and employees and the role of the organizational context when using such interviews.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a 2 x 2 online study, participants read organizational descriptions of either an innovative or an established organization and watched a video displaying a highly automated or a videoconference interview. Afterwards, participants responded to applicant reaction items.\nFindings: Participants (n=148) perceived highly automated interviews as more consistent but as conveying less social presence. The negative effect on social presence diminished organizational attractiveness. The organizational context did not affect applicant reactions to the interview approaches, whereas differences between students and employees emerged but only affected privacy concerns to the interview approaches.\nResearch limitations/implications: The organizational context seems to have negligible effects on applicant reactions to technology-enhanced interviews. There were only small differences between students and employees regarding applicant reactions.\nPractical implications: In a tense labor market, hiring managers need to be aware of a trade-off between efficiency and applicant reactions regarding technology-enhanced interviews.\nOriginality/value: This study investigates high-level contextual influences and individual differences regarding applicant reactions to highly automated interviews.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mental health implications of volunteer fire service membership	[ "Canada", "Post‐traumatic stress disorders", "Fire services", "Voluntary organizations", "Mental health", "Volunteer fire fighters", "Impact of Events Scale" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Volunteer firefighters (VFF) are a specialized subgroup of first responders whose work is not only hazardous but, in fact, highly essential to the more isolated communities they often serve (Casey and Legar, 2000). VFF face high levels of work-related risk comparable to that experienced by professional firefighters (Casey and Legar, 2000), and are exposed to a wide variety of critical incidents including building fires (Hytten and Hasle, 1989), motor vehicle accidents (Dyregrove et al., 1996; Bryant and Harvey, 1996), forest fires (McFarlane, 1989; Bryant and Harvey, 1995), and other small- and large-scale disasters (Moran and Britton, 1994; Bryant and Harvey, 1996). In addition, VFF can face unique challenges not typically experienced by their professional counterparts. These challenges may include increased likelihood of a personal relationship with the victims attended to, the strain of constantly being \"on-call,\" long hours, more limited training and resources, difficulty managing various commitments, and more limited internal social support from the peer group (Beaton et al., 1999a; Casey and Legar, 2000; Werner et al., 1992).\n2. Post-traumatic stress: Considering these unique challenges and the variety of critical incidents to which VFF are exposed, our understanding of prevalence and risk factors for mental illness in this population is underdeveloped. Previous authors have suggested that \"non-professional\" first responders may experience higher levels of emotional distress relative to their professional counterparts (Dyregrove et al., 1996; Ersland et al., 1989; Guo et al., 2004). For example, in a large study of VFF following a bushfire incident in Australia, McFarlane (1989) found post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates of 32 percent at four months and 30 percent at 29 months post-disaster. In the only known study to have addressed levels of PTSD in VFF, independent of a large-scale disaster, Bryant and Harvey (1995) reported that 24 percent of VFF had clinically significant post-traumatic stress symptoms.In contrast to suggestions proposing higher rates in volunteer samples, studies of PTSD in professional firefighters have produced similar results, with findings of 18 percent in a sample of German firefighters, 22 percent in an American sample, and 17 percent in a Canadian sample (Beaton et al., 1999b; Wagner et al., 1998). Considering the estimated one-year prevalence rate of 3.6 percent for PTSD in the general population (Kessler et al., 1995), the above figures indicate a highly elevated risk for PTSD for both volunteer and professional firefighters.\n3. Other mental health symptomatology: First responders are also susceptible to other mental health symptomatology including depression, general anxiety and worry, social impairment, and drug and alcohol abuse (Bryant and Guthrie, 2007; Dyregrove et al., 1996; Heinrichs et al., 2005; Wanger et al., 1998; Wagner et al., 2010). In a study assessing firefighters during training and four years after beginning the job, Bryant and Guthrie (2007) found significantly higher rates of PTSD and depressive symptoms at follow-up reassessment. Heinrichs et al. (2005) assessed 43 firefighters during training and at six, nine, 12, and 24 months after beginning the job. Results demonstrated increased levels of PTSD, depression, anxiety, general psychological morbidity, and alexithymia, but only for the participants with higher levels of hostility and lower levels of self-efficacy at baseline. Wagner et al. (2010) found that professional firefighters had higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, hostility, and psychoticism compared to a matched group of non-emergency service workers. However, the extent to which these additional symptom presentations are secondary to PTSD remains unclear and remains an important area for further inquiry.\n4. Personality: Previous research has suggested that pre-morbid personality factors may make a significant contribution to the development of PTSD in VFF (McFarlane, 1989). Additionally, some evidence suggests that first responders are a self-selecting occupational group linked with certain personality characteristics (Casey and Legar, 2000; Ersland et al., 1989); specifically, Everly and Mitchell (1994) suggest that firefighters are more likely to have personality characteristics including risk-taking, action-oriented, easily bored, high need for stimulation, obsessive, compulsive, and high need to be in control (Everly and Mitchell, 1994). In opposition to the suggestion of Everly and Mitchell, Wagner et al. (2009) found no support for these suggestions and reported that extraversion was the only personality characteristics found to be significantly different when comparing firefighters with similar comparison participants. However, personality characteristics may continue to be important in discussion of the fire service as such characteristics are suggested to have potential for increasing post-traumatic risk in two ways: first, by increasing the risk of exposure to traumatic stimuli; and second, by increasing risk for developing PTSD following exposure (Stein et al., 2002).The characteristics most oft-cited as important in the prediction of mental health symptomatology is neuroticism. Described as a bias toward the experience of negative emotional states (Bowman, 2005), neuroticism has been linked to PTSD morbidity in Australian VFF (McFarlane, 1989), Canadian professional firefighters (Wagner et al., 2010), Taiwanese military rescuers (Hui et al., 2001), and American veterans (Hyer et al., 1993). Trait neuroticism accounted for a greater proportion of variance than did the extent of traumatic exposure in McFarlane's (1989) study of VFF and in Hyer's (1993) study of war veterans.With respect to other aspects of personality, separate studies have found hostility, low self-efficacy (Heinrichs et al., 2005), and negative self-appraisals before trauma exposure (Bryant and Guthrie, 2007) to predict the development of PTSD in first responders. In other research, optimism, a bias toward a positive evaluation of the future, was related to better coping and less distress among first responders (Dougall et al., 2001).Despite the important contribution made by the previously described research, our review reveals that the role of personality factors as risk and resiliency variables for PTSD in VFF remains understudied and merits the attention of researchers.\n5. Present hypotheses: The current study was intended to add to the overall body of literature regarding the mental health implications related to fire service membership; in particular, our intent for this study was to look specifically at the implications of volunteer membership and to compare our results with previous research looking at paid-professional members (Wagner et al., 2010). Similar to gaps in research for paid-professional members, to our knowledge, there exist no studies that have specifically compared self-reported mental health of VFF as compared to a group of similar comparison participants. Consequently, the present research attempted to address this gap in the literature by comparing a group of volunteer fire service members with a similar comparison sample who lived and worked in the same community (described further in \"participants\" section). In order to provide similarity in framework, the present hypotheses were intentionally parallel to those used by Wagner and colleagues in their investigation of paid-professional members. These hypotheses included that VFF would self-report higher rates of post-traumatic stress symptomatology (PTSS) when compared to a similar comparison sample. Similarly, given the previous findings of Wagner and colleagues, we further hypothesized that VFF would demonstrate higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, hostility, and psychoticism. Finally, in addition to our primary hypotheses, we intended to provide exploratory data linking personality characteristics and mental health for VFF; further, we intended to describe any differences in the pattern of relationships between these variables for VFF as compared to the pattern for comparison participants. In particular, given previous data suggesting that neuroticism plays an important role in predicting mental health symptomatology for these populations (e.g. Hui et al., 2001; Wagner et al., 2010), we were especially interested in any links between neuroticism and self-reported mental health symptomatology.\n6. Method: 6.1 Procedure\n7. Results: 7.1 Demographic characteristics of the respondents\n8. Discussion: 8.1 Limitations of the current study\n9. Conclusions: The present data supported the suggestion that PTSS was higher for volunteer fire service members, similar to the differences reported with a paid professional sample (Wagner et al., 2010). However, it should be noted that, although post-traumatic symptomatology was a higher risk for VFF than for non-emergency service population, a comparison of the reported means suggests that paid professional firefighters may be at even greater risk than either VFF or similar comparison populations. Given that our current data and the results provided by Wagner et al. (2010) were drawn from different samples, a discussion regarding the distinction between the post-traumatic symptomatology of volunteer and paid professional firefighters is not currently appropriate. Consequently, this question requires additional research and should be evaluated using methods intended to directly compare these two types of specific fire service members. Furthermore, although our current results support the importance of neuroticism as a predictor for poor mental health, our data (in contrast with McFarlane, 1989) suggest that neuroticism, as an important predictor for PTSS in firefighters, may be particular to a paid professional sample (Wagner et al., 2010).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to add to the overall body of literature regarding mental health implications related to fire service membership; in particular, to look specifically at the implications of volunteer membership and to compare results with previous research looking at paid-professional members.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Responses to the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Symptom checklist (SCL)-90R were collected from a sample of volunteer firefighters (n=64), as well as from a similar comparison sample (n=103).\nFindings: - Volunteer fire service members reported significantly higher rates of posttraumatic stress symptomatology when compared to a similar group of comparison participants. In contrast, no differences were found in other types of mental health symptomatology between the volunteer fire fighters and comparison group. Additionally, there appeared to be few differences in the patterns regarding prediction of mental health symptomatology from individual personality characteristics for the two groups. Generally, the authors' results suggested that, regardless of group, neuroticism was a predictor of mental health symptomatology in many domains.\nOriginality/value: - To the authors' knowledge, this is the only available study to have as its primary intent to describe the mental health implications of volunteer fire service membership, as opposed to a similar comparison sample. In addition, the authors' data provide some meaningful comparison with previously published results found in a paid-professional sample; such comparison, to this point, has been unavailable.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
InDiPres: a statewide collaborative approach to digital preservation	[ "Grants", "Education", "Collaboration", "Digital preservation", "Cultural memory", "Community engagement" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Working Group on Special Collections stated in its 2009 Discussion Report, \"Special Collections in ARL Libraries\", that:\nIndiana Digital Preservation: The Indiana Digital Preservation (InDiPres) (Figure 1) story begins in 2003/2004 when the Indiana State Library hosted a Digital Library Summit. Attendees included representatives from Indiana University Libraries, the Indiana Humanities Council, the Indiana State Department of Education and other cultural memory organizations interested in developing a statewide digital library that could be used in the classrooms. Summit participants identified five goals, i.e., to:\nPreserving Indiana's memories: After several years of conversation with ISL, Cunningham Memorial Library submitted an LSTA Digitization Special Grant Project proposal in March 2015 requesting support for the establishment of a statewide, community-based, collaborative approach to digital preservation. The project called for the creation of a self-governing community that would manage the operation of InDiPres. The member organizations shared the cost of a collaborative membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative Preservation Network, with the Indiana State Library serving as the lead institution; the Indiana State Library Foundation performing as the fiscal agent; and Cunningham Memorial Library acting as the technology supervisor of the LOCKSS server. The findings of the digital preservation readiness survey administered by project staff in September 2015 reiterated many of the statements made by LSTA applicants in response to questions concerning long-term storage, file formats and what the term digital preservation actually meant.\nInDiPres working group: On Thursday, February 4, 2016, the Working Group of the \"Preserving Indiana's Memories Special Digitization Project\" met at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis. Composed of individuals from across Indiana and digital preservation consultants with expertise in the establishment and administration of collaborative state, regional and international networks, the working group brought together experience, unique talents and a common resolve to address the need of Hoosier cultural memory organizations for a secure, geographically dispersed and cost-effective digital preservation solution. Representatives from the Indiana State Library and Cunningham Memorial Library at Indiana State University worked in concert to provide the environment in which to address the very real needs of under-resourced small- and mid-sized institutions. The goal from the beginning was to create a community-based and governed organization eligible for participation in the MetaArchive Cooperative Preservation Network as a collaborative member.\nInDiPres membership model: During the afternoon, the Working Group developed the proposed membership document for the newly established Indiana Digital Preservation or InDiPres for short. Drawing heavily from documents composed by the MetaArchive Cooperative and the Alabama Digital Preservation Network, the group crafted the following mission statement:\nDigital preservation open forums: While the InDiPres membership agreement was being reviewed, Cunningham Memorial Library and the Indiana State Library presented eight free digital preservation open forums to inform digital content creators and to promote InDiPres. Scheduled throughout the months of March and April 2016, these forums were held across Indiana and reached an audience of 125 individuals from libraries, museums, local government offices, community groups and interested citizens. The Digital Preservation Open Forums brought into acute perspective the overarching need for digital preservation education on a basic level, how important it is to delineate the difference between digitizing an original artifact for preservation/access purposes and the long-term preservation of the newly created digital file. The agenda for the open forums included a brief review of the results of the digital preservation readiness survey and a short course in Digital Preservation 101. Based on the identify, select and store modules of the DPOE Train-the-Trainer workshop, the content was couched in terms of collection development activities as an attempt to bring digital preservation tasks into line with existing collection development policies and practices in the minds of attendees. Course packs distributed to participants contained copies of the PowerPoint slides, general articles about digital preservation and a topical bibliography. The course pack was well received and requests for additional copies for colleagues aided in the distribution of information.\nInDiPres governance: The foundational governance meeting on May 17, 2016 brought together the initial members of InDiPres to discuss and compose the governance policies for the organization. Using the governance documents of MetaArchive Cooperative, ADPNet, Evergreen and the Indiana Memory DPLA Service Hub for guidance, the attendees drafted a policy that provided for a steering committee with a chair, a chair-elect and a communication officer, and four standing committees - finance, membership/outreach, technology and nomination. Duties and responsibilities were set; quorums, rules of order, nominations and voting procedures determined; and decision-making authority defined. Further review and revisions took place via a conference call. The final draft of the InDiPres Governance Policy was presented for approval to the membership at its August 11, 2016 meeting when officers were elected and committees appointed. The governance apparatus is intentionally light in acknowledgement of the demands on members' time and to allow participants to focus more on the selection and preparation of their digital content for preservation.\nProgress to date: InDiPres achieves its mission through its collaborative membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative Digital Preservation Network. In its initial 2015-2016 phase, the \"Preserving Indiana's Memories\" grant project incorporated a preservation readiness survey; an informational website; a working group to initiate the creation of a governance document; eight free and open public forums on digital preservation; the promotion of the proposed collaborative solution to prospective members; the purchase of the LOCKSS server; and the MetaArchive Cooperative membership. In June 2016, Cunningham Memorial Library purchased and installed the InDiPres LOCKSS server. The Indiana State Library worked with its Foundation to set up the escrow account for InDiPres membership dues and served as the lead organization for the collaborative membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative. Both of these activities moved the establishment of InDiPres as a statewide solution forward by preparing the necessary structural foundation and on ramps for participation.\nChallenges: Creating a grassroots digital preservation solution from scratch is a significant task. It requires leadership, devotion, determination, flexibility, support and time. Success entails vision and the ability to share the idea in a compelling manner. Identifying stakeholders and promoting the concept of a collaborative approach to digital preservation that benefits all is an important component. Involving member organizations immediately is key to establishing buy in and solidifying the self-government aspect. Once you start there is no going back. People believe in you, in the idea and in the outcome. People willing to assist with initiating a community-based group are the most critical resource to the endeavor. Managing expectations and participant enthusiasm is part of the task and everyone has a stake in the outcome. In short, it requires a long-term commitment.\nNext phase: The 2016-2017 LSTA Special Digitization Project Grant furnishes a second influx of financial support to advance the establishment of InDiPres. The majority of the funding[5] sustains a temporary, full-time professional metadata specialist position, but the budget also includes monies for an Ingest Pathways Working Group to identify and implement the workflows necessary to move member data to ISU for ingesting into the MetaArchive Preservation Network; the creation of a workflow and ingest guidance document for use by current and future InDiPres members; and a day-long, hands-on workshop to aid in the development of local digital preservation policies and plans. Project outcomes include the establishment of the governance structure; 75 per cent of InDiPres members developing and implementing local digital preservation policies and plans; creating best practices for selection criteria, workflows and ingest pathways for InDiPres members; and the 100 per cent ingest of InDiPres members' selected digital content into the MetaArchive Digital Preservation Network.\nConclusion: Using Library Services Technology Act funding as seed money, Cunningham Memorial Library at Indiana State University and the Indiana State Library partnered in 2015-2016 to establish Indiana Digital Preservation (InDiPres), a community-based collaborative to furnish an affordable and sustainable digital preservation solution for under-resourced small- to mid-sized cultural heritage organizations within the state of Indiana. CML and ISL served as catalysts for this statewide collaborative by providing the framework to lower or remove the technical, financial and staffing barriers to proper stewardship of digital content. The overall premise of InDiPres is that by working together, institutions can achieve the optimal in digital preservation - seven copies in seven different geographic locations - at an affordable cost.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate how cultural memory organizations in Indiana used Library Services Technology Act grant funding as seed money to form a collaborative group to attain an affordable and sustainable digital preservation solution.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This case study relates how concern for digital content created across Indiana by an array of cultural memory organizations led to a multi-year quest to establish a community-based, cost-effective, open-source digital preservation solution to address a common problem.\nFindings: Interest in a collaborative community-based digital preservation solution, especially among small- and mid-sized under-resourced organizations, exists across the spectrum of Indiana cultural heritage institutions, but education and commitment are key to the success of a statewide solution.\nOriginality/value: While focusing on cultural memory organizations in Indiana, the case study also provides information about the process of establishing a digital preservation collaborative to leverage resources to provide a cost-effective and sustainable long-term solution, particularly for small- to mid-sized institutions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Supply chain 2.0 revisited: a framework for managing volatility-induced risk in the supply chain	[ "Uncertainty", "Risk", "Flexibility", "Volatility", "Supply chain design" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nVolatility: the \"new normal\" in supply chain management?: Practitioners and scholars alike readily subscribe to the notion that volatility in the business environment has dramatically increased, and global events over the past decade provide ample evidence to support this view. Volatility represents a major risk to supply chains which needs to be understood and managed. However, much of the discussion of volatility and its effects on the supply chain has been largely anecdotal, or refers to single cases of supply chain failure. For this reason we embarked on a journey to measure and analyse the different facets and patterns of volatility that supply chains operate in and to seek evidence that volatility has increased in recent years. In our 2011 paper we demonstrated this increase in volatility empirically (Christopher and Holweg, 2011). We presented our work in the wake of the global recession, and following significant rises in energy prices. Five years on, we still feel the tremors of the global financial crisis yet whilst some key indicators have fallen drastically in absolute terms, overall levels of volatility remain high. The volatility of the price of crude oil over the past decade, for example, makes a case in point.\nThe \"SCVI\": critique and update: In order to illustrate the degree to which overall turbulence in our business environment is changing overtime, we have developed a \"SCVI\". The index was formally proposed in Christopher and Holweg (2011), and depicts the coefficient of variation (CoV) of eight key business parameters: key currency exchange rates, the Bank of England base rate, the cost of raw materials (such as oil, gold and copper), an index of stock market volatility, and the cost of shipping[1]. For each of these we measure the band of annual volatility, recognising that not all the indices move at the same time. We are aware of the possibility of multicollinearity, as many pairs of factors are correlated, but not all react to events or global shifts in the same way. So what we highlight is a \"band of volatility\" across all the indicators. To illustrate how the overall business environment is shifting, we have added an aggregate or meta-index of variation to the chart. This is the mean CoV across all eight indices. Our argument here is that it does not matter whether there is an increased level of volatility in the oil price, the exchange rate, or the Bank of England base rate. What does matter is when several of these indicators move together[2], as this changes the general business climate in which firms operate.\nThe need for a new mental model: The notion of shifting centres of gravity\nOutlook: Evidence is mounting that when the concept of supply chain management first emerged in 1982 (Oliver and Webber, 1982) the world was a different place (Bowersox et al., 2000; Christopher and Holweg, 2011; Sweeney, 2013; Stevens and Johnson, 2016). The conclusion that we draw from our updated analysis is that high levels of volatility in the wider business environment are likely continue to impact our supply chains for the foreseeable future. Whilst the original underlying principles of supply chain management still hold today, the idea that networks can be \"optimized\" in terms of cost has to give way to a design philosophy that is grounded on the premise that the best decisions in conditions of uncertainty are those decisions that are flexible and resilient enough to respond to events as they happen. We need to move our mental models away from a static view, towards one that embraces the volatility that surrounds us in all facets of business. Whereas in the past the key question for supply chain managers was: \"does my supply chain operate at minimal unit cost?\", the new question now has to be: \"does my supply chain feature the appropriate flexibility bandwidth, to minimise total cost in the light of volatility?\" Transitioning from previous mental models into this \"brave new world\" will take time, as cultures, procedures and performance metrics will need to be changed radically. Building structural flexibility will not be free, yet a conscious decision about what level of flexibility to provide will enable firms to navigate the uncertain waters that are yet to come.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an update to the Supply Chain Volatility Index (SCVI), and expand on prior work by presenting a conceptual framework illustrating how firms can deal with persistent volatility, the ensuing risk and mitigate the cost implications for their supply chain operations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use long-term time series of secondary data to assemble a \"basket\" of key indicators that are relevant to the business context within which global supply chains operate. The authors also report on five years of feedback gained from presentations of the SCVI to scholars and practitioners.\nFindings: Volatility has reduced from record levels experienced during the global financial crises, yet remains at levels considerably higher than prior to the crisis, with no sign of a return to the more stable conditions that prevailed when many current supply chain networks were designed.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors reaffirm that new mental models are needed which embrace volatility as a factor in supply chain design, rather than seek to eradicate it in supply chain operations. Traditional static \"network optimisation\" based on a simple definition of low unit cost seems no longer appropriate under conditions of persistent volatility.\nPractical implications: The authors provide a conceptual link of volatility, risk and cost in the supply chain, and outline how firms can develop a supply chain strategy by managing their exposure to volatility.\nOriginality/value: The authors challenge the common assumption that volatility invariably leads to risk and higher cost in the supply chain. Instead the authors argue that the supply chain structure can mitigate the exposure to supply chain risk. The authors introduce the concepts of recovery and resilience cost within a framework designed to help firms manage volatility-induced risk by minimising the adverse cost implications of volatility in their supply chains.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Determining the critical thresholds for co-word network based on the theory of percolation transition: A case study in Buddhist studies	[ "Co-word analysis", "Buddhist studies", "Critical thresholds" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper reports a co-word domain analysis of the literature on Buddhism collected by the Digital Library and Museum of Buddhist Studies (DLMBS) at National Taiwan University. Established in 1995, DLMBS is among the most comprehensive online catalogs of Buddhist research materials worldwide, and currently contains more than 400,000 records of books, research papers, theses, and digitized Buddhist scriptures and artifacts in 45 languages. A controlled vocabulary, which is in five languages, namely, Chinese, English, Japanese, German and French, is used to help users search the DLMBS's bibliographic database. The collection's comprehensiveness affords a rare opportunity to explore the evolution of Buddhist studies in different language communities and across different eras. By using the co-occurrence data of author-assigned keywords in the literature collected from the DLMBS, six co-word networks were generated in Chinese, English and Japanese, across two time periods; thus, Buddhist studies in different language communities and time periods could be compared.\nCo-word based domain analysis: Among the most crucial and arguably most challenging tasks of bibliometric-based domain analysis is mapping the specialties or major research themes within a domain (Chen et al., 2010). Based on co-occurrence statistics of pairs of keywords or phrases of documents in the pertinent literature has been used to map the intellectual structure of a knowledge domain (Callon et al., 1983, 1991).\nProcedures and analysis: This study's main purpose was to compare the intellectual structures of Buddhist studies in language communities over time through co-word analysis. We specifically attempted to answer the following interrelated research questions:\nResults: English (1957-1986)\nDiscussion and limitations: This study employed a social network analytical approach to explore the intellectual structures of Buddhist studies as reflected in its literature over time. The comprehensiveness of the coverage of the DLMBS allowed cross-sectional and cross-language comparisons to be made among the English-, Chinese- and Japanese-speaking communities in two 30-year time periods. Six co-word networks were generated to identify major research themes and their evolution. Filtering out the less meaningful keywords and links and further condensation facilitated the interpretability of the intellectual structure. The filtering criteria were keyword frequency, edge weight and clustering coefficient. An iterative approach was adopted to empirically determine the appropriate filtering thresholds under the guidance of two criteria: the resolution of the grouping, measured by modularity value and the number of resulting modularity classes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: One of the chief purposes of bibliometric analysis is to reveal the intellectual structure of a knowledge domain. Yet due to the magnitude and the heterogeneous nature of bibliometric networks, some sorts of filtering procedures are often required to make the resulting network interpretable. A co-word analysis of more than 135,000 scholarly publications on Buddhism was conducted to compare the intellectual structure of Buddhist studies in three language communities, Chinese, English and Japanese, over two periods (1957-1986 and 1987-2016). Six co-word similarity networks were created so social network analysis-based community-detection algorithm can be identified to compare major research themes in different languages and eras. The paper aims to discuss this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A series of filtering procedures was performed to exclude less discriminatory keywords and spurious relationships of a large, cross-language co-word network in Buddhist studies. Chief among the filtering heuristics was a percolation-transition based method to determine the similarity threshold that involves observing the relative decrease of nodes in the giant component with the increasing similarity threshold.\nFindings: It was found that the topical patterns in the Chinese and Japanese scholarship of Buddhism are alike and observably distinct from that of the English scholarship. Furthermore, a far more drastic changes of research themes were observed in the English literature relative to the Chinese and Japanese literature.\nOriginality/value: The filtering procedures were shown to greatly enhance the modularity values and limited the number of modularity classes; thus, domain expert interpretation is feasible.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
It is not my job: exploring the disconnect between corporate security policies and actual security practices in SMEs	[ "Information security", "Security practices", "Work system theory", "Socio-technical approach", "SMEs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Information system (IS) security is a challenge for all companies and government organizations ranging from the largest of the smallest. Our research looks at information security in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which are increasingly dependent on the use of information technologies and networked systems to support their business operations and decision-making processes. That dependence could make them especially vulnerable to IS security threats because of their limited human and technical resources and limited sophistication related to IS vulnerability issues.\n2. Background: Our literature review is organized around three main themes, namely, socio-technical approach to information security, information security in organizational context and information security in SMEs.\n3. Work system theory as a lens for information security: This section, which is based partly on Alter (2017), explains how WST can be used as a lens for visualizing and analyzing many information security issues. WST supports broad interpretations of empirical results in the next section that have direct implications for practitioners and researchers.\n4. Empirical study of information security in small- and medium-sized enterprises: The empirical study involved 187 employees from 39 SMEs situated in the region of Hampshire in the UK. The research was carried out by 39 trainee business analysts (research students) involved in a business analysis project and the lead investigator (a senior academic) was one of the authors of this paper. Each trainee selected the company they collaborated with. Those companies were drawn from a variety of sectors, including manufacturing industry, services and retail. Company size varied from 5 to 250 employees. In each SME, the analyst held approximately 10 (or more) semi-structured individual interviews over a period of six months. Interviews took around half an hour and had a specified theme and focus. One of the interview sessions was used for a walk-through of the information security questionnaire, which was used to support the interviews. The main objective of our exploration was to assess security practices from employees' point of view and not just as described in formal security documentation. This approach led to a better appreciation and understanding of issues and gaps in security practices. The questionnaire was divided into five sections based partly on the SME questionnaire and guidelines within the Government's National Cyber Security Program. It also covered additional topics related to human and organizational factors in information security management. The questionnaire also included questions that could be answered by professional employees who might or might not have an IT background. The first three parts of the questionnaire focused on planning, implementation and review of information security. The fourth part focused on information security management. The fifth dealt with the contribution of employees to information security management activities. The latter section of the questionnaire is of particular interest for this paper's goals as it investigates the extent to which companies integrate information security activities in every day working routines. This is explored through employees' perceptions of the extent to which that integration exists.\n5. Conclusion: Our exploratory research study reveals that security practices of many SMEs do not go far enough in recognizing the importance of effective information security management. Even when security is considered important in a SME, it may not receive high priority in the context of everyday work practices. While all of the interviewed employees handle and use sensitive data to do their jobs, a vast majority are not involved in risk assessment or in the development of security practices. Security practices are not prioritized and remain an illusory activity in their real world working contexts. Our empirical study indicates that actual work practices and routines of most employees were often ignored in the development and operation of security management efforts. Moreover, security processes that are designed outside of the real world organizational context are prone to undermine effective organizational practices and to create unintended consequences in the operation of work systems. These key findings are consistent with previous literature discussed in the second section.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to present empirical results exemplifying challenges related to information security faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It uses guidelines based on work system theory (WST) to frame the results, thereby illustrating why the mere existence of corporate security policies or general security training often is insufficient for establishing and maintaining information security.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research was designed to produce a better appreciation and understanding of potential issues or gaps in security practices in SMEs. The research team interviewed 187 employees of 39 SMEs in the UK. All of those employees had access to sensitive information. Gathering information through interviews (instead of formal security documentation) made it possible to assess security practices from employees' point of view.\nFindings: Corporate policies that highlight information security are often disconnected from actual work practices and routines and often do not receive high priority in everyday work practices. A vast majority of the interviewed employees are not involved in risk assessment or in the development of security practices. Security practices remain an illusory activity in their real-world contexts.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper focuses only on closed-ended questions related to the following topics: awareness of existing security policy; information security practices and management and information security involvement.\nPractical implications: The empirical findings show that corporate information security policies in SMEs often are insufficient for maintaining security unless those policies are integrated with visible and recognized work practices in work systems that use or produce sensitive information. The interpretation based on WST provides guidelines for enhancing information system security.\nOriginality/value: Beyond merely reporting empirical results, this research uses WST to interpret the results in a way that has direct implications for practitioners and for researchers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The value creation scale of supplier-distributor relationship in international markets	[ "Relationship marketing", "Supplier relations", "Buyer–seller relationships", "Measurement", "Business-to-Business marketing", "Value creation", "Operating performance", "Exploratory factor analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since the 1980s, research in the marketing field has begun to emphasize the interfirm relationship, and has regarded it as a strategic assessment which needs management (Jackson, 1985). Thus, a growing number of research articles started to discuss potential values that could be created by the buyer-seller relationship (Lapierre, 2000; Purchase et al., 2009; Walter et al., 2001).\n2. Literature review: Berry (1983) suggests that both buyer and seller are striving for strategies to create a win-win situation and, consequently, acquire value from the buyer-seller cooperation. Because both parties hope to gain value through trade (Holbrook, 1994), value is thus regarded as the cornerstone of trade market management (Anderson and Narus, 1999). Nevertheless, there is little consensus on the definition of value. Some scholars see value as monetary value with emphasis on cost and benefit (Anderson et al., 1993; Hogan, 1998), or non-monetary value with emphasis on capability, social relationship, knowledge and time management (Lindgreen and Wynstra, 2005). While, more other scholars consider value as the tradeoff between perceived benefits and sacrifices (Ravald and Gronroos, 1996; Zeithaml, 1988), to be specific, value is the exchanging result of give and take (Day, 2000). In brief summary, different definition of value puts emphasis on different aspects of value. However, there are four characteristics certainly in common:\n3. Method: 3.1 Item generation\n4. Data analysis: To establish the measurement scale for the relationship value created between manufacturer and its overseas distributor, we use exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and regression to test reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity of the scale.\n5. Implication and further research: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a value-creation measurement which is applicable to the supplier-overseas distributor relationship. As cross-border cooperation is increasingly important, there is yet no appropriate scale to measure the relationship value between the supplier and the distributor in cross-boundary context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: With a view to establishing the measurement scale for the relationship value created between manufacturer and its overseas distributor, this study uses exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and regression to test reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity of the scale.\nFindings: The scale is made up of six factors, including \"customer service\", \"relationship interaction\", \"cost reduction\", \"product promotion\", \"product sales\" and \"information offering\"; subsequent statistical tests strongly support the measurement.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, the sample collection was not conducted randomly, and the sample was limited to 190 valid questionnaires. Future research might be conducted randomly or in a longitudinal fashion to increase the sample size. Second, this study focuses mainly on manufacturers in the mechanical parts industry and was conducted unilaterally to discuss the creation of relationship value. It is suggested that future researchers investigate relationship value generated in cross-border cooperation from a bilateral perspective or discuss cooperative relationships in other industries.\nPractical implications: This study creates a functional scale to measure the supplier-distributor value creation in cross-border cooperation, and it proves that six factors pertaining to relationship value have significant positive correlation with operating performance; in this regard, in supplier-distributor cooperative relationship, more value the distributor creates for its supplier, the better the operating performance of the supplier will be.\nOriginality/value: In the academic sense, this measurement will be of substantial help to future empirical research on a larger scale. When applied to practice, this measurement supplements the extant body of value-measuring tools and works as an evaluation index for choosing overseas distributor.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Academic leadership - special or simple	[ "Leadership", "Academic leadership" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Academic leadership - special or simple\nLiterature review: The special or simple context\nDiscussion: The overlap between academic leadership and \"traditional\" leadership literature\nConclusion: Academic leadership defined - the authors' perspective\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Is academic leadership unique? Is it special? Do academic leaders require certain knowledge, skills and behaviours that only a career in academic can develop - or is it fundamentally the same as traditional leadership? This paper explores whether or not academic leadership is special or simple. It starts by defining the context and environment academic leaders find themselves in, moving onto explore characteristics and the overlap with traditional leadership thinking and finally concludes with current trends and a working definition of what academic leadership really is. The purpose of this paper is to explore the uniqueness of academic institutions and whether or not they require certain leadership characteristics which can only be found in academic career progression or could an exceptional individual from outside academia lead academics, researchers, administrators and support staff?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based around a literature review of current thinking on academic leadership and then the production of a Venn diagram to compares these current trends with more traditional definitions of leadership.\nFindings: The key findings of this paper include a definition of academic leadership, and how it is similar in many ways to traditional leadership thinking. However, there is a uniqueness centred on the culture and politics of an academic institution which many traditional leaders would not need to work within.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper is part of a wider research project relating to academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma and thus the author has searched out papers which support both areas of the author's interest.\nPractical implications: Anyone in a position of academic leadership may be interested in how it relates to traditional leadership concepts and where their field differs from others.\nOriginality/value: No research current exists which overlaps academic leadership with traditional definitions and characteristics and thus this paper is a new view of academic leadership.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Building "relationally integrated value networks" (RIVANS)	[ "Construction industry", "Organizations", "Performance management", "Intelligent networks", "Value added" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Shortfalls in construction industry inputs and outcomes despite a decade-long programme of change (Constructing Excellence, 2006) provoke a rethinking of previous reviews and recommendations as to whether they were, for example, too optimistic, unrealistic and/or altruistic (Kumaraswamy et al., 2002). One major aspect of this rethinking relates to the models or frameworks for change management. The major initiatives for change recommended in many previous industry reviews (e.g. Latham, 1994; Egan, 1998) were broadly based on supply chain management (SCM) principles and in practice mainly entailed integrated project workgroups, processes and supply chains (Holti et al., 2000; NAO, 2001). These initiatives, at least initially, tended to be predominantly cost-focused, concerned mainly with the efficient management of flows - of materials, goods and information - and the elimination of waste (Dainty et al., 2001). Best practice frameworks and benchmarking were advocated as the best ways of sustaining these improvement processes.However, the ever-increasing complexity of construction projects (e.g. Winter et al., 2006; Aritua et al., 2009), lessons from practice and findings from research suggest a need to go beyond creating and sharing collaborative practices (\"best practices\") to develop cooperative relationships that will use these collaborative practices as building blocks (Dyer and Singh, 1998; Campbell, 2001; Ballard and Howell, 2005; Smyth and Pryke, 2008). In order to achieve improvements on a sustainable basis, it is now increasingly recognised that business strategy must drive business processes and their supporting systems (Morris and Jamieson, 2005; Winch et al., 2003) and that the tools, techniques, best practice guidelines and modalities need to be linked to theoretical foundations and knowledge discovery in the construction management discipline (Fernie et al., 2006; Winter et al., 2006; Koskela, 2008). The reasons above warrant a shift in focus away from cost-focused models and networks towards more value-focused models and networks (Allee, 2008; Artto and Kujala, 2008; Barrett, 2008; Winch et al., 2003).This paper focuses on the development and deployment of \"relationally integrated value networks\" (RIVANS) that are capable of aligning and re-aligning divergent values and behaviours towards a confluence of consolidated high performance levels in both project and strategic networks. The central theme of the RIVANS research programme is thus one of synergising relevant thrusts of SCM and value management, as well as empowering superior governance, exchange, procurement and delivery through value-focused and truly integrated teams. This paper addresses the above needs by exploring the major issues in developing RIVANS. The paper reports the findings of a research into the conceptual validity of the key themes in (building blocks of) RIVANS identified from an extensive literature review. It explores obstacles to improved network value creation and examines ways forward for developing implementation templates for RIVANS.\nConceptual background: Value networks in business\nBuilding-blocks of operational RIVANS: The interactions between the assumptions outlined in the previous section are not static over the lifetime of a value network. They are continually shaped by the decisions and symbolic interactions of network partners and re-interpreted in terms of the shared values and supra contract norms that evolve to regulate collective action and which make the relationship work or breakdown (see Campbell, 2001).This paper reports the findings of research that seeks to move the RIVANS concepts a step towards full implementation templates. RIVANS templates would typically include operational frameworks and supporting protocols and mechanisms, which should not only harmonise with the RIVANS concepts, but also be derived from or informed by them. Network protocols and mechanisms required would typically include for network initiation and development, team building and interface management; objective setting, performance evaluation and incentivisation; and information and knowledge sharing. These would be the focus of follow-on work to that reported in this paper. The operational frameworks provide the structure for and embed the network protocols and mechanisms and would mainly be required for network value objectives identification and alignment, network management, network learning, and network maturity/performance evaluation. The scope and requirements of these operational frameworks are the focus of the present paper. The four constituent themes in (building blocks of) RIVANS were informed by an extensive literature review as summarised below and recent relevant case studies (Kumaraswamy et al., 2008).Value objectives\nValidating the conceptualised RIVANS building-blocks: Testing and validation approach\nDiscussion: There has not been scope and space to include all participant contributions and yet provide findings that are true to the full nature of the data. The findings reported in this paper reflect the core essence of and commonalities in the workshop data. Consequently, a minority of views (some of which were quite provocative and directed at fellow focus group panellists) are not reflected in the findings. Some of the focus group report summaries and presentations appeared to be based on the views of the group that compiled or presented them rather than the evidence of the complete record (both hand-written notes and voice recordings) of the focus group deliberations. Clearly, this raises questions about the verification of data in such focus group sessions. The data are also location-specific, although some of the issues discussed, the cultural complexity of the Hong Kong construction landscape and the input of the international research collaborators may mean that many of the research findings may relate well to other contexts. These limitations place the findings of this paper in proper perspective - as part of an ongoing process of validation of the building blocks of RIVANS in construction.More work needs to be done in linking project and strategic needs to conceptual frameworks and directions in the infrastructure construction field. For example, specific \"value for money\" outcomes sought in road infrastructure delivery as defined by Jensen and Fernando (2006) in Queensland, Australia will need to be mapped into the broader value analysis frameworks that will draw on those of Allee (2002, 2008) and others, while following the main thrusts emerging from the RIVANS workshop findings.Yet, the most critical challenge to RIVANS relates perhaps to ascertaining how its basic tenets respond to and are influenced by the current recession. The tendency in previous recessions has been for construction organizations to restructure in ways that saw them cut back on or entirely freeze investments in and for the future, focus on core business and adopt strict transactional governance regimes (see Hillebrandt et al., 1995; and also Green et al., 2005). Investments in RIVANS typically demand a long-term perspective. With many construction organizations already in dire straits or wiped out as a result of the recession, the question remains whether or not the present recession will evoke responses similar to those of previous recessions. Arguably, construction organizations that invest in or maintain membership of value networks during this recession must have the long term in sight - that of creating competitive advantage and building market share compared to the competition in the emergent post-recession market. Indeed, the CIOB's (2009) Skills in the Construction Industry report recommends that employers look to the long-term rather than reacting to short-term events and focus on retaining and up-skilling in the core competences necessary to thrive in the post-recession market. However, the jury is still out on the full effects of the recession, and the RIVANS concepts have yet to be tested for their robustness to these effects.\nConclusions: With the focus of competition in the market for construction changing from between individual firms to between networks of firms, RIVANS are conceptualised as being a viable strategy for sustained competitive advantage. RIVANS focus on developing cooperative relationships in the pursuit of overall value. They create the right context for organizational learning, leveraging KM and SCM principles and practices as building blocks. Four major constituent themes towards RIVANS implementation templates (value objectives, network management, learning, and evaluation) developed and validated using focus group panellists drawn from a representative cohort of built environment professionals in two workshops, found strong support for their practical relevance and appropriateness. The next distinctive stage of the RIVANS research programme would be the development of network protocols and mechanisms, including possibly framework testing/confirmation in a third and final workshop. Frameworks that build in and on the RIVANS concepts discussed in this paper would ensure the seamless integration of collaborating partners to produce and leverage creativity, innovation and value across the entire network.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Advocacy for the re-integration of highly differentiated, at times fragmented, construction project \"teams\" and supply chains has increased in this era of network competition, yet industry targets remain elusive. This paper aims to report on findings of research focused on the development and validation of the building-blocks for relationally integrated value networks (RIVANS) that seeks to redress this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Complementary theoretical streams are identified through an extensive literature review, and are used to shape and inform discussions of the key RIVANS themes of value objectives, network management, learning, and maturity. Four moderated focus groups hosted in each of two workshops in Hong Kong, are used to validate these themes. Each workshop typically comprised thematic focus group sessions in between introductory presentations and a plenary consolidation session.\nFindings: - The findings indicate strong support for the comprehensive coverage, appropriateness and practical relevance of the key RIVANS themes. The findings also suggest that public sector clients and procuring agents need empowerment to provide adequate leadership and create the environmental contexts required in RIVANS.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The chosen research approach and context may temper the generalisability of the findings reported in this paper. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed RIVANS concepts in other contexts.\nPractical implications: - Implications for the development of basic implementation templates for RIVANS are discussed.\nOriginality/value: - This paper responds to a clearly identified need for integrative value-based models of competitiveness in construction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Arab women's educational leadership and the implementation of social justice in schools	[ "Principals", "Gender", "Educational administration", "Social justice" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The concept of social justice (SJ) is discussed extensively in extant educational literature, especially in relation to educational leaders' role in the application of SJ principles in school (Arar, 2015; Arar et al., 2017; Berkovich, 2014; Theoharis and Brooks, 2013). However, the concept of SJ is open to various interpretations and often politically loaded (Brooks et al., 2015; Jean-Marie et al., 2009). Severe criticism is voiced toward the education system, arguing that the declared aspiration to improve SJ in schools and rectify discrimination, exclusion and marginalization, often remains in the realm of rhetoric and is not expressed in school policies and praxis (Fraise and Brooks, 2015; Wang, 2016).\nMethodology: Qualitative multiple case study was used for empirical data collection and analysis (Thomas, 2011). In-depth semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with each superintendent and principal (Creswell, 2007). Selection of the sample was assisted by the researcher's familiarity with staff in the Arab education system, as the head of a college Master's degree program in educational administration. Additionally, the researcher was aided by the chief superintendent of Arab education in finding suitable respondents, according to the criteria that they would be women principals or superintendents in the Arab education system, known as leaders who promoted principles of SJ in the Arab education system and initial participants also suggested additional participants, who met these criteria.\nFindings: The findings are presented as they appeared from the interviewees' narratives, identifying the interviewees with fictive names; they are discussed in relation to extant literature in the discussion section below.\nDiscussion and conclusions: This study aimed to shine a light on various aspects in the lives of women school principals and superintendents in the Arab education system in Israel, and to elucidate their roles as agents of change through the promotion of SJ in the system and organization where they work. I have tried to show how the studied Arab women principals and superintendents perceive all aspects of their leadership: personality factors, values, career path, perception of responsibility, and the effect of all these elements on the way that they choose to lead social commitment to promote values of equity and justice.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on gender and social justice (SJ) among pioneer female principals and superintendents in the Arab education system in Israel. The research questions were: what motivated these women to act for SJ? Are there common personal characteristics and educational values which characterize these women? What actions have they taken to apply SJ through their work?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four superintendents and two principals participated in in-depth interviews, describing their careers in education and their contributions.\nFindings: The findings indicate that these women were highly motivated often by their backgrounds to right social wrongs upholding values of equality and justice and empowering others to succeed. They employed leadership skills that initiate a strong desire to succeed and challenged inegalitarian rules and norms. They brought their unique feminine strengths and experience to promote social goals far beyond requirements of their official job descriptions. Hopefully their views and actions can guide the Arab education system to pedagogy that rectifies social injustice includes students and empowers teachers.\nOriginality/value: It is concluded that through their jobs these women leaders were able to initiate a policy of change and promote a new educational agenda.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Dragon wine: developments in the Chinese wine industry	[ "Evolution", "Wines", "Competitive strategy", "China" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Vintners of the world are continuing to observe the changing market landscape, with developments in consumer habits, redistribution of production capacity, employment of new technology, and evolution in channel structure, as they are struggling with general over-capacity, substantial price pressure, inability to pass on cost increases, costing peculiarities, currency fluctuations, and meager profitability. In such an industry which economists would denounce as structurally unprofitable (Peter, 1967), China's wine industry is suddenly emerging as a very unusual candidate for foreign direct investments, enterprising firms and eager capitalists. To most observers and practitioners in the wine industry, the questions about the Chinese wine industry remain: what is going on in China, how is this transformation happening, who are the players and why are causes of the growth-spur?\nAs industries evolve: Concerns about the changing nature of the competitive landscape are not unique to the players in the wine industry. However, an understanding of how industries change is believed as essential to the development of profitable strategies (McGahan, 2004). In traditional industries such as the mature wine sector, the patterns of change have not been sudden but been formed over time, allowing for scholars and other savants to wax over the various forces of change and threats to firm profitability. These factors include:* overproduction of grapes;* consolidation forces amongst producers, distributors, and retailers;* shift in consumer behavior patterns; and the* evolving international trade (Cholette et al., 2005).Others have argued that industries follow similar patterns of evolution, and that predictability can help firms understand future opportunities and options (Deans et al., 2002). Yet, what happens in new markets such as the emerging Chinese wine industry? Will we observe a rush of entrepreneurial endeavors, with thousands of small vineyards emerging, how will they sell their products, or undergo consolidation, as consumers are enticed to embrace new purchasing and consumption patterns? Can we anticipate an evolution of slow consolidation, where survival of the fittest will let the stronger firm devour to smaller firm in a process that will take years? And will the developments shaping the Chinese industry have wider implications for the global wine industry?As vines are being scrapped and production is moving out of the traditional wine base of Europe, to Australia, the USA, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, and New Zealand, the wine business has started to see new business models with larger entities exploiting economies of scale and scope in order to match the changing nature of the retail trade. The slowing growth and even displacement of demand in many markets have encouraged dynamic players to cast an eye to the new markets of the former Soviet countries, Asia, and particularly India and China (Cholette et al., 2005).China, with a population of approximately 1.3 billion people, can titillate the imagination of any entrepreneur, and has certainly also done so in the minds of some enterprising vintners. What most of their colleagues around the world do not realize is that some Chinese wine producers have established international visions that are already changing some segments of the wine industry. This article attempts to describe the opportunities and threats of this dynamic country, and hopes to reveal some interesting and possibly some surprising insights into the development of this market and the Chinese vintners' possible role in the international wine market.History of the Chinese wine industry - the origin\nOverview of the modern Chinese wine industry: Wine consumption: evolution and trends\nChallenges in the Chinese market: Educating the consumers\nFuture prospects: The recent evolution of the Chinese wine industry is likely to surprise many international observers. Emerging changes to consumer habits has spurred a dramatic surge of capacity, quality improvement and the application of sophisticated marketing and branding techniques only anticipated by few savants. The ability of a few Chinese wine companies to control major shares of the wine market has been a tough match for international firms, many of whom have only had a late recognition of the potential of the Chinese market.According to a note issued by ISI Emerging Markets Database, the total market for wine in China is forecast to reach around RMB 16.95 bn by 2011, growing by about 39 per cent on the expected value for 2007 (ISI Emerging Markets Database, 2006). Thus, the Chinese market will continue to be of interest to international vintners. The Chinese wine industry is likely to further consolidate in the main segments, as national and international retailers are broadening their reach from so-called tier one cities into tier two-, three-, and four cities. Improved penetration of organized retail chains in more rural towns and cities will help to raise per capita consumption in regions outside the main urban centers. As such, the developments are likely to mirror that of the USA. China is also seeing the development of specialty wine stores, dedicated internet-based wine sites, and wine clubs. These new channels are a good indicator of the small, but growing number of wine enthusiasts that are likely to desire choice and new experience - again, the parallel with the developments in USA is tempting.For academics, the evolution of the Chinese wine industry does lend support to earlier writers' contentions about industry evolution and successful criteria for the global competitiveness. It does have a strong and evolving market, with very good growth prospects, strong economies of scale characteristics recognized by key players, high degree of adaptability, and ample ability to attract both financial and capabilities as needed - all these points were raised by Cholette et al. (2005) and seem to be amply matched by China's evolution.As the large Chinese wine producers are cementing their hold on the domestic market, their role on international markets remains in question. ChangYu's likely dominance of the world's ice-wine segment is a good indication that Chinese wine makers cannot be discounted pre-maturely; both as an importer of wines, exporter to new markets such as India and the rest of Asia, and as eager acquirer of vineyards, brands and distribution channels in the old world.\nNote: 1. It is our judgment that these percentages are questionable; although, many Chinese wine companies write Cabernet Sauvignon on the wine label, experts often believe that Cabernet Franc is used because of the difficulties in growing the former successfully.Opens in a new window.Figure 1.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to provide an evolutionary view of the emerging wine industry in China.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Research on industry evolution provides a background for the historical evolution of the Chinese wine industry. Case studies are used to illustrate the different strategies of the leading wine producers in China, and to identify the major concerns and challenges in the Chinese wine industry. Growth potentials and ongoing trends are supported with statistics from authoritative databases and Chinese wine industry associations.\nFindings: - The Chinese wine market is characterized by an increasing concentration where the top four domestic producers dominate with 50 per cent market share. The lack of a wine culture makes brand marketing crucial to business success. Limited international efforts have been made by Chinese wine producers, although one winery has embarked on capturing 50 per cent of the global ice-wine industry.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper provides a historical overview of the Chinese wine industry and its current situation, which could not elude generalization and simplification. Enormous regional diversity in China compels differentiated regional studies in terms of production, consumer behaviors and marketing strategies.\nPractical implications: - The historical evolution of the Chinese wine industry reveals different settings for wine business in China. The dominance of domestic wine companies and ignorance of foreign wine brands among the general public imply a tough setting for foreign wine makers and distributors to enter the market.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides some insight into the historical and ongoing development of the Chinese wine market.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An exploratory investigation of the consumer religious commitment and its influence on store loyalty and consumer complaint intentions	[ "Religion", "Social values", "Brand loyalty", "Complaints", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "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: The opening statements of this paper are illustrations of reader comments in response to two recently published articles on the internet in which Ford affirmed that it would run ads in gay publications (Kiley, 2005) and after the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce announced that it is joining with Wal-Mart to help promote diversity in its retail operations (French, 2006). These quotes echo the important influence that values and beliefs have on consumers' purchase intentions at stores. Specifically, consumers' religious beliefs seem to resonate in their consumption choices. Consequently, Proctor & Gamble is one of several companies which has cut back millions of dollars in advertising from television shows such as Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in reaction to pressures from some religious organizations (Han, 2005). Additionally, large retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Target, have received widespread criticism for avoiding the explicit use of religious references in national advertising and promotional campaigns during the Christmas holidays (French, 2006).These trends are a reflection of growing religious conservatism in the US. Conservative Christian churches are among the fastest-growing church type in America, some of which grew more than 20 percent over a ten-year period beginning in 1990 (Goodstein, 2002). This trend of growing religious conservatism raises a number of questions for market researchers and managers. For example, will an increase in American consumer religiosity spill over in the marketplace and manifest itself through a change in shopping behavior? More specifically, will American consumers change their shopping behavior if they perceive their religious beliefs to be violated by a company's actions? Will consumers voice their disagreement with company policies? Will consumers change where they shop? Will they attempt to influence others to shop elsewhere? Will they simply do nothing? These questions seem to be particularly appropriate in today's social and political climate.Additionally, one of the most comprehensive frameworks of consumer behavior is Sheth's (1983) integrative theory of retail store patronage preference and behavior that suggests that a consumer's religion is a personal value that may shape an individual's shopping motives. Despite the theoretical support and widespread media attention focused on influence of religious beliefs on consumer choices, empirical research in this domain remains scant.Thus, the primary question that guides this inquiry is, \"Do one's religious values affect one's consumer behavior?\" Specifically, the purpose of this research endeavor is multifold. First, this study examines the understudied concept of religious commitment in the consumer behavior domain. Second, this study proffers a model that examines the relationships between religious commitment and two outcome variables: store loyalty and store complaint intentions. This paper draws on two theories, cognitive appraisal theory and social-cognition theory, to explain the relationship between consumer religious commitment, store loyalty, and store complaint intentions.\nTheoretical framework: In a series of studies, Hirschman (1981, 1982, 1983) was one of the earlier consumer behavior researchers to investigate the relationship between a consumer's religious affiliation and a number of consumption related variables. In the first study, Hirschman (1981) found Jews to be more innovative than non-Jews and to be potentially less store and brand loyal. In the second study (Hirschman, 1982), it was found that religious affiliation also affected the criteria used to make buying decisions. Finally, Hirschman (1983) concluded that few other variables exhibited the range and depth of explanatory power offered by religious affiliation. However, McDaniel and Burnett (1990) failed to find any significant results in using religious affiliation as a predictor of retail store evaluative criteria.Later research (Wilkes et al., 1986; Worthington et al., 2003) further developed the religiosity concept in consumer research and introduced a multi-dimensional approach. Two general components of religiosity are identified: religious affiliation and religious commitment. This bipartite conceptualization was important since past research contends that some people may have a preference for one denomination but an affiliation with another (Roof, 1980).According to the theory of religious values, religion does not directly impose obligations but usually moralistically sets certain values, beliefs, and practice requirements (Worthington et al., 2003). Religious commitment has been defined as \"the degree to which a person adheres to his or her religious values, beliefs, and practices, and uses them in daily living\" (Worthington et al., 2003, p. 85). Original measurement of religious commitment involves both a cognitive and behavioral component. The cognitive component focuses on the individual's belief or personal religious experience while the behavioral component concerns itself with the degree to which an individual practices the doctrine propagated by his religious affiliation.In contrast to the lack of predictability of religious affiliation, religious commitment has been found to be a significant predictor of the importance individuals place on certain retail store evaluative criteria and of differences in consumer shopping behavior. One study found that individuals who exhibited high religious commitment were more likely to buy products on sale, more open to purchase foreign-made products, and referred others to stores with the lowest prices versus stores with the best assortment, when compared to their religious counterparts who exhibited low religious commitment (Sood and Nasu, 1995).Another research study established that casually religious respondents are trendier and more innovative than highly religious individuals (Essoo and Dibb, 2004). An international study concluded that, across several religious denominations, \"the religiously devout respondents were more likely to find advertising of controversial products to be more offensive than the less devout followers\" (Fam et al., 2004, p. 552). Consequently, in concurrence with past research (McDaniel and Burnett, 1990), further research is necessary to investigate the religious commitment construct in the study of retail store patronage behavior and other areas of buyer behavior.Consumers' retail patronage behavior can be manifested in many ways. When consumers are dissatisfied with a firm they may do one of the following:* stop doing business with the firm;* share their concerns with friends and family; and/or* voice their opinions directly to the firm or third parties.In the following section of this paper, cognitive appraisal theory and social-cognition theory are used to investigate whether consumers' religious commitment is related to store loyalty and store complaint intentions when firms are perceived to violate consumers' religious beliefs.\nHypotheses development: Store loyalty intentions and its relationship with religious commitment\nMethod: Sample\nDiscussion and managerial implications: Several practitioner journals, such as Marketing News and Adweek, have recently published articles that highlight the increased potential of religion as a powerful segmentation variable in the US. The inclusion of subtle religious references in communications with consumers and the choosing of appropriate distribution and communication channels have been suggested as avenues to tap the growing market of religious consumers (Fielding, 2005).The results of this study highlight another reason why taking into consideration the religious commitment of consumers may be beneficial for firms. In addition to the potential value of consumer religiosity as a market segmentation variable in exploiting new markets, offending or ignoring religious beliefs of existing consumers may have a detrimental effect on store loyalty and consumer complaint intentions, especially in those markets where the majority of consumers are highly committed to their religion.Practically, advertising managers need to take into consideration the religious commitment level of the existing customer base when considering advertising content and when choosing media outlets through which messages are communicated to the marketplace. Large national retailers, with stores in geographical locations with obvious differences in consumer religious commitment levels, may benefit from developing regional promotional and advertising programs rather than adopting national advertising and promotional campaigns.Furthermore, gaining knowledge of the religious commitment level of current customers may be a worthwhile endeavor, before publicly taking sides in controversial public social or political debates. Corporate managers of large retailers should abstain from taking sides and allow regional or local managers to make decisions which are compatible or in compliance with the local market. Failure to do so may result in lower store loyalty and increased complaint intentions by existing customers, which ultimately may manifest itself in lower sales and profit, or even long-term damage to company brand equity due to negative public relations or perhaps even boycotts.However, not all firms are committed to maximizing shareholder wealth over and above their own values, which may or may not include some religiously charged issues. If a firm is committed and truly values diversity, for example, then they may want to take religious beliefs and the financial implications of ignoring religious beliefs into account in the decision processes.\nLimitations and future research: A first limitation is related to the use of a specific scenario in this study. The use of a specific scenario in this manuscript provides valuable information regarding the relationship between consumer religious commitment, store loyalty, and store complaint intentions, yet it limits the ability to generalize the research findings. Future researchers should attempt to replicate this research using different scenarios to confirm the role of consumer religious commitment in their decision making process.Second, this research paper used student data and student-generated data. However, a level of quality control was maintained through verification of the student-generated data. Also, the sample came from three different regions of the US to provide greater representation of general consumers. Nevertheless, a future replication of this study is warranted, using a national consumer sample representative of the entire consumer population in the US.Third, the outcome variables in this study measured intentions rather than actual behavior. Even though previous researchers have suggested that people act in accordance with their intentions (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Ajzen, 1991), future research should attempt to incorporate behavioral measures rather than intentions.Finally, previous research has suggested that certain consumer personality traits, such as consumer aggressiveness and consumer assertiveness, may play a moderating role in how consumers cope with instances of dissatisfaction in the marketplace (Fornell and Westbrook, 1979). Examining the role of the aforementioned variables may be another avenue for future research.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Past consumer behavior researchers contend that there is a significant relationship between a consumer's religious affiliation and a number of consumption related variables. Based on Worthington et al.'s multi-dimensional approach this paper aims to examine the concept of consumer religious commitment in the marketing domain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using cross-sectional data of 425 respondents this research examines the outcomes of the direct influence of consumer religious commitment on two outcomes, namely, store loyalty and complaint intentions.\nFindings: - Results of the study indicate that consumer religious commitment significantly influences store loyalty and complaint intentions.\nOriginality/value: - The paper offers prescriptive insights for managers, who may see potential value of consumer religiosity as a market segmentation tool.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Does climate for creativity mediate the impact of servant leadership on management innovation and innovative behavior in the hotel industry?	[ "Innovative behavior", "Servant leadership", "Hotel employees", "Management innovation", "Climate for creativity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's complex and competitive environment, the importance of talented employees in challenging service encounters cannot be overstated. This is because of the fact that talented employees display innovative behavior, determine the level of customer satisfaction and loyalty, and help the hotel company gain higher profit margins and achieve competitive advantage (Lombardi et al., 2019; Madera et al., 2017; Tajeddini et al., 2020). Employees' innovative behavior in a work unit or an organization results from their intention to generate new ideas, processes and procedures (Yuan and Woodman, 2010). Individual characteristics such as knowledge and cognitive abilities contribute to innovative behavior (Zhu and Zhang, 2019). Recent research suggests that human-related factors such as leadership and creativity boost hotel employees' innovative behavior (Tajeddini et al., 2020). Prior research also suggests that investment in human resource practices activates innovative behavior (Ottenbacher, 2007). The generation and implementation of ideas are exemplified in various successful service companies such as JetBlue, Starbucks and Singapore Airlines (Lages and Piercy, 2012).\nBackground: Servant leadership, climate for creativity and innovation\nMethod: Participants and data collection\nResults: The measurement model\nDiscussion: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Drawing from theory of organizational creativity, servant leadership (SEL), social exchange and social learning theories, this paper aims to propose a research model where climate for creativity mediates the influence of SEL on management innovation and innovative behavior. The model also investigates the linkage between innovative behavior and management innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data collected from Arab hotel employees in Palestine were used to gauge the aforesaid linkages through structural equation modeling. Common method variance was checked through an unmeasured latent method factor.\nFindings: The results reveal that climate for creativity mediates the impact of SEL on management innovation and innovative behavior. Successful SEL practices enable the organization to have climate for creativity, which, in turn, leads to management innovation and innovative behavior. Furthermore, hotel employees' innovative behavior fosters management innovation.\nPractical implications: Top management should have a high level of commitment to the SEL philosophy, which boosts climate for creativity and innovative behavior. It should also capitalize on climate for creativity to activate management innovation. In such an environment, management has to ensure that the supervisors are servant leaders and non-managerial employees are the potential servant leaders. Once employees are trained, empowered and rewarded in an environment which highlights effective SEL practices, they will be more eager to contribute to the company by exhibiting innovative behavior at elevated levels.\nOriginality/value: Despite a number of studies in the current literature, evidence concerning the effect of SEL on management innovation and innovative behavior simultaneously is scarce. There is still a dearth of evidence pertaining to the underlying mechanism through which SEL fosters management innovation and innovative behavior. In addition, evidence appertaining to the impact of innovative behavior on management innovation is scarce. The study fills in these voids.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sustainability consciousness of pre-service teachers in Pakistan	[ "Higher education", "Teacher education", "Education for sustainable development", "Sustainable development", "Sustainability consciousness" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The concept of sustainable development got visible attention of the education policy-makers across the world with WCED (1987) famous document, that is, \"Brundtland Report\" titled as \"Our Common Future\". Scott and Gough (2003) believe that the Brundtland Report made the concept of \"sustainable development\" more concrete. In June 1992, the first UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Rio de Janeiro. This conference laid the foundation stone of the term \"Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)\". Since then, academia has addressed various aspects of sustainability, for example, conceptual issues regarding ESD (Jickling, 1994; Jickling and Wals, 2012), strategies to implement ESD (McKeown, 2002; Eilam and Trop, 2010) or sustiability competencies (De Haan, 2006; Mochizuki and Fadeeva, 2010; Brundiers and Wiek, 2013; Wals, 2010; UNECE, 2013). The subject that has been relatively less presented in literature is of empirical studies into what students actually know about sustainability or their perceptions regarding sustainability (Carew and Mitchell, 2002; Kagawa, 2007) or ESD outcomes (Mochizuki and Fadeeva, 2010, p. 392).\n2. Literature review: To identify a suitable construct and instrument for the study, the researchers searched for peer reviewed, empirical studies regarding SC (including: attitudes towards sustainability; knowledge of sustainability; pro-sustainability behaviours; and perceptions regarding sustainable development) and related concepts, such as, sustainability competencies; sustainability literacy; critical, environmental and planetary consciousness. The data bases used were: Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Elsevier, SAGE, Emerald, SpingerLink, Wiley Online Library, Taylor and Francis Online and J-STOR. The search was conducted during April 2016. The researchers also used Google Scholar as a search engine to find relevant literature. Here, the researchers present brief introduction of these concepts.\n3. Study context: To promote education for SD, United Nations declared 2005-2014 as UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). During this period, a number of initiatives were taken by the member states to integrate ESD in policy, curricula, teaching and non-formal education (Buckler and Creech, 2014). However, in Pakistan, ESD has not been explicitly incorporated in education policy or education sector plans. Pakistan's national education policy 2009 has made commitments to provide a higher education that would contribute \"in the attainment of social goals of developing civic responsibility, social cohesion and a more tolerant society\" (Government of Pakistan, 2009, p. 47). Equitable education has also been emphasized in the policy (Government of Pakistan, 2009, p. 49, p. 58). However, ESD has not been included as a discrete theme in the policy. Similarly, ESD is missing in provincial education sector plans, that is, Sindh Education Sector Plan 2014-2018; Balochistan Education Sector Plan 2013-2017; Punjab School Education Sector Plan 2013-2017; and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa School Education Sector Plan 2010-2015 (Government of Balochistan, 2013; Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2012; Government of Punjab, 2013; Government of Sindh, 2014).\n4. Methodology: 4.1 The tool\n5. Results: Before presenting results, the researchers mention the way they dealt with the missing data and the off scale response of \"Don't Know\". In all, 22 questionnaires (16 from pre-service teachers and 6 from humanities group) had no response on three or more than three items (6 per cent). These questionnaires were excluded from the data because a statistical analysis can be biased if more than 10 per cent data are missing (Bennett, 2001). In all, 21 questionnaires from pre-service teachers and 7 questionnaires from humanities had missing entries on one or two items (4 per cent or less). These questionnaires were kept in the data because a missing rate up to 5 per cent is inconsequential (Schafer, 1999). However, in these cases, \"single-value imputation\" was applied on the missing one or two entries.\n6. Discussion: Before discussing the findings, the researchers want to highlight the limitations of the study to serve as a background for the discussion. The study data came from only one province. The findings could be different in other provinces of the country because of variation in the external factors. The study does not report any correlation between knowledge, attitudes and behaviours or between SC in three dimensions of sustainable development as they were beyond the scope of the paper.\n7. Conclusion: Results of this baseline study have guided to an inference that although BEd (Honours) Elementary Programme in Pakistan was developed during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), it is not helpful in developing pre-service teachers' sustainability consciousness up to the expectations. Moreover, it is also deficient in developing knowledge of SD and pro-sustainability attitudes and behaviours among the pre-service teachers. In Swedish studies, while students in non ESD-profiled schools had relatively lower SC as compared to those of ESD-profiled schools, their minimum score, that is, \"3.6\" was better than that of pre-service teachers in the current study. This indicates that SC is a complex construct and various factors contribute towards its development. It is not mere ESD profiling which is responsible for developing SC. Instead, it is the overall educational culture (including environmental care, social justice, democracy, economic equality) which directs SC of the students. Probably, the educational culture of Swedish schools regardless of their profile (ESD or non-ESD) is in line with ESD agenda. This conclusion questions educational culture of Pakistan on one hand and suggests the incorporation of ESD in general education and in teacher education of the country. This might change educational culture of Pakistan and make the learners more conscious of sustainability.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention towards sustainability consciousness (SC) of pre-service teachers (student teachers) as their role is central in teaching for sustainable development. This paper investigated SC of the pre-service teachers in Pakistan and compared it with other undergraduate students in the country and with that of Swedish upper secondary students.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper used survey method using a tool developed by a group of Canadian researchers to measure knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards sustainable development. The instrument was later adapted by a group of Swedish researchers to measure SC. Study data came from 207 pre-service teachers and 154 undergraduate students studying humanities.\nFindings: The paper reports that SC of the pre-service teachers in Pakistan is much lower than that of Swedish upper secondary students. Moreover, the paper indicates that the SC of pre-service teachers is not different from other undergraduate students in the country.\nPractical implications: This paper establishes a baseline of SC of the final-year pre-service teachers enrolled in BEd (Honours) programme in Pakistan. Such a study is critical in the context when ESD is a missing element in teacher education in Pakistan. In the presence of such a baseline study, teacher education institutes and departments might review their curricula in terms of their focus on ESD and plan for initiatives to educate pre-service teachers for sustainability.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to a broader debate on measuring SC of university students.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The synergistic impact of ISO 9000 and TQM on operational performance and competitiveness	[ "Competitiveness", "Synergy", "Inventory management", "Operational performance", "ISO 9000", "Time-based performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The implementation and integration of total quality management (TQM) and ISO 9000 has been a hot debate among academics and practitioners since early 1990s. The issue of integrating these two practices occupied a vast area of interest of operations and quality management scholars around the world. The essence of this debate was twofold. First, are TQM and ISO 9000 complementary or substitutes? Second, if the two programs complement one another, which one should be implemented first? This paper takes this debate one step further and argues that if the two programs were considered concurrently, their synergistic impact on the operational performance of the manufacturing plant will be noticed. In a unique and unprecedented way, our paper developed an index to measure the synergy of ISO 9000 and TQM. It further tests the impact of such synergy on the operational performance of manufacturing plants operating in one developing and three developed economies.\n2. Relevant literature: The quality management literature is replete with empirical studies on quality management practices and programs; most notable are TQM and ISO 9000. These two programs were studied, mainly in isolation of one another. One of the explanations to taking this approach in managing quality is that the former is a North American-based program, while the latter is a European-based one. In the past two decades, many North American plants started to implement both programs. A debate in academic research outlets arose as to which program should be implemented and if the two were considered, which one of the two should be the starting point to pave the way for the other. There exists a vast body of knowledge that sees the ISO 9000 as the stepping stone for TQM and thus for continuous improvement (CI). Table I summarizes some of the studies in this regard.\n3. The conceptual model and research hypotheses: The proposed model in this paper postulates that the size and age of the plant impact its progress toward achieving WCM status. It also postulates that the TQM/ISO 9000 synergy level impacts plant's effort to achieve WCM status; the progress toward achieving WCM status impacts the operational performance; the TQM/ISO 9000 synergy level impacts the operational performance; and the plant's effort toward achieving WCM status and the integration of ISO 9000 and TQM positively impact the operational performance of a manufacturing plant.\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Sample and data collection\n5. Analyses: The analysis in this paper proceeded in the following order. First, the profiles of respondents were examined in terms of the plant's country of origin, age, size, and the degree of its progress toward achieving WCM status. The analysis was taken one step further and examined if there are any statistically significant differences in the level of integrating ISO 9000 and TQM among the different categories of each of these demographic variables. Second, we analyzed the impact of the plant's age and size on the progress toward achieving WCM as well as its impact of synergy level on the plant's effort to achieve WCM status. Finally, we tested if there are significant differences in operational performance among respondents with varying levels of synergy and different degree of progress toward achieving WCMS. The analysis strategy is depicted in Figure 2.\n6. Discussion and conclusion: Quality management, inventory management, time-based performance, and competitiveness are the hallmark of a WCM organization. This paper addresses in a unique and unprecedented way, an empirically derived synergy index for integrating ISO 9000 and TQM principles and practices. The development of this index is based on a large sample of 2,961 responses from manufacturing plants operating in one developing and three developed economies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of integrating ISO 9000 and total quality management (TQM) on operational performance of manufacturing organizations and their journey toward achieving world-class manufacturing (WCM) status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors used a conceptual model and its empirical validation based on a sample of 2,961 responses from one developing and three developed economies. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to test five main hypotheses.\nFindings: Plants that integrate ISO 9000 and TQM progressed faster toward achieving WCM status and have better operational performance in terms of quality management, inventory management, time-based performance, and competitiveness.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample from the developing economy includes only 254 responses, while the one from the three developed economies includes 2,907 responses.\nPractical implications: Findings of this study have many implications for both academic and practitioners. These findings encourage practitioners to consider ISO 9000 and TQM as complementary, not substitutes.\nSocial implications: Developing economies should follow the footsteps of developed economies in considering quality as a competitive advantage in global markets.\nOriginality/value: The paper addresses in a unique and unprecedented way the synergistic impact of ISO 9000 and TQM on operational performance. The study is the first in its kind to include responses from both developing and developed economies. The development of the synergy index was never addressed before.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Editorial: Accounting research and the public interest	[ "Public interest", "Accounting research", "Social structure" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: \"The public interest\" is a phrase that we, as accounting researchers, associate with accounting almost by reflex. When we talk about accounting and society, the normative imperative creeps in, and we find it quite natural to insist that accounting ought to serve the public interest. This predisposition is reinforced by the traditional claims of the accounting profession to protect the public interest, and by the neoclassical microeconomic theories that underpin so much accounting research, which deem accounting to aid in social welfare maximization by providing transparent, reliable information to investors. Accounting research that problematizes the notion of the public interest is rare, however. Researchers seldom directly address what is meant by \"public interest\", or question how accounting is connected to it. Mainstream researchers, by virtue of their microeconomic models, tend to assume a unidirectional relationship between accounting and the public interest, wherein \"better\" accounting (i.e. more representationally faithful, more reliable, more timely, more comparable, and so forth) makes for greater social welfare. Even critical researchers frequently accept this one-way relationship, albeit they usually contend that the relationship is impaired.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This essay sets out to introduce the special issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The essay discusses a variety of approaches to exploring the relationship between accounting and the public interest, and briefly reviews the contribution of the articles in the issue.\nFindings: - Not applicable.\nOriginality/value: - The essay argues that accounting research can be opened up by problematizing the notion of the public interest, and by considering not only how accounting constitutes the public interest, but how various public interests constitute accounting.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improving leadership from the inside out: Capabilities and implementation of a new model	[ "Change management", "Leadership", "Strategy", "Capabilities", "Leadership development", "Growth" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: The playbook for leadership development not only has many pages but also has almost just as many authors. A Google search of the terms provides over 20 million responses, with seemingly almost as many books on the subject. For any large organization, the easy part is deciding on where leadership needs improvements and investment; the difficult part is identifying what the best approach would be and where to find it.\nCase studies and capabilities: Whether internally or externally provided, the decision to put in place a leadership development program can be a daunting one, and looking at other major firms' playbook would be a big help to those HR managers struggling with this particular challenge. To provide some insight into this, author Dara Hysmith put together a study titled \"Leading into strategic growth: building capability at global suppliers\", which details her work with a (fictional) multi-billion-dollar international supplier of building materials based in the USA.\nYou had one job ...: To implement the LCM model, it was the decision of the business to simply push it out to all leaders globally and expect them to implement it by themselves with their teams, the idea being that they would figure out for themselves what would make a good fit in their own culture, and part of the program would be to encourage and collate the sharing of the best practices as a result. Not unsurprisingly, while some leaders took this in the spirit it was intended, others reported back that they were confused, complained about the lack of guidance, and as a result the whole exercise must have started to look like a bit of a disaster.\nAdoption and application: First, the lesson on adoption that the first process leaders went through when the LCM model was shared with them was \"sensemaking\". However, respondents of the investigation by Hysmith showed that there was great variety in this, although each individual had a positive attitude toward it. However, what followed from sensemaking was decision-making, and this varied widely from taking on the model for strategic growth activities to using them in talent management. Other activities emanating from its adoption were discussions among leadership teams, increasing understanding through storytelling, and using modeling as a way to embed practice.\nComment: The article \"Leading into strategic growth: building capability at global suppliers\" by Hysmith, (2017) presents an insightful approach to the rollout of a well-meaning, but ultimately troubled, model for developing leadership capabilities at a major organization. Unlike many academic articles, it not only shows how the implementation failed and succeeded using a case study approach but also offers very practical recommendations for other HR managers to learn and ensure a more successful approach.\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: The playbook for leadership development not only has many pages but also has almost just as many authors. A Google search of the terms provides over 20 million responses, with seemingly almost as many books on the subject. For any large organization, the easy part is deciding on where leadership needs improvements and investment; the difficult part is identifying what the best approach would be and where to find it.\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" } ]
Learning outcomes of a work-based training programme: The significance of managerial support	[ "Transfer of training", "Care work", "Learning outcomes", "Managerial support", "Vocational education and training (VET)", "Work-based training" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This article concerns the further education and training of care workers through a work-based vocational education and training (VET) programme. The purpose is to explore the extent to which first-line managers' (FLMs) attention to and support of the VET programme and the care workers' learning activities influence the learning outcomes of the programme and the transfer of training to the work context.\nPrevious research: As previously mentioned, there are quite a number of empirical studies that indicate the significance of managerial support for the learning outcomes from training (e.g. Baldwin and Ford, 1988; Blume et al., 2010; Burke and Hutchins, 2007). Managerial behaviours that have been found to be positively related to learning outcomes and the positive transfer of training include supportive behaviours, such as following up on and discussing the training and its outcomes, participating in training, providing encouragement, and coaching workers on the use of new knowledge and skills on the job (Burke and Hutchins, 2007). As demonstrated by Clarke (2002), limited opportunities to apply and use new knowledge on the job are a significant impediment to positive transfer of training. Also Lim and Johnson (2002) emphasised that the lack of opportunity for knowledge use following training is an important obstacle to positive transfer of training to the job.\nMethod: The present study was conducted as a multiple-case study of six care units within elder care in a Swedish municipality that had participated in a work-based VET programme financed by the government.\nResults: The results of the study are presented below in three steps relating to the three research questions formulated in the introductory section. First, the learning outcomes of the VET programme are described, as reported by the participants. Second, we describe two main patterns of managerial support that were identified across units. Third, the two patterns of managerial support are analysed in relation to the learning outcomes.\nDiscussion: The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which first-line managers' (FLMs) attention to and support of a work-based VET programme for care workers influenced the learning outcomes of the programme and the transfer of training to the work context.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which first-line managers' (FLMs') support of employee learning activities influence the learning outcomes and the transfer of training from a work-based vocational education and training (VET) programme.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was designed as a multiple-case study including six service units in elder care. Data were collected through interviews with managers and care workers in the six units.\nFindings: The study demonstrated that the role of FLMs was a significant condition for the learning outcomes attained and for positive transfer of training. For care workers to attain benefits from training that went beyond the individual level, that is, benefits at the level of the work team or the organisation, a supportive FLM role appeared to be necessary.\nResearch limitations/implications: The statistical generalisability of the study is limited by its character of a multiple-case study of six work units. At the same time, a strength of the study lies in its potential for analytic generalisations, that is, for identifying and verifying theoretically meaningful patterns across a number of cases.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest a need for management development that promotes a broader understanding of the task as FLM, and, specifically, improved knowledge and skills regarding how to lead and organise learning and development processes in a workplace.\nOriginality/value: Using a qualitative approach, this study adds to the limited knowledge of FLMs' influences on the learning outcomes and the positive transfer from work-based training.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Political entrepreneurship in action research: learning from two cases	[ "Action research", "Organizations", "Entrepreneurs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Organizational change projects are often regarded by those they affect as very important during initial phases, but the focus and interest fades away after a while. A similar phenomenon is well documented in action research projects (Naschold et al., 1993; Norrgren et al., 1997). This study focuses on the insider action researchers' role and activities that enable sustainable action research projects. Insider in this context refers to that the researcher is doing research in the own organization.This study focuses on the role of insider action researchers. As such, the focus is on the process of establishing and maintaining an insider researcher role which enables the researcher to create new knowledge of high relevance to both the academic community and the organization.The study is based on two ongoing action research projects where the authors have played the roles of insider action researchers. In focus are the personal experiences and reflections from 40 months of action research in two organizations. In AstraZeneca, the research has examined the management practices of organizational creativity in new product development and in SIF - a Swedish white-collar labor union - the research project is an important part of the strategic renewal of trade union activities and services.\n2 Theoretical framework: 2.1 A theoretical overview of action research\n3 Research aims: The purpose of this study is to examine insider action researchers' actions and behaviors in relation to political entrepreneurship. The action research literature mainly focuses on the argumentation for the research approach, the usability of the method in different settings, and descriptions of the internal research processes. With few exceptions - such as Coghlan and Brannick (2001) - the importance of creating an enabling research milieu has scarcely been discussed. Such a milieu is enabling in terms of resources, management attention and interest from colleagues and different parts of the organization.The focus in the study is on actions and behaviors enabling durable insider action research projects. The actual roles possessed by the two authors will be discussed from such a perspective, thus focusing on the insider action researcher's role as a political entrepreneur. The resultant section aims at exploring the following issue: what actions and behaviors are likely to enable durability in long-term insider action research projects? A key issue related to the enabling activities will also be discussed: how does the insider action researcher role as enabler/change agent/political entrepreneur relate to the enabling activities?\n4 Methodology: Auto-ethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural (Ellis and Bochner, 2000). Auto-ethnography has become a broad and somewhat blurred term in describing studies and procedures that connect the personal to the cultural. Various methodological strategies have been developed in connection with auto-ethnographic methodology, e.g. self-ethnography (Van Maanen, 1995), personal experience methods (Clandinin and Connelly, 1994) and methodology for close up studies (Alvesson, 1999).The methodology used is inspired by collaborative autobiography (Goldman, 1993), auto-observation (Adler and Adler, 1994), and in particular reflexive ethnography (Ellis and Bochner, 1996). Thus the auto-ethnographic approach used focuses on a culture where the authors use their own experience in the culture(s) reflexively to \"bend backwards\" on the self and look more deeply at self-other interactions (Ellis and Bochner, 2000). The researcher's experiences are in focus using confessional tales (Van Maanen, 1988) of what went on at the backstage of doing research, combined with narratives of the authors experiences, to be incorporated into the description and analysis of others emphasizing the ethnographic dialogue between the two authors and other members (Tedlock, 2000).The empirical starting point is thus the researcher's familiarity with the setting. As insiders, the researchers are potentially better positioned than outsider researchers when it comes to revelation of \"the true story\". However, this approach may be risky, as problems and difficulties of an intellectual and political character may occur. In worst cases, the results may provide no more than personal idiosyncrasies and flattering, \"politically correct\", accounts. Thus the importance of dealing with taken for granted assumptions and blind spots calls for an ambitious struggle with personal and cultural frameworks. One way to cope with difficulties related to the research approach is to avoid \"staying native\" through the use of theories which challenge common sense. In this study, theories of political behavior in organizations may not challenge common sense, but still comprise the introduction of a framework that could bring new perspectives and may confront taken for granted assumptions in the organizations studied as well as traditional organizational theory (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 2).The method used included three stages. The first step was that each author presented case descriptions of the different research studies. The validity of the case descriptions was then assessed by colleagues (two sponsors within each organization and the authors' research tutors) as these have contributed comments on earlier versions. This initial presentation of the cases and findings was organized on two dimensions:1. Framing of the research project. Refers to the inter-organizational alliances that are created during the initial phases of the long-term insider action research projects and to the maintenance and development of these alliances during the duration of the project. Important activities include negotiations, renegotiations, and commitments.2. Executions. Relates to the respective research projects that are conducted within the framework given by the agreement between the insider action researcher, the organization, and the research program.The second step involved a series of sessions in which the researchers cross-interviewed each other based on the different action research studies and case studies. From these sessions, a number of activities and behaviors were categorized into nine actions and behaviors. These research findings were evaluated in respect to the political entrepreneurship skill set provided by Buchanan and Badham (1999) and the ten key power dimensions (Coghlan and Brannick, 2001, pp. 65-9; Greiner and Schein, 1988). During this stage, draft versions of the paper were discussed at different research seminars and ideas and criticism from fellow researchers were used as important contributions.The third and final step - guided by assessments from external reviewers - included further development of findings and analysis in order to clarify the major research contributions from this study. This process resulted in four aspects relevant to political entrepreneurship based on the eight action research projects.\n5 Overview of case descriptions: 5.1 The AstraZeneca case\n6 Results: insider action research actions and behaviors: The research frameworks and projects presented above have been scrutinized by the authors in order to systematize the actions taken and behaviors observed by the insider action researcher. The focus has been on actions and behaviors aimed at attaining required resources (such as obtaining management attention, creating interest among colleagues, the creation and maintenance of legitimacy, and allocating time and financial resources). From the evaluation process, based on the eight action research projects, four features of reflecting activities and behaviors were found as shown in Figure 1.6.1 Finding red-hot issues\n7 Discussion: We have found four important enabling actions and behaviors in the insider action research projects. The next question, therefore, is whether and how these relate to political entrepreneurship. In this section, two perspectives on political entrepreneurship will be adapted to the actions and behaviors discussed. The first relates to the skill set of the political entrepreneur. Buchanan and Badham (1999) propose a number of skills necessary to be able to intervene in the political process.Political entrepreneurship requires the ability to operate in an organization, combining a flexible number of skills in enabling activities such as intervention in the political processes, pushing particular agendas, influencing decisions and decision makers, dealing with criticism and challenge, coping with resistance, and promoting credibility in order to reach objectives or goals. It is evident that each of the actions or behaviors outlined reflecting the eight action research projects has similarities or is in line with the skill set proposed by Buchanan and Badham - and all parts of the skill set has been used by us.How do the four actions or behaviors generated relate to the ten key power relationships described by Coghlan and Brannick (2001) and Greiner and Schein (1988) as shown in Table I? We claim that finding red-hot issues is closely linked to relations with sponsors and executives, with the sponsor's relationship to other executives, and the relationship of executives with each other. Using the inside and using and diffusing results involve a majority of the power relationships described, while positioning the relational platform directly addresses the need associated with managing these relationships. The relations between researchers and sponsors and the sponsors' relationships to other executives have proved to be of specific importance. The utilization of external networks widens the sphere of important relationships further - and is an addition to the ten key power relationships.From our studies, it is evident that the ability to execute political entrepreneurship is a critical success factor in long-term insider action research projects. Thus the political entrepreneurship activities in the examples implies a behavioral repertoire of political strategies and tactics, and a reflective, self-critical perspective on those political behaviors, which in the context of the insider researcher means a pre-understanding of the organization's power structures and politics. This kind of entrepreneurship is needed to enable research conforming to political conditions without compromising the action research projects or the researcher's own career.The absence of references to organizational politics in the action research literature is, in our view, astonishing. The nature of action research is dependent on the ability to perform research within organizations. Thus the action research process and the action research outcome will be more or less influenced by organizational politics. Apart from a few researchers such as Coghlan and Brannick (2001), the importance and relevance of organizational politics, and especially at the actor level (i.e. the action researcher), has been totally neglected in the action research literature.Action research projects are constantly threatened by, but also dependent on, political processes in organizations. Thus it is highly relevant to include the concept of political entrepreneurship to explain and understand political processes so as to avoid pitfalls and exploit possibilities surrounding action research projects. We believe that the concept of political entrepreneurship is of particular importance in conducting and managing long-term action research projects.We suggest that research by insiders as well as outsiders, in action research projects, and in different settings, may provide refinements of the findings and suggestions presented here. The implications for inside action researcher may be suggested as follows:* find red-hot issues for one's research;* use the inside of the organization in the research efforts;* use and diffuse the research results; and* work on the positioning of one's relational platform.Using the inside of the organization in the research and using results may be regarded as core activities in all action research. We argue that these aspects additionally contain an important research project durability dimension, making them even more important than previously stated in the action research literature. Finding red-hot research issues, diffusing results, and positioning of one's relational platform are important aspects to handle during action research projects, and should thus be treated in the action research literature.Managerial implications, or recommendations to client organizations, include a clarifying of the research issues in written contracts, working on their partnerships, ensuring that results are displayed and diffused continuously during the project period, providing the researcher with strong sponsors and selecting an insider with credibility (interpreted as loyalty, organizational knowledge, and acceptance within the organization, useful networks and reputation as a high performer) and recognizing the ability to play the role of a political entrepreneur.\n8 Conclusions: The background of this study was the researchers' perception that action research theory needs to be further developed with respect to factors that facilitate sustainability in action research projects.The study reveals four important enabling actions or behaviors in the cases. These relate to managing resources, management attention and gaining the interest of colleagues and different parts of the organization which emphasize the political dimension in doing insider action research. An important contribution is thus the examination of the character of political entrepreneurship in the studied insider action research projects.We argue that the political dimension in action research theory has been neglected and needs to be developed further. The action researcher's ability to understand and execute political entrepreneurship is an important factor for maintaining a focus and interest in long-term action research projects. Or, to paraphrase Buchanan and Badham (1999): an action researcher with the ability to execute political entrepreneurship is like a car with power-assisted steering - making the journey not only safer but also easier.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To discuss political entrepreneurship as a capability to enable durable insider action research projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The two authors utilize auto-ethnographic methods in order to evaluate and draw inferences from their own actions as insider action researchers. The paper draws on action research theory and theories on political entrepreneurship.\nFindings: - Political entrepreneurship is an important factor behind success or failure in action research projects, but has, despite this, been scarcely discussed in the action research literature. Findings indicate that a political entrepreneurship repertoire consisting of capabilities to find red-hot issues for one's research, to use the inside of the organization in the research efforts, to use and diffuse the research results, and, finally, to work on the positioning of one's relational platform.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study is based upon case studies in two organizations. Its implications may be further developed through studies in a wider array of settings.\nPractical implications: - The study provides valuable knowledge for organizations intending to participate in (insider) action research as well as for (insider) action researchers.\nOriginality/value: - Political entrepreneurship in action research is scarcely discussed in action research theory - and hence the paper addresses an important research gap. Moreover, the presented implications have a certain practical value for organizations and researchers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sales force impact on B-to-B brand equity: conceptual framework and empirical test	[ "Brand equity", "B‐to‐B branding", "Sales force behaviour and personality", "Conceptual framework", "Brands", "Sales force" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The aphorism that \"B-to-B brands have feet\" encapsulates a widely-held belief that the human factor features strongly in business-to-business (B-to-B) marketing. According to many practitioners, it is the personal interaction between buying and selling centres that makes the difference that matters in markets characterised by increasingly commoditised products. It is thus reasonable to assume that the perception of B-to-B brands will be strongly influenced by the quality of personal communication with customers and the emotions that result from human interaction. From this perspective, it is people rather than products who that generate B-to-B brand equity. B-to-B brands, in turn, have been found to be of increasing value in industrial markets (Mudambi, 2002; Ohnemus, 2009).However, marketing scholars have not always taken the importance of B-to-B branding as a given. For instance, Kotler and Pfoertsch (2007, p. 357) have recently observed that, in industrial marketing, \"things are different - branding is not meant to be relevant\". As decision making is widely seen as a predominately rational process (Rosenbroijer, 2001), the emotional aspects of branding are perceived as being inappropriate. Lynch and de Chernatony (2004, p. 403) asserted that \"the limited work on business branding has largely ignored the role of emotion and the extent to which organisational purchasers, like final consumers, may be influenced by emotional brand attributes\". The sales function plays a highly important role in this respect: salespeople do not just explain product features and negotiating prices, they also shape brand perceptions as part of the interpersonal communication process. Clearly, B-to-B brand management must integrate this potential, if it is to fully exploit the positive benefits of branding. Yet the brand-driving capabilities of the sales force have not yet been examined empirically, and are often overlooked in practice.Against this background, we examine the influence of the sales force on brand equity in a B-to-B context.\n2. Literature review and research questions: While there is a long-standing academic interest in personal selling and a quickly growing body of literature on B-to-B brand strategy, no attention has been paid in the literature to the interdependence of these two management disciplines. More specifically, and if B-to-B brands do indeed have feet, it is important to understand how emotions conveyed through the sales function influence brand equity, and the resulting managerial implications.2.1 B-to-B branding\n3. Conceptual framework: 3.1 The sales force and classical marketing as drivers of B-to-B brand equity\n4. Methodology: Based on conceptual framework presented earlier, the empirical study reported next will help to close an important gap in the literature of branding in B-to-B marketing.4.1 Research design\n5. Results: 5.1 Measurement model analysis\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Summary and research-related implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to develop and empirically test a conceptual framework explaining the influence of the sales force on brand equity relative to the product and promotion elements of the marketing mix, in the context of business-to-business marketing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Six research hypotheses, relating to the effects of four key drivers of B-to-B brand equity identified in a review of the relevant literature, were empirically tested with a sample of 201 respondents in B-to-B firms in Germany, using partial least squares analysis.\nFindings: - The results confirm the high relevance of the sales force to the building and maintenance of a strong B-to-B brand. The most important driver of brand equity in this environment is the salesperson's behaviour, followed in sequence by his or her personality, product quality and non-personal marketing communications.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The sample size permits only a general analysis and conclusions. The choice of PLS analysis and formative scales limits the rigorousness of scale and model evaluation. The decision to interview one manager per company may have introduced informant bias.\nPractical implications: - The study identifies controllable variables that are critical to the effective management of a B-to-B brand and offers an alternative approach to the measurement of brand equity in B-to-B marketing.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study to test the widely claimed influence of the sales force on B-to-B brand equity empirically, developing a simple but powerful framework to integrate sales management and brand management in this context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A new typology to characterize Italian digital entrepreneurs	[ "Digital entrepreneurs", "Digital start-up companies", "Policies", "Self-perceptions", "Quantitative survey research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Digital start-up companies (DSCs), that is, new companies that harness technology to improve their performances and customer service through digitalization of business, are widespread and are important in capitalizing on the internet by merging digital technologies, e.g. cloud computing, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence (Hartmann et al., 2016). DSCs are characterized by \"a high intensity of utilisation of new digital technologies to improve business operations, invent new (digital) business models, sharpen business intelligence, and engage with customers and stakeholders through new (digital) channels\" (Ries, 2011). Internet-enabled platforms are the vital component of DSCs business models (Nambisan, 2017) and the DSCs could not feasibly operate without them (Vey et al., 2017). Examples of successful DSCs include Amazon.com which introduced a completely new channel for bookselling, upsetting the existing markets. Airbnb disrupted hotel business by launching a new sharing economy based platform for accommodation hiring. Similarly, Uber changed the game in the taxi business by not owning any taxis. Parker et al. (2016) agree that such platforms consummate matches among producers and consumers and facilitate the exchange of goods, services or social currency, enabling value creation for all through the digital landscape. High dynamism, ability to breakdown the time-to-market, focus on innovation and new technologies and risk tolerance are essential elements of DSCs. Compared to not-digital start-ups, DSCs seem to need less starting funds while the go-to-market strategy is faster to land products in the market (Davidson and Vaast, 2010).\nTheoretical background: In this section we list the four research questions emanating from the literature review. Answering the research questions is fundamental to providing recommendations for policy makers who will be better guided to design bespoke supporting policies. These would be tailored to DEs typology aimed to improve their DSC success and DEs' entrepreneurial satisfaction.\nMethodology: A structured inventory to gather data was developed originally in Italian and later translated using a reverse translation method between English and Italian by language experts. The inventory is a questionnaire divided in two sections. According to Parker (2013), in the first section, respondents are asked to provide personal data (9 items) and data about contextual factors essentially related to characteristics of their DSCs (12 items). Items are in the form of binary, categorical and scale variables. Some of them are potentially important in underlying the \"digital\" traits of the DE while others are more traditional entrepreneurial traits. (see Appendix)\nResults: In this section we report results of the three data analyses providing evidences and answers for each of the research questions.\nDiscussion: Analysis of results let us to answer the four research questions we pose in the theoretical background section.\nConclusion: Our study fills a gap in the literature to better understand the self-perceptions of DEs in relation to their skills and experience and to enhance the successful use of digital entrepreneurship within the Italian context. In this sense, this paper supports the directions of mainstream entrepreneur literature that postulates that individual characteristics and pursued opportunities are at the core of the entrepreneurial process (Davidson and Vaast, 2010; Segal et al., 2005; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Strong agreement in the extant business literature emphasizes that digital developments are key to economic growth internationally. This is in spite of the recorded high levels (up to 50 percent) of failure among digital companies and entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to identify the digital debates in Italy, explore current policies and develop a typology that characterizes digital entrepreneurs (DEs) and their start-up companies in Italy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The digital debates and policies are explored through an extensive telephone survey of the self-perceptions and identified supports required by 348 Italian active DEs. Quantitative statistical techniques were used including factor analysis, cluster analysis and ANOVA, to identify motivations, profiles and critical success factors relevant to the sample.\nFindings: The study identifies three main clusters among the DEs: emerging very young; emerging business focused and experienced. These clusters vary with the entrepreneurs' background and competence base, motivation and satisfaction factors. The different kinds of profiles require specific kinds of supporting policies identified by the sample that focus on financial, educational and/or networking provision.\nOriginality/value: The paper affirms the central role of digital entities in modern economies expressed in the current literature and increases knowledge of the perceived success factors identified by DEs. The identification and classification of self-reported characteristics of Italian DEs and to what extent these characterizations might be useful for tailored interventions to support their success are the main contributions of this study. Accordingly, an authentic, original and self-reported portrayal has been constructed of the self-perceptions of Italian DEs. Finally, the study explores the implications for actions and new policies considering self-perceived profiles, needs and expectations of DEs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring the relationship between leader narcissism and team creativity: Evidence from R&D teams in Chinese high-technology enterprises	[ "Participative decision making", "Team creativity", "Information search effort", "Leader narcissism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In a market environment characterized by constantly changing demand and technology, China's economy has undergone a critical stage of transformation, and innovation has become a new engine for the country's economic development. High-tech enterprises (HTEs) are at the forefront of technology and play an important role in the success of this transformation by providing new technologies, new products or new services. The research and development (R&D) teams at HTEs are crucial for solving technical problems and building a competitive advantage in this innovation-driven economy. Therefore, fostering team creativity has become an important concern in the development of HTEs (Florida and Goodnight, 2005; Rego et al., 2007). HTEs face a competitive and rapidly changing environment, and in such an uncertain environment, individuals with a narcissistic tendency are more likely to become leaders (Brunell et al., 2008). The conditions and capabilities that allow companies to obtain useful resources from outside are especially constrained in a turbulent environment. Narcissistic leaders have higher motivation and creativity (Maccoby, 2000), and the positive image of glamour and self-confidence displayed by narcissistic leaders becomes a source of psychological security for team members to a certain extent. Narcissistic leaders can turn a crisis into an opportunity (Fredberg, 2007), and in a turbulent environment, the positive role of narcissistic leaders is magnified such that organizations need narcissistic leaders (Klimchak et al., 2016). The leader of an R&D team in a high-tech company may display a high level of narcissism. Therefore, research on R&D team leader narcissism is very important. In team-level studies supported by experimental data, narcissists have been found to promote team creativity (Goncalo et al., 2010); however, research on the impact of narcissistic leadership on team creativity is still in the exploratory stage. This paper examines the relationship between narcissistic leadership and team creativity based on attention theory and advances this theory.\n2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses: The concept of narcissism, initially introduced by the psychological literature (Byrne and Worthy, 2013), is a psychological dimension that characterizes all individuals to varying degrees (Grijalva, 2015; Judge et al., 2006). Currently, research on narcissism focuses on its meaning in the context of psychology, organizational behavior, management (Back et al., 2013; Bogart et al., 2004; He and Gu, 2012) and the scale of development (Grijalva and Zhang, 2016). Leader narcissism is mainly reflected in the following three aspects. First, narcissism reflects a typical characteristic that a leader embodies. Through a meta-analysis of 186 examples from the literature, Hoffman et al. (2011) found that effective leadership was related to seven major characteristics, including energetic, dominant, self-confident and charming; all of these characteristics are strongly related to narcissism. Second, individuals who have the narcissistic personality trait usually find it easier to take on leadership positions. For example, Nevicka et al. (2011) found in their experimental study of 56 teams that a narcissistic individual was more likely to be selected as a leader regardless of the type of task (Nevicka et al., 2011). Finally, Brunell et al. (2008) also found that narcissistic individuals were more likely to stand out in a group because they were more confident when expressing their views and were very convincing (Brunell et al., 2008).\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Sample\n4. Conclusions and discussion: Although some research has indicated that the personality traits of leaders may affect team creativity, the role of leader narcissism has been neglected. Furthermore, scholars consider narcissism to be a negative personality trait and have focused on the negative effects of leader narcissism on organizational performance. Early clinical psychology research describes narcissism, Machiavellianism and mental illness as the \"three dark personalities.\" However, with the deepening of narcissism research by personality psychologists, the meaning of narcissism has expanded beyond this negative understanding. Owens et al. (2015) argue that narcissism is a complex and contradictory combination of traits, usually characterized by extreme self-centeredness, self-attraction, extreme self-confidence, a sense of superiority and a strong desire for power. This obsession with power and expectations for appreciation motivate narcissists to take risks, stay on target in adversity, be productive and be charismatic (Maccoby, 2000).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of information search effort on the relationship between leader narcissism and team creativity in China based on attention theory. The paper also explores participative decision making as a moderator in the relationship between team leader narcissism and information search effort.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Through a survey of 667 team members and their team leaders from 96 research and development teams at 23 high-tech enterprises in China with paired samples, cross-time data were collected. Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical regression and path analysis were adopted to analyze the data.\nFindings: This paper found that leader narcissism had a positive impact on team information search effort, thereby promoting team creativity, and the effect of leader narcissism on team information search effort is more positive in the context of high participation in decision making.\nPractical implications: Narcissism should be a noteworthy trait in manager selection and promotion especially for the departments and teams which focus on innovation and creation. And companies should pay attention to the team work processes to ensure that team members have the opportunity to participate in decision making for promoting the team leader's narcissistic \"bright\" side in the institutional environment and avoiding the \"dark\" side.\nOriginality/value: This paper discusses how and when leader narcissism influences team creativity in Chinese high-technology enterprises based on attention theory. This research expands the application of attention theory at the team level.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social semiotics as theory and practice in library and information science	[ "Technology", "Discourse", "Semiotics", "Display", "Screen", "Social semiotics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The fields of LIS and IS are awash in \"conceptual imports,\" to borrow the term used by Frohmann (1994, p. 123) when discussing his own advocacy work for discourse analysis . Such imports necessarily bring their own discursive practices and biases into the information disciplines, as Frohmann explains it, and the changes they impose, or fail to impose, on existing power relationships within these disciplines are worth considering just as much as any methodological or epistemological benefits that they might have on offer. It is with these issues in mind that I carefully make a case in this paper for the incorporation of social semiotics paradigms and practices into information research. Social semiotics, to put it broadly, blends \"traditional\" semiotics - the study of signs as delineated by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce, who were long considered to be the \"co-founders\" of the discipline even though they never actually coordinated their research - with critical theory. In particular, the work of linguistics scholar M.A.K. Halliday, who coined the term \"social semiotics,\" is cited as a major influence. Early advocates of social semiotics - particularly Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress, who co-wrote one of its foundational texts - heavily criticized the work of Saussure and his followers, who they accused of disregarding the socially constructed aspects of meaning with respect to signs and symbols. Whether or not this criticism was justified, social semiotics scholars have built an impressive foundation of research in which they apply their critical methodologies to a wide variety of cultural artefacts. More recent research has also paid particular attention to the idea of \"multimodality\" - that is, the use of a variety of representational structures, such as language, images, and sound, within the same text.\nSemiotics research in LIS and IS: Social semiotics emerged out of semiotics proper, and while it has done much to distance itself from the work of \"classical\" semiotics scholars, I feel that it is necessary to survey this field and to explore the ways in which semiotics has been applied to information research. As we will see, semiotics has featured in important LIS and IS research, though mostly in the field of knowledge organization, and mostly based off of the work of Peirce. This by no means is meant as a criticism of either field; rather, this situation presents an opportunity to bring a new epistemological perspective to areas of research that have so often successfully absorbed new forms of scholarship in the past.\nSocial semiotics - an introduction: Social semiotics emerged as a somewhat antagonistic response to traditional semiotics, with Hodge and Kress serving as its chief polemicists. In their work Social Semiotics, they indicate that they do not intend to \"break with the past,\" but they then state the following about Saussure's work:\nCase study: electronic displays: Social semiotics is a powerful tool precisely because it allows researchers to consider a variety of phenomena under the same rubric. For the purposes of LIS and IS, it enables us to expand on existing research by looking into artefacts and texts that were previously considered to be marginally relevant, if they were considered at all. We can then study more familiar information artefacts and practices from new perspectives, gaining insights to how they function as semiotic resources, and how antecedent resources contributed to the ways in which their semiotic potential has been realized. For the purposes of this case study I will focus on a seemingly essential component of any information technology system: the electronic display, which may also be called the computer display or \"monitor,\" and is often referred to simply as the \"screen.\" The actual screen is, of course, only one component of a display, but it is by far the most relevant for the majority of computer users, in that it serves as the site for activities ranging from word processing to graphic design to gaming. As Lev Manovich (2001) puts it, \"coupled with the computer, the screen is rapidly becoming the main means of accessing any kind of information, be it still images, moving images, or text\" (p. 94). To this list we may add LIS and IS tools such as online public access catalogues (OPACs), article databases, and search engines. Even when we seek out physical media, we generally spend at least some time interacting with screens, and we are increasingly trending towards the use of digital media as researchers, as library patrons, and as consumers.\nAnalysis: It is worth pausing for a moment to inventory our findings. As indicated at the beginning of this case study, we have focussed almost exclusively on one type semiotic of resource: the electronic display, with the pixel grid serving as the primary mechanism by which digital computers produce output on the screen. We noted the ubiquity of the screen in modern digital devices, and inquired as to how this relationship was first established. As part of a larger research effort, I highlighted those displays that I felt were particularly important resources. Taking in the entire history of the display as a whole, we can connect the modern electronic screen with its functional and conceptual antecedents. One of the advantages of using a social semiotics approach here is that we have a significant degree of flexibility with respect to scale. Rather than getting lost in the details of a specific display or computer system, we can maintain a high-level analysis as resources emerge and evolve over the course of several decades.\nLOP: Now that we have gained such valuable insights into how electronic displays act as semiotic resources, it is time to move to Van Leeuwen's third practice: the \"discovery and development of new semiotic resources.\" Is it possible to develop new resources - either hardware of software - that help to overcome the limitations of the electronic display? To narrow our focus to something more manageable, let us focus here solely on search-based applications. This would include modern OPACs, article databases, web search engines, and similar tools. These applications allow users to enter search terms, send search \"requests\" to computer systems, and read the \"results\" of a search from an electronic display (and, when relevant, to connect to web sites and/or electronic documents). While the output data are visible, the actual algorithms used in these searches remain hidden. The display once again serves to legitimize and normalize the user's role as a simple data creator.\nConclusions: This case study was a cursory attempt to cover the major aspects of a social semiotic analysis as defined by Van Leeuwen, and could be expanded upon on a number of fronts. For example, while interactivity was a major theme here, the means by which users are able input data into a given computer system was rarely mentioned. The light pen, which arrives on the scene at a surprisingly early date, is one such tool, but mouse (or touchpad) and keyboard are now more familiar devices. Direct interaction with the screen, however, has made a comeback, with popular consumer products such as smart phones and tablets leading the way. Such devices could easily be treated as semiotic resources, and might possibly exert significant influence with respect to how users perceive information displayed on their screens. In the iPad ad copy discussed earlier, the act of \"touching\" the screen was emphasized. The mouse, meanwhile, serves to emphasize the notion of the screen as a virtual \"desktop,\" particularly if the user is sliding one across their actual desktop. More research would be necessary to expand upon these observations, but such a project could prove to be a valuable compliment to the work on the electronic display that I have showcased here.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Information scholars frequently make use of \"conceptual imports\" - epistemological and methodological models developed in other disciplines - when conducting their own research. The purpose of this paper is to make the case that social semiotics is a worthy candidate to add to the information sciences toolkit.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Both traditional and social semiotics are described in detail, with key texts cited. To demonstrate the benefits social semiotic methods may bring to the information sciences, the digital display screen is then employed as a test case.\nFindings: By treating the display as a semiotic resource, the author is able to demonstrate that, rather than being a transparent window by which the author may access all of the data, the screen actually distorts and conceals a significant amount of information, and severely restricts the control users have over software packages such as online public access catalogues. A programming paradigm known as language-oriented programming (LOP), however, can help to remedy these issues.\nOriginality/value: The test case is meant to provide a framework by which other information sciences issues may be explores via social semiotic methods. Social semiotics, moreover, is still evolving as a subject matter, so IS scholars could also potentially contribute to its continued development with their work.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How do government regulations and policies respond to the growing online-enabled transportation service (OETS) in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan?	[ "Regulation", "Platform", "Sharing economy", "Transportation network company", "Online-enabled transportation service (OETS)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Mobility is crucial in any society, making the transportation industry one of the most in-demand markets. Recently, commotion has revolved around the \"online-enabled transportation service (OETS)\" that connects drivers with potential customers who request a ride. The internet-based digital technology application provides services by connecting available registered vehicles with registered customers who request rides. The service providers who provide this type of application and facilitate this new type of transportation service are referred to by many jurisdictions globally as transportation network companies (TNCs) (Goodin and Moran, 2016).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Technological innovation and the sharing economy\n3. Research findings: 3.1 Transformation of regulations in Indonesia\n4. Discussion: 4.1 Timing\n5. Conclusion: Based on the study of three countries, it is found that the policy responses to the sharing economy in the taxi sector are incremental and trial-error-based policy. Based on how their respective transportation policies evolved, it can be concluded that the way the Governments of Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan responded to the growing OETS is similar to what the city governments in Europe do in addressing issues related to the sharing economy particularly in the cases of the Taxi and hotel industries. As it is the main task of governments to make regulations, governments around the world need to address with regulation issues the four broad challenges of the sharing economy:\n6. Limitation: This paper only analyzed the government regulatory policies of the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan in addressing the challenges brought about by OETS. This paper has not addressed the policy issues the relationship between driver and platform companies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore the dynamic context of the sharing economy in the transportation sector. This paper looks into the development of government regulations on the growing business of transportation network companies in Indonesia, the Philippines (represented as middle-income countries) and Taiwan (high-income country). How do government regulations and policies respond to the growing online-enabled transportation service (OETS) in Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan?\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is qualitative-comparative research. Data on the transportation sector of each country have been gathered from reputable online sources.\nFindings: Authors found evidence that the policy responses made by the Governments of Indonesia, Philippines and Taiwan to the sharing economy in the transportation sector are incremental and trial-error based policies.\nResearch limitations: This paper has not addressed the policy issues' relationship between driver and platform companies.\nPractical implications: The future of the relationship between sharing firms and local governments suggests that the focus should be on stronger consumer protections, deeper economic redistribution and achievement of other policy aims (Rauch and Schleicher, 2015).\nOriginality/value: This is a comparative study on different levels of economy, particularly between low- or middle-income and high-income country.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Corporate heritage brands, augmented role identity and customer satisfaction	[ "China", "Customer satisfaction", "Brand management", "Corporate branding", "Heritage tourism", "Corporate heritage brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? This is the evocative title of Paul Gauguin's (1848-1903) largest and most celebrated painting. As a work of art, it not only has an iconic but also has a philosophical quality. Both visually and metaphysically, Gauguin's canvas addresses - in visual terms - three profound philosophical questions relating to time. Philosophical issues are not always uppermost in artists' minds, and this is sometimes the case among marketing scholars too. Yet, marketing can be seen as a philosophy and one in which time is accorded prominence and can be of the utmost import. Time has a heightened role in both corporate marketing (Balmer and Greyser, 2006) and corporate heritage marketing contexts (Balmer, 2013), where considerable import is accorded to the past, present and prospective future.\nOmni-temporality: a missing dimension of marketing thought?: Reflecting further on the past, present and future as per Gauguin's aforementioned magnum opus, some scholars may deduce that, to date, some marketing scholarship has been narrowly conceived. Thus, the extant marketing canon - for all its considerable strength and utility - sometimes perceives the field through a somewhat narrow lens in terms of:\nResearch objectives and significance: An under-researched aspect of the corporate heritage/corporate heritage brand field relates to customer attractiveness, and this preliminary study has customers as its focus. To reiterate, this preparatory study explores the importance and impact of TRT's corporate heritage brand and, in addition, its imperial augmented role identity vis-a-vis enhancing the company's extant corporate brand reputation in terms of customer satisfaction. In theoretical terms, the research seeks to validate the significance of both corporate heritage and the attendant theoretical notion of augmented role identity. The insights from this small-scale preliminary study should be regarded as provisional, but it is hoped that the findings will shed light on an under-explored field of corporate marketing scholarship, and as such, this study is an appropriate focus for an EJM commentary.\nThe Tong Ren Tang traditional Chinese medicine company (founded in 1669): Today, TRT is arguably the most world's most celebrated traditional Chinese medicine corporate heritage brand. Moreover, it is arguably China's most celebrated corporate heritage entity, both within China and among the Chinese diaspora. The firm has branches throughout the Middle Kingdom, as well as having a strong global presence. TRT is engaged in the production and retailing of pharmaceutical products. It also provides (private) medical consultations and runs hospitals. In 2005, in a national poll run by Chinese Television, the firm was voted as China's favourite brand.\nCorporate heritage brands and augmented role identity: The foundational work on corporate heritage brands (Balmer et al., 2006; Urde et al., 2007) presaged the formal introduction of the corporate heritage identity notion (Balmer, 2011c). Corporate heritage identities are meaningful not only because they are imbued with perennial corporate identity traits but also because they are invested with \"multiple role identities\" or \"augmented role identities\" (Balmer, 2013).\nMethodology: Because the TRT corporate heritage brand phenomenon has not previously been accessible to scientific investigation, this preliminary study is akin to a critical case study (Yin, 1994). Indicative research - in very general terms - utilises a mixed method approach to data collection, and the utility of this approach has been advanced by a number of authorities (Tashakkori and Teddlier, 2003; Hanson and Grimmer, 2007; Lee and Lings, 2008; Bryman, 2008).\nFindings: Structural equation modelling was used for this pilot study to test the conceptual framework (Table I). The fit indexes (l2 (59) = 86.99, p < 0.01, CMIN/DF = 1.474, GFI = 0.904, CFI = 0.919, RMSEA = 0.065) suggested a good fit with the data. The analysis followed the three-step regression procedure proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) and as such examined the mediating role of TRT company heritage and augmented imperial heritage between corporate reputation and customer satisfaction.\nManagement implications: In the opening of this commentary, reference was made to Paul Gauguin's (1848-1903) painting titled: \"Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?\" The momentous questions relating to time contained in this title resulted in Gauguin's execution of the subject on a large canvas. Arguably, too, corporate marketing managers should more often than they do consider a larger canvas when addressing issues of temporality in marketing thought. It seems probable that many organisations fail to realise that they are invested with an inimitable and valuable corporate heritage and that they can be strategic assets of considerable importance. Of course, as previously noted, corporate marketing as a philosophy and the nascent corporate heritage domain are informed by an omni-temporal perspective (Balmer and Greyser, 2006; Balmer, 2011c, 2013).\nReflection: This indicative study has demonstrated the significance and added-value effect of a corporate heritage brand augmented role identity vis-a-vis customer satisfaction. Interestingly, this study found TRT's augmented imperial role identity to be highly significant in terms of customer satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The study aims to explore customer satisfaction towards the celebrated Tong Ren Tang (TRT) Chinese corporate heritage brand (established in 1669). This paper examines the multiple role identities of the corporate brand and, in particular, the enduring imperial identity (role identity) of the corporate brand. The study examines whether the corporate heritage brand's imperial associations are still meaningful.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A indicative, survey-based case study methodology undertaken with Chinese customers informs this research.\nFindings: TRT's corporate heritage brand identity and, moreover, its imperial role identity were salient in terms of customer satisfaction. TRT's augmented imperial role identity not only was highly salient but also, moreover, meaningfully enhanced the organisation's corporate reputation in terms of customer satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implication: This study lends further support for the utility of the notion of corporate heritage/corporate heritage brands and in particular the saliency of the theoretical notion of augmented role identity within the corporate heritage marketing field.\nPractical implication: Corporate heritage brand managers should be appraised of which corporate role identities are meaningful for customers. At a practical level, senior corporate marketing managers of corporate heritage organisations should accorded importance to the additional P of Provenance apropos the corporate marketing mix.\nSocial implication: At a time, when China is reappraising its relationship with its past - including its imperial past (of which much has been destroyed) - this paper's focus on TRT's unsurpassed augmented role identity is pertinent and propitious. Seemingly, this corporate heritage brand's imperial association provides a living and tangible link with China's long and momentous imperial provenance and erstwhile imperial polity. In short, the corporate heritage brand is part of China's patrimony and enjoys a unique place in this regard.\nOriginality/value: This paper is one of the first empirical studies examining a Chinese corporate heritage brand entity. The study marks new ground in examining customer satisfaction from the theoretical perspectives of corporate heritage brand and augmented role identity. It is believed that this is the first study to consider corporate heritage in the pharmaceutical sector and marks new ground in considering the saliency of China's imperial legacy on an extant, highly successful and high profile-Chinese corporate heritage brand.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
CFO financial expertise and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from S&P 500 companies	[ "CFO financial expertise", "Corporate social responsibility", "Chief executives", "Social responsibility", "Financial reporting" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Prior empirical work has explored the value of the chief financial officer's (CFO) financial expertise and its impact on performance and reporting. For example, Aier et al. (2005) find that CFO financial expertise is associated with a lower probability of financial restatement. In another study, Li et al. (2008) find that CFOs who are certified public accountants are more capable of correcting internal control problems. They also find that hiring a CFO who is a CPA increases the probability of receiving a clean opinion in the year following a company's adverse SOX 404 opinion on internal control quality. Ge et al. (2008) find that older, more experienced CFOs select more conservative financial reporting choices.CFOs with financial expertise have the competencies needed to identify and resist rationalizing inappropriate reporting. CFOs can easily find themselves under pressure to misreport results[1]. Feng et al. (2008) show that many CFOs are involved in earnings manipulation because they succumb to pressure from the CEO. Guan et al. (2005) find that CFO resignation is associated with income-increasing accruals in the year of resignation. They suggest that when asked by top management to alter earnings reports, many CFOs resign rather than comply. Financial expertise becomes a valuable resource in the face of these pressures since those with a greater understanding of accounting are better equipped with the knowledge and skills to refuse requests to misreport.Despite the obvious impact of the CFO on the financial statements of a company, there is limited evidence on whether and how a CFO's personal characteristics affect corporate social responsibility[2] (CSR) activities. Indeed, empirical research on the link between CFO characteristics and CSR is still scarce. Anecdotal evidence (Kuehn, 2010) suggests a shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co-driver of a firm's long-term strategy, which includes economic, social, and environmental issues, in the wake of the global recession. This role shift implies that a CFO should focus not only on financial performance but other performance dimensions (e.g. CSR) of a company as well.In this study, we posit that the shift in role may cause CFOs to engage in more CSR activities since CSR is important to a firm's long-term success. Consistent with prior studies, we measure the personal characteristics of a CFO in three dimensions: experience, education and professional expertise. This paper explores the association between CFO financial expertise and CSR. Our sample consists of firms from the 2005 S&P 500 index. Data on CSR comes from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD), Inc. We hand-collected data on CFO financial expertise. Consistent with prior research, we use experience (tenure), education (masters of business administration degree), and professional experience (certified public accountant designation) to measure the CFO's financial expertise. We find that CFO experience (tenure) is positively associated with CSR at a significant level but CSR is not significantly associated with a CFO's MBA or CPA credentials. Our findings suggest that CFOs with longer tenure are more likely to engage in CSR activities than those with shorter tenure. It appears that, among the three CFO expertise variables, only tenure may play an important role in CSR.Our study is valuable for several reasons: first, our study contributes to both the CSR literature and the CFO financial expertise literature by delivering new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and CSR. Second, our study provides useful information to boards of directors, corporations and investors on certain CFO characteristics associated with effective CSR. Third, our study provides empirical evidence to support the suggested shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co-driver of a firm's long-term strategy.The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes our research design, including the measurement of primary variables and empirical specification. Section 3 describes sample selection and descriptive statistics, while Section 4 reports the results from regression analysis. Section 5 summarizes the study.\n2 Research design: 2.1 Measurement of the primary independent variable - CFO financial expertise\n3 Sample selection and descriptive statistics: Our sample selection process began with the 500 firms from the 2005 S&P 500 index. We focus on bigger firms because data on CFO personal characteristics is more readily available than for smaller firms. We gathered financial expertise data from several sources. We used firm 10-Ks (annual reports submitted to the SEC) to identify the name of the principal financial officer who certified each firm's financial report and the number of years the officer had been the CFO[3]. Only a small number of sample firms disclosed the CFO's educational background and professional certifications in their 10-Ks or proxy statements. We collected this data from other sources in these cases, including the Reference Book of Corporate Management released by Dun and Bradstreet, Who's Who in Finance and Business, profiles on company web sites, press releases, and other sources such as Business Week online.We merged our data on CFO expertise with KLD's CSR data and Compustat's financial data. Our final sample consists of 258 firms with complete data. Panel A of Table I reconciles the initial 500 S&P index firms to our final 258 sample firms. Panel B presents the industry distribution of the sample. For instance, 171 firms are in manufacturing and six are in construction.Table II presents descriptive statistics for sample firms. The mean social responsibility index score is -0.06, with a standard deviation of 3.52. The average CFO tenure is 4.16 years. On average, 55 percent of CFOs have MBA degrees, and 69 percent of CFOs have CPA certifications. The average asset age is 0.49, and the mean leverage ratio is 0.20.Table III presents the Pearson correlation matrix. We expect our CFO expertise variables to be positively associated with the social responsibility index score (KLD score). The CFO experience variable (tenure) shows the best correlation results with our CSR variable (KLD). CFO TENURE is significantly positively associated with the KLD score with a p-value of 0.0104. KLD is positively associated with MBA with a p-value of 0.4377, and is negatively associated with CPA with a p-value of 0.8190.Additional results indicate that size (measured by total assets, TA) is significantly positively associated with MBA, suggesting that larger companies prefer CFOs with MBA degrees.KLD is significantly positively associated with ASSETAGE with a p-value of 0.0004, suggesting that firms with younger assets demonstrate better CSR performance than firms with older assets. KLD is significantly negatively associated with LEV with a p-value of 0.0059, suggesting that firms with a lower leverage ratio have better CSR performance than firms with a higher leverage ratio.\n4 Results: Table IV shows regression reports for the association between KLD scores (KLD) and CFO financial expertise variables, including CFO TENURE, MBA, and CPA. Three separate regression tests reveal that KLD score (KLD) is positively (0.1296) associated with CFO tenure at a significant level (p=0.0081). KLD score (KLD) is positively (0.0832) associated with MBA and negatively (-0.2414) associated with CPA at an insignificant level (p=0.8478; p=0.5949), respectively. The above evidence suggests that, among the three CFO expertise variables, only tenure may play an important role in CSR. Results from the joint regression confirm the above findings, with KLD scores (KLD) positively and significantly associated with CFO tenure. Our results suggest that CFOs with more experience are more likely to participate in CSR activities.Additional results in Table IV reveal a significantly positive association between ASSETAGE and KLD. This finding suggests that firms with younger assets demonstrate better CSR performance than firms with older assets. This association between CSR and the age of long-term assets is consistent with the findings in Cochran and Wood (1984). One explanation is that firms with older assets may simply be less socially responsive than firms with younger assets. Specifically, managers of firms with younger assets are more likely to engage in CSR activities than managers of firms with older assets.Another explanation is that firms with older assets may have built plants or purchased equipment at a time when regulatory constraints were less severe than they are today. For example, government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now impose tougher environmental regulations on companies. Thus, firms with younger assets can deal with tougher regulations better than firms with older assets, since younger/newer assets may have already been designed to meet regulatory requirements. Firms with older assets may need to spend more funds to upgrade their facilities to satisfy regulatory mandates.Table IV also reveals a significantly negative relationship among KLD, LEV and ROE. This suggests that:* firms with lower risk (LEV) demonstrate stronger CSR performance (KLD); and* firms engaging in CSR activities have lower returns (ROE).In Table IV, a marginally significant and positive relationship between KLD and MTB suggests that firms with stronger CSR performance (KLD) are more highly valued by the market, consistent with prior research.\n5 Conclusion: This paper examines the relationship between CFO financial expertise and CSR. We use CFO experience, education and professional expertise to measure different dimensions of CFO financial expertise and propose that CFO financial expertise is positively associated with CSR. In our sample of 258 S&P firms, we find significant support for a positive link between CSR and CFO experience. Our findings suggest that CFOs with long tenure are more likely to engage in their firm's CSR activities.Our study has its limitations. First, our sample consists only of firms from the S&P 500 index. Future studies may use a larger sample. Next, our study does not categorize the MBA variable based on an institution's quality level. For example, an MBA degree from Harvard may be valued differently by shareholders than an MBA degree from a less prestigious university.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between a chief finance officer's (CFO's) financial expertise and corporate social responsibility (CSR).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper's sample consists of firms from the 2005 S&P 500 Index. Data on CSR come from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD), Inc. Data on CFO financial expertise were had collected. Consistent with prior research, experience (tenure), education (masters of business administration degree), and professional experience (certified public accountant designation) are used to measure the CFO's financial expertise.\nFindings: - Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2005, it is found that CFO experience (measured by tenure) is positively related to CSR at a significant level. In addition, the results indicate that CSR activities are not related to the CFO's education (measured as a Master's of Business Administration degree) or accounting expertise (measured as certified public accountant designation). The findings suggest that CFOs with more experience engage in more CSR activities than CFOs with less experience.\nOriginality/value: - This study is valuable for several reasons: First, the study contributes to both the CSR literature and the CFO financial expertise literature by delivering new evidence on the link between CFO financial expertise and corporate social responsibility. Second, the study provides useful information to boards of directors, corporations and investors on certain CFO characteristics associated with effective CSR. Third, the study provides empirical evidence to support the suggested shift in the CFO's role from accountant to co-driver of a firm's long-term strategy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The use of health risk scores and classification in food service: An experience in Baixada Santista's public schools - Brazil	[ "Schools", "Food safety", "Risk assessment", "Food service", "Food handler", "Hygiene" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One of the most important public policies of the Brazilian federal government to ensure the health of the population is the provision of school meals, through the NSFP (National School Feeding Program). The program began in 1955 and over the years changes have occurred in its management until it was established, in 1979, as the NSFP. Currently this program provides, through transfer of financial resources, the food supply for all students (from day care centres, elementary schools, high schools and general education for youth and adults) enrolled in public and philanthropic schools in Brazil (National Education Development Fund, 2011).\nMaterial and methods: Study design\nResults and discussion: A total of 59 school foodservices were evaluated and 136 food handlers were interviewed. The score used in this study ranges from zero (all inspection items were inadequate) to 232. The mean value (SD) of health score was 168.3 (17.4). Table I shows the distribution of schools and day care centres according to the classification of health risk.\nConclusions: School meal services in Baixada Santista have shown weaknesses in GMP, especially regarding hand hygiene and pest control. Over half of the school meal services were classified as \"average health risk\", failing to comply with Brazilian legislation on food safety rules.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the good manufacturing practices in meal services in public schools and day care centres in Baixada Santista, Brazil using a health risk classification.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 59 public schools and day care centres in nine municipalities of Baixada Santista - Brazil were randomly selected. The sanitary conditions were evaluated by applying a validated checklist specific to school meal service. The questions were scored according to the health risks detected. A percentage of conformity to good manufacturing practices was calculated, than schools and day care centres were classified according to health risk in relation to the scores obtained for each thematic area addressed in the checklist and in relation to the overall score.\nFindings: It was observed that 62 per cent of the schools were classified as average health risk failing to comply with Brazilian legislation on food safety rules. The thematic areas that showed lower percentage of conformity to good manufacturing practices were: hand hygiene (33.9 per cent), pest control (3.4 per cent), food handlers (62.4 per cent) and food hygiene (65.4 per cent). The school meal service of day care centres presented higher conformity in the hand hygiene (p<0.01) and the environmental sanitation (p<0.05) than elementary schools.\nPractical implications: The data observed in our study highlight the need of an effective system to monitor and evaluate the hygienic sanitary conditions in Brazil. The implementation of HACCP system may be an option with good potential to produce safer meals in school environment, nevertheless, the prerequisite program must be implemented first. Professionals with expertise in food safety can act as consultants to the school meal service and may use the data from this study as a benchmark for interventions.\nOriginality/value: This paper contain new information related the state food safety practices of Brazilian school meal service. It also presents the use of scores to determine risk. The use of health risk is a novel way to evaluate the food safety practices in school meals facilitating the implementation of corrective measures.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Institutional change and the multinational change agent: A study of the temporary staffing industry in Spain	[ "Institutional change", "Industry identity", "Temporary work industry", "Multinational companies", "Multinational organizations", "Spain" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Recent theorizing in institutional research has shown that institutional environments are far from stable. In examining change, institutional theorists have mostly reported a process where change is initiated by local actors, either core (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006) or peripheral (Maguire et al., 2004). While some scholars have examined transnational fields (Djelic and Quack, 2008); not many have focused the specific role of foreign or multinational actors in initiating change. Also, while international management scholars have applied institutional theory to the study of multinational corporations (MNCs), they have adopted a rather narrow view of institutional theory (Kostova et al., 2008), drawing almost exclusively from neo-institutionalism and focusing mainly on issues such as isomorphism, legitimacy and compliance with institutional pressures (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991).\nTheoretical base: The paradox of embedded agency or how actors engage in agentic behavior despite institutional constraints has been a central concern for institutional scholars. Scholars have drawn up various explanations of why actors revise or reenact their behavioral scripts when actions and thoughts are constantly constrained by existing institutional systems (Beckert, 1999; Holm, 1995; Greenwood and Hinings, 1996; Seo and Creed, 2003). At times, change in organizational fields can be triggered by exogenous factors, such as landmark events, technological changes, economic shocks and social upheavals (Hargadon and Douglas, 2001; Hoffman, 1999), and at others by endogenous ones, such as changing internal values and conflicts (Greenwood et al., 2002; Seo and Creed, 2003).Whatever the source of change, it is actors who stabilize and destabilize an organizational field as they struggle over resources, stakes and access and depart from the comfort zone of institutionalized routines (Bourdieu, 1990). An organizational field represents an intermediate level between organizations and society and is a useful level of analysis for examining processes by which socially constructed expectations and practices become disseminated and reproduced (Scott, 1994). By incorporating network, cultural and historic elements, \"inter-organizational fields provide a fruitful context for tracing and interpreting the process of change in institutional practices\" (Leblebici et al., 1991, p. 333). The field typically embodies all relevant actors - firms, organizations, intermediaries, consumers and the state - that interact directly or indirectly through exchange, competition and collaboration. Studying an organizational field brings into attention the context in which various actors exist and evolve, highlighting both micro-level organizational processes and macro-level field dynamics.In explaining institutional change, most scholars invoke the role of purposeful change agents, often described as institutional entrepreneurs who are seen to lead the way forward through purposeful and artful exploitation of institutional contradictions and exercise of praxis (Benson, 1977; DiMaggio, 1988; Seo and Creed, 2003). Institutional entrepreneurs are change agents that \"spearhead collective attempts to infuse new beliefs, norms, and values into social structures\" (Rao et al., 2000, p. 240). These actors can be those at the core of an organizational field - powerful incumbents (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006) - or those at the periphery - marginal outsiders (Hensmans, 2003). Yet, actors, whether core or peripheral operating in a particular field or society are often bound by existing norms values and rules as they attempt to mobilize alternative institutional logics to serve their interest (Friedland and Alford, 1991), and bring diverse, or even incompatible schema to new contexts (Sewell, 1992).What is the role of transnational actors such as MNCs in institutional change? Considering the role of MNCs in field transformation draws attention to two important issues. First, as foreign actors, they may be relatively less bound by local field constraints. For instance, transnational organizations entering a new host environment to develop novel practices have been argued to be relatively less constrained by local norms, values and rules (Kostova et al., 2008; Morgan and Kristensen, 2006). These actors often operate simultaneously in several markets across the world and straddle multiple organizational fields. In an era of globalization and the rise of deregulation and marketization of many sectors across the world, transnational organizations have assumed increasing importance as agents of change as they attempt to introduce and diffuse novel practices in different environments. Operating across several fields, these organizations can transpose a set of practices from one institutional environment, where they are seen as \"normal\" to another, where there are relatively novel (Sanders and Tuschke, 2007). Furthermore, many of these transnational organizations command massive resources and influence, at times larger than some national economies that place them at an advantage in developing and diffusing change in the host environment. From this perspective, transnational organizations seem to be better placed to introduce and diffuse change than home organizations more constrained by local norms, values and rules.In addition, high visibility and the political support many MNCs tend to command seem to go hand in hand with a relatively ambitious and sometimes overoptimistic change agenda. This can at times, ignite resistance from key constituents in contested host terrains (Fiss and Zajac, 2004), as well as experimentation from local actors engaging in exploring the possibilities of the novel practice (both as producers and users) (Colomy, 1998). As they attempt to bring about change, the MNCs are likely to confront institutional complexity, contradictions, and \"institutional voids\" (Khanna and Palepu, 2000). MNCs operate in a liminal space, where the new institutional context emerges from the confrontation of the global and the local (Frenkel, 2008), developing relevant political and social systems, and product, labor and capital markets. Institutional voids may represent an opportunity space for actors seeking change, yet lack of adequate institutional infrastructure may also impede the development and diffusion of novel practices, and, in case of high-profile large-scale ambitions, create unexpected systemic dynamics affecting the change process. To sum, transnational organizations have both advantages and disadvantages in introducing and diffusing change in host environments. Given that change may be high profile, relatively large-scale and rapid, how does this process play out?\nMethod: Research context: temporary staffing industry in Spain\nCase findings: Growing tensions leading to the 1994 legalization\nDiscussion and contribution: Our evaluation of the Spanish context shows how contextual developments shape shifting configurations of markets at multiple levels, as transnational agencies attempt to maintain legitimacy, adapt to new competitive rules, and rethink their role as economic and social agents. The case of the establishment of the temporary work industry in Spain shows how multinational organizations' attempts to develop new practices were influenced by several stakeholders. It highlights some of the challenges that MNCs encounter when they engage in ambitious high-profile change projects in local contexts that differ from those where they operated earlier.Some large MNCs had entered the market at a very early stage, in what was an economic grey zone of activities, establishing an industry association (GEESTA) and drawing upon the international industry association (CIETT) to introduce TAW to Spanish regulators in 1992. In 1994, government legalized TAW as a practice that could contribute to solving economic and labor market problems in Spain.On the one hand, our case thus shows the special or privileged position that MNCs can assume in institutional change. However, while the international TWA industry brought extensive experience and even some form of local legitimacy (provided by the dominant elite institutional actors, usually the national government) to bear in this process, our study also shows the challenges of high profile, large-scale and rapid change led by MNCs. Such change needs to be carefully managed as unanticipated developments and resistance can end up derailing the change process (Khan et al., 2007). Our case highlights three dynamics affecting the success of a project: control of undesirable activities, the need for concerted effort, and the redefinition of practices by other actors.Controlling undesirable activities\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in local institutional change. To what extent do multinational organizations help or hinder change, in particular new industry creation?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents a qualitative case study examining the role of multinational temporary work agencies in the development of temporary agency market in Spain.\nFindings: - The authors find that while multinational firms were less constrained by the norms, values and logics of the home environment, they also encountered specific challenges in the implementation of new practices. First, high-profile introduction of a novel practice requires checks and balances to manage unanticipated developments, such as undesirable activities by opportunistic actors that may derail the change process. Second, rapid growth is not conducive to concerted efforts at industry level, leaving the public identity of the institutional innovation extremely vulnerable. Third, high-profile change is also vulnerable to redefinition of the practice through misinterpretation or misuse by inexperienced users.\nPractical implications: - The findings highlight the interaction between global and local actors in the development of a novel market and the main findings provide three concrete aspects of the change process that need to be carefully monitored in processes of MNC-driven institutional change.\nOriginality/value: - MNCs have been argued to be important agents of change in an organizational field as they are less bound by the norms, values and logics of any particular institutional environment. The authors' analysis shows how this disconnectedness of MNCs can also hinder the change effort in three important ways.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The archetype of excellence in universities and TQM	[ "History", "Business excellence", "Total quality management", "Universities" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and paper objectives: Universities have always been primary actors in the creation and utilization of knowledge. Since, the age of Plato in ancient Athens, where people enchanted by the mysteries of life and nature, gathered in Academia and under a strong bond discussed a variety of issues, until the birth of the first European university in Bologna (end of the eleventh century) (Bowden and Marton, 1998) and even today, the pursuit for objective and scientifically documented knowledge along with the need for individual and social development, continue to permeate the idea of higher education. The university aims:* at transmitting scientifically documented knowledge through teaching;* at advancing science through research; and* at engaging in economic development, social prosperity and progress.The challenges that universities face (e.g. the need for accountability, the focus on the economic perspective of higher education and funding related issues, the appearance of new types of higher education institutions, the globalization and increasing competition among universities, university networking activities, the diversification of student body (Duderstadt, 1997; Middlehurst, 2001; Thorens, 1996; Privateer, 1999; Newman and Couturier, 2001; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000; Enders, 1999; Gibbons et al., 1994; De Boer et al., 2002), and the pursuit of quality in mission attainment mark out excellence (to the degree it can be achieved) as a basic objective, a reference criterion and a seal of efficient and effective university management and operation.In bibliography, there are many articles written regarding excellence in higher education (Ho and Wearn, 1996; Badri and Abdulla, 2004; Hides et al., 2004; Osseo-Assare et al., 2005; Badri et al., 2006; Sadiq-Sohail and Shaikh, 2004; Calvo-Mora et al., 2006), prizes (Baldridge Award, European Quality Award) have been established for institutions that attain high performance level in specific dimensions and roadmaps to excellence have been suggested. The reason for all these developments has been the quality management school of thought and the discussion/research on its implementation in the university context (taking into consideration the aforementioned higher education challenges and the significance of quality). However, the concept of excellence is not something recently discovered; it is synonymous with exceptional/absolute quality, it is based (as quality does) on the idea of \"good\" it embraces \"good\" and is a basic presupposition for it in a dynamic circle.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present the content of excellence through the parchments of the ancient Hellenic Philosophy and its application in the university context. Further on, the meaning of excellence (aristeia) is presented and is compared with the main concept and principles of total quality management (TQM), which is considered as a management philosophy that can lead an organization to excellence.The archetype and the three hypostases of excellence\nThe evolution of excellence and its application in universities: In the organizational context, excellence is a framework that offers systemic view, asks for high engagement of human resources, enables self improvement and evolution and thus it contributes to constant change and conformance to new situations through quality monitoring at each stage and every process of the organization. From the management perspective, excellence acquired different meanings according to the dominating school of thought each time, as shown in Table I. It has to be noted, that the categorization of the different management schools has been based on the work of Hermel and Ramis-Pujol (2003).The Classical Management School of Thought (Taylor, Fayol, Weber, Mintzberg, etc.) (nineteenth and early twentieth century) focused mainly on efficiency, organizational hierarchy, productivity, managerial tasks, work division and the principles of management and it paid little attention to behavioural issues, the social needs of the employees and their interactions (Daft, 2006). Excellence is being presented as the result of the aforementioned factors and is dominated by scientific decision making, implementation of time and motion studies, standardization, objectives setting, incentives, individual instead of team working, employee training, careful selection of personnel and shorter working hours (Chytiris, 2005).From the 1920s and later on, management professionals concentrated their attention on the social dimension of work. They emphasized on interpersonal relations, on the needs of employees and the informal power relations within organizations. The Behavioural Management School of Thought (Mayo, Herzberg, Maslow, etc.) contributed successfully in identifying the significance of human resources and in understanding that management systems should combine the operational/technical and the human dimension of organizations (Chytiris, 2005). So, excellence according to this school of thought meant emphasis on the human element and the motivation of workers by aligning their needs with the organization of work.In the beginning of 1950, it occurred to management professionals and theoreticians that business problems have multiple facets and their solution should be presented within a dynamic frame. A new holistic perspective of the organizations (as a system) was necessary that would take into account all dimensions and consequences of a problem and the results of a suggested solution in every department/division of the organization. The socio-technical school of thought attempted to solve problems related to the combination of structures and human behaviour. Excellence, according to Hermel and Ramis-Pujol (2003), results from the enrichment of tasks and the implications of the actors in defining the socio-technical organizational environment (under a dynamic perspective).The structural/systems management school of thought (during the 1950s) considers the organization as a whole. Excellence according to the structural/systems school of thought is based on a combination of hard sciences and management theory and the balance and harmony among functional relationships of the departments of an organization resulting from a consensus on the dominating organizational values.Further, on the neo-classical school adopted a synthetic approach to excellence. Excellence results from merging the teachings of the classical school with those of the behavioural school. Finally, the sociological school has suggested that excellence can be the result of analysis of organizational actors, their behaviours' and the importance of power, in the sense that they constitute important elements that drive an organization towards its development and advancement and hence, they can lead to excellence.The ideas of Edwards Deming (1900-1993) and the appearance of the TQM School of Thought had been followed by significant changes in the management of different types of organizations worldwide and extensive research activity regarding all aspects of TQM.Since, the 1980s, a lot of models/frameworks for excellence have been suggested. Starting with the McKinsey 7s model (developed by Peters and Waterman in 1980) according to which, an organization consists of seven elements, namely the hard elements (strategy, structure and systems) and the soft elements (style/culture, staff, skills, shared values/superordinate goals). The 7s model suggest that an organization in order to be effective, it should achieve a fit between the aforementioned elements. In 1981, Pascale and Athos underlined the importance of taking into consideration the human element and values that would help in the creation of a guiding vision, factors that were considered necessary for excellence. Peters and Waterman (1982), using the 7s model as an input in their book \"In search of excellence\" suggested that excellent organizations should pay attention to the hard and soft elements and their interaction and underlined the fact that excellent companies present the strengths of innovation, an ability to change and leadership that excels through their vision and values. Three years later, in 1985, Peters and Austin on \"The passion for excellence\" suggested that excellent organizations base their success on people, care of their customers, constant innovation and leadership through management by wandering around). In 1988, Peters pointed out that excellent organizations are those who strive for constant improvement and constant change through high value added, quality and flexibility.Two years later (in 1990) as Dahlgaard and Dahlgaard-Park (2005) present, Xerox, having learned from Deming and the quality movement, it related excellence to certification in six excellence criteria (management leadership, human resources management, business process management, customer and market focus, information utilization and quality tools and finally business results).Senge in 1990 influenced by the work of Argyris, Deming, Forrester and Dewey suggested that excellence could be achieved through shared vision, personal mastery, working with mental models, team learning and systems thinking.Aubert and de Gaulejac (1992) presented the view that the first step to excellence is the internalization of the firm values to create intrinsic obedience and then the existence of explicit (training, evaluation, etc.) and implicit support mechanisms (internal competition, etc.).On the other hand, special prizes (like the Deming Prize in 1951, the Malcolm Baldridge Award in 1987 and the European Quality Award in 1991) have been established for organizations with exceptional performance in quality (as measured against specific organizational dimensions). Finally, a significant contribution for building organizational excellence has been made by Dahlgaard and Dahlgaard-Park (1999, 2003) with the development of a simplified but integrated model (the 4P model) that combines tangible and intangible aspects, subjective and objective aspects, etc. and puts the human factor of the organizational edifice on top. Excellence therefore can be attained through building leadership for people that create partnerships/teams that manage processes to build products. The 4P model and the Toyota 4P model developed by Likert (2004) are quite similar regarding the theoretical backgrounds behind the models; they both put the human factor on top and balance the soft with the hard elements inside organizations.It has to be noted at this point that as Dahlgaard and Dahlgaard-Park (2005) suggest, it is integration of:* tangible and intangible elements; and* individual and organizational levels inside organizations, into a framework which would be able to fully utilize previous knowledge regarding excellence as appears from the models and frameworks presented earlier.A comprehensive definition of excellence in universities should incorporate all approaches that have been developed in the past (mainly for organizations) but without ignoring the peculiarities of their profile. Excellence is meant to refer either to the academic pillar of universities or the managerial or both.In Newman (1854) in his essay \"The idea of the university\" described ancient Athens as the metropolis of knowledge in which the archetype of excellence was developed and praised. It was harmony between the physical surroundings, the academics and the students that made excellence a continuous experience in the process of knowledge acquisition through dialogue, experiment and insight. Pure love with everything that surrounded this learning community (visible and invisible, perceived or not) had been the motive for excellence in a relentless internal and external dialogue and self improvement with the final aim to approach truth and the elevation of soul to eternal light.Hides (2002) and Hides et al. (2004) refers to a working session for the Association of University Administrators, in which he asked the question \"What is excellence in higher education?\" The delegates answered that excellence was synonymous with achieving institutional mission/vision, achieving/exceeding benchmarks and internal measures; best practice; community engagement; cost-effectiveness; customer/stakeholder satisfaction; dissemination of good practice nationally and internationally; learning outcomes; making optimal use of all resources financial, human, assets; match between desired and actual perception; positive atmosphere in staff and student environments, integration in teaching and research, quality of teaching and learning and relative to a starting point - achieving targets. From an organizational perspective, university excellence means exceptional performance in areas such as leadership, strategic planning, student-stakeholder and market focus, measurement-analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management and results, according to the Baldridge Education Criteria for Performance Excellence 2007 or present slight differentiations in comparison to other frameworks (e.g. European Foundation for Quality Management, Balanced Scorecard).It is indeed difficult to gain an understanding of excellence without first attempting to perceive the meaning of quality. The attainment of a specific quality level for a higher education institution and the mentality/culture of continuous improvement through quality monitoring at every process, procedure and level of organization are the first steps for the journey of excellence. Excellence comes as the result of achieving higher and higher quality levels. There is no final frontier of excellence. Consequently, excellence could be defined as quality (referring to the quality mentality at the individual, team and organizational level), within quality (having attained a quality level), for quality (referring to a higher level from the one already attained).In the case of universities, quality in teaching and learning, in research, in external engagement, in management and infrastructure should be examined and taken into consideration in every attempt to understand and to strive for excellence. Quality can be related to institutional management or the educational functions of a university. It is gradually integrated through a process of personal transformation, communication and organizational changes. It furthermore requires the commitment of human resources and strong leadership (Lagrosen et al., 2004).Quality in university management\nConclusions: Quality constitutes a basic prerequisite to pursue excellence in a higher education institution. Inside universities, quality should be a way of life, a way of behaving so that individual and collective contribution is maximized along with personal and organizational advancement through continuous improvement and learning.Excellence in every field presupposes a smooth mantling of traditional academic values with values derived from the quality philosophy. Harmony, creation of stability (but not stagnation) in a dynamic self improving circle, constant monitoring, teamworking, continuous learning and personal advancement through reflection and conjecture, passion in the acquisition of knowledge and the advancement of science are factors that explain and describe \"excellence\" but also they constitute the teachings of quality management!By reflecting on the parchments of the ancient Hellenic Philosophy and combining it with the inferences of TQM, the different excellence models and frameworks and the peculiarity of higher education institutions, new approaches on excellence may be further developed, helping in the identification of suitable and dynamic performance dimensions, relevant quality criteria and the transformation of human behaviour and action through a mentality of excellence.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to present and interpret excellence through the parchments of the ancient Hellenic philosophy and the different schools of management thought and its application in the university context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach taken in the paper is theoretical and is based on the writings of ancient Hellenes philosophers and management researchers, a semasiologic analysis of the term \"excellence\" in Hellenic and its content in the university context and a comparison with the basic principles of total quality management (TQM).\nFindings: - The findings of the paper support the view that the ancient Hellenes philosophers had a substantial contribution in the development of excellence and TQM fundamental concepts, as proved by their writings 2,400 years ago. It is worth mentioning that the term aristeia (excellence, in Hellenic) hides in it, as appears from the analysis of the word, the idea of good in an exemplary way and the factors that constitute the teachings of TQM.\nPractical implications: - The paper brings out the essence of excellence and proves that deep understanding of the concept of excellence leads to a virtuous personal life which leads in good citizenship in the wider social context that result in a constantly improving and transformative academic or professional life.\nOriginality/value: - The paper presents the meaning of excellence through the combination of knowledge from the ancient Hellenic philosophy, management, Hellenic language and TQM.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Heuristics-in-use in industrial interfirm-collaborating clusters	[ "Decision making", "Industrial performance", "Cluster analysis", "Network analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of industrial interfirm clusters is a striking feature of regional development and supports synergies among firms in achieving long-term collaborative objectives. Schleimer and Shulman (2011) indicate that most firms involved in the innovative development engage simultaneously in intra-firm and interfirm collaborations. However, firms must surmount difficulties in integrating collaborations; the difficulties occur based on aspects of the firm's tacit knowledge and relationship factors (Johansson et al., 2011). To sustain such working collaborations, a strategic selection of new business interfirm partners is necessary. This study includes a brief introduction to some of the relevant literature on how decision-makers decide and how they should decide to identify appropriate business partners in interfirm collaborative clusters (ICC).\n2. Literature review: A collaborative interfirm relationship can serve as the source of a firm's competitive advantage. Managers in clustered industries not only perceive more benefits and opportunities for interfirm collaboration in marketing activities (Felzensztein et al., 2012) but also improve their performance and collaborative innovation activities by creating acceptable institutional environments (Bek et al., 2013). Many firms are seeking collaborations due to the increasingly complex nature of global competition (Lai and Tsai, 2010). A successful collaboration requires the sharing of responsibilities, risks and rewards while retaining individual autonomy among the participating firms (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Kogut (1988) proposes that the strategy for an effective partnership is to avoid having potential competitors enter the market and/or to find ways to weaken the position of competitors. Kanter (1989) states that a business relationship between firms provides a potential competitive advantage, especially for suppliers and consumers, and when a company selects a partner, the following factors should be utilized to assess possible candidates: track record, past experience and friendships, cultural differences, commitment and future risks. Kogut (1988) compares strategic costs and transaction costs, and the difference between these two costs in light of different selection criteria for the collaboration and partnership among machinery manufacturing firms. The motivation for strategic costs is to pursue long-term profits, and the goal of transaction costs is to minimize the costs of exchanging products or services. When selecting a partner, the strategic focus is on a competitive position that is specifically related to competitors or consumers in a competitive position. According to the transaction cost theory, an organization aims to engage resources in the environment arising from transactions costs, and it will manage the costs incurred within the exchange to minimize them (Williamson, 1975; Coase, 1937).\n3. Research method: This study includes the research methods of the fast and frugal decision tree (FFDT), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and decision systems analysis (DSA). In the first stage, this study presents a literature review and interviews with related firms to select and confirm the influential factors of interfirm decision-making in ICC. After obtaining the preliminary influential factors, the questionnaires are distributed to 21 experts to determine the final six factors and to calculate the cue validities for the six factors. In the second stage, this study adopts the method of AHP to decide the weights for each factor and to construct the tree structure of FFDT. In the final stage, this study uses the DSA method to establish a DSA flowchart of interfirm decision-making in ICC. Figure 1 shows the research flow of this study.\n4. Data analysis: This study focuses on the central areas of Taiwan's machinery firms and designed its questionnaire to allow the decision-makers determine the collaboration factors. After obtaining the collaboration factors, this study then calculated the weights of the cues. In addition, an FFDT structure was established and firms were interviewed to learn about their detailed decision-making processes to obtain the DSA flowchart. This study included the collection of data from 21 firms that specialize in tool machinery, precision machinery, plastics machinery and hand tool machinery. Within the interviewed experts, eight experts were from the machine tool industry, seven were from the precision machinery industry, three were from the plastics and rubber machinery industry and three were from the hand tool industry. Additionally, of the experts, 38.09 per cent were CEOs, 19.04 per cent were inventory managers, 14.28 per cent were project managers and 28.59 per cent were general managers. These 21 experts answered not only the questionnaires designed to filter the collaboration factors and AHP, but they were also interviewed for the different rounds of the DSA process. The background information of the interviewed experts appears in Table II.\n5. Conclusion and recommendations: Most firms in Taiwan are SMEs, and SMEs need to constantly improve technology skills and peruse the high manufacturing quality and productivity to compete in a rapidly evolving and uncertain business environment. The structure of ICC influences the potential for knowledge creation, and a dense local clustering provides information transmission capacity in ICC by fostering communication and collaboration (Schilling and Phelps, 2007). According to government development policies, the machinery industry is one of the key industries in Taiwan, and the government plans to focus on the development of this industry in the future because the machinery industry has a complete industrial cluster to address future challenges. Thus, the government and the industry must pay more attention and devote more resources to improving the country's economic outlook, whether in technological innovation or innovative education. This study presents a decision-making solution to shorten the time required in the search for new business collaboration partners in ICC. This study not only develops the FFDT of decision-making notes to quickly identify potential collaboration partners but also constructs a DSA flowchart to provide a qualitative measurement of the six factors of the decision-making process and effectively shorten the decision-making processes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to help interfirm-collaborating cluster (ICC) executives examine the relevance of alternative decision rules in practical business contexts. Multi-party-implemented strategies and establishing multi-lateral collaborations are necessary actions for achieving success in new product development by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study explores interfirm decision-making heuristics relating to industrial ICCs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study examines the relevancy to decision making in ICCs of heurstics such as \"fast-and-frugal decision trees\" (FFDTs) and \"take-the-best\" (TTB) to processing possibly influential decision-making cues. The study also examines simple heuristics versus the value of a \"fully rational\" approach to making decisions - calculating cue values, importance weights, multiplying values by weights, summing and selecting the option having the highest summed score. This study included interviewing executives of the pivotal firm in an ICC.\nFindings: This study reveals a decision-making solution for shortening the time and processes required in seeking new business collaboration partners in an ICC. This study not only develops a FFDT for six decision-making modules to quickly identify potential collaboration partners, but it also constructs a decision systems analysis (DSA) flowchart to effectively shorten the decision-making process.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study is in accordance with the general type of industrial interfirm collaboration in Taiwan. The industrial interfirm collaboration could be further divided into the types of formal, semi-formal and informal industrial interfirm collaborations.\nPractical implications: This study argues that firms usually find it difficult to develop their own technology because of the high costs of research and development for SMEs. Therefore, firms need to collaborate with partners to maintain their competitive advantage. However, to collaborate, firms must learn to trust their collaboration partners, and the degree of collaboration also strongly depends on the degree to which they trust their collaboration partners.\nOriginality/value: This study provides the efficient models of FFDT and DSA to quickly identify potential collaboration partners and to effectively shorten decision-making processes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The innovating firm as corporate entrepreneurship	[ "Innovation", "Alertness", "Corporate entrepreneurship" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The theory of the innovating firm assumes that the investments that the firm makes must be developed and utilized over time, as the firm transforms technologies and accesses markets, before returns from those investments can be generated, or indeed before the rate of return can even be known (Lazonick, 2008). Firms vary in the amount of inputs they devote to the innovation process. However, the dedication of more inputs to the innovation process does not guarantee innovation outcomes, since the process of developing innovation is complex and characterized by high risks. If firms devote substantial resources to the innovation process, but are unable to turn them into innovative offerings, resources are squandered and firm performance suffers (Dai et al., 2014; Donate et al., 2016; Urban, 2016).\nLiterature review: CE\nResearch design: The study was cross-sectional and survey based in design. The context and survey population for the study was the South African financial sector. The South African financial sector is detailed in the Charter on Black Economic Empowerment, as gazetted on March 2, 2012 (Republic of South Africa, 2012), which categorizes financial sector organizations into: banking, insurance, brokerage organizations (including financial service providers (FSPs) as regulated by the financial services board (FSB) and asset managers and collective investment schemes. The FSB and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) further classify the financial sector into banks (foreign controlled and locally controlled); short-term insurers; long-term insurers; FSPs; JSE registered stock brokers.\nResults: Reliability and validity results\nDiscussion: The findings provide quantitative empirical support for theoretical claims of the importance of corporate building blocks, alertness, and metacognitions in fostering CE. The study contributes to the literature on CE by disentangling the relationship between organizational and individual links as per the model structure and by providing empirical support for this relationship in an African context.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Innovation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and at the firm level incorporates the behaviors and interactions of individuals and various organizational factors. Not only are entrepreneurship and innovation complementary, but a combination of the two is vital to organizational success. The purpose of this paper is to respond directly to research calls to provide an integrated model of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) which encompasses both organizational- and individual-level factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A model was formulated in accordance with the study hypotheses and statistically tested. A sample of 784 responses from the South African financial sector was surveyed. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test for model fit.\nFindings: The results support the hypotheses that it is through the interaction of the firm (in establishing corporate building blocks), and the individual (through entrepreneurial alertness and metacognitions) that CE activity is realized. SEM results showed that entrepreneurial alertness had the greatest direct path impact on CE.\nPractical implications: Managers need to understand and leverage corporate building blocks in a manner that influences employee's respective levels of entrepreneurial alertness and metacognitions in order to foster CE.\nOriginality/value: The study is one of the first to model and empirically test causal links between corporate building blocks, entrepreneurial alertness, metacognitions, and CE at the firm level. Moreover, the study takes place in an under-researched African context, allowing for fresh insights to evolve.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Designing a support system for aerospace maintenance supply chains	[ "Maintenance", "Supply chain management", "Inventory", "Aerospace industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIndustrial research motivation: Three major changes should be taken into account when considering how to manage an airline fleet: business models, aircraft technology and supporting information processing technology. These are outlined below.Firstly, business models developed recently include point-to-point low fare carriers, which aim to eliminate complex ticketing agreements and sell direct to the consumer, offering value over comfort. To achieve this, low fare carriers tend to favour streamlined operations, with a single aircraft type to maximise efficiencies in purchasing power, maintenance and crew utilisation (Fiorino, 2005).Secondly, aircraft technology has changed since the 1980s and maintenance, in particular where engines are concerned, has a lower fixed-schedule component (i.e. planned preventative) and a greater diagnosed or measured performance element (referred to as on-condition scheduling). As newer aircraft employ more solid-state systems with fewer mechanical instruments and controls and improved material and system design, their overall maintenance needs are less. A drop in demand has reduced new aircraft prices by as much as 50 per cent (OnBusiness, 2002) and leasing rates have come down; thus many older generation aircraft have been retired over the past few years. Therefore, while a five-year-old airplane performs the same task as a 30-year old, lower ownership costs, lower maintenance costs and lower fuel costs have led to a demographic shift to younger fleet in recent years. Coupled with a drop in aircraft utilisation, the consequence for maintenance costs has been pronounced, and the value of the aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) market has fallen to US$34.6bn in 2003 from US$43bn in 2001 (Back Aviation, 2003). There is continuing consolidation in the market, with constant pressure to innovate and create competitive advantage.Thirdly, major environmental changes have come into play. In particular, inventory management of aircraft spare parts is different to the conventional \"produce and discard\" view of ERP systems since parts are typically maintained and re-stocked - these are referred to as rotable inventory units. Additionally, the business environment gives increasing pressure to link information systems within cross-company business processes (Luftman and Brier, 1999), despite many still being only deployable within single organisations.Key questions that have arisen from action research and motivate this work are:RQ1. What is the composition of the aircraft MRO supply chain?\nPurpose and scope of the research: In general, the purpose of the work is to promote the increased use of computer-based systems to automate, communicate and optimise business information processes in the aircraft maintenance industry. This is in response to the perception that the industry lags others in its adoption of technology, and that the scope to apply technology is large and offers huge potential benefits (Airline Business, 2000).The systems development approach described in the next section aims to move from the general to the specific in three steps: starting with a structured mapping of the supply chain (a \"business process model\"), moving to the automation of transactions between members of the supply chain (\"the information model\" level), and finally performing complex optimisation on extensive operational data used within one of the firm types in the supply chain (the \"computerised information management\" level).The first step described (mapping the supply chain) aims to span the industry with a generic model of organisation types and their processes. The second step (building an e-commerce exchange) covers the governing transactions between a repair service provider and their maintenance agency customer. The third step (inventory optimisation) is yet more specific and detailed, applying a mathematical solution to a well-defined and large-scale resource-planning problem. This three-step approach corresponds to the conventional organisational view (strategic-tactical-operational) (Laudon and Laudon, 2000), requiring greater detail and understanding at each descending level.\nMethodology: systems development: This work uses a standard information modelling approach (Stevens et al., 1998) as shown in Figure 1. The \"use-case scenarios\" were developed from an airline (Aer Arann) and a primary maintenance provider (Shannon MRO).The \"process level\" of development has been used to define the business process deliverables (e.g. inventory management process for cost and downtime minimisation). This model is referred to in this paper as the \"Aircraft maintenance supply chain reference (AMSCR) model\" and is intended to coordinate with other standard models such as the Society of British Aerospace Companies supply chain relationships in action model (SBAC, 1999) and the supply chain operations reference model framework (Stephens, 2001).The \"information-level\" model is an e-commerce exchange demonstrator. This facilitates the simulation of real business processes in a computer-based system by allowing transactions between organisations in the MRO supply chain. The model encompasses the principle of demand driven management; this requires close integration between providers and consumers of goods and services, and a high level of e-commerce capability (Williams et al., 2002).The \"computerised information management level\" embodies algorithms for dynamic inventory control that are embedded in the e-commerce exchange demonstrator; inputs are taken from back-end MRO inventory management ERP systems. The outputs were then validated against the original use-case scenarios to create off-line MRO SCM simulations.Each of these levels is now described in greater detail.Process level: the AMSCR model\nPrototype: systems results and industrial implications: Three levels of research outputs have been prototyped: the AMSCR model (process level), a repair order e-commerce exchange prototype (information level), and a rotable inventory optimisation system (automation level). Each different level of development within this research has illuminated new issues in aircraft MRO supply chain management.The AMSCR model achieved several outcomes:* Participants in the building of models gained clarity and consensus on their own processes.* They also came to better understand their place in the industry.* The model serves as a basis for devising supply chain solutions.It is intended to continue development of the AMSCRM to tie into the Lean enterprise model developed by the Lean Aircraft initiative programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://lean.mit.edu.pitt.idm.oclc.org).The e-commerce exchange has been validated with a MRO operator, a component trading company and a specialist repair vendor. The observable strengths were that:* The e-commerce system accurately captures the process beyond the capability of available ERP solutions, as it focuses on external transactions.* The automation of the process is helpful in standardising procedures and reducing error and uncertainty in inter-organisational communication.* There is greater visibility of WO status by customers (this may be a cause for concern, as vendors have less control over managing customer expectations).However, the downsides of such systems are that:* Participants have a high degree of mistrust in the e-commerce exchange model - even though it is an efficient method for gathering and communicating information - for confidentiality reasons live critical data is reluctantly given to external intermediaries.* Integrating an e-commerce exchange into internal ERP systems would be expensive and difficult: the economic benefit must be clearly evident.The opportunities that such systems provide include:* E-commerce exchanges are of greater benefit to customers than vendors, as they enhance the ability for customers to track vendors' status reporting. Also, at present, vendors provide status information in a range of formats and reports are not as regular as customers would like.* Greater transparency and speed of communication should facilitate reduction in inventory levels through faster repair cycle turn-around times.The development of such systems is currently threatened by:* Little interest in e-commerce initiatives, as most companies have been party to failed projects and have been exposed to extensive negative publicity.* The immature state of middleware technologies, solutions and service management. Few companies will entrust critical data to service providers. In particular, there is a lack of standards at the data format level, which has long been a problem with web-based EDI initiatives.* There is a strategic problem with the idea of e-commerce exchanges. For example, at the \"Eye for Aero\" conference in 2000, Airbus announced that all customers would have to use their site in future to purchase MRO parts. In the following presentation, Air France announced their own e-commerce initiative, whereby all of their MRO parts purchasing would be conducted on their new web site. This created an immediate stalemate, resulting in the failure of the airline's project and a low initial uptake of the supplier's service.The rotable inventory optimisation system was prototyped with a small number of parts, giving forecast reduction in inventory of 40 per cent with no consequent loss of service. On the strength of these prototype results, the company collaborating in the research provided resources to build a full-scale enterprise application, drawing data from a range of sources, including ERP for material holding, cost and mean-time-between-failure (MTBR) figures, and engineering databases for aircraft utilisation rates. The results of the first test on a limited range of data gave similar cost reduction: a group of parts valued at US$8M could be reduced to US$5M without affecting the SLs.The system is now undergoing integration for full fleets and parts listings, where it will be used on a pool of inventory valued at US$250M. It is expected that savings of 20 per cent will result in the system use (if the company acts on recommendations and sells off excess inventory). In addition to reducing current holdings, the application permits better forecasting at the provisioning stage, when fleet purchase is being considered. Furthermore, the owner of the inventory can increase its return on these assets by selling inventory support to other operators of the same fleet: if you hold spares to support 25 aircraft, the additional investment to support several more aircraft is negligible. To date, over six man-years of development effort have been put into developing this system (implemented in a Java environment and linking it to an Oracle Enterprise database).The prototype provides the potential to achieve target SLs whilst substantially reducing the total value of inventory required (MacDonnell and Clegg, 2004) which is essential for efficient MRO supply chain management (Piplani and Yonghui, 2005)\nSummary: This project has been driven by three research questions:RQ1. What is the composition of the aircraft MRO supply chain?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To develop a systems strategy for supply chain management in aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A standard systems development methodology has been followed to produce a process model (i.e. the AMSCR model); an information model (i.e. business rules) and a computerised information management capability (i.e. automated optimisation).\nFindings: - The proof of concept for this web-based MRO supply chain system has been established through collaboration with a sample of the different types of supply chain members. The proven benefits comprise new potential to minimise the stock holding costs of the whole supply chain whilst also minimising non-flying time of the aircraft that the supply chain supports.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The scale of change needed to successfully model and automate the supply chain is vast. This research is a limited-scale experiment intended to show the power of process analysis and automation, coupled with strategic use of management science techniques, to derive tangible business benefit.\nPractical implications: - This type of system is now vital in an industry that has continuously decreasing profit margins; which in turn means pressure to reduce servicing times and increase the mean time between them.\nOriginality/value: - Original work has been conducted at several levels: process, information and automation. The proof-of-concept system has been applied to an aircraft MRO supply chain. This is an area of research that has been neglected, and as a result is not well served by current systems solutions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relative impacts of experiential and transformational benefits on consumer-brand relationship	[ "Transformation", "Self-esteem", "Brand experience", "Attachment", "Aversion", "Consumer-Brand relationship", "Self-expression" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The marketing paradigm in recent years has shifted from traditional to experiential and transformational perspectives. In the experiential view, consumers are believed to be both rationally and emotionally driven and are considered as individuals who constantly seek pleasurable experiences (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982; Schmitt, 1999; Brakus et al., 2009). The increasing desire of consumers for experiential benefits has encouraged many brands in recent years to start looking for new ways of value creation. Pine and Gilmore (1998, 1999) point to experiences as an independent type of marketing offer and the basis of a new form of economy.\n2. Theoretical foundation: 2.1 Consumer-brand relationship\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement model\n5. Discussion: This study presented and compared the roles of experiential benefits (i.e. brand experience) and transformational benefits (i.e. self-expression and self-esteem) in enhancement of AA consumer-brand relationship. Empirical data from a survey on consumption of cosmetic brands well confirmed our proposed research model. Results showed that brand experience and self-expression have significant positive impacts on AA consumer-brand relationships. Furthermore, we found that compared with transformational benefits, experiential benefits have stronger impacts on such relationships. This finding shows that the paradigm of experiential marketing is currently dominant for cosmetic brands, and a full transition to transformational marketing has not taken place yet. Several factors could potentially explain the significant impact of brand experience on consumer-brand relationship. For instance, a recent study by Shamim et al. (2016) in the context of retailing services shows that brand experience plays a key role in increasing the tendency of consumers to interact and dialogue with service providers. In addition, Taheri et al. (2016) suggest that communitas is an integral part of many experiential consumption situations. Such communal and social elements could contribute to the development of strong consumer-brand relationships.\n6. Implications: 6.1 Theoretical implications\n7. Limitation and future research: There are a few limitations that should be considered before applying the findings of this study. First, self-administered questionnaires would allow for little interaction between the researcher and the respondents and would thus limit the opportunities for clarification and explanation. Furthermore, the survey dealt with each participant's favourite brand of cosmetics, and what he/she could remember from the most recent consumption of that brand. The quality of the collected data, therefore, depends on how well the subjects could retrieve memories of their last consumption sessions. With regards to sampling, our subjects were mainly from a North-Eastern university and thus might not represent all cultural groups.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore and compare the roles of brand's experiential and transformational benefits in formation of consumer-brand relationships. Focusing on cosmetics consumption, the study investigates how brand's experiential benefits (brand experience) and transformational benefits (self-esteem and self-expression) could impact the strength of consumer-brand relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling technique. The sample consisted of 373 university students, who completed self-administered questionnaires.\nFindings: Results show that brand experience and self-expression have significant positive impacts on consumer-brand relationships. Brand experience plays a more important role, compared with transformational benefits, in this process. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research could study possible transformative experiences across various industries. It could also use a more divergent sample that better represents general population.\nOriginality/value: This study is among the first in the literature to investigate the impacts of emerging sources of brand value, i.e. experiential and transformational benefits, in formation of strong consumer-brand relationships. It is also among the first to compare the predictive power of those two types of benefits in shaping brand-related outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From knowing to doing: experience and flexibility make the difference	[ "Strategic management", "Management strategy", "Experience", "Flexible organizations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The field of business strategy abounds with learning opportunities: degree programs, executive education, paper and web journals, and shelves full of books. Presumably, then, upper-level managers overall are familiar with principles that now are accepted as conventional wisdom in business strategy and are likely to agree with many. It appears, however, that they are less likely to put them into practice.\nA survey of executives: We surveyed 100 senior executives with strategic responsibilities. The questionnaire explored three issues:1. Given a sample of Drucker's principles for strategic success, to what extent is each idea familiar to those executives? It seemed clear that familiarity provides an \"outside limit\" to the prevalence of implementing an idea, at least knowingly.2. Which principles, if any, do they agree with? This seemed of considerable interest for two reasons. First, it limits implementation; managers presumably will not put into practice ideas with which they disagree. Also, however, the number who say they agree with an idea provides a useful comparison to the number who implement that idea. If there is a large gap, it suggests not unwillingness to implement a strategic principle, but inability to do so.3. Finally, to what extent, and how, is each idea implemented? This information was gathered to give managers ideas of how a strategic principle can be put into practice.We expected that familiarity with the ideas we asked about and agreement with them would be associated with longer tenure in management. It appeared that the longer executives had attended seminars, read about antecedents to business success, and watched organizations and marketplaces respond to management decisions, the more awareness they would have of Drucker's principles and the more they would agree with them. As previously noted, however, implementation seemed more dependent on organizational flexibility. We expected the highest level of implementation of these principles in organizations that are most open to the likelihood that tomorrow will differ from yesterday in the environment and in the marketplace and that therefore strategic decisions might sensibly change as well.\nFive ideas for profitable strategies: To develop a questionnaire, we selected five ideas taken from Drucker's published work that focus on business strategy and are specific enough that an executive could explain how his or her company implemented the idea. Selecting the five began with a list of ten possibilities that two of this study's authors derived from articles by or about Drucker and nine of his 39 books, each read when first published and then reexamined as a \"refresher\"[2]. We used a pretest among 12 executives to reduce the ten statements to five, retaining those that prompted the easiest explanations of how they are implemented. The five we selected, as worded in the questionnaire are:1. Results flow from exploiting opportunities, not solving problems.2. The goods and services that we see as direct competitors rarely adequately define whom the company is actually competing with.3. Managers must systematically monitor changes external to the business to identify innovative opportunities.4. Successful marketers set prices based on the benefits they provide to the customer, rather than based on the product they sell.5. To be effective, an innovation should be focused; it should do only one thing.While recognizing that other researchers would in all likelihood have selected an entirely different set of statements, we also recognized that the large number of strategic ideas in Drucker's published work would make a lack of consensus inevitable. The five selected statements seemed different enough to offer useful cues for executives to react to in reporting whether they are familiar with an idea, whether they agree with it, whether it is implemented in their company, and if so, how.\nAbout the survey: The survey was conducted via the Internet, with a quota of 100 executives from surveyexecutives.net, which promotes its database of executives as the largest in the world. The criterion for survey inclusion was a title of vice president with profit responsibility, or executive vice president, or CEO. The questionnaire was e-mailed to 2,000 executives, with the introduction that it was \"academic research\" and would require ten minutes or less to complete. The 100-response cutoff was reached after three working days.Each of the five ideas was presented on its own screen and ideas were rotated so that each appeared first for one-fifth of respondents, second for one-fifth, etc. For each, respondents were asked to indicate:* Are you familiar with this idea?* Do you agree with the idea?* Does your company implement this idea? Then those who responded positively to this item saw a box where they were asked to write how their company implements the idea.Next, respondents checked a category indicating their years of experience in management. Finally, they answered a four-item scale measuring organizational flexibility as a dimension of corporate culture, which asked for their degree of agreement/disagreement with statements concerning the extent to which an organization is open to change and supportive of continuous improvements -, e.g. \"new ideas are always being tried out here.\"Given our expectation that management experience and organizational flexibility would predict the answers to survey questions, we analyzed those expected relationships statistically[3]. First, however, we were able to learn how each principle is implemented, which the executives described in their own words.\nResults: experience matters, so does flexibility: Responses came from executives in a wide range of industries, from mining to the marketing of books. Of the 100 responding, 86 executives claimed familiarity with the need to monitor changes in the environment to identify innovative opportunities. A nearly identical number, 85, claimed familiarity with the wisdom of setting prices based on customer benefits. Those stating agreement with each of the five ideas ranged from 94 for the need to monitor environmental changes to discern innovative opportunities down to 38 for the idea that innovations \"should do only one thing.\" Complete results are shown in Table I.A higher level of experience in management was associated with familiarity with two of the five ideas shown to respondents: the need to monitor environmental changes to identify innovative opportunities and the wisdom of setting prices based on customer benefits. Also, when we simply matched length of management experience against the number of ideas with which an executive was familiar, a \"break point\" separated those with five years experience or less from those with more. The former group on average said they were familiar with 2.2 ideas. Those with more experience averaged familiarity with between three and four ideas presented, a significant difference.For each idea, the number saying that their company implements it ranged from a high of 78 (the need to monitor external changes) to a low of 23 (focusing an innovation on only one thing). Table I shows how many of the 100 executives reported that their company implements each idea.Organizational flexibility did not predict agreement with the ideas presented, but it did predict implementation. The category of flexibility rating (top/middle/lowest third) was associated significantly with implementation of three of the five ideas, viewed individually, and also predicted the total number implemented. On average, the highest one-third of respondents in terms of their rating of the flexibility of their organization said they implemented 2.85 ideas, compared to 2.2 for the middle third and 1.86 for the lowest third.How the five principles are actually implemented is included in Table I. We simply tallied how many executives said their companies implemented each idea in a particular way.As shown in the table, the single most often mentioned way to implement any of the ideas came in response to the statement that managers must systematically monitor changes external to the business to identify innovative opportunities. Of the 78 executives who said their company implements this idea, 31 referred to gaining market intelligence, using marketing research, or to industry monitoring, with specific mentions for trade shows, feedback from sales channels or third party vendors, and interactive Web forums among many specific examples.The advice that pricing should be based on customer benefits, implemented by 59 executives, led 26 to refer to value-based pricing strategy and pricing influenced by the total cost of ownership for the customer. However, five of those descriptions of how this idea is implemented included a stated or implied \"but\" - with indications that the company tries to implement such pricing, but runs into difficulties either because of competition or customer resistance.The idea that results flow from exploiting opportunities, not solving problems, ranked third in the number of executives saying their company implements this idea, with 40 reporting that their organization does so. Of that number, 18 said their company identifies problems or gaps and views those as opportunities; six of those said their company has created methods to do so. Two others mentioned that they look for missteps by competition; two mentioned an emphasis on service, and five referred to technological innovations that meet customer needs better than the technology of competitors. One manager noted the role of employees in implementing this perspective:[In our company] there is a culture that successful managers are the ones that can grow their businesses and retain an empowered, capable workforce.The goods and services believed to be direct competitors rarely adequately define whom the company is actually competing with, Drucker wrote in 1964. Only 29 executives said their company implements that idea. However, of the five ideas it appears the most difficult to operationalize, and therefore a higher proportion may in fact act on such an assumption without recognizing the assumption itself. A diverse set of comments concerning implementation included \"our company does not define our competitors; our customers do,\" and \"we advertise to combat other activities competing for discretionary consumer spending.\"Finally, 23 executives said their company implements the idea that to be effective an innovation should be focused; it should do only one thing. Eight said they target niche markets. Comments from others included \"we focus on the KISS [Keep It Simple, Stupid!] principle. Anything not expressed in simple terms will not fly.\" Most tellingly, \"we used to be all things to all people. During the past year we focused on doing three things and improved our bottom line 900 percent.\"\nWhat managers can learn and do: Like all studies, this one has limitations. Since the term \"academic research\" introduced the survey to allay fears of commercial taint, those who answered may be unusually well-disposed toward the academic world, or at least not hostile to it. Therefore, it would be naive to consider these 100 respondents a representative sample of all senior executives with strategic responsibilities. We sought simply to shed light on the influence of a set of ideas, to help managers to see where theory and practice overlap, how Drucker's ideas are implemented, and how the practices of their own organization match those of others. Such comparisons can then lead to a more sophisticated view of what leads to strategic success.A first conclusion is that although at least some of the five ideas we presented are well known to executives, management experience plays a role. Executive suite \"beginners\" claim familiarity with fewer of them, are less likely to agree with some, and also are less likely to report implementing them.Going beyond the question of familiarity, executives in general say that they agree with these principles, but except for two of the ideas, most do not say they implement them. That observation leads to our most telling result: although organizational flexibility fails to predict the extent to which executives agree with any of the ideas, it significantly predicts whether or not those ideas are implemented, for three of the five principles analyzed and for the total number implemented.Stated another way, despite the fact that executives agree with these principles, low-flexibility organizations are significantly less likely than more flexible organizations to follow them. This combination of results supports the basic message that management skills must complement strategic thinking. That conclusion rests on the assumption that skillful management is necessary to create or maintain flexibility in an organization, given the likelihood that if left to its own devices it will continue to operate as it has in the past.Moving to specifics, among many other important ideas, Drucker told managers in 1964 of a need to focus on opportunities, not problems, and of the reality that their competitors are a broader set than they might perceive. Implementing both statements at that time would have required many organizations to abandon a \"business as usual\" approach, quite likely a threatening possibility to those at executive levels. Whether that threat still exists and accounts for the lower familiarity with these two ideas among respondents to our survey, compared to later ideas from Drucker's writing, one can only speculate. Possibly newer ideas are more often taught and written about, and both of these surmises may explain why only about half the executives surveyed agree with each of the 1964 statements, and even fewer say that their company implements them.By contrast to these two ideas from 1964, the need to monitor the environment to identify opportunities for innovation and the wisdom of setting prices based on the value of a product to the customer gain wide agreement and wide implementation. Also these two ideas are increasingly familiar as executives report longer tenure in management, and they achieve the smallest gaps between agreeing with an idea and actually implementing it. Possibly they are perceived to require less dramatic organizational changes for implementation.The statement that an innovation should be focused - should do only one thing - gains the lowest level of agreement and the lowest level of implementation, despite being familiar to half the sample. It appears that the barriers to implementation come both from within the organization and from the marketplace, based on hints to the role of each in executives' comments on how this idea is implemented. One executive writes that his company builds specialized teams for innovations \"to avoid being drawn into the corporate quagmire,\" presumably where whatever focus the innovation offers is weighed down with additional baggage. Another executive indicates that to some extent customers thwart a tight focus by wanting many applications for a new technology.Taken as a whole, the comments from executives do offer some help in understanding the diffusion of ideas in organizations. They suggest that more experienced managers are the ideal target market for learning about strategy, possibly an indication that workshops, graduate programs, and the like will most benefit the organization if more seasoned individuals attend them - although it is also possible that longer tenure has provided more exposure to such programs and contributes to our results.The evidence that organizational flexibility leads to use of management principles is, however, the most helpful conclusion from this study, justifying efforts by managers to increase such flexibility in their own organizations. Furthermore, differences in flexibility may explain why some ideas were implemented far more than others. As noted earlier, scanning the environment for opportunities requires little organizational flexibility, but focusing an innovation tightly may involve changing a \"business as usual\" mentality of providing something for everybody, whether inside the organization or among customers.Overall, such inferences suggest that businesses are well advised to \"buy\" management expertise, by employing more experienced managers, by educating less experienced managers in how to create and maintain organizational flexibility, or both. Organizations that \"outsource\" most of their marketing efforts, whether to sales agents or advertising agencies, are likely to have the greatest need to ensure that their own top management takes on the responsibility for scanning the environment and then setting the priorities that will help their organization to respond to changes in the marketplace, in competition, and in all the uncontrollable areas that influence profitability.No organization can afford to neglect conscious efforts to increase its flexibility once managers accept the proposition that what happens inside an organization influences its likelihood of implementing ideas that lead to strategic success. This study suggests that one key factor is a resolute willingness to try something new.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - While managers have many opportunities to learn about strategic principles, this article investigates how managers understand and use them. Focusing on principles from the writing of Peter F. Drucker, described by many as \"the man who invented management,\" the purpose of the study is to test the relationship of organizational flexibility to implementing his principles and also to explore how they are implemented.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors conduct an online survey of senior managers about their familiarity with each of five of Drucker's ideas, their agreement with each, and how they are implemented. The respondents also report how management ideas are put into practice in their organization.\nFindings: - As expected, we find that implementation of strategic concepts is likelier given greater organizational flexibility, a willingness to try something new. As Drucker posited, the way an organization is organized and motivated affects whether it will implement profitable strategies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This is a study of 100 executives who responded to an academic inquiry. The authors do not know whether the respondents were affected by the academic focus. Further, since the respondents are employed in a wide variety of industries, the conclusions are necessarily broad and may not reflect any one industry's values.\nOriginality/value: - It is well known that enterprises develop cultures that either welcome or repel new ideas. This paper may motivate managers to consider the flexibility of their own organization in reacting to and assimilating \"not invented here\" possibilities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Diversity powers performance at Catalyst Energy: Company college imparts engineering skills to women	[ "Women", "Equal opportunities", "Energy industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Fixed graphic\nFactories operated significantly below capacity: The advantages of a more diverse workforce would be particularly evident at times such as Navratri - the most popular religious festival of Gujarati-speaking Hindus in India. Almost the entire workforce would apply to go on leave at such periods. Production consequently suffered, as the factories operated significantly below capacity.\nAn environment where diverse talent can be nurtured: Sitting in the conference room at the Ahmedabad office and discussing diversity in the organization, HR leaders talk about the transformation of the plant over the past two decades into a diverse and dynamic company. Reflecting the sense of satisfaction in the HR team, Ayushi Jhaveri, the HR manager, enthused: \"We have been able to create and sustain an environment where diverse talent can be nurtured, work, perform and grow. We can always understand that women might leave for family or other reasons but we have been able to create conditions where they can always come back to us. We feel we have really done our job.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to observe how the Catalyst Energy college of engineering for women has played a significant role in helping to train women in fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and power production and so overcome a shortage of qualified women in these fields.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper examines what gave rise to the diversity initiative at Catalyst Energy's Ahmedabad plant, India, and the success that it has achieved.\nFindings: This paper reveals that, of the first batch of 30 students, in 1995, eight made it to Catalyst Energy. The number has grown every year since then.\nPractical implications: It explains that Catalyst is working towards having women make up half its workforce, as it moves away from being dominated by Gujarati males.\nSocial implications: It touches on some of the reasons that women are under-represented in Indian companies.\nOriginality/value: It reveals that globalization is a key pressure in encouraging Catalyst to make its workforce more diverse.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Impact of psychological capital on the resistance to change during post-merger integration: A theoretical model	[ "M&A", "Change management", "Resistance to change", "PsyCap", "PMI", "Post-merger integration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Currently, organisational change is a predominant topic, and it has become an unavoidable issue that organisations must survive. Virtually all major global companies and industries contemplating growth or positive value apply important corporate strategies such as mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, partnerships, or joint ventures (collectively called mergers and acquisitions (M&As)). As major changes, M&As incorporate wide-scale organisational changes, require more sophisticated levels of management, and extensive employee collaboration. M&As are one of the most stressful forms of organisational change (Stahl and Voigt, 2008).\nBackground and problem analysis: M&A activities and PMI failures\nRQs: As mentioned, M&A activities often fail during the PMI phase, and PsyCap may influence change efforts more positively regarding the RTC. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to summarise the literature on the main themes and to extract propositions to develop a strong theoretical model.\nMethodology: To address the RQs, the methodology included the analysis of previous work on key concepts via a comprehensive literature search for representative sample of research/studies, thereby synthesising these and deriving proposals for a theoretical model. Hence, it was essential to identify literature that applies to this research area and is considered influential and significant.\nLiterature summary and propositions: Emotional impact of mergers and PMI resistance\nResults and theoretical model: Based on the review of the PsyCap framework, the results suggest that the concept is strongly related to desirable employee attitudes and behaviours that are considered relevant to PMI. Based on the literature, M&As are strongly associated with negative reactions, i.e., exhibition of deviance, misbehaviour, and dysfunctional attitudes (merger syndrome). Thus, the propensity to meet the PMI with resistance increases, resulting from negative emotions that have been identified as triggers for PMI resistance, which applies to RQ1. To address RQ2, regarding the association intensity between the four PsyCap dimensions and organisational change, the empirical evidence indicates a strong positive correlation that applies to PMI. Each element helps employees cope with challenges of the changes.\nLimitations: This research also has limitations, which should be evaluated. First, regarding the proposed model, the usage of the RTC scale and PCQ could not be quantified in terms of the intervals at which they should be applied because this is dependent on empirical testing. Similarly, these measurements may also be used before and during a M&A deal. Second, the PCQ provokes questions as to whether social or cultural biases or preferences influence this self-reporting measurement. As Hofstede (1980) discovered, cultures distinguish from each other to a large extent due to the possible influence of the PsyCap dimensions because they are developmental. For example, in addition to self-efficacy and hope, optimism and resilience are also dependent on the external environment, which in turn may differ in their development reinforcement within individual or collectivistic cultures (Luthans, Avolio and Avey, 2007; Luthans, Avolio, Avey and Norman, 2007).\nConclusions and future research directions: This paper has hypothesised that PsyCap can support during PMI because it has emerged as an important human resource that has significant effects on organisational objectives.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are major corporate changes and are among the most stressful for employees. Employee resistance is a well-recognised reason for high failure rates of post-merger integration (PMI). The contemporary concept of psychological capital (PsyCap) is a promising approach for dealing with the issue. To date, relatively little research has been conducted on the relationship between PsyCap and resistance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible positive impacts of PsyCap on employee resistance during PMI, based on a review of the existing literature and selected interviewers with a panel of experts, and offer a theoretical model for decreasing the resistance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper builds on the literature on M&A, PMI, and employee resistance by focusing on the contribution of PsyCap. Apart from formulating propositions and answering pre-determined research questions, the findings are the basis for a theoretical model that was validated by a panel of experts.\nFindings: This research documents the negative emotions that are triggers for resistance during PMI under the influence of PsyCap. By measuring and assessing the PsyCap needs of employees, resistant employees were revealed, and their PsyCap was developed using tailored interventions. The research findings indicate this to be a feasible approach for reducing resistance during PMI.\nResearch limitations/implications: All of the findings rely on empirical testing and operationalisation. Cultural differences may influence the PsyCap dimensions.\nPractical implications: M&A deals often fail due to unsuccessful PMI implementation because leaders fail to consider the psychological impacts when trying to overcome resistance. The model proposes a possible solution.\nOriginality/value: The offered theoretical approach is original and provides new insights for researchers and practitioners who evaluate M&A strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of human resource management control systems on the relationship between knowledge management strategy and firm performance	[ "Human resource management", "Control systems", "Knowledge management strategy", "Organizational performance", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Knowledge management (KM) is a set of interdependent activities aimed at developing and properly managing an organization's knowledge. If used appropriately, KM can help organizations become more flexible as well as become better learning places (Yahya and Goh, 2002). KM has been seen as an important means to enhance company competitiveness (Soliman and Spooner, 2000). In recent years there has been an increasing interest in examining the relationships between KM and performance (e.g. Choi and Lee, 2003). While much of the early KM literature was heavily focused on technological issues, this has changed, such that the importance of human factors has been increasingly recognized. The management of people is inseparably related to KM results (Meso and Smith, 2000; Narasimha, 2000; Shih and Chiang, 2005). However, to date few empirical studies have validated such assertions (Shih and Chiang, 2005).It has become largely accepted today that a firm's competitive advantage may be generated from firm human resources (HR). According to the resource-based view (Barney, 1991), the firm could develop sustained competitive advantage through creating value in a manner that is rare and difficult for competitors to imitate. The concept of HR as a strategic asset has implications for this issue. HR is an invisible asset that creates value when it is embedded in the operational system in a manner that enhances firm ability to deal with a turbulent environment. A number of studies have demonstrated that human resource management (HRM) practices, either individually or as a system, are associated with higher levels of performance at the organizational level of analysis (e.g. Arthur, 1994; Hoque, 1999; Youndt et al., 1996). In the past, the construct of control has been used as a lens for combining HRM practices (Snell, 1992; Snell and Youndt, 1995). Accordingly, this study used the concept of control to integrate HRM practices and place them in the strategic context of firms.It is widely accepted that a firm's control system is designed to support its strategy. The management control system should be tailored explicitly to support the strategy of the business (Langfield-Smith, 1997; Liao, 2005). Researchers have also investigated the relation between the control system and operational strategies such as quality (Ittner and Larcker, 1997) and customer-focus (Perera et al., 1997). But the knowledge of relationship between control system and strategy is still limited (Langfield-Smith, 1997). An unexplored dimension of firm-level strategy is the firm's use of KM strategy.The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between KM strategy and control system imposed through the HRM function at the organizational level. The focus in this study is on the performance effects of interaction of KM with HRM control. As such, this study contributes to the knowledge about the importance of HRM control for KM strategy. Although aspects of HRM have received attention from scholars in the past (Liao, 2005, 2006; Snell, 1992; Snell and Youndt, 1995), little research has examined the association between HRM control and the KM-performance relationship. The firm's HRM control systems can be expected to contribute significantly to KM-performance. Understanding how an organization can use its control systems to support KM will help firms sustain their competitive advantage.The following section develops the theoretical arguments that lead to the setting out of several testable propositions which refers to distinct expected effects of HRM control on KM-performance relationship. The research design section presents the research method, including data collection procedures, operationalization of measurement instruments. Results are then presented in the next section. The discussion section presents interpretation of research findings, evaluation of the limitations of the study and some directions for future research. A final section summarizes the findings.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: KM strategy\nResearch design: Sample and data collection\nAnalysis and results: The approach to estimating the conceptual model follows the two-stage procedure recommended by Anderson and Gerbing (1988), that is:1. estimating the model's reliability and validity; and2. testing the theoretical model.The stated hypotheses have previously been tested using regression techniques.Reliability and validity test\nDiscussion: Interpretation of research findings\nConclusions: The results of the study have provided evidence of the relevance of the use of certain types of HRM control systems in influencing the relationship between KM strategy and firm performance. The most significant contributions have been the discrimination of moderating effects of HRM control, and the identification of plausible distinct consequences of the learning derived from the use of KM strategy in hi-tech manufacturing firms. The general conclusion from this study is that behavioral approaches offer the most potential as a basis for improving performance through HRM. However, the value of any approach to HRM control can be augmented or diminished by simultaneously managing the type of KM strategy emphasized by a firm.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this study is to examine whether the relationship between knowledge management (KM) strategy and firm performance is contingent on human resource management (HRM) control systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Surveys were collected in computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing industries in Taiwan. A total of 111 presidents returned usable questionnaires.\nFindings: - When firms emphasize personalization strategy, the use of behavior control will enhance firm performance. In contrast, when firms emphasize codification strategy, the use of output control will make firm performance better. If personalization and codification strategy were emphasized simultaneously, firms would not use single HRM control system to better performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - First, the use of a self-rating performance measure may constitute a limitation of the study. Second, this study is confined to a limited scope of control system. Third, perhaps the most obvious limitation is inherent to the selected research methodology that the one-time data resemble a snapshot. Finally, it is not known how the selection of industries and geographical areas affect this study's findings.\nPractical implications: - Results from this study suggest that managers can leverage their best performance by matching the HRM control system to a particular KM strategy.\nOriginality/value: - This study contributes to the knowledge about the importance of HRM control for KM methods. The firm's HRM control systems can be expected to contribute significantly to KM-performance. Understanding how an organization can use its control systems to support KM will help firms sustain their competitive advantage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Why organizational loyalty programs cannot prevent switching	[ "Loyalty programs", "Customer switching", "Switching resistance", "Trust", "Affective commitment", "Individual-level cultural values" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In highly competitive retail markets, a major concern for firms is customer switching to competitors. Switching can lead to lower profits and higher costs (Reichheld and Earl Sasser, 1990; Rust et al., 2002). As a result, firms try to create switching costs to increase customer retention and reduce customers' desire to leave (Burnham et al., 2003). A growing marketing tool for managing retention and creating switching costs are loyalty programs (Baloglu et al., 2017; Sharp and Sharp, 1997; Yi and Jeon, 2003). According to estimates by market intelligence firm Beroe, the US loyalty program market was worth between $47bn and $55bn in 2018 in terms of spending by companies (Venugopal, 2019). Loyalty programs are designed to drive repeat purchase behavior in profitable segments (Bolton et al., 2000; Lewis, 2004; Liu and Yang, 2009) and generate customer loyalty (Liu, 2007; Yi and Jeon, 2003). However, redemption rates are low, averaging below 14 per cent globally (Yang et al., 2019), and dropout rates are over 75 per cent (Capizzi and Ferguson, 2015).\nLiterature review and theory development: Loyalty programs can be defined as a firm's structural effort to build attitudinal and behavioral bonds between customers and the firm through loyalty-building techniques (Kwiatek et al., 2018). Rosenbaum et al. (2005) differentiate between communal loyalty programs that reward via increasing membership tiers and focus on brand communities as loyalty program, and non-communal loyalty programs that focus financial benefits or product gifts, and are predominantly used in fast moving consumer goods. For the purpose of this study, we focus on the latter, i.e. non-communal loyalty programs.\nMethodology: To test the hypotheses outlined above, the data were gathered from university students in five different countries (Brazil: n = 119; Russia: n = 113; India: n = 116; China: n = 120; and Germany: n = 104). These countries were chosen as the BRIC countries are some of the fastest-growing emerging markets in the world and are attractive new markets for multinational corporations. Germany, a developed country, was added to the sample as it provides an example of an established market. Students are an appropriate sample for this study as they are regular consumers of toothpaste (the product offered during the experiment) and have ample experience with purchasing this product. Furthermore, while they may have less experience with other prevalent loyalty programs, such as car rentals, airlines, and hotels, they have ample experience with loyalty programs of grocery stores or health and beauty retail stores, where this product category is sold.\nData analysis and results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to assess measurement validity (Bagozzi et al., 1991). The CFA results revealed that all measures achieved convergent validity, given the standardized factor loadings of all items were higher than the generally accepted level of 0.5 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1991). The results also showed that each factor was a unidimensional construct. In addition, the reliability estimates (Cronbach's alpha) for each scale were above the recommended 0.7, indicating adequate internal consistency. The above results taken together provide good evidence of convergent validity.\nDiscussion and implications: Customer switching to competitors is a major concern for firms, particularly in highly competitive markets. Switching can lead to lower profits and higher costs (Reichheld and Earl Sasser, 1990; Rust et al., 2002). Therefore, to increase customer retention and reduce customers' desire to leave, firms try to create switching costs (Burnham et al., 2003). Loyalty programs are an increasingly common marketing tool for managing retention and creating switching costs (Banik et al., 2019; Koo et al., 2020; Yi and Jeon, 2003). This paper theorized that key attitudinal loyalty measures, such as loyalty program trust, affective commitment and differences in individual-level uncertainty avoidance and collectivist values, have a significant effect on loyalty program switching behavior. The results indicate that consumers high in trust or high in affective commitment are significantly more likely to stick to a chosen loyalty program than consumers low in trust or consumers low in affective commitment. The results also show that high levels of uncertainty avoidance moderate the relationship between loyalty program trust and loyalty program stickiness by strengthening the relationship. Furthermore, high levels of collectivist values have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between loyalty program affective commitment and loyalty program stickiness by weakening that relationship.\nConclusion: Despite these limitations, the results demonstrate that loyalty programs cannot prevent switching but that program stickiness can, in part, be explained by loyalty program trust, affective commitment and individual-level cultural values. Consumers high in trust are significantly more likely to stick to a chosen loyalty program, as are consumers high in affective commitment. Our findings also show uncertainty avoidance values moderate the relationship between trust and loyalty program stickiness. Similarly, individual-level collectivist values moderate the relationship between affective commitment and loyalty program stickiness. Thus, this paper makes an important contribution to knowledge by showing that loyalty programs do not universally prevent switching behavior. Instead, the authors find that an understanding of a firm's consumers' trust, affective commitment and individual-level uncertainty avoidance and collectivist values is of strategic importance in counteracting customer switching. Firms can use this information for a more strategic approach to develop and implement more effective loyalty programs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which loyalty programs can prevent switching, and how individual level cultural values impact this. Loyalty programs are designed to create switching costs, which reduce customers' desire to leave. However, in practice, these programs are often misapplied; that is, most companies inadvertently treat all customers as equal. While ample research has examined the role of loyalty reward programs in facilitating customer loyalty, little is known about the extent to which individual-level cultural values moderate customer loyalty measures of trust and affective commitment and how this impacts the effectiveness of loyalty programs; that is, consumers' intentions to \"stick\" with the program or to switch.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses a quasi-experiment combined with an extensive survey to collect the data.\nFindings: Based on data collected from one industrial country and four emerging countries, the results show that loyalty programs do not universally prevent switching behavior. Instead, this study finds that individual-level uncertainty avoidance and collectivist values significantly moderate the effects.\nOriginality/value: This study helps advance the understanding of how international retailers can increase their loyalty program effectiveness and reduce customer switching to competitors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluating physicians' serendipitous knowledge discovery in online discovery systems: A new approach	[ "Health professionals", "Information behaviour", "Serendipity", "Confirmatory factor analysis", "Monte Carlo simulations", "Questionnaire design" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Due to the growth and complexity of the biomedical literature, as well as the increasingly specialised nature of medicine, there is a need for advanced systems that can quickly present information and assist physicians to discover new knowledge through serendipity. Over the years, the idea of serendipitous knowledge discovery (SKD) - chance, or accidental discovery of new knowledge - has been studied using a variety of methods. This paper presents the data collection and data analysis approaches developed and tested by Dr Mark E. Hopkins at the University of North Texas in 2017-2018 in the dissertation research which sought to address the gaps in the literature and some of the important limitations of research tools and methods used for assessing information seeking behaviour of physicians, and more specifically serendipitous information discovery with the help of specialised information systems in a clinical care setting. In this research, SKD has been defined as \"the chance, or accidental discovery of new knowledge, where its encountering happens without the expressed or known information of interest at the time of initial searching/browsing\" (Hopkins, 2018, p. 7). While an anticipated outcome of this research is a better understanding of the complexity associated with defining and measuring how SKD is operationalised and applied in research, the primary aim is to evaluate whether the Spark information system (discussed in detail next) contributes to physicians' SKD and if the information flow-serendipitous knowledge discovery (IF-SKD) model recently proposed by Workman and colleagues (2014) is a good representation of this type of information behaviour.\n2. Literature review: While the concept of serendipity has been present in the literature since the 1960s (e.g. Bernier, 1960), its targeted study has shown enormous growth in the literature in the past 20 years (Erdelez et al., 2016). According to Agarwal (2015, \"literature review\"), SKD is a logical extension of Wilson's (1999) nested model of information behaviour. Information behaviour refers to the information seeking, information needs, and gaps encountered in information acquisition. Information behaviour models seek to explain how humans interact with information, whether that be in their daily life or through online systems (Case and Given, 2016). There are numerous types of information behaviour models, and several of them focus on the idea of SKD, such as information encountering and accidental information discovery (e.g. Erdelez, 1997; McCay-Peet and Toms, 2010).\n3. Methods: Our study developed a combination of a questionnaire research instrument and statistical approaches suitable for small sample survey data analysis to explore whether Spark contributes to physicians' SKD and to what degree the IF-SKD model reflects physicians' SKD in a clinical context by capturing and analysing physician feedback. Our study proposed a mapping of the constructs of IF-SKD model to the McCay-Peet's (2013) and McCay-Peet et al. (2015) serendipitous digital environment (SDE) questionnaire and Perception of Serendipity Scale (SDE) and adapted the SDE with adjustments based on these mappings for data collection and data analysis. This study evaluated the IF-SKD model using confirmatory factor analysis - \"a type of structural equation modelling that deals specifically with measurement models measuring the relationship of factors (concepts) and items (questions or variables)\" (Brown, 2015, p. 1). Confirmatory factor analysis procedures used in this study are detailed in Section 3.3.1 of this paper.\n4. Discussion and implications: There are multiple novel aspects in the research approach reported in this paper. This research presented the second application of a relatively new research instrument, the Perception of Serendipity and SDE (McCay-Peet, 2013; McCay-Peet et al., 2015) questionnaire. We developed the research tool based on the SDE and studies by Erdelez (2004) and Bjorneborn (2008). Our research was the first to assess the SDE instrument using confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, the study of multiple confirmatory factor analysis models has helped provide broader context regarding the application of the indicators to the proposed models' structures.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A new approach to investigate serendipitous knowledge discovery (SKD) of health information is developed and tested to evaluate the information flow-serendipitous knowledge discovery (IF-SKD) model. The purpose of this paper is to determine the degree to which IF-SKD reflects physicians' information behaviour in a clinical setting and explore how the information system, Spark, designed to support physicians' SKD, meets its goals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed pre-experimental study design employs an adapted version of the McCay-Peet's (2013) and McCay-Peet et al.'s (2015) serendipitous digital environment (SDE) questionnaire research tool to address the complexity associated with defining the way in which SKD is understood and applied in system design. To test the IF-SKD model, the new data analysis approach combining confirmatory factor analysis, data imputation and Monte Carlo simulations was developed.\nFindings: The piloting of the proposed novel analysis approach demonstrated that small sample information behaviour survey data can be meaningfully examined using a confirmatory factor analysis technique.\nResearch limitations/implications: This method allows to improve the reliability in measuring SKD and the generalisability of findings.\nOriginality/value: This paper makes an original contribution to developing and refining methods and tools of research into information-system-supported serendipitous discovery of information by health providers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
EEUI: a new measure to monitor and manage energy efficiency in data centers	[ "Energy efficiency", "Data centres", "Energy proportionality", "Energy-efficient computing", "Operations management principles", "Resource usage efficiency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Data centers (DCs) are the backbones of modern society, be it business, research or governmental computing. The growth in the number of DCs has been staggering, establishing their own global industry (Shuja et al., 2012; Uddin and Rahman, 2012; Wang et al., 2013). All modern IT services (social media, industry, and science) come with a sizable energy cost. For instance, the US Environmental Protection Agency (2007) estimated that, in 2006, DCs represented 1.5 percent of the total US electricity consumption (i.e. 61 billion kWh, US$4.5 billion), energy is thus the main factor in operating expenses (Barroso and Holzle, 2009). Higher energy consumption implies higher CO2 emissions, both in electricity generation (Shuja et al., 2012, 2014) and DC resource use (Ardito and Morisio, 2014; Nada and Elgelany, 2014; Shuja et al., 2014).\n2. Related work: 2.1 Energy and power efficiency, energy proportionality\n3. Methodology and data sets: We follow a design science (DS) approach, which focuses on finding practical problems and developing new alternative solutions (Holmstrom et al., 2009). The improvement of the EE of DC operations is a practical problem for DC managers and operators. Thus, DS is a suitable approach to be applied. In this research, we analyze what has been done to help solve this problem and then we propose a new and innovative solution to help improve the EE of DCs.\n4. New indicator: The indicators presented in the literature review neglect the relationship between the utilization of different server components and their energy consumption, that is, their EE at different utilization levels. Commonly used performance indicators such as ITEU do not provide a measure of how efficiently computing resources are used (Green IT Promotion Council, 2012).\n5. Evaluation: We evaluate the EEUI by studying and analyzing the EE and throughput of several servers under different workloads, hence, with different server EEUI values. This allows us to study how different workloads in a server, with their corresponding EEUI values, affect the server EE and throughput (measured as jobs performed per time unit). For the sake of space, the results reported here are based on the CERN data set; however, they hold among all data sets.\n6. Conclusions, implications, and future work: The literature shows that there is a need to find ways to improve the EE and throughput of DCs. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to contribute to the enhancement of both the EE and throughput of DCs. To do this, we first clarify different concepts of efficiency such as power, energy, and energy and power efficiency, and how these are related. We then propose the EEUI to measure the degree of EE at which servers and clusters operate. We test the indicators by collecting data from three different scientific DCs and performing controlled laboratory tests.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Data centers (DCs) are similar to traditional factories in many aspects like response time constraints, limited capacity, and utilization levels. Several indicators have been developed to monitor and compare productivity in manufacturing. However, in DCs most used indicators focus on technical aspects of infrastructure, not efficiency of operations. The purpose of this paper is to rely on operations management to define a commensurate and proportionate DC performance indicator: the energy-efficient utilization indicator (EEUI). EEUI makes objective and comparative assessment of efficiency possible independently of the operating environment and its constraints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors followed a design science approach, which follows the practitioner's initial steps for finding solutions to business relevant problems prior to theory building. Therefore, this approach fits well with this research, as it is primarily motivated by business and management needs. EEUI combines both the amount of energy consumed by different components and their current energy efficiency (EE). It reaches its highest value when all server components are optimally loaded in EE sense. The authors tested EEUI by collecting data from three scientific DCs and performing controlled laboratory tests.\nFindings: The results indicate that the optimization of EEUI makes it possible to run computing resources more efficiently. This leads to a higher EE and throughput of the DC while reducing the carbon footprint associated to DC operations. Both energy-related costs and the total cost of ownership are consequently reduced, since the amount of both energy and hardware resources needed decrease, while improving DC sustainability.\nPractical implications: In comparison with current DC operations, the results imply that using the EEUI could help increase the EE of DCs. In order to optimize the proposed EEUIs, DC managers and operators should use resource management policies that increase the resource usage variation of the jobs being processed in the same computing resources (e.g. servers).\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a novel approach to monitor the EE at which computing resources are used. The proposed indicator not only considers the utilization levels at which server components are used but also takes into account their EE and energy proportionality.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Accounting development in a changing environment: the case of Tunisia	[ "Developing countries", "Environmental factors", "IAS/IFRS", "Accounting development in Tunisia", "Unachieved harmonization" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Most developing countries devote considerable efforts in their economic development programs to achieve progress and to ensure a better integration into the global economy. During the globalization process, international institutions have proposed their support to reduce gaps and to solve contradictions that have emerged between countries around the world (Phuong and Nguyen, 2012). Accounting in both developed and developing countries has undergone dramatic change and has recently evolved because of this phenomenon, with a trend toward harmonization with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)[1].\n2. Accounting regulation's development in Tunisia: Accounting regulation is intended as \"rules that have been developed by an independent authoritative body that has been given the power to govern how financial statements are to be prepared\" (Deegan, 2009, p. 59). Financial statements are obviously the current form of financial reporting; several years back, we simply spoke about the act of \"giving account\" of its financial position to whom it may concern, especially the tax collectors.\n3. Environmental factors affecting accounting development in Tunisia: According to the international accounting literature, financial reporting practices are the product of their environment and are specific for each country (Cooke and Wallace, 1990). This specificity comes from a number of environmental factors such as political and economic relations, legal and taxation systems, educational and professional systems, and international ties (Assenso-Okofo et al., 2011; Al-Akra et al., 2009; Choi and Mueller, 1992; Belkaoui, 1994).\n4. Does accounting development fit with accounting's environmental development? A critical analysis of the Tunisian context: Since 1996, accounting development in Tunisia has been reaching the stage of harmonization of domestic rules with international accounting standards. However, while several environmental factors evolve according to the requirements of globalization, the progress of the standard-setting process is increasingly slow and sometimes is in a state of hibernation. In this section, we analyze recent accounting standard-setting development in the light of accounting's environmental change.\n5. Conclusions: The aim of this paper was to discuss the development of accounting and accounting's environment in Tunisia. Based on an exploratory approach, our study shows that many environmental factors have evolved since Tunisia has chosen to enter the era of globalization in the early 1990s. These factors were intended to ensure the transition from a socialist system to an economically liberal system. In this framework, the Tunisian standard-setter has implemented since 1996 the EAS. This system, while keeping with the logic of the chart of accounts, represents a first attempt to harmonize with international accounting standards. Thus, having the IFRS label as a part of a globalization strategy helped the country to enhance the accounting environment at a macroeconomic level by improving the competitiveness of the economy, strengthening the financial market's role, legitimizing the role of the country in the international community, enhancing foreign investments and allowing for the development of accounting education and the accounting profession. Our documentary analysis shows that this system is more suitable to the accounting needs of SMEs and micro-enterprises. Currently, the process of international accounting harmonization is in a shutdown state. We highlighted numerous constraints that hampered the harmonization process, mainly the French accounting culture, the lack of independence of the standardization body, the connection between accounting and taxation, weak corporate governance mechanisms and the absence of a political environment that encourages transparency. In fact, since the 2000s, Tunisia has no longer been considered a country whose accounting standards are based on IFRS. The financial reporting made under the EAS is largely criticized by international donors. This unachieved harmonization has led large enterprises, especially listed ones, to comply with some international standards to overcome the unachieved nature of domestic standards. Since January 2011, the country has begun its democratic transition, which is in our view an important tipping point that moves forward the importance of financial transparency and the fight against corruption. The quality of accounting standards and the need for harmonization with international standards have again taken their place at the heart of all debates.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss accounting development in Tunisia, which is a developing North African country little known in the international accounting literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Methodologically, this paper is based on an exploratory approach. It uses the descriptive tradition of research by collecting and analyzing numerical and narrative data to identify and describe environmental factors that favor or hamper accounting development in Tunisia.\nFindings: This paper indicates that Tunisian companies have been applying the Enterprise Accounting System (EAS) since 1996. This system, while keeping with the logic of a chart of accounts, represents a first attempt to harmonize with international accounting standards. Accounting harmonization in Tunisia is meant to support the strategy, launched in the early 1990s, to integrate the country into the globalization process. Accordingly, the EAS has helped to achieve macroeconomic benefits (public interests). However, it does not lead to the desired level of financial transparency (private interests), especially that of large companies. Currently, Tunisian Accounting Standards neither reflect the rapid evolution of business activity nor changes in international accounting standards. This unachieved harmonization has led some listed companies to comply with some International Financial Reporting Standards which are not included in the EAS.\nResearch limitations/implications: The unachieved harmonization in Tunisia is mainly related to the political system, taxation factors, the legal system, the weak state of corporate governance and governmental control over standardization.\nPractical implications: This paper provides insights into the problems of developing countries that harmonize with international standards to achieve public interests. These countries may encounter many difficulties in bringing their accounting standards up to date. These difficulties seem to be associated with environmental specificities. Accordingly, international standardization bodies and developing country regulators should take into account environmental factors which are determinant for the harmonization decision to succeed.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the existing literature on accounting development in developing countries. It implies that recent accounting development, as it is designed in Tunisia, is better suited to the needs of small businesses. Large companies would be compelled to complement local generally accepted accounting principles by standards they choose, voluntarily, among international standards.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Franchise model schools: rethinking educational practices and structures	[ "Innovation", "Leadership development", "Organizational change and learning", "Franchise Model Schools" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Innovation is an essential factor in the success and competitive edge of organizations. The U.S. Department of Education (2019) defines innovation as a means to \"develop, learn from and scale new and effective approaches\" to serve all students, especially those with high needs. One crucial component of educational innovation is school leadership. School leadership has a direct impact on creating and fostering a culture of innovation and school improvement (McCharen et al., 2011). Much of the success of schools is highly dependent on the innovative spirit of school leadership.\nFranchise Model Concept: Franchising is a way of doing business which can be applied to almost any sector of society, including education. The franchising model is a method of distributing products or services between two parties:\nMethodology: Purposive sampling was used to identify the five elementary schools for the study. The schools were the five elementary schools in the district which met the criteria as Franchise model schools. Qualitative data was collected through focus group interviews of teacher leaders and individual interviews of school administrators. State assessment data was collected at the end of the 2018-19 academic school year when four of the five schools had completed implementation of the model for three years. However, one school had only two years of implementation by the data collection date. Additional data collection will continue for two more years for further evaluation of the model. Student performance and faculty interview data were used to determine the overall effectiveness of the franchise model.\nInnovation Impact on student outcomes: Interviews with the teachers and school leaders revealed that student and staff morale dipped after initial implementation of the model and student assessment scores also decreased after the first year of implementation. Such a decrease in performance follows Miller's (2013) research findings that scores tend to dip the first two years after a new principal is hired; then start increasing for the next three years and level off. Franchise model schools with fewer percentages of at-risk students performed above the state average in both mathematics and reading all three years, but their scores decreased overall, an interesting finding that may be attributed to the decreased amount of time principals spent at their original schools. In contrast, schools with higher percentages of at-risk students performed below the state average in Mathematics and Reading, but their overall performance increased by the end of the third year of model implementation. Because not all grade levels take the state assessment, it was important to consider other data, such as reading inventories in evaluating the effectiveness of the model. One assistant principal from School 5 summarized her school's progress with the following statement:\nInnovation Impact on Organizations: The Franchise Model idea can benefit education and society in the following ways:\nConclusion: As educational leaders strive to use creative ways to ensure the environment for successful student performance, having effective school leaders guide and assist leaders of less effective schools is one option. The Franchise School Model is one attempt to replicate effective leadership and best practices. The goal is to place an effective leader in every school with less funding, allowing allocated resources to be used for other impactful services or products. This model also provides an ideal setting for leadership development since assistant principals who work within this model gain more experiences and opportunities than in traditional school settings. Based on interviews with the school leaders and teachers, the consensus is that the model lends itself well to replication with certain caveats. For example, all interviewed educators agreed that the model was replicable as an effective model for increasing student performance due to the transfer of best practices in instruction, leadership, and processes. However, many respondents emphasized the need for the principal leading both schools to have proven experienced as an effective leader of a school with similar demographics as the lower-performing school. However the greatest impact from this innovation is increased student achievement which negates socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: How will schools reinvent themselves to respond to the technological and economic demands of the mid-21st century? In response to the demands, a school district in the western region of the United States implemented a model patterned after the franchise business model. Two effective principals were tasked to simultaneously lead multiple high-risk elementary schools and to replicate the success they achieved from their flagship school. This paper aims to introduce the concept of franchise model schools. It also examines the innovative impact of the model as it relates to student achievement and leadership development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology for this research was a case study approach. This case study sought to examine teacher and school leaders' perceptions of the implementation of the franchise model school framework. The setting of this case study was five franchise model elementary schools in the western region of the United States. Participants of this study included 37 grade-level teacher leaders and 133 teacher respondents to an online questionnaire. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with grade-level teacher leaders at each participating school. State and site-based academic assessments were also collected and analyzed.\nFindings: Due to the novelty of the franchise model schools, the long-term effects on student outcomes are not yet discernable. Interviews with the teachers and school leaders revealed that staff morale was low after the initial implementation of the model and student assessment scores also decreased after the first year of implementation. The current pattern of student assessment revealed a decrease after the first year of implementation and a small increase after the second year. Findings revealed assistant principals within the model increased their leadership capacity and efficacy. Assistant principals felt confident in their ability to lead a school as principals.\nOriginality/value: The implementation of franchise model schools is unique to the United States education system. Minimal research exists which examines the novelty and impact of franchise model schools. This case study has the potential to inform school systems, policy-makers and educator preparation programs of new practices and innovative structures that can help meet the demands of obtaining a mid-21st-century education. For educational leadership preparation programs, the use of this model provides new practicum and internship opportunities for aspiring school administrators.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Segmenting slot machine players: a factor-cluster analysis	[ "Slot machine player", "Gaming", "Casinos", "Gambling", "Motivation", "Gambling behaviour", "Betting", "Motivation (psychology)", "Individual behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Americans like slot machines. In the 1970s, the slot machine's share of the gaming floor at American casinos was 40 percent; by 2010, it stood at about 70 percent (Stewart, 2010). A 2006 national survey shows that 71 percent of casino gamblers prefer to play slot machines and/or video poker, over other games (Harrah's Entertainment, 2006). There are more than 854,000 slot machines available in 39 states in 2011 (American Gaming Association, 2011), of which 432,394 are located at commercial casinos, 337,628 at tribal casinos, and 84,680 at non-casino venues. Slot machines and other machine games are \"cash cows\" for casinos - they currently account for nearly 70 percent of gross gaming win (i.e. gross revenue) in casinos that offer both machine gaming and table games, and over 90 percent of gross gaming win in casinos without table games (American Gaming Association, 2011; Stewart, 2010). In an increasingly interactive entertainment environment, it is imperative that casino managers understand who their slot machine customers are and how their preferences are changing.\nPurpose of the study: This article examines the motivations and behaviors of slot machine customers, and develops market segments. The study's objectives include understanding the demographic, gambling motivation, and gambling behavioral characteristics of slot machine players; identifying important reasons for choosing one slot machine game over another; examining player attitudes and behaviors pertaining to progressive machines; and investigating player desire for theme-based games. This article fills in some of the gaps in understanding the gambling behavior of slot players. This study's findings provide insight for slot machine manufacturers and casino operators to improve their slot businesses.\nLiterature review: Despite the broad popularity of slot machines, studies on slot machine players are scarce. A review of the limited literature reveals four major areas of study pertinent to slot machine players:1. personality traits;2. casino atmospherics;3. problem gambling; and4. gambling motivation.The authors could find no studies that specifically addressed reasons for playing slot machines. It is for this reason that the following literature review is derived from a variety of sources. These areas reflect different approaches that researchers have taken, in order to gain a deep understanding of the slot machine player. The following discussion addresses the first three areas - personality traits, casino atmospherics, and problem gambling - but attends most fully to gambling motivation, which is followed by a review of casino customer segmentation. The survey used in this study was developed from an amalgamation of all of the research covered in this literature review.Personality traits\nMethod: We used an internet-based questionnaire to survey a convenience sample of subscribers to Strictly Slots magazine, which is the only magazine in US written exclusively for slot machine and video-poker players. Since our goal was to explore slot player profiles, we selected this convenience sample to ensure that participants yield an efficient, targeted sample. After analysis, the data ultimately generated four player profiles based on reasons for playing slot machines.A message inviting subscribers to take the survey was sent out via the magazine's subscriber e-mail list. The responses were collected during November and December of 2006. While this data may seem dated, Harrah's annual study \"Profile of the American Casino Gambler\" (Harrah's Entertainment, 2006), and Stewart (2010) suggest that slot machine players' demographic features remain relatively consistent over time. In addition, while new features are beginning to appear on the slot floor, such as networked gaming and mobile gaming, the vast majority of machine games are still the video and mechanical reel slots, video blackjack, and video poker games that were on the gaming floor when this study was conducted.The questionnaire had three sections. Section 1 contained general behavioral questions (e.g. the most frequently played game, length of time participants gambled, and denomination used most often). Section 2 contained questions about reasons for gambling, importance of features on game choice, likes and dislikes of themed slot machines, and attitudes toward progressive slot machines. The last section included demographic questions such as age, gender, education, income, marital status, and home ownership.We developed the questions in section 2 (the reasons for deciding to play slot machines) from the previous research, as discussed in the literature review. An initial set of issues was developed and presented to managers of a large gaming company as well as with slot players who were involved in testing new slot machines under development by a large gaming machine manufacturing company. This process resulted in 23 reasons for slot gambling motivation items. The full list of reasons for slot gambling is shown in Table I, which contains the final set of factors (discussed in the \"Data analysis\" section).A list of reasons for slot players to choose one slot machine over another was also developed upon the request and suggestions of the aforementioned gaming company, which sponsored this study. This process resulted in a total of 37 potential reasons for choosing one slot machine over another. Again, slot players who were providing feedback for slot machines under development examined this list to lend validity.A total of 1,094 responses were received and documented, of which 76 were invalidated by the screening question, \"The most frequently played game is slots,\" ultimately yielding a total of 1,018 valid responses. Once the respondents met the qualifying criteria, there was little difficulty securing their cooperation. The questionnaire took approximately 30 minutes to complete.\nData analysis: The data analysis is divided into two major sections. In the first section, we analyzed the sample as a homogeneous group, using descriptive analysis and cross-tabulations to reveal the demographic and gambling behavioral characteristics of all respondents. The second section of the data analysis focused on developing clusters of respondents based on motivation or reasons for favoring slot machines, and identifying the different characteristics of each cluster.Part 1: sample demographics and behavioral characteristics\nDiscriminant analysis: The third stage of the analysis of the reasons for gambling was Discriminant Function Analysis. In this analysis, the number of clusters was the dependent variable and the four reason factors were treated as independent variables.As shown in Tables IV and V, there was a statistically significant group difference in the combined predictors as Chi-square X2(15)=2351.857, p < 0.005 and the association between group membership and the discriminant score was strong, where Eta-squared (e2)=0.90. With an Eigenvalue of 3.69, Function 1 explained 77.3 percent of the variance. Function 2, with an Eigenvalue of 0.99, explained 20.8 percent of the variance. Function 3, with an Eigenvalue of 0.09, explained 1.9 percent of the variance. Also referring to Tables IV and V, the discriminant functions achieved a high degree of classification accuracy. The hit ratio of the analysis sample was 96.6 percent. Although high, this ratio must be compared with the maximum chance (Cmax) and proportional chance (Cprop) criteria to assess its true effectiveness (Hair et al., 1998). As shown in Tables IV and V, the maximum chance criterion (Cmax) was 26.62 percent, and the proportional chance criterion (Cprop) was 13.57 percent. These results indicate that since one group occurred 26.62 percent (12.57 percent) of the time, we could be correct 26.62 percent (12.57 percent) of the time if we assigned all observations to this group. Since the Cmax was greater than the Cprop, the maximum change criterion was the measure to outperform. Because the hit ratios of 96.6 percent (analysis sample) exceeded these criteria substantially, the discriminant model was valid based on these measures. A high Press's Q-value (3752.52) for the analysis sample also supported the validity of the predictors since this figure was substantially higher than 6.63 (the critical point at the 0.01 significance level; Hair et al., 1998).To determine which independent variables contributed the most in discriminating group membership, we examined univariate F-ratios and correlations between discriminating variables (i.e. the five factors) and standardized canonical discriminant functions in the structure matrix. The F-ratios showed that the variables differentiating the discriminant functions the most were Factor 4 Financial awards (F=560.36, p<0.000), Factor 3 \"relaxation\" (F=468.54, p<0.000), and Factor 5 \"excitement\" (F=424.15, p<0.000). The structure matrix shows that Factor 4 Financial awards and Factor 5 \"excitement\" had the highest correlations (i.e. 0.62, 0.57) with discriminant Function 1; Factor 3 \"relaxation\" had the highest correlation (0.85) with discriminant Function 2; and that Factor 1 \"Ego-driven\" had the highest correlation with discriminant Function 3.In summary, the statistics in Discriminant Function Analysis showed that a four-cluster grouping of the respondents based on their motivation for slot gambling was a valid approach to gain further understanding of the sector. We now proceed to market segmentation based on these clusters.Cluster segmentation\nDiscussion: This study revealed that a typical slot machine player was likely to be female between the age of 55 and 60, married, with at least some college education and an annual household income of more than US$55,000, and who owns a home. It also revealed that most respondents (78.2 percent) were medium and light gamblers who gambled at most twice a month; heavy gamblers, those who gambled about once a week, or more, made up only 21.8 percent of the sample. Approximately 95 percent belonged to at least one slot player club. The five most important slot machine features influencing a player's choice of one game over another were the machine's denomination, chance of winning, level of fun, bet size, and bonus round. Only 33 percent of the respondents expressed interest in progressive machines, and among these 56.3 percent considered the frequency of winning and size of the jackpot deciding factors in playing these machines. Most respondents showed little interest in theme-based games.We identified five distinct motivational factors for gambling:1. ego-driven;2. learning/evaluating;3. relaxation;4. financial awards; and5. excitement.The high Cronbach's alpha values of these factors reinforced the reliability of the gambling motivation model as summarized by Cotte (1997) that people gamble for symbolic, hedonic, economic, and experiential reasons. When clustering the respondents based on the five motivational factors, we identified four distinct groups:1. utilitarian gambling seekers;2. excitment gambling seekers;3. multipurpose gambling seekers; and4. relaxation gambling seekers.Previous studies attempting to identify the motivations of gamblers did not cluster the whole group based on these factors. Thus, using a factor-cluster segmentation approach, this study has revealed four distinct motivation-based groups of slot machine players. These findings could be useful to casino marketers when planning marketing strategies such as promotion and product development, since they provide the different motivational factors for the different clustered groups, along with related demographic and behavioral variables.Implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Slot machines and other machine gaming generate between 65 percent and 90 percent of a US casino's revenue. This article aims to examine the motivations, behaviors, and preferences of slot machine customers, and to develop market segments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study's objectives include: understanding the demographic, gambling motivation, and gambling behavioral characteristics of slot machine players; identifying important reasons for choosing one slot machine game over another; examining player attitudes and behaviors pertaining to progressive machines; and investigating player desire for theme-based games. This was accomplished through an online survey of slot machine players.\nFindings: - Profiles of slot machine players are developed and the slot players are segmented into four clusters that explain motivations and game preferences.\nPractical implications: - This article fills in some of the gaps in understanding the gambling behavior of slot players. This study can help gaming machine manufacturers design new products and features to serve existing machine gaming customers and to attract new customers. Casino and other gaming operators can use this information not only to select the right types of machines to provide on-site, but also to develop advertising and promotions to attract and retain new and existing customers for slot machines and other types of gaming machines.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first published study that segments slot machine players from a marketing perspective and identifies their preferences, behaviors, and demographic groupings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The influence of senior executive support informatization on radical innovation performance	[ "Structural equation modelling", "IT infrastructure capability", "External system environment", "IT managerial capability", "IT-enabled capability", "Radical innovation performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Radical innovation is a primary determinant to hold sustainable competitive advantage and capture a future market for enterprises (Dahlin and Behrens, 2005). It represents disruptive changes in technology, obviously affects demand of mainstream market, breaks previous competition pattern and gains continuous competitive advantage of enterprises that utilize technology to develop differentiated products to better meet key users demand (Chandy and Tellis, 1998; Dewar and Dutton, 1986; Hill and Rothaermel, 2003). Nearly half of sales and profits from the best innovation enterprises are listed on radical innovation products within three years (Kahn, 2012). Radical innovation has a profound influence on profit and sustainable growth of enterprises by creating new products, services and business depending on novel technology and knowledge (Chatterjee et al., 2015; Un, 2010).\n2. Theoretical background and hypotheses: 2.1 Informatization\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Measurement development\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement validation\n5. Discussion and implications: We provide an evidence via a rigorous empirical study of the link between senior executives support informatization and radical innovation performance. Although part of hypotheses are rejected, our study still helps to open the black box of informatization and better understand the role of senior executives support informatization and radical innovation performance. Our findings provide several theoretical and managerial implications.\n6. Limitations and future research: Several limitations in this research can be extended in future. First, the usable sample only includes manufacturing enterprises from the Northeast and Pearl River Delta regions in China. It can be extended to other industries, regions and countries. Research results from the proposed framework would be more conducive to be deemed as widely applicable. Second, informatization definition is only limited to the capability perspective. Future research should explore other significant perspectives to conceptualize informatization with multidimensional constructs. Third, our research sample may result in losing a clear definition about levels of senior executives and ignoring a CEO's unique advantages of power in resource utilization and informatization support (Stemberger et al., 2011). CEOs appointed in different periods in the same firm also have different understanding of informatization. Most of time, CIO does not belong to top-management team. CIO also is more than one level below CEO in administrative hierarchy, this situation may affect research conclusion (Ouakouak et al., 2014). Our study implies a basic assumption: CIO belongs to the top-management team (Lim et al., 2013), CIO is equal to COO and other senior business leaders, CIO has corresponding management authority, power and influence over other executives. Future research should categorize senior executives. We can further examine existing differentials of senior executives support informatization.\n7. Conclusions: Research about both senior executive support informatization and radical innovation have been popular in recent years, while studies about influence of senior executive support informatization on radical innovation performance are limited. We aim to further explore this commonly observed phenomenon. We define informatization as a latent construct reflected in three variables: IT managerial capability, IT-enabled capability and IT infrastructure capability. Results suggest that senior executive support has a positive impact on IT-enabled capability. Likewise, three variables have positive impacts on radical innovation performance. Our findings reveal external institutional environment has no significant impact on senior executive support informatization, but has partially positive impact on IT managerial capability and IT-enabled capability. Moreover, firm property, firm size and firm informatization age have different influences on the process of senior executive support IT-enabled capability, and further influence radical innovation performance. We hope enterprises and academia can better understand the effect of senior executive support informatization on radical innovation performance through this paper and take effective measures to highlight management level and firm radical innovation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to define the conceptualization and measurement of informatization according to a capability perspective reflected in three aspects: IT managerial capability, IT-enabled capability and IT infrastructure capability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Manufacturing enterprises in China's Northeast and Pearl River Delta regions in China were selected to empirically examine, using structural equation modeling, the association between a firm's senior executive support informatization and radical innovation performance.\nFindings: Results show a significant positive relationship between senior executive support and IT-enabled capability. However, there are no significant positive influences uncovered between senior executive support and IT managerial capability and IT infrastructure capability. The authors find significant positive effects of IT managerial capability, IT-enabled capability and IT infrastructure capability on radical innovation performance. Lastly, the joint effect of senior executive support and external institutional environment has no significant influence on informatization.\nOriginality/value: This study offers improved understanding for enterprises and academia about the effect of senior executive support informatization on radical innovation performance. It also suggests taking effective measures to highlight the management level and enterprises' radical innovation performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Risk reduction using wavelets for denoising principal-components regression models	[ "Stock markets", "Stock returns", "Data analysis", "Stock exchanges", "Regression analysis", "France" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Many methods of data analysis study the relationship between a group of explanatory variables and another group of explained variables. The methods are generally based on a regression scheme.Linear regression can explain one variable according to several variables. However, it seems difficult to carry out a linear regression on an infinite number of explanatory variables, hence the recourse to the principal-components regression (PCR). This technique gives undeniable results in various applications.Compared to \"classical\" data analysis methods, the PCR presents many advantages. We are always confronted with the major problem of the presence of noise in the initial dataset. This can affect negatively the quality of regression model.To resolve this problem, or at least to decrease the noise that affects the data, we introduce a wavelets technique to denoise data (i.e. thresholding). Denoising allows separating the signal from the noise without losing pertinent information.In this paper, we discuss a hybrid data analysis method based on the combination of wavelet thresholding techniques and PCR.The paper is organized as follows: in Section 1, we present a brief introduction of the fundamental concepts of wavelet theory and explain the basic idea of wavelet denoising. An overview of PCR is given in Section 2. Section 3 provides details of the proposed wavelet-PCR technique. An application of this hybrid procedure on French stock exchange data sets is discussed in Section 4. We conclude the paper with some recommendations of further research in wavelet denoising.\n2 Wavelet analysis: 2.1 Basic concepts\n3 Principal-components regression: PCR, or principal-components regression, is a simple extension of multiple linear regression (MLR) and principal-components analysis (PCA). At first, the principal components are calculated. The scores of the most important principal components are used as explanatory variables in the MLR model with the target data Y.The PCR performs a proper selection of the eigenvectors to be included.3.1 Principal-components analysis\n4 The wavelet-PCR method: The wavelet-PCR method entails several steps, as shown on Figure 1:1. We pre-process the variables in the following manner: if the explanatory data vectors are not of dyadic lengths (i.e. powers of 2), we extend the data samples by applying a so-called \"zero-padding\" method. This method consists in adding zeros to the beginning and/or end of each time domain sequence in order to attain the next dyadic length. For example, if our sample includes 1,000 observations, we must then add 24 zeros in order to reach the dyadic number 1,024=210. This pre-processing step is needed for the implementation of the DWT algorithm that requires a dyadic length time series. It should be underlined here that the wavelet coefficients relating to the zero-padding operation are subsequently eliminated while performing the inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) signal reconstitution.2. The DWT is performed to the exogenous variables. This requires a precise choice of the wavelet system to be used. In this work, we rely on Daubechies wavelet bases possessing attractive properties such as vanishing moments, orthogonality, and especially support compactness, which result in significant computational gains.3. The obtained wavelet coefficients are thresholded by means of the wavelet-based denoising techniques discussed above.4. We carry out an IDWT to reconstruct the set of explanatory variables that are now practically noise-free. Finally, the conventional PCR is applied to the new set of regressors.\n5 Application: In this section, we illustrate the contribution of the wavelet-PCR approach in processing and modeling a French stock market dataset.We retain daily returns of 37 securities quoted in the Parisian Stock Esxchange composing the \"CAC 40\" index on August 31, 2007[1]. The data cover the period going from January 2004 to 2008, thus totaling 1,024 observations. It should be underlined that the sample size is chosen to be of dyadic length (210 in our case). This is required in order to perform the DWT.5.1 PCR before denoising\n6 Conclusions: By applying the \"wavelet-PCR\" approach on the French stock market data, we empirically demonstrate the usefulness of this new method and its contribution in improving the quality of PCR regression model.Indeed, we were able to increase the number of significant factors in the model, to improve the coefficient of determination adjusted R2 and to reduce the mean square error compared to the regression model on principal components.As future research directions, one can opt for a multidimensional wavelet denoising technique that is well suited for situations when an additive, spatially correlated noise affects the dataset. This can further improve the identification (estimation) of the risk factors that explain the stock returns.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - In this paper, it is set out a hybrid data analysis method based on the combination of wavelet techniques and principal-components regression (PCR). The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamics of the stock returns within the French stock market.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Wavelet-based thresholding techniques are applied to the stock price series in order to obtain a set of explanatory variables that are practically noise-free. The PCR is then carried out on the new set of regressors.\nFindings: - The empirical results show that the suggested method allows extraction and interpretation of the factors that influence the stock price changes. Moreover, the wavelet-PCR improves the explanatory power of the regression model as well as its forecasting quality.\nPractical implications: - The proposed technique offers investors a better understanding of the mechanisms that explain the stock return dynamics as it removes the noise that affects financial time series.\nOriginality/value: - The paper uses a new denoising framework for financial assets. The paper thinks that this framework might be of great value for academics as well as for financial investors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Blending the past and present in a retro branded music concert: the impact of nostalgia proneness	[ "Word of mouth", "Intentions", "Willingness to pay", "Nostalgia proneness", "Retro branding", "Retro marketing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Thanks to retro marketing in general, and retro branding in particular, consumers can now purchase modified versions of products or brands that fit today's tastes and functionalities while still referring directly to the past (Youn and Jin, 2017). Retro marketing is \"a generic term used to describe marketing strategies capitalizing on the past to sell up-to-date products and services\" (Fort-Rioche and Ackermann, 2013, p. 497). As such, retro marketing leads to a form of consumption related to the past as it establishes a connection with people, events or objects that are presented as being somehow bound to a lived past (Belk, 1990) or even to an indirectly experienced past (Stern, 1992).\nConceptual background: Retro marketing and retro branding\nMethodology: The proposed conceptual model is tested with an experiment on the rock band \"Led Zeppelin\". This band was selected based on its tremendous contribution to rock music and its ensuing mythic status as referred to in the popular and specialized press. Among others, its contribution has namely been underscored by President Barack Obama, in December 2012, when the three surviving members of the band were granted the Kennedy Center Honors, the USA's highest award for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts[2].\nResults: Prior to conducting the main analysis, we checked whether nostalgia proneness was significantly related to the gender and age of respondents. The results suggest that age (r = 0.031, p = 0.706) and gender (t150 = 0.629, p = 0.530) are not significantly related to nostalgia proneness, indicating that these two demographic variables cannot be used as proxies in a retro branding strategy.\nDiscussion: Overall, anchored within the self-continuity theory (Wildschut et al., 2006; Routledge et al., 2011; Routledge et al., 2012; Heintzelman and King, 2014), the results find support in the assumption that a blend between the past and present for a retro brand, has a positive impact on consumers' responses under conditions of pronounced nostalgic feelings. This study gives empirical credence to Brown's (1999, 2001a) and Brown et al.'s (2003b) assertion that nostalgia proneness moderates the effect of a retro brand and consumer reactions.\nTheoretical implications: While retro marketing and retro branding are gaining unprecedented momentum, this study empirically enhances the understanding of the relationship between retro branding and nostalgia, two paramount elements previously discussed at a conceptual level in literature. As such, this study has numerous theoretical and practical implications.\nManagerial implications: From a managerial standpoint, the findings suggest that nostalgia proneness is a promising segmentation variable to explain how consumers can react to a retro brand. For managers, this means that the demographic segmentation variable of age, despite its relative straightforwardness and ease of use, is not a good one. Indeed, the results showed that age and nostalgia proneness are not significantly related. Accordingly, the propensity to feel nostalgic appears to be a more relevant segmentation criterion. Related to this point, the attachment to a retro brand (in our case, Led Zeppelin), does not rely on age. Managers should not take for granted that a consumer who has lived a period of reference directly will be necessarily more attached to a retro brand than a younger consumer. Overall, neither retro brand attachment nor nostalgia proneness seems to vary with age. Therefore, in contrast to common assumptions, age has no impact.\nLimitations and future research opportunities: The current study has some limitations. First, the results are contingent upon the music band selected. It is likely that the direct effects could have been different if another band (e.g. Pink Floyd) had been chosen. Second, the scenarios presented to the respondents were hypothetical and cannot pretend to reflect true reality. Third, working with only two features of a concert is in itself a reductive representation of all the elements surrounding the performance of a rock show. Keeping up with the drama metaphor (Grove and Fisk, 1992), inclusion of other elements, such as the physical stage, would have probably led to richer findings. Future research could aim to replicate the results while investigating the impact of an \"atmosphere mix\" variable. Grove and Fisk (1992) stressed the people component but defined it as actors and public. The retro levels in the audience were not controlled. Another limitation is that we used a convenience sampling method. Other studies could seek to triangulate our results using a probabilistic sampling method. Future research could determine to what extent the presence of older members of the audience who knew the band in its initial years would further impact consumers' reactions before and/or after the actual concert experience. Future research should address the issue of consumers' responses toward a retro music band that never really stopped touring and performing, like the Rolling Stones, for instance. According to Brown et al. (2003b), in a retro branding strategy, the dormancy of a brand enhances its chances of success. Future research could therefore compare the behavioral intentions between a retro music band that has gone through dormancy and another band, which has not gone through that stage.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Retro branding is gaining unprecedented momentum. This study aims to empirically examine the moderating impact of nostalgia proneness on the relationship between retro branding and consumer behavioral intentions in the music industry. Nostalgia and retro branding are two paramount elements conceptually discussed in literature but rarely investigated together empirically despite their interconnections.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An experiment including four different scenarios blending retro and contemporary stimuli was conducted on 181 subjects. Two rock band variables were manipulated: song set list (i.e. list of songs) and band lineup.\nFindings: The findings suggest that mixing the past and present for a retro brand impacts consumer behavior. A more nuanced explanation is suggested by showing that a retro brand has a strong effect on consumers' intentions to attend and willingness to pay, but not on their WOM intentions, when these consumers are more prone to feeling nostalgia.\nOriginality/value: Nostalgia and retro branding appear to be interconnected concepts, but few studies have assessed how nostalgia proneness can impact consumers' intentions toward a retro brand. Fewer have investigated consumers' intentions toward an experiential, intangible retro brand.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Country classification and the cultural dimension: a review and evaluation	[ "International marketing", "National cultures", "Culture", "Classification", "Market segmentation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For international marketeers, segmenting the market is necessary in order to identify a company's target markets. Segmenting the market can be done in various ways, such as quality of life grouping (Peterson and Malhotra, 2000), regional country classification (Furnham et al., 1994; Lessem, 2001) or cultural country classification (Hofstede, 1980). Although researchers do not agree on \"the best way\" of segmenting the market, we support the idea that segmentation based on cultural country similarities can be valuable for both international marketing (IM) practitioners and researchers. For IM practitioners and researchers, several questions can be raised while studying this topic, such as \"What are the advantages of segmenting the world?\" \"Why using countries as a level of analysis when doing so?\" and \"What is the usefulness of considering cultural similarities?\" These questions will be addressed before explaining the purpose of this research.Segmenting the world based on cultural country similarities\nClassification and scientific inquiry: First, the importance of classification schemes for scientific research is explained. Thereafter, the differences between typologies and taxonomies are examined. To conclude, Hunt's (2002) criteria to evaluate classification schemes are discussed.Importance of classification for scientific inquiry\nResearch study: In this part, we address three subdivisions; \"method,\" \"overview of cultural country classifications,\" and \"evaluation\".Method\nDiscussion: Previous research in the cultural domain in general and specifically in cultural classifications has received some criticism (Ronen and Kraut, 1977; Bhagat and McQuaid, 1982; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). We use these criticisms to evaluate whether progress has been made in this field.Ronen and Kraut warned in 1977 that few authors examining country clusters use quantitative data. In the eight cluster studies reviewed by Ronen and Shenkar (1985) some empirical data is used. The question can be raised whether \"current\" (post 1985) classifications are developed based on an empirical research study. When looking at the eight studies discussed in this paper, the authors of six studies use some kind of quantitative data (newly developed or existing databases). This seems to indicate that - when looking at the studies discussed in this paper - this research domain appears to be slightly more \"robust\" than 30 years ago.Bhagat and McQuaid (1982, p. 675) raised their concern about the fact that many researchers use \"culture as an unspecified independent structure\". It therefore seems necessary to:* specify the concept of culture; and* incorporate other influencing factors than culture.Concerning the first aspect, we would recommend researchers to use a multidimensional conception of culture and not restrict themselves to four-dimensional (Hofstede, 1980) or two-dimensional models (Hall, 1976, 1983). Also Kale (1995) remarks that Hofstede's results should probably not be applied without searching for other possible cultural dimensions. Unfortunately, in the eight papers reviewed, many authors (Sriram and Gopalakrishna, 1991; Kale, 1995) adopt Hofstede's cultural dimensions to conceptualize culture without searching for other cultural dimensions. Regarding the second aspect, we notice that many authors tend to use cultural country differences or similarities to \"explain\" the differences or similarities concerning marketing practices such as relationship marketing or advertising. Although we tend to agree on the fact that cultural differences or similarities cannot be ignored, we do believe that - besides culture - other factors (e.g. economic, political and legal) might influence the effectiveness of marketing practices (Wills et al., 1991; Sriram and Gopalakrishna, 1991; Zandpour and Harich, 1996; Ralston et al., 2001; Rawwas, 2001; Hsieh, 2002).When developing new cultural country classifications, it seems obvious that researchers try to utilize recommendations made by other authors (Bhagat and McQuaid, 1982). Ronen and Kraut (1977) and Ronen and Shenkar (1985) emphasize the importance of a clearly defined sample profile and volume. However, as discussed earlier, few authors of the reviewed studies seem to follow this useful remark. Specifically, in the area of the translation of questionnaires, recommendations by Bhagat and McQuaid (1982) and Ronen and Shenkar (1985) have not been followed.Some points of interest for researchers who want to develop an \"original\" classification scheme are derived from Table IV (see earlier). First, researchers can probably increase the reliability and applicability of their classification scheme by explicitly describing (cultural) country characteristics. By doing so, researchers seem to avoid representing them as a \"black box.\" Moreover, other scholars and practitioners can probably better understand why a particular country is attributed to a certain category if researchers using numerical values representing dimensions clearly describe the cut-off rate. In addition, other (not yet categorized) countries can probably be categorized more easily. Second, scholars have to allocate each country to a category, and to only one category (mutual exclusivity). Moreover, if a country appears to be an outlier, researchers can possibly consider subdividing this country into two or more cultural regions, or at least reflect on its position, rather than merely excluding it from their \"neat\" classification. By doing so, the classification scheme can be more \"robust,\" which presumably increases the applicability of the classification.We argue that the era of divergence in the domain of cultural country classification has passed, and that there exists an urge for convergence. So far, IM researchers do not seem to build on existing research results. Eventually this has resulted in a proliferation of \"competing\" classification schemes. Often, researchers start \"from scratch,\" building their own typology or taxonomy instead of refining the existing classification schemes. Consequently, future IM researchers could try to refine earlier results, such as Schuster and Copeland's (1999) broad cultural country groupings.When adopting existing classifications in research, such as studies testing the effectiveness of IM strategies or marketing mix elements in different countries or country groups, researchers should make their choice of cultural classifications more explicit. So far, researchers do not seem to make a conscious selection of the existing classifications, nor do they seem to use multiple classifications to test the robustness of their research. Studies such as Jackofsky et al. (1988) and Townsend et al. (1990) do not provide any explanation for their choice of classification.Regarding practitioners, this study argues that IM managers might think of grouping countries culturally for fine-tuning their marketing strategy. When seeking co-ordination and synergies, multinationals might use country cluster offices as a step-stone or alternative to more centralized, global headquarters and \"regional\" offices. Depending on the topic and goal, we recommend marketing managers to try out different classification schemes for different purposes. Country clusters based on work goals can be more suitable for establishing organizational and HR approaches for subsidiaries or alliances abroad, whereas other cultural classification schemes are probably more useful for the differentiation of relational marketing and advertising strategies. We also recommend IM managers to continuously question their own country groupings. Following up on new country classification studies (either testing or comparing existing schemes or developing an alternative classification) might lead to a re-allocation of some countries and a re-thinking of marketing mix approaches towards a country or a group of countries.\nConclusion and future research: We try to answer our three research questions (see earlier), incorporating recommendations for future research. Firstly, while describing the research characteristics of the eight selected papers, it became clear that not all empirical studies take into account Ronen and Shenkar's (1985) useful remarks concerning questionnaire and sample characteristics. Although future cultural country classification researchers might first want to evaluate whether all recommendations are useful for the research they are planning to execute, they should at least consider them explicitly. By doing so, they can probably improve the reliability and validity of their research, which in turn can considerably advance the IM research domain. We also recommend future researchers to specify the concept of culture and/or incorporate other influencing factors than culture (see the \"discussion\" section for further explanation).Secondly, we have discussed the fact that some of the selected papers do not meet Hunt's (2002) evaluation criteria. Consequently, both IM researchers and practitioners have to take into account that the classifications' usefulness can be rather low. In general, we believe that researchers could use Hunt's evaluation criteria as follows: first, they might explicitly check whether the classification scheme they have developed or refined meets these criteria. By doing so, they can probably increase the reliability and repeatability of the classification scheme (see also the \"discussion\" section for a summary of some points of interest). Second, researchers might use our \"ratings\" of the selected papers to know which aspects of the existing classifications can be refined. Some future research directions contributing to a convergence of the cultural country classification research domain are:* To empirically test newly developed typologies. By doing so, these classification schemes can probably become more robust, which in turns can advance the cultural country classification research domain.* To refine studies in which countries are ambiguously allocated to two or more country clusters. Moreover, geographic areas such as \"Latin-America\" could be subdivided into two or more country groups.* To assign other countries to the classification schemes in which only a few countries are examined. That way, the classification scheme could be enriched. Currently, IM researchers and practitioners need to be \"lucky\" that the countries they are interested in are examined in the selected papers.* To test comparatively existing typologies and taxonomies in order to evaluate their robustness. So far, classification schemes seem to exist \"independently\" from another.To answer our third research question, we believe that researchers develop their own classification schemes instead of using the Ronen and Shenkar (1985) synthesized clusters because in each domain, cultural influences can differ. We believe that cultural influences are different when searching for \"best\" HR practices as compared to \"best\" IM decisions. Even within a particular domain, different country clusters can probably emerge when examining different aspects. Cultural country groups used to develop advertising campaigns might be dissimilar from relationship marketing cultural country groups. We, therefore, would urge for the development and testing of different cultural classification schemes along different marketing intents (e.g. advertising, relationship marketing). We also believe that the existing classification schemes could - as explained in the previous paragraphs - be refined by future researchers. By doing so, future researchers can contribute to a convergence in the domain of cultural country classifications.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to identify, review and evaluate international marketing (IM) studies in the domain of cultural country classification (1985-2006).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - First, articles in which an \"original\" classification is developed are identified. Then, the paper characteristics are summarized using Ronen and Shenkar's characteristics. Eventually, Hunt's evaluation criteria are used to evaluate these classifications.\nFindings: - Summarizing and evaluating the selected papers reveals that the authors of the selected papers do not always seem to explicitly consider Ronen and Shenkar's useful recommendations concerning questionnaire and sample characteristics. Moreover, evaluation seems to indicate that Hunt's evaluation criteria are not always met.\nResearch limitations/implications: - It is recommended that future cultural country classification researchers consider Ronen and Shenkar's recommendations. Moreover, researchers might explicitly specify the concept of culture and/or incorporating other influencing factors. It is also recommended that researchers develop their own classification scheme to check whether the scheme meets Hunt's evaluation criteria. Other researchers might try to contribute to a convergence of the cultural country classification domain by empirically testing newly developed typologies; refining studies; assigning other countries; and testing comparatively existing classifications.\nPractical implications: - Practitioners might think of grouping countries culturally for fine-tuning marketing strategy. When seeking for co-ordination and synergy, multinationals can use country cluster offices as a step-stone or alternative to more centralized, global headquarters.\nOriginality/value: - Besides, Ronen and Shenkar's paper in 1985 - another evaluation paper in the domain of cultural country classification and IM was not discovered. The paper tries to offer some useful recommendations to both scientific researchers and practitioners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intellectual capital and performance: Taxonomy of components and multi-dimensional analysis axes	[ "Performance", "Intellectual capital", "Intangible assets", "Systematic review" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The OECD (2015) recently underlined the importance of intellectual capital (IC), stating that in OECD countries, investment has gradually moved away from traditional areas of investment in physical assets, placing the emphasis on intangible assets. In addition, the relative resilience of investment in intangible assets at times of crisis could be a sign that these assets are cyclically less sensitive than investment in physical assets or benefit more from government actions in the early stages of a crisis.\nIC: dimensions of analysis: The appearance of new MAAs of IC is intrinsically linked with the advance of research on different units of analysis considering multiple dimensions, namely, individual, organisation, urban space, region (Uziene, 2013) and nation (Uziene, 2014; Gogan, 2014; Macerinskiene and Aleknaviciute, 2015).\nMethodology: Traditional literature reviews often do not have the necessary rigour and, in many cases, are not understood as real contributions to research science (Marr and Moustaghfir, 2005). In addition, Massaro et al. (2016) advocate that traditional literature reviews can provide varied results due to a certain lack of rigour that has been criticised as too subjective (Petticrew and Roberts, 2006). To minimise this understanding, SLRs, developed initially in the area of medical science aiming to produce a replicable, scientific and transparent analysis of the literature, have recently been extended to other areas (Boaz et al., 2002), particularly the scientific area of management (Tranfield et al., 2003; Marr and Moustaghfir, 2005; Geraldi et al., 2011; Sirelkhatim et al., 2015). SLRs use a process that, through a set of rules, potentially offers less bias and more transparency of the execution, measures, techniques of validation and reliability than traditional literature reviews (Massaro et al., 2016). Various authors recommend respect for the specific principles of the SLR methodology in order to guarantee greater transparency, high quality and more pertinent comments on management research (Tranfield et al., 2003; Marr and Moustaghfir, 2005; Geraldi et al., 2011; Sirelkhatim et al., 2015).\nConclusions: The literature on IC is quite vast, but by considering only empirical studies of OIC as the focus of research, the literature basis is still limited, and so additional research efforts are needed to gain a general view and critically assess what has already been studied and the measuring methods used. The previous studies by Petty and Guthrie (2000) and Labra and Sanchez (2013) do not provide unequivocal identification of the main components of IC, making the dominant typologies of IC components depend not only on the dimensions of analysis selected, but also on the limited nature of the primary data used in different empirical approaches. So this paper fills the gap identified through carrying out an SLR, based on articles published in high impact journals, allowing identification of the main components of IC, by dimension of analysis, as well as the influence of each of those components on performance. This SLR makes an important contribution to the literature on IC, in that it provides an instrument that can be used by the academic community, political decision makers and managers in order to identify areas of development of IC dimensions and components, as well as the main studies about the relationship between IC components and the performance of organisations, regions and countries.\nImplications and recommendations: This paper provides important implications for policy makers, managers and scholars, presenting empirical evidence about the type of relationship existing between IC components and performance by MAA. In relation to OIC, managers should develop strategies in order to develop, implement and control IC to ensure a competitive advantage and improve future performance. If organisations develop their IC, especially the human capital component, attracting more qualified and/or more educated people to the region where they are located or promote staff training, they contribute not only to development of the organisation itself, but also improve considerably its profitability, and stimulate the region's development (Piekkola, 2011; Pink-Harper (2015). According to Pink-Harper (2015), human capital measured as a concentration of highly educated people leads to positive economic growth and development of the regions of influence, agreeing with the conclusion of Barro (2001) that human capital's education is a factor with a positive effect on countries' economic growth. Regarding innovation capital, most of the studies analysed highlight the importance of this type of capital in determining organisations and nations' performance. As mentioned by Bontis and Cabrita (2008), IC is a critical discipline in the field of strategic management and an important area of research in the innovation era (Bontis and Cabrita, 2008). Therefore, if organisations are strategically innovative, they will tend to increase innovative capital, not only their own but also that of regions and countries, through knowledge spillover effects. Through analysis of RIC, regional public policies can find solutions in terms of the IC territories should possess to attain sustainable development and determine the current situation of those assets (Medina et al., 2007). IC is also an important factor for investors (Yalama and Coskun, 2007), helping those who devise public policies to formulate and implement policies oriented towards resilient performance by sector (Yalama and Coskun, 2007; Al-Musali and Ismail, 2016).\nLimitations and directions for future research: This SLR shows the growth in the number of empirical studies related to RIC and NIC, these being the least explored areas. However, due to the difficulty in collecting data, this development is believed not to be as rapid as would be necessary. Despite the large number of publications found, the area of research dealing with IC provides multiple opportunities for future exploration and so researchers can continue to make very significant contributions to advancing theory on IC. In this line of reasoning, this paper emphasises the need to deepen empirical research in the regional and national axes of analysis, given the limited number of empirical studies identified in the SLR.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the predominant classification of intellectual capital (IC), in terms of components, using the literature of reference on the relationship between IC and performance and considering multi-dimensional analysis axes (MAAs): organisational, regional and national.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review (SLR) is presented focussing on empirical studies on IC published in the period 1960-2016. A protocol for action is defined and a research question is raised, gathering data from the databases of: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. A social network analysis is also provided to determine the type of networks embracing groups, IC individual components and performance type.\nFindings: Of the 777 papers included in the SLR, 189 deal with the relationship between IC and performance. The paper highlights the greater development of empirical studies starting from 2004; the organisational MAA is the most studied. The most frequently used groups of components in studies dealing with IC's influence on performance corresponds to a triad of human capital; structural (organisational or process) capital; and relational (social or customer) capital, which determine positively the performance of organisations/regions/countries, but their influence is not linear and depends on various factors associated with the context and surrounding environment.\nPractical implications: This study has wide-ranging implications for politicians/governments, managers and academics, providing empirical evidence about the relationships between the components of IC and performance, by MAAs, and a global vision and better understanding of how those IC components have developed and how they are related to performance.\nOriginality/value: Due to the high number of references covering a wide range of disciplines and the various dimensions (e.g. organisational, regional and national) that form IC, it becomes fundamental to carry out an SRL and systematise its MAAs to deepen knowledge about what has been discovered/developed in this domain, in terms of empirical studies, in order to situate the topic in a wider theoretical-practical context. The paper is exceptionally wide-ranging, covering the period 1960-2016. It is one of the first clarifying studies on systemisation of the literature on IC, by MAA, and an in-depth study of IC's impact on the performance of organisations/regions and countries which may serve as a guideline for future studies using the taxonomy proposed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Examining the influence of online retailers' micro-blogs on consumers' purchase intention	[ "Brand equity", "Purchase intention", "Micro-blog", "Perceived informativeness", "Perceived persuasiveness" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As social media become an increasing part of daily life, many companies, especially online retailers, are trying to employ micro-blogs as a major marketing channel to increase their commercial value. Daily posts on micro-blogs are an effective way for companies to achieve a series of favorable outcomes including attracting consumers' attention, collecting and processing consumers' information, and building up and retaining bonds with customers (Cheung and Thadani, 2012; Zhang et al., 2014). Existing research considers marketing effectiveness to be one of the key indicators of enterprises' micro-blog value. Most studies tend to use direct indicators - such as the number of followers, comments, and likes - to measure the performance of micro-blog marketing (Cha et al., 2010; Yao and Bu, 2011). However, in practice, while micro-blogs have been found to do a good job when it comes to attracting followers and encouraging commenting and sharing behaviors, they have done a poorer job when it comes to enhancing brand equity and driving purchasing behaviors. This shows that direct indicators cannot always objectively reflect the effectiveness of micro-blog marketing. Thus, determining how best to measure and improve micro-blog marketing effectiveness and to further drive consumers' actual purchase behavior are critical and unresolved issues for both academia and practitioners.\n2. Theoretical background and hypotheses development: In this section, we derive hypotheses based on theoretical bases and propose a research model as shown in Figure 1.\n3. Research methods: In order to examine our research model and hypotheses empirically, we conducted onsite interviews and an online questionnaire survey among followers of the Sina micro-blog (www.weibo.com), currently the most popular social networking site in China.\n4. Data analysis and results: We used the component-based structural equation modeling technique partial least squares (PLS) to assess the measurement and structural models. The Smart PLS 2.0 software package was used.\n5. Discussion and conclusion: 5.1 Discussion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the key determinants of the information value of enterprises' micro-blogs, drawing on the consumer's perspective. This paper examines the effects of such information value on consumers' purchase intention through the building of online brand equity. The paper also investigates how perceived usefulness intervenes in the relationship between micro-blog information value and consumer purchase intention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed research model is examined empirically using a survey of 315 users of the Sina micro-blog. The statistical analysis applies a method based on variance using partial least squares.\nFindings: The results show that online retailers' micro-blog posts, which are characterized by informativeness and persuasiveness as perceived by customers, positively impact online retailers' brand equity, which in turn influences consumer purchase intention. In addition, perceived information usefulness is found to be an important contextual factor that moderates the relationship between perceived persuasiveness and online retailer brand equity.\nOriginality/value: This work adds significance to the literature by extending the research on micro-blog marketing and also provides practical recommendations for online retailers on the operation of micro-blogs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizing for servitization: examining front- and back-end design configurations	[ "Servitization", "Case study", "Front- and back-end units", "Integrated project teams (IPTs)", "Organizational design", "Solutions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Manufacturers increasingly combine products with services to improve their competitive advantage (Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Baines et al., 2009), a strategy known as servitization (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988). When a manufacturer servitizes, it provides different offerings - from relatively uncomplicated \"product-oriented\" services, such as maintenance (Baines et al., 2009) to more complex, result-oriented services or solutions, where the product is \"substituted\" with a service (Cusumano et al., 2015). It is suggested that to undergo the transformation from manufacturer to service provider, manufacturers should modify the way in which they are organized to deliver services and solutions (cf. Galbraith, 2002, 2005; Sawhney, 2006).\n2. Literature review: Motivations for servitization coalesce around competitive, economic and demand perspectives (Baines et al., 2009). Accordingly, manufacturers attempt to develop new revenue streams from services to accompany traditional product offerings (Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003; Davies et al., 2006; Cusumano et al., 2015; Kowalkowski et al., 2015). The provision of servitized offerings is also considered a new means of achieving competitiveness in the marketplace (Foote et al., 2001; Fang et al., 2008; Kastalli and Van Looy, 2013). Moreover, service revenues from an installed asset base can provide a buffer against fluctuating demand cycles (Windahl et al., 2004) and customers can also directly demand servitization from providers (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988).\n3. Research method: To better understand how firms structure for servitization, a case study approach was adopted (Yin, 2003; Ketokivi and Choi, 2014; Voss et al., 2016). This was deemed appropriate as the phenomenon under investigation has not, to date, been studied in depth within servitization.\n4. Findings: This section presents the empirical findings from the three studied divisions of EngCo.\n5. Cross-case analysis and discussion: Within EngCo, different divisions have embarked upon servitization in different ways, suggesting that the transition toward service is not as linear or straightforward as may be suggested (cf. Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003). These differing organizational designs were clearly influenced by the different markets in which the EngCo divisions operate.\n6. Conclusions: This research shows the different design considerations (Chase and Tansik, 1983; Metters and Vargas, 2000; Zomerdijk and de Vries, 2007; Ponsignon et al., 2011) undertaken within an organization that provides servitized offerings and the factors that influence the split between front- and back-end functions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Research suggests that to structure for servitization, organizations should separate their front- and back-end units by reference to high vs low contact activities. However, these prescriptions are overly simplistic and largely based on anecdotal evidence that fails to account for context. The purpose of this paper is to explore the design decisions taken by organizations in support of servitization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A large-scale exploratory case study was conducted, consisting of embedded cases in three divisions of a UK-based, global manufacturing firm.\nFindings: Each division provided different combinations of offerings (i.e. product-, use- and result-oriented). The findings suggest that front-end/back-end configurations differ according to the offering and can exist concurrently within the same organization, challenging the assumption that different configurations within an organization are not possible. The findings show that underlying contextual factors, such as the complexity and temporality of the offering, as well as the power of the customer, have implications for the structuring of servitizing organizations.\nResearch limitations/implications: This is a context-specific, qualitative case study conducted within a large original equipment manufacturer, yet the findings are analytically generalized.\nOriginality/value: In identifying the relevance of different design decisions in terms of customer contact, decoupling of activities and grouping of employees, the findings challenge the extant view that organizations simply split activities between the front- and back-end functions. The research identifies an additional design configuration - integrated project teams - involving a dominant customer dictating organizational interfaces. This research exposes the need for further investigation into how to organize for servitization in project-based contexts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Patenting or not? The dilemma of academic spin-off founders	[ "Performance", "University", "Patents", "Knowledge transfer", "Academic spin-offs", "Start-up" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Theoretical conceptions on the role of universities in local development have evolved over the last 20 years, from the innovation systems approach, which highlighted the importance of knowledge spillovers from university educational and research activities to the surrounding knowledge spaces, toward greater focus on the \"third role\" of universities as an animator of regional economic and social development (Bolzani et al., 2014; Etzkowitz, 2002a, b, 2003; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997, 1999; Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz, 1998; Holland, 2001; Chatterton and Goddard, 2000; Goddard and Chatterton, 1999; Trequattrini et al., 2015, Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Etzkowitz, 2003; Grimaldi et al., 2011).\nThe performance of academic spin-offs: explanatory factors: From a national economy perspective, ASOs can be viewed as a mechanism providing benefits in terms of knowledge transfer from universities to markets, which encourages economic development and creates new jobs (Wright, 2007). The establishment and success of ASOs is a complex process and, from a firm-level perspective, scholars have found only a few successful cases of ASOs (Chiesa and Piccaluga, 2000).\nHow knowledge transfer by patenting affects the performance of academic spin-offs: hypothesis formulation: In the context of academic-related studies, Arora et al. (2001) argue that since university research is generally explicit and codified, knowledge transferred by patenting is easier for universities than other firms. Research on the effects of patents on the performance of ASOs offers limited evidence. Niosi (2006), by analyzing the performance of spin-off companies founded by Canadian universities, suggests that spin-off companies that had grown had also often obtained patents. Clarysse et al. (2007) suggest the importance of patents for ASOs as a basis for success as well as an indicator of early growth. More recently, Clarysse et al. (2011) argue that the development of university technology transfer offices has led to an increase in financial support for the spin-offs based upon these patents. Similarly, Haussler et al. (2009) show that patents are factors which positively affect the capability of research spin-offs to find venture capital. Lofsten (2016), by studying how new technology-based firms' business and innovation resources affect firm survival, suggests that patent development during firms' initial years is critical to firm survival.\nMethods: The hypotheses outlined above are explored through quantitative methods applied to a sample of Italian ASOs. The literature provides different definitions of ASOs because previous studies adopt different approaches to define ASOs by considering the institutional aspect, focusing on its features and its relationship with the founder's (institutional perspective) or the resources exploited by the spinning company (resource-based perspective, Mustar et al., 2006). Our definition is mainly based on the institutional perspective and begins with the generic definition of research spin-off as a new company that is formed by a faculty member, staff member, or student who left university to found the company, or started the company while still affiliated with the university, and a core technology (or idea) that is transferred from the parent organization (e.g. Roberts and Malone, 1996; Smilor et al., 1990; Steffensen et al., 1999). In particular, we act in accordance with the idea that a research spin-off can be considered a university spin-off only if the following three criteria are met: the company founder or founders must be from a university (faculty, staff or student); the activity of the company must be based on technical ideas generated in the university environment; and the transfer of knowledge from the university to the company must be direct (McQueen and Wallmark, 1982; Klofsten and Jones-Evans, 2002).\nFindings: The theoretical hypotheses outlined in this paper are verified if patenting activity is significantly correlated with firm growth. In particular, H1 is confirmed if the coefficient associated with the number of patents is positive and significant. In addition, H2 is confirmed if the coefficient associated with the patent age is significant, whereas a positive and significant coefficient to the number of pre-foundation patents corroborates H3. The interaction-term coefficient, if statistically significant, would testify to the moderating effect of patent age on the stock of patents awarded to the spin-off. Furthermore, we expect as to be negative, signaling mean reversions as often found in samples of SMEs (see Lotti et al., 2003). In addition, aa is usually found to be negative in previous literature.\nConclusions: Existing studies consider patents and spin-offs as two different and often alternative mechanisms adopted by university to transfer technology. Conversely, while scholars recognized the positive effect of patents on spin-off generation, the impact of patents on spin-offs performance is nearly controversial.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of patenting on the performance of academic spin-off firms (ASOs) in the post-creation stage. Specifically, our study analyses how the combination of knowledge transfer mechanisms by ASOs and patents can foster ASOs' early growth performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors explored the relations between patenting processes and spin-off performance through econometric methods applied to a broad sample of Italian ASOs. The research adopts a deductive approach, and the hypotheses are tested using panel data models by considering the sales growth rate as the dependent variable regressed over measures of patenting activity and quality and assuming that firm-specific unobservable drivers of growth are captured by random effects.\nFindings: The empirical analysis shows that the incorporation of knowledge transferred by the parent university and academic founders through patents affects the performance of ASOs. Specifically, the authors find that the number of patents is a positive driver of ASOs' performance, whilst patent age does not have a significant impact on growth. Moreover, spin-offs with a larger endowment of patents obtained before foundation, surprisingly, grow less on average.\nPractical implications: The findings have implications for ASO founders by suggesting that patenting processes reap benefits. However, in the trade-off of external knowledge access vs internal knowledge protection, it may be better to begin patenting after the foundation of ASOs.\nOriginality/value: The authors enrich the on-going debate about the connections between knowledge transfer and organizational performance. This paper combines the concepts of patents and ASOs by providing evidence on the role of patenting processes as a transfer mechanism of explicit knowledge in ASOs. Furthermore, the authors contribute to the literature on costs and benefits of patents by hinting at unexpected findings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cost efficiency analysis of scheduled commercial banks: empirical evidence from India	[ "Data envelopment analysis", "Technical efficiency", "Cost efficiency", "Allocative efficiency", "G2", "C24" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Efficiency measures a bank's performance in relation to a yardstick at a given point of time (Mohan and Ray, 2004). It depicts how well a bank converts its resources into qualitative products and services at minimum possible cost. Banks can take advantage of competitive environment only if these perform efficiently in the market (Bader et al., 2008). If banks are fully efficient, these can have improved profitability with greater amount of funds intermediated at greater prices and, thus, provide quality service to the consumers (Berger et al., 1993). The efficiency of banking system also becomes instrumental in the welfare of society as a whole when it offers innovative and quality service to society at the minimum cost (Valverde et al., 2003; Bader et al., 2008; Gulati, 2011). To earn maximum profits, bank managers have two options; either to maximize their revenues or to minimize their cost. But practically, bank managers do not have much command on their revenues while they definitely have control on following practices that help to reduce cost to a certain extent. As a result, a bank can endeavour to be cost efficient and maximize its profits by offering eminent services at the minimum cost. Focusing on the cost minimization objective of the bank, assessing CE is an essential factor. CE depicts the relative performance of the bank as against the best practice bank which is producing the same output at the lowest operating costs under the similar technological conditions as faced by the concerned bank. It tells how close a bank's cost is to what best practice bank's cost would be for producing the same level of outputs (Weill, 2004).\n2. Review of literature: Innumerable studies have explored the efficiency performance of banks. Number of research articles have focused on technical efficiency (TE), i.e. reducing input to the maximum possible extent with given level of outputs or maximizing the outputs with the given level of inputs without considering their prices (Yue, 1992; Bhattacharyya et al., 1997; Saha and Ravisankar, 2000; Ketkar and Ketkar, 2008; Bala and Kumar, 2011; Uddin and Suzuki, 2011; Gulati, 2011; Sharma et al., 2012; Zeitun and Benjelloun, 2013, Bhatia and Mahendru, 2015; Mahendru and Bhatia, 2017). Merely considering inputs and outputs will not provide any useful information as it will not lead a bank toward financial benefits unless and until their prices are also taken into consideration. So, the researchers shifted their attention toward financial efficiency measures that consider prices. The prime objective of a bank is to earn maximum profit. To achieve this, a bank must minimize their cost at the first instance. Thus, the researchers have analyzed the CE of the banks across the globe. CE evaluation has gained prime significance and even the existing literature on efficiency of banks has exclusively focus on measuring the CE of the banks. The studies specifically evaluating the CE of banks are given in a tabular format, as shown in Table I.\n3. Database and Methodology: 3.1 Database\n4. Empirical findings and discussion: 4.1 CE of SCBs\n5. Conclusion: The results of the paper depict that Indian SCBs have never achieved the full CE score of 1 in any of the years of study. The dominant reason located behind cost inefficiency is the allocative inefficiency which is perhaps due to high variation and unsteadiness in the input prices. SCBs should focus on Asset Liability Management and should correlate their inputs, i.e. deposits, borrowings, employees and fixed assets with their outputs, i.e. loans and advances, investments and non-interest income in order to improve efficiency. Indian SCBs should seriously consider the risk assessment and risk management criteria by balancing their assets and liabilities. Asset driven strategies should be framed for correcting the mismatch focusing on shortening the duration of the asset portfolio. Similarly, liability driven strategies should also be formed concentrating on lengthening the maturity profiles of liabilities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate cost efficiency (CE) scores of Indian Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) in India over a period of 22 years, i.e. 1991-1992 to 2012-2013.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data envelopment analysis (DEA) - a non-parametric approach is used to calculate efficiency scores of banks. Further the efficiency scores are decomposed into technical and allocative efficiency. The differences in the efficiency scores across ownership as well as across reformatory and post-reformatory era are examined by applying Panel Tobit Regression.\nFindings: The paper also identifies the reason for cost inefficiency among Indian banks. In addition, the nature of their return to scale of all SCBs has also been evaluated. The results of the paper depict that Indian SCBs have never achieved full CE score of 1 in any of the years of study. The dominant reason identified behind cost inefficiency is allocative inefficiency. Surprisingly, the results also highlight that SCBs exhibit higher CE scores in reformatory era as compared to the post-reformatory era.\nOriginality/value: With specific reference to India, even lesser literature is found on CE. Indian banking sector has witnessed many changes on account of liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG). Before banks adapted to the new environment, the global financial crisis acted as a fuel to fire affecting the performance of banks. Thus, a reassessment over a longer period would help to know a wholistic view of the issue of cost inefficiency, which has always been a troubling factor for Indian banks.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Teaching marketing to non-marketers: some experiences from New Zealand and the UK	[ "Market orientation", "Student engagement", "Qualitative research", "Marketing education", "Non-marketing students" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Marketing has become a popular subject for undergraduate and postgraduate students across the world (Yoo and Donthu, 2002; Bacon, 2017). Marketing surrounds activities, in which managers and employees create value for their customers, in ways that competitors cannot imitate (Kumar and Reinartz, 2016; Homburg et al., 2017). Marketing education has focussed on various sub-topics, such as strategic marketing, consumer psychology, and market research, to help students understand how organisations can develop their customer value provision and out-perform competitors (Harrigan and Hulbert, 2011). The extant educational literature has typically been written with the key assumption that those who receive marketing education, originate from a marketing (or business-oriented) discipline. While some research has been conducted on teaching non-business students in the capacity of executive education (Mintzberg, 2004; Armstrong, 2005; Hooijberg and Lane, 2009), the teaching and learning strategies available to academics teaching non-marketing undergraduate students (non-marketers) are scarcely available.\nLiterature review: The marketing concept and market orientation\nMethodology: Empirical context\nFindings: Themes\nDirections for future research: As noted earlier, the marketing education literature has scarcely considered how marketing can be taught to students (particularly, undergraduate students) who have relatively little business knowledge (Barr and McNeilly, 2001). Thus, there are certain issues within the extant theory that require additional research. First, despite being validated by certain checks, the assertions made in this investigation were somewhat subjective, in which the teaching and learning strategies that were employed when lecturing or tutoring marketing to non-marketers were predominately based upon a personal account about what methods can be effective in certain scenarios (see Hayden and Chiu, 2015; Travers et al., 2015). More empirical research is needed to explore the teaching and learning strategies that non-marketing students (who are undertaking marketing subjects at degree-level for a specific reason) are most likely to be engaged by. Such empirical research could involve either theory-building or theory-testing approaches to direct future research.\nConclusions: The objective of this paper was to outline the teaching and learning strategies that academics can use when facing the unconventional task of teaching marketing to non-marketing (and non-business) students. Guiding this viewpoint were some personal experiences from teaching non-marketers in the UK and New Zealand (alongside some key publications from the marketing education literature), to determine the most effective teaching and learning strategies that are likely to engage non-marketing students. Henceforth, the following three conclusions are made. First, it is concluded that marketing academics should integrate theory with practice. Second, it is also concluded that lecturers and tutors should provide students with ample opportunities to have discussion-oriented interactions. Third, it is finally concluded that marketing should be related to non-business subjects, namely, the subjects-of-origin of non-marketing students. In closing, this investigation should help academics to engage non-marketing students and help them to be aware of the practicalities of the subject in the commercial world.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how marketing can be taught to students originating from non-marketing or non-business backgrounds (non-marketers), so that academics can engage such students in lectures and tutorials.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research design involved a qualitative methodology using data from two undergraduate marketing courses (one in New Zealand and one in the UK) that contained a large proportion of non-marketing students. Data were collected from a combination of empirical and archival sources and were analysed using self-reflection techniques, alongside other checks for methodological credibility.\nFindings: When teaching marketing to non-marketing students, it is important to integrate theory with practice to help their learning (e.g. through practical case studies). Marketing educators must also maximise their interactivity with their students and have in-class discussions to engage the cohort. Further, lecturers and tutors should relate marketing theories and concepts with non-business subjects to demonstrate the subject's relevance to students with limited commercial knowledge. These teaching and learning strategies were important for students intending to become entrepreneurs after graduating from university, as well as those planning to enter paid employment.\nOriginality/value: Prior studies have focussed on teaching marketing to specialist marketing students; however, they have scarcely considered how educators can teach non-specialist marketing to students with non-marketing and non-business backgrounds. This viewpoint solves this research problem, by discussing the best ways that academics can maximise such students' engagement. It is proposed that the main way that non-marketers can be engaged is through linking marketing with their subjects-of-origin, to demonstrate how marketing activities apply to all organisations and should not be overlooked. A framework is presented, based on the empirical data, to help academics teach marketing to non-marketers. This paper ends with some directions for future research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Regulatory relationships and incentives: from Riggs Bank to HSBC	[ "Penalty", "Incentives", "Regulatory relationships" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In 2004, the USA Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (2012) published a report on Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption Enforcement and Effectiveness of the PATRIOT Act Case Study involving Riggs Bank (Riggs Bank Case Study, 2004). The report set out the anti-money laundering (AML) failings at Riggs Bank, with particular focus on the bank's relationship with certain politically exposed persons (Riggs Bank Case Study, 2004, at 2). Eight years later, the Subcommittee would examine the AML problems within HSBC, including its USA division (HSBC Case Study 2012). One intriguing aspect in both of these case studies is the interaction between the institutions and their primary AML regulator, which in both cases remains the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (hereinafter the OCC) (Riggs Bank was subsequently acquired by the PNC financial services group).\n2. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency: The OCC ensures that financial institutions in the USA that have a national charter are compliant with US AML statutes, such as the Bank Secrecy Act. Although there are various facets to the AML domain, the two most important strands remain suspicious activity reporting, informing the regulator of any transactions which may point to possible money laundering, and customer due diligence, the process whereby an institution records and assesses the financial profile of the customer to determine the money laundering risk they pose. To ensure compliance with AML regulations, the OCC undertakes AML examinations at financial institutions located in the USA. The examination process entails the OCC issuing a \"Request Letter\" to the relevant institution setting out the particular records or information the OCC examiners may need to review (HSBC Case Study at 295). After the examination is concluded, the OCC examiners must then inform the Examiner in Chief of their findings.\n3. OCC and Riggs Bank: According to the Subcommittee's Report into Riggs Bank, the OCC had become \"tolerant of the bank's weak anti-money laundering program\" (Riggs Case Study, at 73). The regulator became reliant on a series of commitments provided by Riggs management that the underlying problems associated with this AML program would be resolved (at 73). In addition to this particular failing, the Report also notes how the OCC was unwilling to utilise formal enforcement tools (at 91). Therefore, the relationship between the OCC and Riggs Bank can best be described as \"unbalanced\". While the regulator in this case was willing to provide the Bank with some discretion to resolve the issues raised, the Bank did not necessarily use this support to address these issues, but merely to continue on as before.\n4. Business costs versus compliance incentives: To resolve the failings detected by the regulator in question, a bank may have to invest considerable resources and time. The Bank for International Settlements recommends that an institution's compliance function should have the required resources in place \"to carry out its responsibilities effectively\" (Bank for International Settlements at 13) (Bank for International Settlements, 2005). But for certain institutions, investing in the compliance function may divert resources from more profitable business operations. There may also be additional indirect costs associated with compliance. For instance, a bank may decide to exit certain markets or decide to terminate a proposed new business line to reflect the requirements of a new regulation (Pierce et al., 2014 at 12-13).\n5. Relationship between regulator and financial institution: Different commentators have examined how relationships develop between regulators and regulated entities. In most cases, the primary motivation of the regulator remains clear, to ensure that the institution in question adheres to the standards established by law. However, different institutions, be they in the financial services or other sectors, may adopt a more nuanced approach to regulation. An institution may view their interactions with the regulator through a prism of \"gains and losses\", where the key principle is \"focused on maximizing their self-interest\" (Etienne at 4). Yet another institution may consider that their \"duty is to obey the law\", where the regulatory relationship is not viewed through a \"loss-gain\" perspective but rather through a \"conform-or non-conform\" prism (at 4). In the former case, an institution is likely to equate compliance with a \"loss\" rather than a gain, particularly if \"complying\" entails the revocation of profitable business lines. For the latter category, the main objective is to address the regulator's concerns.\n6. Regulatory relationships: Before the financial crisis, certain financial regulators were tasked with performing two contradictory roles, one related to the actual process of supervising and monitoring financial institutions, and the second role, entailed promotion of the banking sector as spur for further economic growth. Baxter (2012) notes the OCC is one such financial regulator charged with not only supervision of the banking sector but also responsible \"implicitly\" for promoting \"the growth and prosperity of the national banking system\" (Baxter at 33). In the pre-subprime crisis environment, financial regulators adopted a non-intrusive approach to supervising financial institutions. For instance, Di Lorenzo (2012) comments how no regulatory deterrent existed to control the levels of real estate lending in the USA before the financial crisis and how \"the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) rescinded earlier regulations that imposed such limitations\" (Di Lorenzo at 253). This particular example illustrates how prior to the crisis, certain banking regulators sought to alter the regulatory \"burden\" on the banking sector rather than try to alter the behaviour of financial institutions via regulation.\n7. HSBC United States and the OCC: lessons learned from Riggs?: With a national charter, HSBC USA (hereinafter HBUS) fell under the joint regulatory remit of both the Federal Reserve and the New York State Banking Department. Both primary regulators \"cited fundamental, wide-ranging problems, including ineffective monitoring of wire transfers and monetary instruments, ineffective recordkeeping and reporting of currency transactions, inadequate customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence, and a failure to report suspicious activities\" (HSBC Case Study Report at 301). To address these problems, HBUS entered into a formal agreement with both the Federal Reserve and New York State Banking Department. Under this agreement, HBUS was legally required to bolster \"its AML internal controls\" with particular focus in the customer due diligence and suspicious transaction domains (at 301).\n8. Promoting more robust regulation in the financial industry: The above examples provide only a snapshot of the wider regulatory relationship between the OCC and both financial institutions. But from these an obvious pattern can be deduced of the OCC failing to appreciate the incentives underlying the actions of both Riggs and HBUS. Instead of Riggs and HBUS interpreting the lax approach of the OCC as a form of quid pro quo, minimal if any formal enforcement action in exchange for substantive remedial efforts, an opposite interpretation was formed. Both institutions weighed up the position of the OCC in respect of AML failings and ultimately considered the chances of formal sanction remote. Thus, for both institutions, there were no sufficient incentives proffered by the OCC to remedy the AML failings in each bank. The possible costs of non-compliance, at least in the short to medium term, trumped the costs of compliance.\n9. Conclusion: The financial crisis has highlighted the problems that arise when financial regulators provide too much discretion to financial institution when it comes to complying with regulation. In most cases, the regulator may seek to adopt a passive approach to supervision, but this may only cede ground to the regulated entity without any appreciably gain for the regulator in question. The interactions between both the OCC and Riggs Bank, and the OCC and HBUS, illustrate this point best. Instead of adopting formal sanction proceedings after continuing compliance failings, the OCC still presumed that the institutions in question would resolve these issues in a timely manner. From the perspective of these institutions, the non-confrontational position of the OCC aligned with their own internal incentives to continue on as before rather than to invoke meaningful remedial action.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of the paper is to examine what type of relationship existed between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Riggs Bank in respect of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance. Different commentators have established certain trends in the interaction between a regulator and a regulated entity, and this paper seeks to apply these findings to the relationship between the OCC and Riggs Bank and ascertain where this example lies in the wider domain of regulatory relationships. The paper then examines whether the relationship between the OCC and HSBC United States was similar to the one between the OCC and Riggs Bank or did the regulator adopt a more aggressive supervisory stance. Throughout this work, there is also a focus on the underlying incentives which may adversely affect how a financial institution interacts with a financial regulator and possible solutions to this problem proposed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Research undertaken by commentators was assessed and their findings as the different regulatory relationships that may develop between a regulator and a regulated entity were applied to the interactions between the OCC and two different financial institutions, namely, Riggs Bank and HSBC United States. Examples from the Senate Subcommittee Reports into the AML failings into these financial institutions were examined through the prism of pre-existing regulatory relationship categories.\nFindings: The paper ultimately concludes that the OCC was far too passive in its interactions with both Riggs Bank and HSBC United States and that the primary underlying motivations for both institutions were profit- rather than compliance-led.\nResearch limitations/implications: One of the main limitations to this research was the absence of direct input from either personnel from the banking sector in the USA or of regulators from the same jurisdiction.\nPractical implications: This paper proposes a number of practical solutions to recast the relationship between financial regulators and regulated institutions away from the former deferring to the latter to one where the former dictates to the latter.\nOriginality/value: This paper seeks to examine an actual regulatory relationship between a financial regulator and two different institutions that is reported in the public domain by applying pre-existing academic research on question of regulatory relationships and see how the practice differs or corresponds with the theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leading for sustainability: is surface understanding enough?	[ "Education", "Australia", "Leadership", "Sustainable development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Our research addresses the national and international sustainability agenda by contributing to the existing knowledge base relating to education for sustainability. The study is set in Western Australian Government secondary schools and investigates two issues: the leadership involved in establishing education for sustainability; and how education for sustainability may or may not become embedded across the curriculum and sustained in teaching and learning practice. The research captures participants' understanding of first, how education for sustainability is conceptualised; second, how education for sustainability is incorporated across the curriculum; third, how education for sustainability is led; and fourth, which processes enable education for sustainability to become embedded into the study schools.The significance of this research is linked to the United Nations declaration of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) (Tilbury and Goldstein, 2003). The research is significant because the Australian Government recognises the importance of environmental education and education for sustainability in its policy documents such as \"National Action Plan Environmental Education for a Sustainable Future\" (DEH, 2000) and \"Educating for a Sustainable Future\" (DEH, 2005). Other initiatives include the establishment of the National Environmental Education Network, the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability, and the 2003 National Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) (DEH, 2005; Tilbury et al., 2005).The importance of education for sustainability is reflected in the \"Western Australian Curriculum Framework\" (Curriculum Council of WA, 1998). This is the framework which addresses the learning outcomes for compulsory schooling in all Western Australian schools. However, there is no documented material available to explicate the teaching of education for sustainability in secondary schools. Furthermore, there is a paucity of relevant research in Western Australia. This study is a small step towards filling that gap by providing a richly descriptive analysis of how education for sustainability is conceptualised, led and embedded across the secondary curriculum in our study schools.\nBackground: Education for sustainability\nMethodology: Our study adopted a phenomenological approach. During visits to three Western Australian Government secondary schools to interview teachers of education for sustainability, we sought to understand what these teachers understood to be happening in each setting. The semi-structured interviews explored the successes achieved and trials faced by teachers of education for sustainability. We allocated pseudonyms to each school and each participant to ensure anonymity. Using writing strategies with which we were familiar, we generated narrative accounts from our interview data (Wildy and Pepper, 2005).Narratives permit participants' stories and descriptions of experience to be honoured and given status (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). Our narratives were returned to each participant for feedback and approval of their use in the research. The narratives were analysed by first open coding then axial coding the data (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Sorting the data in this fashion enabled a number of themes to be identified and documented. Further analysis across the cases identified four themes. Links between the themes and the education for sustainability and leadership literature were then explored.\nData and analysis: In this section, we present three narrative accounts obtained from Colin, the teacher responsible for education for sustainability at River View College, one of the three schools in our study. River View College regularly achieves outstanding academic success. River View College has a population of almost 1,500 students, enrolled across year groups from years 8 to 12. Student numbers are relatively stable with a small decrease in the number of years 11 and 12 students over the past five years. Three deputy principals support the principal and a teaching staff in excess of 100 teachers.The three narratives capture the understanding of leading education for sustainability during interviews with Colin, a locally recognised science teacher. Although he is a long-term and committed sustainability educator, Colin maintains a low-profile outside his school community. Two of his narratives describe implementing sustainability initiatives into River View College and the third describes collaboration with his teaching colleagues. In our study, Colin emerged as an exemplary leader of education for sustainability, in contrast to teachers and principals in other schools in the study:BushRangers\nAnalysis: Six themes were identified through a coding process by which phrases of similar or opposite meaning were clustered. For example, phrases referring to \"a long-term passion, a desire to promote environmental awareness and an enthusiasm to promote sustainability interest\" were clustered as displaying emotion. Phrases indicating initiative, such as, \"I recruited, I designed the course and I introduced,\" were clustered together as looking forward. A third group of phrases such as \"a strong structure, through the curriculum and our program was designed to,\" indicating a sense of strategy were called developing strategies. Phrases such \"as no scope for capacity building and to think critically\" were clustered together to represent building resilience. A fifth theme sharing responsibility emerged after clustering phrases such as, \"I found a teacher and with the assistance of a teacher.\" Across all River View College narratives another theme, interpreting sustainability, was identified. In the next section, these themes are elaborated.Displaying emotion\nDiscussion: We interpret understanding sustainability, imagining the future, building relationships, and taking action as key concepts in re-conceptualising leading for sustainability.Understanding sustainability\nFindings: The elaboration of key concept understanding sustainability addresses the question How is education for sustainability conceptualised in WA secondary schools? The concept of education for sustainability, with its balance of environmental, social and economic elements, has existed for many years, but it is not widely embraced in the schools in our study. By and large, the participants, with the exception of Colin, focus on the environmental aspects of sustainability. In so doing, they focus on and about the environment, as described by Heck (2003) rather than the core values articulated by Fien (2006, 2001). While the participants in this study maintain the historical focus of environmental education, their use, and understanding, of sustainability, is superficial.How education for sustainability is incorporated across the curriculum in Western Australian secondary schools was another research question for our study. In general, the participants are driven by their own passion to deliver the environmental elements of sustainability. Nevertheless, with the exception of Colin, this widespread emotional involvement from the participants did not extend to enthuse others. Interest in sustainability education remains concentrated in the Social Science and Science contexts just as Heck (2003) described for environmental education in the past. Even so, much of the sustainability curriculum that is implemented is fragmented, vulnerable to changing school conditions and could be considered serendipitous.Our study's third research question was How is education for sustainability led in Western Australian secondary schools? Leadership does not seem evident across the settings of this study. A basic tenet of leadership agreed upon by many leadership researchers, such as Fullan (2005), Hargreaves and Fink (2004) and Wildy and Louden (2000), is that leadership involves exercising influence over others. Much of the sustainability education in this study is delivered in isolated pockets, with limited collaboration among participants and their collegial networks. Across the study there is a general absence of long-term, coherent planning, and the systemic building of alliances. By and large, education for sustainability is delivered whimsically, without assembling resources and without articulating a clear vision for the future. Ironically again, this absence of explicit leadership does not auger well for the future of education for sustainability for the schools in this study.What are the processes which facilitate education for sustainability to become embedded and sustained into Western Australian secondary schools? This was our fourth research question. We argue that understanding sustainability is fundamental to facilitating the routinisation of education for sustainability in Western Australian secondary schools. Without themselves having a deep understanding of the concept of sustainability, individuals will struggle to engage others with the concept. This understanding is supported by Fien (2006) who believes that the purpose underpinning the United Nations declaration of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is to build individual understanding of working for a sustainable future, responsibility for future generations and optimism for a sustainable future. However, it is not enough to understand the concept of sustainability. Those who would be leaders for sustainability need also to imagine the future. A future orientation, providing opportunities and a culture of innovation are the elements we conceptualise as shaping the key concept imagining the future. Such sentiments are consistent with the research reported by others such as Tilbury and Wortman (2004) and Hargreaves and Fink (2006). Strong interpersonal relationships together with strong networking and delegation skills are the elements we conceptualise as forming the key concept building relationships. Those who would lead for sustainability need also to build relationships. Research reported by Tilbury and Wortman (2004) and Spillane (2006) also supports this conclusion. Finally, those who would lead for sustainability need to do more than understand sustainability, imagine the future, and build relationships. They need also to be action oriented. Being strategic, overcoming challenges and behaving reflectively are the elements we conceptualise as shaping the key concept taking action. Such concepts are also identified in publications from Fien (2001) and Bennett et al. (2003). Nevertheless, if education for sustainability is to become embedded and sustained in Western Australian schools, local educators are obliged to deepen their understanding of these concepts. Being a leader for sustainability requires a combination of a deep knowledge of sustainability; the forward thinking and ability to imagine a different future; the interpersonal and networking skills to build strong relationships; and the energy and capability of taking action.\nConclusion: We set out to study how education for sustainability is conceptualised, led and embedded in a small sample of government secondary schools. Firstly, by and large, participants focus on the environmental aspects of sustainability due to a superficial understanding of the concept. Indeed, in these school settings, much of the behaviour and resources purported to address education for sustainability remain focussed narrowly on environmental education. Our study suggests that schools do not distinguish between environmental education, with its narrow focus on the environment, and education for sustainability, with its broad focus on the integration of environment, economics and social justice.Secondly, leading initiatives does not occur as a consequence of the actions of charismatic or passionate individuals alone, as in transformational leadership. While transformational leadership has a future orientation the concept has only a rudimentary focus on relationship building. Instead, collaborations within and among committed teams as practised in the distributed leadership and sustainable leadership models face greater likelihood of success. Nevertheless, the distributed leadership focus is firmly on relationship building but lacks a strong focus on the future (Burns, 1978; Leithwood, 1994; Bennett et al., 2003). Preliminary iterations of the sustainable leadership model articulated by Hargreaves and Fink (2003, 2004) proposed three aspects for sustainable leadership. The most recent iterations of the sustainable leadership model incorporate a number of principles and action principles (Hargreaves and Fink, 2004, 2005, 2006). While these are designed to clarify sustainable leadership, doubts are voiced about the usefulness of the model by other educational researchers (Levin, 2006). Despite the connections described between our research and the sustainable leadership model offered by the North American researchers, our research identifies both the complexity and the importance of understanding sustainability as crucial to leading for sustainability.Thirdly, embedding change in secondary schools is acknowledged as difficult. Educators are not short of innovative ways to engage students in learning. Problems arise, however, in embedding or sustaining initiatives once they are implemented. This research into the three cases indicates that some educators have under-emphasised, or remain unaware of, the planning necessary for the sustainability of their initiatives. Many initiatives are adopted in an ad hoc manner and therefore doomed to collapse without being normalised into the school culture. Without a deep understanding of sustainability participants in our study are not in strong positions to embed and sustain educational change.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to report an investigation of how education for sustainability is conceptualised, incorporated across the curriculum and led in three Western Australian Government secondary schools. It also reports on processes to enable education for sustainability to become embedded into these schools.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data for the research were gathered through semi-structured interviews with teachers who were reputedly leading education for sustainability.\nFindings: - With the exception of one participant, the concept of education for sustainability is not widely embraced in the schools of this study. Instead participants focus only on the environmental aspect of sustainability. Again, with the exception of one participant, education for sustainability remains fragmented and vulnerable to changing school conditions. Leadership of education for sustainability occurs whimsically and with little vision for the future across this study with little evidence of alliance building or collaboration among colleagues.\nOriginality/value: - The paper concludes that leading for sustainability requires a combination of a deep knowledge of sustainability; forward thinking and the ability to imagine a different future; the interpersonal and networking skills to build strong relationships; and the energy and capability of taking action to achieve the imagined different future.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Indonesian public healthcare service institution's patient satisfaction barometer (IPHSI-PSB): A new public healthcare patient satisfaction index	[ "Satisfaction", "Index", "Healthcare service", "Patient perspective" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In many countries healthcare service is one of the services that must be supplied by government (Fryer et al., 2007). Thus, government in many countries has established public healthcare service institution. In Indonesia, the government has also established public healthcare service institution in order to fulfill the citizens' needs on healthcare service.\nLiterature review: Satisfaction\nResearch methodology: This research applied quantitative research methodology. Figure 2 shows the steps of this research.\nResult: Construct validity analysis\nDiscussion: Theoretical implication\nConclusion: Nowadays, it is important for public healthcare service institution to monitor and analyze patient satisfaction. Given this, this paper has developed and tested a new PSI called as Indonesian Public Healthcare Service Institution's Patient Satisfaction Barometer (IPHSI-PSB). The index measures patient's overall satisfaction (PSI) and its antecedent variables, which are the quality of healthcare delivery, the quality of healthcare personnel, the adequacy of healthcare resources, the quality of administration process, perceived sacrifice, perceived value, and image.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a new public healthcare patient satisfaction index (PSI) in Indonesia. More clearly, the index measures overall patient satisfaction and its determinants.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Literature review was performed to identify the determinants of patient satisfaction. Data collection was carried out by using survey with questionnaire. The survey involves 161 patients of one public healthcare service institution in Tangerang, Indonesia. The authors conducted some statistical analyses, namely exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach a analysis, and multiple regression analysis.\nFindings: A new public healthcare PSI was developed and tested. The index consists of overall patient satisfaction and its determinants. The determinants include the quality of healthcare delivery, the quality of healthcare personnel, the adequacy of healthcare resources, the quality of administration process, perceived value, perceived sacrifice, and image. Furthermore, the new index was called as IPHSI-PSB.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research was carried out only in Tangerang, Indonesia and only involved one public healthcare service. Hence, the index needs to be tested in different cities in Indonesia. Furthermore, it is also needed to involve more public healthcare service institutions in future researches.\nPractical implications: Public healthcare service managers can use IPHSI-PSB to monitor, measure, and improve the patient satisfaction of the public healthcare service institution they manage.\nOriginality/value: This paper has developed and tested a new public healthcare patient satisfaction index.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Small and medium enterprises' collaborations with universities for new product development: An analysis of the different phases	[ "Capabilities", "Small and medium-sized enterprises", "New product development", "University-industry relationships" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Understanding how to foster innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is a priority in many countries, and is of particular importance to European policy-makers (Jones and Tilley, 2003) due to the relevance of SMEs for economic growth, innovation, employment and social integration.\n2. Literature review: University-industry collaborations (UICs) have been studied from different perspectives (see Perkmann and Walsh, 2007; Agrawal, 2001). One of the main topics addressed by the literature is how large, established firms can overcome the barriers that hamper the establishment of successful UICs. On the one hand, some authors focus their attention on firm characteristics. An adequate level of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989, 1990) is deemed fundamental to exploit university knowledge fruitfully. Furthermore, firm flexibility and adaptation are crucial for aligning cultural aspects of firms and universities (Santoro and Chakrabarti, 1999). Finally, organizational features impact the outcome of collaborations. In this vein, both firm and university champions play an important role (Santoro and Chakrabarti, 1999, 2002), as do ad hoc organizational units for managing collaborations (Buganza and Verganti, 2009).\n3. Research framework: Based on the objectives of the paper, two aspects of UICs must be taken into account. The first is the potential for SMEs and firms in general to collaborate with universities during different phases of the NPD process, each of which may entail specific challenges (Schartinger et al., 2002). The second is what capabilities a SME must develop to benefit from UICs. In the following pages, these two aspects will be briefly reviewed.\n4. Research methodology: To answer the research questions, both qualitative and quantitative evidence was collected.\n5. Results and discussion: To answer our research questions, we analyzed how SMEs sustain university collaboration during different phases of the NPD process (section 5.1) and the role of the capabilities in supporting such collaborations (section 5.2).\n6. Conclusions: The results of this research shed some light on an important but rather under-explored topic: collaboration between SMEs and universities. Some relevant managerial and policy implications can be drawn from the research results.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to investigate how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can engage in collaborations with universities in different phases of the new product development process, taking into account the peculiarities of SMEs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper combines a qualitative methodology (five SME case studies) with a quantitative one (a survey of 28 SMEs). The quantitative data are used to support the preliminary results obtained through the qualitative analysis.\nFindings: SMEs engage in collaborations with universities following a progressive model; from the easiest collaborations during the testing phase to more complex collaborations during the research phase. In this way, SMEs establish a trust-based relationship with universities. Furthermore, technology management capabilities and project management capabilities are crucial prerequisites for managing complex forms of collaboration with universities.\nPractical implications: SME managers should be aware of the difficulties associated with complex collaborations. They can overcome such problems by adopting a progressive collaboration model as well by as developing project management and technology management capabilities.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers new insights on how to deepen the important topic of how SMEs can manage and develop their relationships with universities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Communication patterns to address the consumption of PDO products	[ "Marketing strategy", "Marketing communications", "Food marketing", "PDO" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction and theoretical background: 1.1 The role of protected designation of origin products\n2. Research design and methodology: With the above mentioned aim, an analysis of the communication tools used by Consortia for PDO products protection was conducted on the entire population of Italian Consortia, with the exception of PDO wines. Indeed, as noted by previous studies (Hall and Mitchell, 2008; Bruwer et al., 2011), communication strategies and consumption behaviours of wine products are peculiar and rather different from those of other PDO food products.\n3. Results: 3.1 Clusters of Consortia: characteristics of the media mix\n4. Communication types and targeted consumer response: an analytical framework: To provide a more useful and effective interpretation of the results of the above analysis, we choose to use, as a reference, the possible communication objectives. We intend them as PDO's purchasing drivers affected by different communication tools. In this way we aim to identify which communication types are most suitable to achieve a given objective.\n5. Discussion: The interpretation of the results of the analysis conducted on Italian PDO Consortia, through the filter represented by the analytical framework proposed above, shows several behavioural differences among the four clusters.\n6. Conclusions and implications: Italy is the global leader with the world's highest number of PDO labels and the highest revenues. The Consortia system is at the very heart of this success, as it oversees the key activities of promotion and consumer information, in a business environment dominated by small and micro enterprises. Although Consortia dedicate relevant resources to this mission, previous research works conducted on PDO never focussed on Consortia communication patterns to understand how to enhance the effectiveness of communication strategies and the consistency of the communication mix with the communication objectives and the characteristics of the market targets. We filled in this gap by investigating Consortia communication patterns, which are defined as a mix of targeted consumer responses, tools and budgeting choices.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the communication patterns adopted by special organisations, called Producers' Consortia, to promote Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) products. In particular, the paper analyses the key differences among the communication patterns in terms of the task assigned to communication, the communication tools employed to convey key messages to customers and the amount of the budget allocated to the mix of communication.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors analysed the communication activities conducted by all the Italian Consortia (112 in total) over a period of four years. A centred log-ratio transformation (clr) was applied to make the compositional data treatable in the Euclidean space. A clustering procedure was then followed to identify the different communication patterns adopted by the Consortia. The authors adopted an analytical framework where different communication patterns of Consortia are identified by the mostly used types (traditional advertising, public relations and digital communication) and the corresponding aimed consumer response (i.e. awareness, attitude and engagement).\nFindings: This paper identifies four relevant and different communication patterns that co-exist in the Italian PDO market. Each pattern responds to a different logic and focusses on a specific task assigned to communication: to increase the awareness of the PDO label, to improve the attitude towards the PDO products and to enhance the engagement with the PDO's values.\nResearch limitations/implications: PDO products are key assets of a growing relevance for the European agri-food industry and consumer education is at the very core of the PDO labelling system. By law, the Consortia are in charge of the crucial task of communicating to customers. This research suggests that the communication of PDO is a complex activity that requires a careful choice of the right communication mix. Different patterns are driven by specific logic and are suitable for Consortia with different characteristics. Future research could complete the results of this study using a qualitative analysis of the content of communication activities. Caution should be used when generalising these findings to markets that present relevant differences in consumer food culture.\nPractical implications: This research identifies some possible communication mixes that managers of the Consortia can adopt to promote PDO products and some options that can guide the development of their communication activities over time.\nOriginality/value: This work adds value to the literature on food marketing, and more specifically on food communication, by analysing the yet underexplored issue of how PDO products can be promoted in the \"post-modern\" food consumption era.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of trust in manager on unethical intention and customer-oriented selling	[ "Customer orientation", "Sales force", "Trust", "Ethics", "Trust in manager" ]	[ { "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.Much emphasis has been placed on understanding individual ethical decision making in the organization and providing means for improving it. Despite these efforts, unethical behavior still permeates the workplace. A total of 55 percent of respondents in a poll of nearly 20,000 people across 19 countries indicated that cheating in business deals was more rampant today than ten years ago, while only 7 percent said it was less pervasive (Cohen, 2008). In a poll of US marketing executives, 42 percent indicated that deceptive sales and marketing practices were one of the top three ethical concerns facing US businesses (Crittenden et al., 2010). The preponderance of unethical behavior is cause for alarm as companies increasingly shift their strategic focus toward establishing mutually beneficial customer relationships (e.g. Cannon and Perreault, 1999; Ganesan, 1994; Gundlach and Murphy, 1993). Dishonest and deceptive (i.e. unethical) acts directed toward customers make it difficult to develop long-term customer relationships.\nTheoretical background and research hypotheses: Theory on individual ethical decision making in organizations provides the basis for the model in Figure 1. As part of the ethical decision making process, individuals establish moral intent, which is the precursor to moral behavior (Rest, 1986). In their models of ethical decision making, both Ferrell and Gresham (1985) and Dubinsky and Loken (1989) suggest that managers can affect individual ethical decision making. As such, subordinates look to the behaviors of their managers and their moral intentions are influenced accordingly. These models, however, have not examined trust in manager as a possible managerial influence on ethical decision making. Unlike most ethical decision making models (except for Wotruba, 1990), this research considers outcomes associated with ethical intention. Wotruba (1990) proposes a theoretical framework for ethical decision making in the sales organizations in which a salesperson's moral decision structure (which includes moral intent) impacts several outcomes, including sales performance. Built on this framework, the study will extend ethical decision making models by including another possible outcome, customer-oriented selling. This is theoretically plausible given that customer-oriented behaviors exemplify a high concern for others (which would presumably involve ethical behaviors) (Saxe and Weitz, 1982).Trust in manager and unethical intention\nMethodology: Sample and data collection\nOperationalization of study variables: A scale developed and validated by MacKenzie et al. (2001) was used to assess Trust in Manager (TM). The scale consists of three items in which participants respond using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from (1) \"strongly disagree\" to (7) \"strongly agree\". Higher scores indicate greater trust in manager.Unethical intention (UI) was measured by asking respondents to read a short scenario in which a salesperson performs an unethical act and then asking them to rate the probability on a scale of (1) \"highly probable\" to (7) \"highly improbable\" of behaving in the same manner as did the individual in the scenario. This format was developed by Reidenbach and Robin (1988) to assess unethical intent. Three scenarios were utilized, rating scores were reversed, and a higher score indicates greater unethical intent. These scenarios were selected because research has determined them to be common unethical sales practices (Dubinsky et al., 1980; Inks et al., 2004). Scenarios have been recognized as a valid method for conducting ethics research in marketing given that they help to standardize the ethical stimulus across respondents while providing realism for the decision making situation (see Chonko et al., 1996).A reduced ten-item version of the Saxe and Weitz (1982) SOCO scale developed by Thomas et al. (2001) was used to measure \"Customer-oriented selling\" (CO). The scale asks participants to respond to five customer-oriented and five selling-oriented sales behavior items using a five-point scale anchored with (1) \"True for none of your customers-NEVER\" and (5) \"True for ALL of your customers-ALWAYS\". The selling-oriented items were reverse-scored so that a higher score indicates greater customer-oriented selling. This scale has been widely used and found to demonstrate good measurement properties (Pettijohn et al., 2007; Thomas et al., 2001).Measure assessment\nAnalysis and results: Before estimating the hypothesized model, the variance inflation factor (VIF) for each independent variable was calculated in order to assess multicollinearity. If the VIF, the inverse of (1-R2), is close to 1.00 little or no multicollinearity exists. The highest VIF occurs for unethical intent (VIF=1.54, R2=0.35), well below a suggested cutoff value of 10.00 (Hair et al., 2006), suggesting little multicollinearity exists among the variables.The hypotheses were tested by performing structural equation modeling with AMOS 16 (Arbuckle, 2007). The fit statistics (GFI=0.926, AGFI=0.898, NFI=0.929, CFI=0.960, RMSEA=0.059) suggest that the model provides an acceptable fit for the data (see Table IV for results). Hypothesis one suggesting a positive relationship between trust in manager and unethical intention is supported (beta=-0.196, p<0.001). However, trust in manager is not significantly related to customer-oriented selling as suggested in hypothesis two. As proposed in hypothesis three, unethical intention does negatively impact the use of customer-oriented selling (beta=-0.750, p<0.001). It appears that by increasing salespeople's trust in their sales manager, salespeople's level of unethical intention should decrease, which should subsequently result in more customer-oriented selling.\nDiscussion and implications: The goal of this study is to understand the impact of business-to-business salespeople's trust in their manager on their unethical intention and the resulting effect on their customer-oriented selling behavior. From this basis, this section will discuss the implications of the empirical findings of the model.An important factor that can be developed by the sales manager is the extent to which he or she has developed trust of the salesperson. Specifically, the significant negative link between trust in manager and unethical intention (H1) provides a unique insight into supervisory trust and the decreased likelihood of unethical behaviors that such trust can produce. This finding underscores the importance of the manager's ability to earn subordinate trust, since importantly, trust was found to be empirically linked to sellers being less likely to engage in unethical behaviors. Managers who regularly engage in trust building activities (e.g. full disclosure of expected goals) can expect to not only enhance seller ethical behaviors, but also to have a residual positive impact on sales performance.Support for H1 adds to the knowledge of ethical decision making theory. Models of individual ethical decision making consider significant others (i.e. management and peers) to influence the moral judgment and moral intent of individuals making an ethical decision. This study expands Dubinsky and Loken's (1989) preliminary study by showing that one way in which significant others (in this case, managers) influence subordinate unethical intent is through trust. Organizational tools such as being able to identify trust building managers, appropriate training in trust building, and communication, can be used to enhance trust building mechanisms between the salesforce and sales managers, fostering higher ethical intention. Importantly, managers who develop trust are likely to influence salespeople's moral judgment.Contrary to the findings of O'Hara et al. (1991) and Martin and Bush's (2006) concept of manager support (similar to trust), the current study did not find a significant relationship between trust in manager and customer-oriented selling (H2). While the potential for such connections does exist, the inconsistency in results suggests an examination in such linkages may be further warranted. The O'Hara et al. (1991) study may have been limited by the study's sample. The sample was narrow, only including salespeople from a medium-sized advertising firm, as well as some missionary salespeople. Furthermore, both studies did not specifically measure trust in manager, but used scales that tapped broader constructs (leader-member exchange and supervisor support) that also assessed trust in manager. Specifically, these conflicting findings indicate the need to reexamine both studies to understand if trust in sales managers really does (or can) create a direct impact on salesperson customer orientation. In fact, there may be a complex aspect of customer-oriented selling that links managerial characteristics that are unidentified in this and other studies.As expected, unethical intention is negatively related to customer-oriented selling (H3). Business-to-business sellers who may practice dishonest and deceptive sales practices to make the sale are not likely to be concerned about the welfare of their customers and vice versa. Additionally, these findings indicate that relational connections (customer-oriented selling) are tied to the ethical intention of the seller. Building on the previous findings that note ethical salespeople avoid behaviors that do not satisfy customer needs (Hansen and Riggle, 2009), the salesperson with ethical intention is likely to show high concern for others, which is a key characteristic of customer-oriented selling.The inverse relationship between unethical intention and customer-oriented selling suggests it is useful to assess possible tools of salesforce management to determine which might be tied to also reducing unethical intention. For instance, there appears to be an ethical overlap between trust in manager and ethical intention such that trust earned on the basis of ethical managerial behavior could solicit in-kind ethical intention. Managers can require and examine client advance preparation work (sales objectives, prospect lists, etc.) of salespeople to attempt to assess seller intention and to align this intention with relational building activities (i.e. customer-oriented selling).\nLimitations and directions for future research: This research offers significant opportunities for future salesforce and business ethics examinations, although it also has some limitations. First, the model tested is only a portion of the possible influences. Other antecedents of adopting a customer-orientation are possible. Variables not yet tested may also be useful to add to this type of model. Second, the survey was limited to sales professionals having access to e-mail and the web. However, business-to-business salespeople generally have access to both tools. Finally, as with all research involving sensitive issues, particularly those dealing with ethics, we depend on the honesty of the respondents to produce reliable results. To reduce socially desirable responses, however, we offered respondents anonymity (Randall and Fernandes, 1991).Other influencers in the sales organization such as sales mentors and co-workers may be critical in expanding the understanding of ethical (unethical) behaviors. Future research should study a wider host of variables and their impacts related to moral judgment and ethical behaviors. A subset of managerial trust building behaviors and ethical intention would also make valuable contributions to the understanding of sales management/salesperson interactions. Other aspects of trust may be interesting to incorporate into this model such as those studied by Mallin et al. (2010), whose work supported a direct and positive relationship between lower uncertainty (via goal congruence and relationship tenure) and managerial trust in the salesperson, instead of what was examined here as trust in the manager.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine how customer-oriented selling is linked to two important antecedents - unethical intention and the trust of salespeople in their manager.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Hypotheses are developed suggesting that \"unethical intention\" is inversely related to \"trust in manager\" and \"customer-oriented selling.\" Data were collected from 345 business-to-business sales professionals. Structural equation modeling was used to test a model of the hypothesized relationships.\nFindings: - Support was shown for a negative relationship between unethical intention and both trust in manager and customer-oriented selling. Interestingly, the proposed negative relationship between trust in manager and customer-oriented selling was not supported in this sample.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study's findings will advance the academic sales research as the literature suggests the importance of building salespeople's trust in their manager, reducing unethical behavior and using customer-oriented selling. In addition, contributions are offered for advancing the understanding of ethical decision making theory.\nPractical implications: - Understanding the importance of manager trust building and reducing unethical behaviors can be incorporated into training.\nOriginality/value: - The study confirms a negative relationship between unethical intention and both trust in managers and customer-oriented selling. Implications are provided as to how practitioners can operationalize these findings to develop trust in managers and reduce the unethical intention of their salespeople.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Toxic leadership: Coping strategies to deal with dysfunction at the top	[ "Psychological distress", "Leadership", "Coping strategies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: When history comes to review the 2010s in North America, the issue of leadership will undoubtedly figure significantly. It will surely seem a mystery how the first black American president, and a Democrat, served for two terms to be followed by at least one term of one of the more hard right Republican presidents ever to sit in the Oval Office. Putting aside their diverse political tendencies, it is also remarkable how two such different personalities served the American people in the same decade. Truly, the awkward meeting on the White House steps as Obama handed over to Trump will become a seminal moment in history, although little will ever be known about what was really going on inside the head of both leaders.\nToxic substance: It may be hard for some of us to imagine working in such an environment, however on the other hand some of us may have had to work for a leader who was somewhat of a maverick in the way they chose to lead their organization. Focusing on examples of toxic leaders, the authors Bhandarker and Rai (2019) seek to understand the effect they can have on their employees in their article \"Toxic leadership: emotional distress and coping strategy\".\nIntended consequences?: Rather than just focusing on toxic leaders themselves, the authors are eager to understand what the fallout is from such a leadership style in terms of the effects on employees and how they deal with such an environment. The authors identify that some staff members undergo psychological distress under a toxic leadership regime - in other words they feel sadness, anxiety and detachment, as well as stress, low self-worth and emotional exhaustion. This can be especially intense for those in immediate contact with such leaders, and can even lead to depression and a loss of self-worth.\nDistress flares: Given the negative consequences of toxic leadership styles, understanding an optimal coping mechanism for employees is key to at least mitigating its effects if the leader remains in post. To do this, the authors surveyed over 500 employees in organizations in India to assess levels of distress and the effectiveness of coping mechanisms employed. Following detailed analysis of the results, the authors found that the feelings of distress were significant, and characterized by hopelessness, irritation, humiliation and anger. The three main coping strategies that followed were summarized as assertive, avoidance and adaptive - a strategy that primarily involved adaptive tactics was used most often:\nComment: The article \"Toxic leadership: emotional distress and coping strategy\" by Bhandarker and Rai (2019) paints a bleak picture of organizations in the spell of toxic leadership. It does a very good job of spelling out what this entails, and what the overwhelmingly negative implications are for employees and the business as a whole. As such, it is well worth an in-depth read to understand more fully the impact of toxic leadership regimes.\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 his/her own impartial comments and places the articles in context\nFindings: When history comes to review the 2010s in North America, the issue of leadership will undoubtedly figure significantly. It will surely seem a mystery how the first black American president, and a Democrat, served for two terms to be followed by at least one term of one of the most hard right Republican presidents ever to sit in the Oval Office. Putting aside their diverse political tendencies, it is also remarkable how two such different personalities served the American people in the same decade. Truly, the awkward meeting on the White House steps as Obama handed over to Trump will become a seminal moment in history, although little will ever be known about what was really going on inside the head of both leaders.\nPractical implications: This 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" } ]
Understanding international web site usage: A cross-national study of German, Brazilian, and Taiwanese online consumers	[ "Electronic commerce", "Internet shopping", "Consumer behaviour", "Germany", "Brazil", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The global internet population is growing at a rapid rate. According to the Computer Industry Almanac (www.c-i-a.com), the worldwide internet population today is almost 945 million and is expected to reach 1.5 billion in 2007. In addition, UNCTAD estimates that the value of global e-commerce has totaled $3.9 billion in 2003, and around 18 percent of all firm and individual purchases will be carried out via the internet by 2006. According to Forrester Research, net shoppers in Europe will spend an average Euro$223 online, bringing Europe's online retail market to Euro$40 billion in 2004 and online retail will take 8 percent of total retail sales in Europe by 2009. More importantly, this phenomenon does not just appear in Europe. A survey of shoppers in 124 countries has found that two thirds of online consumers have no concerns about purchasing from international web sites (www.nua.com). Although global e-commerce provides marketers an exceptional channel to reach their potential customers worldwide, many companies are realizing that building an e-commerce web site to suit an international audience is more complex than they expected (Sheldon and Strader, 2002).As companies set up their international web sites, it is important for international marketers to understand what factors influence consumer use of international web sites for online transactions. Understanding what motivates global consumers to purchase at international web sites can help international marketers design more effective international web sites that target foreign customers. There are only a few studies in the literature that have attempted to explore the web site usage and online purchasing activities of global consumers (Heijden, 2003; Pavlou and Chai, 2002; Phau and Poon, 2000; Simon, 2001). The factors affecting global online consumers' willingness to transact on international web sites are also an under-explored area. Researchers have called for more empirical studies to better understand online consumer behavior cross-culturally (Goldsmith, 2002; Phau and Poon, 2000; Yoo and Donthu, 2001). Thus, this study proposes to use the technology acceptance model (TAM) to study international consumers' acceptance and use of multinational company web sites designed specifically for their country. The aim is to not only extend the use of TAM to study user acceptance of international e-commerce web sites, but to also see how the cultural adaptation of international web sites impacts the attitude and the purchase intention of consumers.To achieve these objectives, we study Brazilian, German, and Taiwanese online consumers' perception of American and Japanese multinational companies' web sites specially designed (in Portuguese, German, and Chinese) for Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan. One of the reasons we chose Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan as our research target is that we hope to get data from culturally different countries that results in more comparable and meaningful results. Thus, Brazil is from South America, Germany is from Europe, and Taiwan is from Asia, and based on Hofstede's (1980) cultural dimensions, Germany is more individualistic and short-term oriented; Taiwan is collectivistic and high in long-term orientation; Brazil and the rest of South America shows a medium score in both individualism and long-term orientation. Furthermore, we chose these countries because they have high internet usage rate and growth rate. Brazil boasts the largest online user population in Latin America (cyberatlas.com), with almost 14 million internet users. Germany, a developed country in the West, is one of the largest at-home internet populations in Europe (www.nua.com). On the other hand, Taiwan boasts an online population of 10 million users', almost half the Taiwanese population (www.cyberatlas.com). Taiwan also boasts an online population of 11.6 million users, almost half the Taiwanese population. Last but not least, since previous studies testing the TAM model were conducted in the US, UK, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Arab countries (Al-Gahtani, 2001; Heijden, 2003; Loch et al., 2003; Straub et al., 1997), Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan are three new countries for testing the TAM model, which makes a contribution to the extant literature.\nLiterature review: The technology acceptance model\nHypotheses: As the objective of this study is to not only test the TAM model in Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan, but to also apply it in the e-commerce setting and extend it to incorporate the impact of cultural adaptation on user acceptance of international web sites, we propose a set of hypotheses to test how relationships among the variables of the TAM model and cultural adaptation affect behavioral intention to use international web sites (Figure 1).The TAM model, in line with the TRA, basically predicts that beliefs lead to development of attitude, and these attitudes in turn determine the consumer's behavioral intention and final behavior. However, Davis (1989) extended the TRA to study technology usage and adoption by adding two key beliefs that specifically account for technology acceptance. The first is perceived ease of use (PEOU), or the degree to which an individual finds the task of using the new technology effortless (Davis, 1989). The second of these beliefs is the PU, or the degree to which an individual perceives that a practical system or technology will enhance the task at hand and lead to better performance (Davis, 1989).Studies of PEOU and PU of web sites in the international business or marketing literature or otherwise are sparse (Zeithaml et al., 2000), but there is growing evidence in the IT literature that PEOU and PU are important predictors of potential adopters' attitude and behavioral intention to use a technology. A recent survey of the IT literature by Legris et al. (2003) found that of the 14 studies investigating the impact of beliefs on attitude towards technology adoption about 12 studies found PEOU and PU to have a significant positive impact on attitude toward adopting the technology. Some studies relating to online consumer behavior have also proposed that web sites which are easier to use, navigate and load are perceived as more effective leading to a favorable attitude toward the web site (Chen and Wells, 1999; Chen et al., 2002a, b; Heijden, 2003; Lynch et al., 2001). There is also evidence in the IT literature that PU of a web site, influences web site usage and adoption indirectly through attitude and directly through behavioral intention (Heijden, 2003). Thus, we propose that international web sites that are perceived useful to completing the online task and are easy to use will lead to a favorable attitude toward the web site, and PU will positively impact the intention to use the web site.H1. Brazilian, German, and Taiwanese consumer's PU of the international web site will positively affect their attitude toward using the international web site.\nMethodology: Sample\nResults: Structural model evaluation\nDiscussion and implications: Previous studies have highlighted that TAM needs to be extended to different contexts and be validated in different cultures to enhance its generalizability (Yoo and Donthu, 2001; Straub et al., 1997; Zeithaml et al., 2000). The present research builds on previous studies and validates TAM in three countries not yet explored. While previous studies have validated TAM in the UK, US, Switzerland, Arab countries, and The Netherlands most of these studies were tested, using surveys, for the adoption and use of IT technology in organizational settings (Al-Gahtani, 2001; Heijden, 2003; Loch et al., 2003; Straub et al., 1997). The exception is the study by Heijden (2003), where they investigated web site usage and acceptance among a Dutch consumer sample. The present study tests TAM model not only in consumer setting but also captures respondents opinions during actual web usage (each respondent visited a web site and then filled a survey form based on their web experience), most of the previous studies have tested TAM using surveys without putting subjects in situation of actual usage of the technology. Thus, the study provides not only a cross-cultural validation of TAM, but it also tests TAM in a different context (web), during actual web site usage, using consumer sample, and controlling for industry (B2C). This study shows that cultural adaptation is an important explanatory variable when determining international web site usage. The study provides empirical evidence showing that cultural adaptation not only enhances ease of use on the web site but also leads to more favorable attitude toward the web site, which in turn affects the intention to transact online. Culturally adapted web sites show the commitment of the foreign vendor to invest in the local culture and to be receptive to their unique demands. This finding has important implications for international marketers wanting to use the web site presence for targeting global consumers. However, many American companies have not yet adapted their e-commerce efforts to meet the needs of a global-online market (www.cyberatlas.com). Some companies equate web site localization to simple translation of web pages for different countries, but translation constitutes only 10-15 percent of the localization effort (www.lisa.org). For example, when localizing a web site to a specific country, special attention needs to be paid to local conventions, time and date formats, units of measurements, addresses and phone numbers, layout and orientation of web pages, icons and symbols, language and rhetorical style, dialects, colors, and aesthetics. Thus, using the extended TAM (TAM plus cultural adaptation) as a diagnostic tool, international marketers can measure the effectiveness of their international web sites in terms of ease of use of the site, PU of the site, and cultural adaptation on the site, and thereby rectify the deficiencies in the site design. Future research can further investigate what types of cultural features and local norms need to be emphasized to make international web sites culturally congruent to local cultures. There have been studies in the advertising literature extending the cultural frameworks of Hofstede (1980), Hall (1976) and other cross-cultural researchers to study the cultural content of print and television advertisements. However, in the online context, the only framework to study culture is that of Singh and Matsuo (2002) and Singh et al. (2003). Further research is needed to develop a parsimonious and exhaustive cross-cultural framework to analyze cultural content on international web site that will provide marketers with an effective tool to develop culturally adapted web sites. Along with cultural adaptation, ease of use and PU of the web site are also shown to be important determinants of international web site usage. Thus, future research is also needed to investigate the antecedents of ease of use and PU. It will be interesting to see how other web site features such as web aesthetics, site security, web site interactivity, and flow states might impact usage and attitude toward international web sites. Although the focus of this study was within the B2C context for international web sites of American and Japanese MNEs, future research can expand the present context of this study by including B2B web sites, web sites of MNEs from other countries, portals, and extranet and intranet applications. Furthermore, studies can investigate how various motivational components of the TAM vary in their importance at various levels of technology acceptance. For example, the effect of PEOU on PU is shown to be strong in the early years of technology adoption and diminishes with time (Davis et al., 1989; Al-Gahtani, 2001). Does this mean that as international online users get more acquainted with shopping on international web sites the impact of cultural adaptation and ease of use will diminish? Future research can also investigate how other competing models (TRA and theory of planned behavior), explaining the attitude - behavior link, compare with TAM in terms of predicting the usage of international web sites. A recent trend on the web is American corporations targeting Hispanic online consumers by developing Spanish language web site and web pages, but how effective are they in terms of attracting Hispanic consumers is open to investigation. TAM model can be extended to study the usage and acceptance of portals and web sites specifically targeted to ethnic consumers, which constitute a sizeable minority in countries like US, UK, Canada, Australia, and other countries with ethnic populations.Finally, to summarize we have shown that TAM is a robust model that can be extended to study international web site usage. Future researchers can use TAM to investigate various forms of technology use and in various contexts, and explore its validity and boundary conditions.\nConclusion: The aim of this study was to test the applicability of TAM in terms of explaining the usage of international web sites by global consumers and extend the TAM to include the impact of cultural adaptation on international web site usage. The empirical findings from this study show that the casual relationships between the TAM constructs (PEOU, PU, cultural adaptation, and attitude toward the site) and the outcome variable (purchase intention) were as predicted in the previous literature. Thus, this study provides strong support for the applicability of TAM in explaining international web site usage in Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan. Also, consistent with prior research (Davis, 1989; Al-Gahtani, 2001), the total effect of PU is greater than that of PEOU on purchase intention. PU has greater impact on attitude toward the site in comparison to PEOU. Most importantly, cultural adaptation is shown to be a vital predicting variable for international web site usage in Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan. Brazilian, German, and Taiwanese consumers' attitude toward using the web site is shown to have a strong impact on their intent to purchase from these international web sites.Finally, some limitations of this study need to be highlighted regarding the sample and method. First, the study used a student sample, while students in this study represented active web users, it is important to have a broader cross-section of population to enhance generalizability of the study. Second, we used a convenience sample of B2C web sites of American and Japanese multinationals; this again restricts the genrelizabilty of the study. Future studies can use different web sites from different industries and countries and even develop experimental international web sites where actual web usage and acceptance can be measured in controlled settings. While the sample consisted of regular internet users, the study did not explicitly measure the impact of online consumers' shopping experience on international web site usage and acceptance. Future studies can incorporate user experience as an external variable in the TAM and test the model. Most importantly, this study uses cross-sectional data giving us a snap shot at that moment in time, longitudinal studies can provide stronger test of theory.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been one of the most influential theories in the information technology literature, but it has not been used in the marketing literature to understand consumer acceptance of international web sites. Thus, the purpose of this study is to use TAM to study international consumers' acceptance and use of MNEs web sites designed specifically for their country.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study applies and extends the TAM to study the B2C international web sites of American and Japanese MNEs for Brazilian, German, and Taiwanese consumers. In total, there were 2,243 usable questionnaires and the structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: - This study provides strong support for the applicability of TAM in explaining international web site usage in Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan and shows that cultural adaptation is an important explanatory variable that should be included in the TAM when exploring cross-cultural issues.\nOriginality/value: - The value of this paper is that it not only extends the use of TAM to study user acceptance of international e-commerce web sites, but also sees how the cultural adaptation of international web sites impacts the attitude and the purchase intention of consumers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Training effectiveness during technological changes in Dubai-based companies: perspectives from managers and employees	[ "Training", "Motivations", "Organizational change" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"The Smart Dubai 2021 strategy has promoted technological advances that benefit the city's people, its economy, and its resources; however, for this strategy to be successful, we must prepare our people to work in new ways.\" This statement from an HR manager reflects the reality that is being faced in many Dubai-based companies. Technological advances have changed how work is performed and increased the demand for technological skills and abilities. However, do managers provide employees with effective training to help them develop required technological skills? Are employees motivated to learn during training? This article aims to answer these questions by examining the effectiveness of training during technological changes in four companies located in Dubai. The perspectives of managers and employees were explored with respect to two factors that influence training effectiveness: training program characteristics and employees' motivation to learn during training (Aziz and Ahmad, 2011). The results of this article could help managers better understand how to more effectively manage technological changes within companies in the UAE (Baddah, 2016).\nMethodology: Because several companies in Dubai are implementing technological changes, emails were randomly sent to managers and employees from different companies to invite them to participate in this study. Individuals who accepted this invitation (namely, eight managers and seven employees from four different companies) were included in the final sample. All of these individuals participated in semi-structured interviews in which questions were posed about the effectiveness of different training techniques and employees' training motivations during the most recent technological organizational change. Three independent researchers were present during the interviews, and each researcher played a specific role (posing questions, recording data, or transcribing data). There were three major steps in analyzing the study data, the first step involved identifying which training techniques were selected as effective by managers and why these approaches were considered to be effective. Managers' perspectives regarding factors that drive employees to learn during change (i.e. training motivations) were also identified in this first step. In step 2, employees' perspectives regarding the same topics were identified. In the final step, the data from managers and employees were compared to identify a pattern.\nThe 70-20-10 training model: The results of the interviews indicate that both managers and employees prefer a training program that incorporates different training techniques, similar to the 70-20-10 training model (for additional explanation of this model, see Lysova et al., 2014). However, according to both parties, for employees to effectively develop required technological skills, such a training model should follow a specific order in practice. Moreover, when such an order is followed, individual learning needs must be considered, as will be elaborated on below.\nWhat motivates employees to learn during change: Managers' perspectives\nConclusion: In conclusion, training during technological changes is somewhat effective in Dubai-based companies because the 70-20-10 training model prepares employees to independently work with such changes. Steps in this model are adopted in a specific order that addresses individual learning needs. Attention should be devoted to the final step of the model, which should ideally be implemented in consultation with employees. With respect to training motivations, the study results reveal that these are not stable and may vary within and among individuals. To improve training effectiveness, managers should measure employees' training motivations during each organizational change to better address all individuals' needs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of training during technological changes in Dubai-based companies by focusing on training program characteristics and employees' training motivations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative investigation was conducted that included interviews with eight managers and seven employees.\nFindings: As demonstrated by the study results, managers and employees suggest that the 70-20-10 training model is effective for preparing employees to independently implement technological changes. However, employees argue that training motivations are not stable and vary within and among individuals during any organizational change, although this consideration is not acknowledged by managers.\nOriginality/value: This study is the first to focus on identifying how change management can be improved in Dubai-based companies via effective training.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Penny-wise, pound-foolish managers: the syndrome affecting productivity and efficiency	[ "Productivity", "Efficiency", "Effectiveness", "Human‐resource management", "Organizational performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Scholar and author of the Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton, in the early-seventeenth century, first used the phrase \"penny-wise, pound-foolish\". It implies the need to avoid wasting too much time saving small amounts of money while liberally spending large amounts.\nProductivity, effectiveness and efficiency in performance: Sink and Tuttle (1989) define effectiveness as \"doing the right things\", while efficiency means \"doing things right\". Performance effectiveness is when someone meets a target or goal but the use of the resources may not be efficient. In short, doing things correctly from the beginning to ensure the intended purpose is adequately achieved. On the other hand, performance efficiency is all about good use (least cost) of resources to attain the target or goal.Productivity is the ultimate quantity with quality of the output. People who are efficient and effective are also productive. The simple equation efficiency+effectiveness=productive can be complex for large businesses. Grossman (1993) mentions that productivity improvement is a key competitive advantage of an enterprise.Small to medium-size enterprises also strive to operate within the equation. Senior and middle-management attention and time given to these performance attributes are significant. The entire enterprise and the full supply chain ought to be linked to these performance indicators.Organization performance in terms of quality and productive output is determined largely by the caliber of executive management. These senior managers must be good role models, motivators, able to inculcate a performance-driven culture, be strategic and be able to develop good human-resource (HR) capabilities. Senior management has an important responsibility to steer the organization through incorporating resources efficiently and effectively with the strategic objectives of the organization.\nHow it happens: The reasons that senior executives fall into being penny-wise, pound-foolish include:the boss is inefficient and does not know about smart and productive management;the manager may be limited in recognizing teamwork, employee empowerment and supply-chain management techniques;the executive is playing politics and deliberately frustrating middle and junior managers;the manager needs to let others know that he or she is the boss by, for example, firing off directives and warnings on minor matters to junior employees;the executive balks at opposition or suggestions from lower-ranked workers; andthe executive manager lacks confidence in junior managers and other workers and fears a blunder that will lead to further complications.\nSome remedies for penny-wise, pound-foolish practices: Mismanagement and abuse of office are prevalent in organizations that have goals that are not only fuzzy but also difficult to attain. Goals and objectives must be clear and understood by the workers. These objectives should be directly linked to specific core values of the organization.The objectives are likely to be attained if the workers' skills and expertise are matched and compatible, and rewards are paid fairly in line with the work. Workers should be credited for smart thinking and good performance.Efficient, effective and productive performance organizations mostly have a transparent and open (fluid) communication style. HR is professional and supportive.\nExtracting productivity from human resources: HR performs best when it is motivated. HR's feeling of well-being may be affected by factors both external and internal to the organization. Senior HR executives must be aware of possible external threats to morale, and share HR employees' grief with them. If there is an internal cause of dissatisfaction among HR staff, senior HR executives must deal with it - or at least show that they are trying. Top HR people must motivate their staff by either inculcating a sense of collective ownership, or through quantifiable incentives. A few genuine words of praise can work like magic.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Outlines the importance of senior management focusing on strategic and value-creating activities rather than on issues that could be handled by subordinate staff.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Draws on information gathered from the authors' industry knowledge and experience, plus the HR literature.\nFindings: - Argues that senior managers sometimes get side-tracked by lack of proper teamwork and dynamics, organizational politics, ego and lack of confidence. Underlines the importance of setting clear and attainable objectives and introducing good communication systems with a supportive and professional organizational culture.\nPractical implications: - Draws attention to a common and concerning pattern of management in which senior managers get bogged down with minor matters instead of making significant issues a priority.\nOriginality/value: - Deals with organizational performance in the context of penny-wise pound-foolish thinking.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modernising stroke services using clinical governance	[ "Clinical governance", "Patients", "Carers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: We were in the kitchen, I knew that I had to hold the sink, and then I can't remember anything. And I must have fell down, my husband will tell you that it was the worst he'd ever heard because the terrible noise that came out of my mouth, wasn't words. Somehow I must have [been taken] to the bed and I must have gone to sleep, and then I look up and there's two men. I can remember thinking \"oh they're green, so they must be ambulance men\" and I thought \"why aren't they smiling, what have I done wrong?\", because they're not smiling. I can remember [listening in] the ambulance and thinking \"we're going to this [big] hospital when there's a small hospital nearby, so I must be bad\". Then I came through to the emergency room, then through into another ward and I thought, \"all my children are here, so I must be really ill\". But I didn't know I was ill, it was as though I was asleep. But it wasn't until I got to the ward afterwards, that they told me I'd had a stroke. I didn't know what a stroke was - never knew what a stroke was. Then I had the most awful headache and after that I just couldn't talk, I couldn't talk for a year (Stroke Patient, 2005).\nIntroduction: Stroke is a devastating disease that is both common and serious, with profound social and economic effects on individuals and on society as a whole. Stroke is the major cause of serious disability and is the cause of around 10-12 per cent of deaths in the UK (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, 2002). Over 5 per cent of the entire health service budget is attributed to stroke (Mant et al., 2004).Organised stroke care makes a substantial difference to clinical outcomes after stroke: compared to conventional care, organised care on a specialist stroke unit reduces the risk of death by 17 per cent, reduces the risk of death or dependency by 31 per cent and reduces the risk of death or the need for long-term institutional care by 25 per cent (Stroke Unit Trialists' Collaboration, 2004).Since 1998, the quality of stroke care in the UK has been measured through the Royal College of Physicians' National Sentinel Audit of Stroke (Royal College of Physicians (Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party), 2001/2002, 2004; Royal College of Physicians, 2005). Every two years, data are extracted from hospital admissions records and management information, and analysed to produce results in the two key domains of organisation of care (such as the existence of a stroke unit at the site) and process of care (such as the proportion of patients spending time on a stroke unit). The audit compares results with standards derived from research evidence, as set out in the National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke (Royal College of Physicians, 2004). A scoring system enables trusts to compare their organisation with national data, with a score of 100 being the optimal score.Findings from the National Sentinel Audit of Stroke in 2002 (Royal College of Physicians (Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party), 2001/2002) showed marked variation across the UK in terms of the organisation and process of care (see Figure 1). Furthermore, progress in development of stroke services across the UK was unacceptably slow: in 1999, only 25 per cent of stroke patients spent the majority of their in-patient episode on a stroke unit and by 2002 this had risen to just 27 per cent.\nStroke and clinical governance: The NHS Clinical Governance Development Programme for Stroke (NHS Clinical Governance Support Team, 2003) was launched in 2001 through joint working between the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team (CGST), the Royal College of Physicians and The Stroke Association. The principal goals of the programme were to foster development of patient-centred stroke services and to reduce the heterogeneity of standards of stroke care across the UK.The principles of clinical governance are especially relevant to the development of services for people with stroke. People who experience stroke are often already vulnerable and frail, have complex health care needs, and require effective team working from multiple health professionals who use evidence-based care. Additionally, the framework of clinical governance fosters the incorporation of clinical guidelines and audit mechanisms, both of which already exist at a national level in stroke through the Royal College of Physicians.The speciality-specific Stroke Programme, in common with the CGST's general Clinical Governance Development Programme, comprised five \"learning days\", spread over a nine month period, with participating teams agreeing key actions during the interval periods. It employed a systematic evidence-based approach to transform groups of people, from multiple agencies across stroke care communities, into effective working teams. Teams performed a stroke service review using the RAID (Review, Agree, Implement, Demonstrate) model, which promoted user-involvement, challenged existing practices, and stimulated projects created by front-line staff (Rogers, 2006). In selecting appropriate projects for review, delegates were prompted to consider process complexity factors versus implementation factors, and to include one or two discreet, simple processes that would show results within two months - \"quick wins\".During the review phase, delegates sought information regarding their existing services from users and carers, plus key clinical stakeholders, in addition to information from national and local audit and through process mapping. As there has never been any dedicated central source of funding for stroke, delegates also learned the principles of attracting resources to stroke from other areas with funding, such as through the new general practitioner contract (Department of Health, 2003) and intermediate care services.\nPatient and public involvement in Stroke: The involvement and true participation of users, carers and families is a core method to improve the healthcare quality agenda at a local level and is emphasised in the National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke (Royal College of Physicians, 2004). The particular challenges for involving users in stroke relate to the pre-existent vulnerability of this user group and the high incidence of communication disability after stroke: stroke will leave as many as 60 per cent of all sufferers with some degree of impairment of language ability (Warlow et al., 2003). Teams on the Programme were given a range of tools and techniques to gain information from, and aid discussion with, patients and carers about healthcare services (Squire and Hill, 2006).\nExperiences from the Programme: Between March 2001 and June 2004, 200 delegates from 42 Trusts completed four waves of the CGST Stroke Programme. In addition, a follow-up day was organised two months after delegates completed the Programme, to bring together stroke teams that had completed the learning days, so that they could share their progress on service improvements.The most commonly reported benefits of delegates attending the Programme were improved team working, raised service profile and the involvement of users and carers. Examples of \"quick wins\", accomplished by teams to rapidly raise local awareness of stroke services and to heighten team morale, are shown below:* Newsletter.* Media coverage.* Web site.* Stroke register.* Carer involvement in therapy.* Multidisciplinary goal-setting.* Roving stroke team to assess outlying patients.* Gastrostomy clinic (monthly follow-up, added to existing clinic).* Neurovascular clinic (\"pump primed\" through industry grant).Effective lobbying of healthcare commissioners, such as Primary Care Trusts or Strategic Health Authorities, by the teams resulted in significant service changes either during the period that delegates attended the Programme, or by the time of the follow-up visit. A total of 62 new stroke beds were opened on dedicated units (see Table I), eight new neurovascular clinics were created, and three stroke specialist nurses, two stroke nurse consultants and two consultant physicians were appointed. Details of the experiences of one team at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust are shown below:1. How it was:* Stroke patients scattered throughout Acute Trust.* No dedicated stroke unit.* No dedicated neurological rehabilitation team.* No dedicated stroke consultant.2. How they did it:* Three nurses and an occupational therapist attended Stroke Programme.* Team determined to raise the profile of stroke within the Trust.* Listened to patients and staff using techniques from the Programme.* Implemented an in-house stroke training programme.* Lobbied for dedicated stroke beds in a new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hospital.* Lobbied Senior Management Board for stroke physician post.* Created business case for Neurovascular Clinic.3. How it has improved:* New stroke liaison nurse post fashioned from existing resources.* Designated eight-bed Acute Stroke Unit in new PFI hospital.* Newly-appointed Stroke Consultant.* Rapid-access Neurovascular Clinic.* Increased nursing establishment level on Stroke Rehabilitation Unit.Evidence of improved user involvement was widely reported by the teams, with patients and carers being both more involved with their own goal-planning during rehabilitation after stroke, and also contributing to discussions about service development. Common themes reported included:* dispelling of staff anxieties that their work would be criticised;* realisation by staff that user demands would frequently differ from what staff predicted and that the demands could often be met in a simple and quick manner; and* involving patients with significant language impairment was possible - delegates reported that dysphasia did not restrict contributions, as long as there was an appropriate pace of explanation and adequate time for expression was given.Examples of patient involvement at two sites are shown below. The first site was Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust:1. How it was:* The team had concerns that previous attempts to involve users had been unsuccessful.* Patients said that the hospital setting and being outnumbered by professionals had made them reluctant to contribute.2. How they did it:* Alternate-monthly meetings held across 3 primary care trusts in community settings.* Service users invited by local branch of the charity The Stroke Association (TSA).* Patients invited included those with communication disability (dysphasia).* TSA representative facilitated discussions about existing services and proposed developments.3. How it has improved:* Enhanced ratio of users to professionals.* Members much freer to contribute to decisions about service change.* Professionals learnt techniques to involve those with dysphasia.* Created new dysphasia support group with self-referral exercise class.* Created a telephone help line for stroke, in partnership with the British Red Cross.The second site was Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust and Walsall Community Health NHS Trust:1. How it was:* Only retrospective information from users and carers was available.* No timely system existed for prospective involvement of patients in planning of services.* Hospital was facing critical media comments after a \"Dr Foster\" report.* Staff felt unfairly represented in report with adverse effect on staff morale and retention.2. How they did it:* Staff proposed a group of motivated healthcare assistants (HCAs) could develop their communication skills with stroke patients.* Training programme devised to help HCAs develop listening skills, including for patients with dysphasia.* Competency acquired contributed towards NVQ level 3 award.* HCAs interviewed patients during normal duties.3. How it has improved:* Themes extracted from interviews were addressed.* HCAs help deliver treatment programmes designed by therapists.* Menu and meal times changed to suit patients.* Team has improved dynamics and confidence.* HCAs have enhanced professional development.* Model of engaging users has stimulated interest across the Trust.\nEvaluating the effect of the Programme: The Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation Unit (CEEU) of the Royal College of Physicians (London) conducted a survey in 2003 to assess the extent and principal areas of change in stroke service provision across the UK since the National Sentinel Audit of Stroke 2001/2002. Proformas were sent to the lead clinician for stroke in the 240 sites that participated in the 2001/2002 Audit.The survey provided the opportunity to evaluate the effect of the Stroke Programme. The CEEU was asked by the CGST to perform a retrospective analysis of the changes in stroke services in those trusts that had completed the first three CGST Stroke Programmes, and to provide a comparison with the changes in trusts that had not been on the Programme.Response rates to the survey questionnaire were high. Of the 37 sites that had both attended the CGST Stroke Programme and taken part in the 2001/2002 National Sentinel Audit of Stroke, 30 responded to the survey of change carried out by the CEEU; a response rate of 81 per cent. Of the 203 sites that had not attended the CGST Programme, 189 responded to the survey; a response rate of 93 per cent.Results from the survey are shown in Figures 2-4. There was greater reported change in stroke service development by those sites that had attended the Stroke Programme, compared with those sites that had not attended the Programme. This was not only apparent in changes in stroke unit provision (for example, the opening of a new stroke unit or an increase in stroke bed numbers) but also in related staffing (for instance, stroke consultant and nurse appointments). Sixty-eight per cent (20/29) of the sites that had attended the Programme had obtained new funding for stroke service development, compared with 37 per cent (67/181) of the sites that had not attended the CGST's Stroke Programme.\nConclusions: The NHS Clinical Governance Development Programme for Stroke helped NHS organisations to raise the local profile of stroke, implement evidence-based care, involve patients and public and increase the capacity of their stroke services. Despite the significant communication problems encountered by many patients after stroke, experiences from the Programme demonstrate that they are surmountable and that effective communication with real listening to users can be accomplished.Although the survey by the Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation Unit was a retrospective analysis of two non-randomised cohorts, the trends in the findings support the qualitative data from the Programme. The results suggest that effective team working by health professionals, using the principles of clinical governance, can improve the care for people with stroke. Importantly, the results suggest that such improvements are not confined to stroke unit provision but extend to include related staffing levels and acquisition of new funding. It may be that commissioners of healthcare services are more influenced by bids from teams, which include users and carers, than by those from individual clinicians.The findings from the National Sentinel Audit of Stroke 2004 demonstrate the need for further improvements in stroke care across the UK. The challenge will be to harness the knowledge gained from the National Clinical Governance Programme for Stroke and embed that in the culture of all stroke services.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To report progress made by the National Clinical Governance Support Team's (CGST) Programme for Stroke between 2001 and 2004 and its effects on service provision.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The effectiveness of the Stroke Programme on services was assessed by comparing changes in services in Trusts which had undergone the process with those in a control group.\nFindings: - Using the Review, Agree, Implement, Demonstrate (RAID) model, the Stroke Programme led to benefits which include greater participation by patients and carers in treatment programmes and in development of services. Quantitative assessment of the extent of change in stroke services showed a significantly greater change in stroke unit provision, staffing levels and new funding in those sites which had attended the Stroke Programme.\nOriginality/value: - The review provides an overview of recent developments in stroke services in the UK and describes the benefits of intervention by the Clinical Governance Programme.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The practice of intersectionality: the amateur elite sport development game	[ "Methodology", "Institutional power", "Intersectionality", "Organization structures", "Sport", "“Ideal” athlete" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Headline news, \"Brothel athlete books Olympic ticket\" (\nIntersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach: Intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to analyze inequality can be conceptualized and practiced in a variety of ways (e.g. Choo and Ferree, 2010; Healy et al., 2011; Winker and Degele, 2011). An open-ended concept, intersectionality has stimulated a rich scholarly debate as to its strengths and weaknesses (Acker, 2012; Bilge, 2010; Broadbridge and Simpson, 2011; Holvino, 2008; McCall, 2005; Naples, 2009; Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Bilge (2010) summaries this debate as one that exists on two levels. These are discussions, on first, theories and methodologies, and second, praxis or the application of intersectional knowledge to advance equality. Considering this robust scholarly debate this paper represents our thinking on one way to conceptualize an intersectional research project on elite sport systems, in other words, scoping what subject matter to include, what to exclude or see as peripheral to the analysis (Choo and Ferree, 2010; Naples, 2009). Toward this end, we take our lead from, for example, the study by Tatli and Ozbilgin (2012) who show how intersectionality adds complexity and contextual depth to understandings of inequalities and privilege in the cultural and arts sector in the UK. Similarly, Ozbilgin et al. (2010) highlight how an intersectional study can address conceptual \"blind spots\" and gaps in research on work-life balance. In addition, Acker's (2006, 2012) insightful work discusses the theoretical positioning of inequalities within organizations, in particular, their gendered subtext and organization logics.\nThe macro-institutional order: the creation of a hierarchy of winners and losers: Sport does not exist in a vacuum divorced from the broader historical, social, political or economic realities (McKay, 1991). As a social construct, sport is often noted as a microcosm of larger society (Day et al., 2012). In contrast to business, however, sport is intriguing in that the aim is to heighten competition, not eliminate it. Further, if competition is to take place, coordination and collaboration with competitors is a necessary requirement (Leberman et al., 2012). These inherent tensions are clearly visible in the contextual changes to sport that two decades ago would have been inconceivable. Driven by macro-government policy, a growing number of nations now \"pay up\" and play a strategic global \"elite sport development\" game to \"win\" on the global stage at mega-events such as the Olympic Games (Green and Houlihan, 2008, p. 291). Maguire (2009, p. 1256) portrays this obsession with sporting success as \"the equivalent of the arms race in which ever greater resources have to be invested in order to maintain or improve the position of the nation in the medal table.\" NZ promotes itself as a nation \"passionate about sport\" (Obel et al., 2008, p. 1). It is, however, a relative newcomer to this form of strategic sport game. The impetus for change saw the creation of the quasi-government agency Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) in 2002 (see Collins, 2008; Martin, 2009). Their mandate, to provide \"strong leadership\" signaled a philosophical shift in the policy definition of public good (Sport, Fitness and Leisure Ministerial Taskforce, 2001). Influenced by a combination of localized neo-liberal macro-policy thinking and the sport intensification practices of other countries (Green and Houlihan, 2008), nowhere has the re-definition of public good been more overt than in elite sport development. The emergence of High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) in August 2011 is symbolic of a continuing obsession to \"create a nation of winners on the international stage.\" Meanwhile, SPARC has been strategically realigned with the sentiment \"sport for all\" and renamed Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ, 2011,hpsnz.org.nz/news-events, July 19). The relationship between ministerial appointments, government policy and the impact of policy in creating a hierarchy of societal values by actively seeking citizen endorsement (Sam, 2007, 2011), is illustrated in the following quote from the NZ Minister of Sport and Recreation:\nThe ideal athlete worker as part of a \"HPWS\": In a similar manner to paid work, performance in sport involves the integration of many factors (Maguire, 2009). Critical management literature and feminist scholarship draws attention to the powerful influence economic rationalization and utilitarian instrumentalism has exerted on workers (e.g. Casey, 2004; Acker, 2006, 2012). Three issues that have been much discussed in relation to equity and worker well-being are \"work intensification\" and \"disciplined conformity\" to managerial requirements (e.g. Bryson, 2010) and their gendered subtext and organizational logic (see Acker, 2012; Benschop and Doorewaard, 2012). The singular trajectory of change in elite sport development draws attention to comparable issues. For example, the topic of HPWS is underpinned by the idea that \"there exists a system of work practices for core workers in an organization that leads in some way to superior performance\" (Boxall and Macky, 2009, p. 3). Although described imprecisely as a \"fuzzy notion,\" it is as a concept of interest to practitioners, policy makers and global industries seeking ways to build and retain competitive advantage in the face of intensified global competition (Boxall and Macky, 2009, 2010). The inherent tensions between worker involvement, work intensification and possibilities of \"win-win\" outcomes for all workers and global industries are unresolved (Boxall and Macky, 2009). Gendered subtexts and an organizational logic are implicit elements of HPWS.\nThe \"ideal\" athlete \"worker\" and life: Unequal relationships, from the macro-level down, frame expectations of the \"ideal\" elite athlete worker. Government, agencies acting on their behalf (HPSNZ) and the sports network, all influence the behavior of individual athletes. For example, it is assumed that amateur elite athletes - like the specialists employed to maximize athlete performance - are dedicated, full time, to the task. The reality is not so clear cut. As our headline that began this paper hints, few athletes in Olympic sports are \"professional\" in the sense that a livable income can be derived from elite sports participation in NZ. So while Maguire (2009, p. 1256) comments \"the days of the amateur elite athlete are long gone\" this is not the lived experience of many Olympic, elite athlete hopefuls in NZ. For the majority of Olympic and Paralympics participants, the \"professional\" and \"amateur\" are indistinguishable - they are one in the same. However, the expectation is that an athlete's \"real work\" will be constructed around performance in sport, \"life\" is all else. Conceptualizing \"life\" in its totality as suggested by Ozbilgin et al. (2010, p. 10) is critical to understand the shifting work-life interface of unpaid elite athlete workers given it is estimated to take at least ten years to \"make a champion\" (Maguire, 2009). This means for example, in amateur Olympic team sports such as field hockey, amateur elite athletes are not only at different stages of a performance continuum but also, different stages of \"life.\"\nIntersectionality of difference social categories: The previous sections of the paper have identified processes and systems, positioned as an institutional order where the distribution of power determines relationships of inequality. We see McCall's (2005) intercategorical approach as potentially offering one way to frame intersectional analysis at the micro-individual level. In order to \"explicate relationships requires the provisional use of social categories as anchor points\" (McCall, 2005, pp. 1784-1785). To do so, however, brings to the fore a raft of methodological questions, two of which we highlight here. First, different social categories (such as gender, class and age) are analytically distinct yet interconnected through socially ascribed understandings varying in different contexts (e.g. Gatrell and Swan, 2008; Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006). To illustrate, Yuval-Davis (2006, p. 201) states, \"age represents the dimension of time and the life cycle and shows more clearly than other social divisions how categories and their boundaries are not fixed, how their political meanings can vary as well as being continually challenged and restructured both individually and socially.\" Sport is a context where age matters. Socially ascribed ageist boundaries determine level of participation depending on the physicality associated with a particular sport (e.g. field hockey vs golf). Further, age-defined categorizations of \"younger\" (has potential) or \"older\" (nearing retirement) can be quite different and far more overt (e.g. comments in the media) than, for example, the paid workplace (Maguire, 2009).\nConcluding thoughts: Explaining the story behind the headline, \"Brothel athlete books Olympic ticket\" (\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to seek the potential of an intersectional methodology to scholars interested in processes of exclusion and subordination in organizations in particular the sport sector. The amateur sport sector in New Zealand is used as a case to address the theme: intersectional practices of organizing and their consequences.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The conceptual paper brings together strands of interdisciplinary research to model an intersectional framework for future research development. In the paper, the interplay of shifting forms of inequality, inclusion and exclusion that are implicit in processes of elite amateur sport management, are made visible.\nFindings: The paper argues for an intersectional framework to understand the complex processes of inclusion, exclusion and subordination in the elite amateur sport sector. Institutionalized change is a process that can have negative or positive consequences; it depends on perceptions of those affected by it. Sport in the wider environment is portrayed as intrinsically a \"good\" thing, yet the paper argues that sport reflects and reinforces social inequalities. There is a clear need for intersectional analysis of the work-life experiences of unpaid athletes involved in elite sport development processes.\nOriginality/value: The paper argues for the use of intersectionality as a multi-level methodological approach for scholars to understand the complex processes of inclusion, exclusion and subordination in organizations, including those involved in the delivery of elite amateur sport. The authors anticipate this methodological approach will contribute a valuable insight to understanding institutional power dynamics.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Changing academic work places: the introduction of open-plan offices in universities	[ "Change", "Organizational space", "University campus", "Office redesign", "Open-plan office" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Open-plan offices and other office redesign concepts such as flexible, innovative or alternative workplaces, hot desking and office landscaping have attracted much attention in organization studies (e.g. McElroy and Morrow, 2010; Kornberger and Clegg, 2004; Brennan et al., 2002; Elsbach and Bechky, 2007; Van Marrewijk and Yanow, 2010). The physical features of office redesign have been identified as factors that can trigger organizational change (Hancock, 2006; Cameron, 2003). Similarly, constructing a new corporate building, renovating existing buildings and (re)designing interior spaces can be seen as important facets of organizational transformation (Van Marrewijk, 2009). Therefore, architecture is, according to Kornberger and Clegg (2004), a powerful intervention in changing organizational work practices. Work practices are here perceived both as individual activities and as a collective, social category. They are accomplished by and embodied in people engaged in a collective series of activities organized around specific forms of knowledge (Nicolini et al., 2003). Spatial settings shape work practices and interaction, which are reshaped by interactions of employees in return (Hernes et al., 2006). This process of spatial production and reproduction is recursive (Hernes et al., 2006). Spatial practices are, thus, simultaneously work practices (O'Toole and Were, 2008).\nSpatial interventions and organizational change: Although the physical features of office redesign have been identified as factors that can trigger organizational change (Hancock, 2006; Cameron, 2003; Kornberger and Clegg, 2004; Van Marrewijk, 2009) their outcomes yield mixed findings (Elsbach and Pratt, 2007). Managerially orientated scholars perceive the relation between spatial redesign and change to be powerful in creating institutional transformations (Duffy, 1980; Cameron, 2003; Becker, 1981). They understand interventions in physical settings as tools for mediating social change (Hancock, 2006), for strategic change (Higgins et al., 2006), for mingling office and factory workers (Kotter and Cohen, 2002) and for supporting collaboration between project and staff members (Allen and Henn, 2007). These studies suggest that bringing people together in open-plan offices maximizes communication, increases knowledge sharing activities and, consequently, increases collaboration among employees (e.g. Boutellier et al., 2008). Thus, designing specific physical spaces of open-plan offices intends to shape collaboration by promoting unplanned, spontaneous encounters (Fayard and Weeks, 2007).\nMethodology: We conducted ethnographic research on the case of the science faculty at Campus University where open-plan offices were introduced between 2010 and 2013. Ethnographic research is an excellent method for the in-depth study of the lived experiences and daily practices of research participants (Yanow, 2006; Ybema et al., 2009). In this way, practices and experiences of academic and support staff have been explored in a longitudinal fieldwork, with a specific focus on practices, design, materiality, esthetics and sense making concerning the introduction of open-plan offices in the science faculty, 1 of the 12 faculties of the Campus University. The science faculty, with more than 3000 students, employed 180 academic staff and 50 supporting staff subdivided in six departments. Data on the academic staff, support staff and students have been collected through the methods of observation, participant observation and semi-structured interviews during three phases: (I) the last month of the science faculty in the Main building; (II) the first period after the moving to the Start building; and (III) one year later another three months (see Table I).\nCase description: the introduction of open-plan offices at university campus: Three externally imposed changes triggered the introduction of open-plan office space at the Campus University. First, there was a general need in the Netherlands for more office space as the number of students had grown with more than 20 percent, while no new buildings had been constructed (TU-Delft, 2016). Therefore, the Campus University launched an ambitious plan to redesign the campus space. This plan foresaw in the replacement of old buildings by new ones, a new, lively and open campus square and an integral connection of this square with the nearby business district. Furthermore, office space would be doubled to 500.000 m2 enabling new and other users to move into the new campus and enabling scientists, students and industry partners to work across physical borders of faculties and disciplines. Second, the Campus University wanted to use floor spaces more efficiently and reduce costs with 30 percent; a trend in line with other Dutch universities (TU-Delft, 2016). Third, the negative perception of Main by both staff members and students adversely influenced the public image of the Campus University. Main, designed and built in the 1960s, is an example of modernist architecture (e.g. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe). The style of this 90.000 m2 building is sober, business-oriented and pragmatic. Now, 50 years later, a majority of staff and students perceive this building to be an outdated relic from a former epoch.\nConceived space: spatial scripting in Start: With Lefebvre's (1991) first dimension of conceived space in mind, we focus on the spatial intervention as planned by the facility managers, architects and engineers and with the intention of achieving certain goals. Start had three levels with open-plan offices. The spatial interventions in Start were: creation of different types of rooms, open work places and lounge settings; construction of transparent glass walls; closing off of the work places from students; creation of a mixed zone where staff and students meet; and the introduction of a clean desk policy. The architect combined business-like esthetics such as gray carpets, gray-white striped wallpaper and white bookshelves, with brightly colored furniture to present the image of a fashionable office. The stair ways, corridors and rooms are made of shiny concrete, and many of the walls and doors are made of glass. Every floor was divided into different areas comprising a group of mixed work places. There were one-person rooms for concentration work and two-person rooms for possible collaboration in research and teaching (see Figure 1). Furthermore, there were large open spaces for stimulating group work, knowledge exchange and half-concentrated work. Finally, lounge places could be used for less concentrated work such as mail checking, correcting students' work and informal meetings and discussions (see Figure 2). Apart from these work places, at each floor two large and three to four small meeting rooms were available. The diversity of work places allowed faculty staff to work at different places for different work practices:[...] you choose a type of working spot for the task you have to do on that moment. To offer all the working spots to everyone, they have to be shared. Therefore nobody owns his or her own working place.(Working-spot-guide of Start; p. 3)\nRepresentational space: perceptions of the old vs new building: The second dimension of Lefebvre's (1991) triad is representational space, which involves space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols. Here, we focus on the employees' interpretations and subjective experiences of Main and Start. Respondents who were asked about their perceptions of Main - before they moved to Start - were positive about their working rooms but overall negative about the building (see Table II). After moving to Start, these respondents were more negative about their workplaces, which were no longer private, but more positive about the building:I'm really very positive. I think it is fantastic. It is beautiful. I like the carpet, the furniture is amusing and nice, it looks good, the chair fits well. Yes, aesthetically it is nice and clean. When you take people from Main to here, then they are astonished.(Interview with respondent April 13, 2012)\nSpatial practices: work practices in the old and new building: Research on spatial practices should consider practices and routines that reproduce the prevailing social order in various spatial performances (Lefebvre, 1991). Here we discuss three new work practices related to the use of the open-plan office in Start: selecting type of work place; selecting location of work place; creating private work places, and the change of three existing work practices; doing of research; meeting with colleagues; and of, meeting with students.\nDiscussion: This study concerned how the introduction of an open-plan office affected the work practices of academic and support staff and how those practices appropriated the spatial settings in return. The spatial intervention found in this study included open work spaces, business like esthetics, glass walls, one and two person rooms, lounge places, a locked entrance and a mixed zone. These findings are in line with earlier studies on creating flexible, innovative and alternative workplaces (Danielsson and Bodin, 2008; McElroy and Morrow, 2010).\nConclusions: This paper studied the working practices of campus university staff members before, during and after moving from traditional to open-plan offices. Specifically, we investigated how staff members gave meaning to and appropriated their space, and how spatial (re)configurations affected their practices and vice versa. This paper contributes to the academic debate on organizational space by extending the theory on the mutual and recursive relation between spatial intervention and organizational change with empirically grounded insights into how a spatial setting can change work practices and vice versa (e.g. Elsbach and Pratt, 2007; van Marrewijk and Yanow, 2010). Furthermore, the case contributes to the growing debate on open-plan offices at university campuses (Wilhoit et al., 2016; Lancione and Clegg, 2013; Gastelaars, 2010; Peltonen, 2011) with an in-depth case. The growing popularity of open-plan offices at universities with planners, administrators and architects asks for a thorough empirical research of these kind of academic spaces (Wilhoit et al., 2016). Future research might explore in more detail the relation between open-plan offices and the professional culture of academics. We might also benefit from learning about successful cases of open-plan offices at universities or other forms of collocation in academic settings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the spatial intervention of open-plan offices in a university, the consequential change in work practices of faculty members and how these practices appropriate the designed space.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors executed a two-year longitudinal ethnographic study following the case of the science faculty, which moved from a traditional office setting to open-plan offices. The authors studied the space and interviewed staff before, during and after the introduction of open-plan offices.\nFindings: Findings show that the new spatial setting triggered staff members to attribute certain meanings and practices of adaptation which were, partly, unintended by the design of the open-plan offices.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper contributes empirically grounded insights into the (un)intended consequences of a spatial intervention in terms of how staff members, far from being passive, attribute meaning and alter their work practices leading to unprecedented organizational changes.\nPractical implications: For change consultants, facility managers and university managers the outcomes of this paper are highly relevant.\nSocial implications: Large budgets are spent on new office concepts at universities but the authors do know little about the relation between spatial (re)design and organizational change.\nOriginality/value: The introduction of new office concepts, spatial redesign and co-location is for many academics highly emotional.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Guest-based hotel equity: scale development and validation	[ "Hotels", "Scale development", "UAE", "Customer perceived value", "Customer-based brand equity", "Guest-based hotel equity", "Hospitality service" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Brand equity has been described, from the cognitive psychology standpoint, as the incremental utility or the added value conferred on a product by its brand name (Chen and Chang, 2008; Buil et al., 2013). It can be measured from either a financial perspective, which emphasizes the value of a brand to a firm or from a consumer perspective, which stresses the conceptualization and measurement of brand equity at the consumer level (Myers, 2003; Buil et al., 2013). Indeed, this latter perspective, which is known as customer-based brand equity (CBBE), has been given much attention by both marketing academics and practitioners because it represents the product's position in the consumers' minds that provides equity for the brand and value for its firm (Yasin et al., 2007). In addition, a brand with high equity from the consumers' perspective generates a competitive advantage that enables its firm to attain a price premium, larger margins, greater loyalty, a more inelastic consumer response to price increases and a more elastic consumer response to price reductions, less vulnerability to competitive marketing actions and increased effectiveness in its marketing communication (Keller, 2008). A high level of brand equity also increases consumer satisfaction, repurchase intention and loyalty (Kim et al., 2008a).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Customer-based brand equity\n3. Research method: 3.1 GBHE scale generation\n4. Analysis and results: The main objective of this study is to develop and validate a scale to measure GBHE; therefore, it is crucial to conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to confirm the GBHE conceptualization, to test the unidimensionality of each single construct, and to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and composite reliability of the proposed scale. However, using two sub-samples (i.e. the purification sample and the validation sample) requires certain CFA procedures before combining them into one pooled sample to estimate the CFA psychometric properties of the GBHE scale. First, the CFA model for each individual sample has to be estimated for the purpose of cross-validation. Second, multi-group analysis using configural and metric invariance tests has to be performed to ensure that the factor structure of GBHE CFA model will function in a similar manner in both samples. Third, when the configural invariance and metric invariance across the two samples exist, the two samples will be pooled in a single sample to estimate the CFA psychometric properties of the GBHE scale.\n5. Discussion and implications: Although CBBE which takes the consumer perspective of brand equity has been studied throughout the past two decades in different contexts, there is a lack of consensus among researchers and practitioners about its measurement and dimensions. Research in this field adopts one of two models initiated by Aaker (1991, 1996) and Keller (1993) to measure CBBE. Many academic papers have added to or decreased the number of original dimensions of CBBE. Academics and practitioners are still calling for better and richer conceptualization of the CBBE (Veloutsou et al., 2013).\n6. Limitations and suggestions for future research: Although this research provides evidence of the validity and robustness of the GBHE scale in the hotel context in the UAE, this scale should be brought in to assess the attributes of hotels in other countries as well as in other lodging services, such as hotel apartments and medical resorts, to provide further evidence of scale generalizability. Surveying hotel guests about their experience with the last hotel they had stayed in during the previous year could be a limitation of this study, due to the retrieval failure problem. It would better to survey hotel guests just after they had finished their stay in the hotel or within three months at most of their stay. Another limitation of this study is related to the sampling procedures. Although we believe that the sample size was reasonable and adequate to conduct CFA analysis, a bigger sample would be better and might increase the robustness of the proposed scale. In addition, the hotel classification or hotel star rating was not considered in developing and validating the GBHE scale. Therefore, future research could, as this study suggests, use the star rating of hotels as a moderator. Moreover, future research could compare the incorporation of perceived value for money as a unidimensional construct in the measurement of hotel equity with GBHE which considers customer perceived value as a multidimensional construct. Furthermore, future research might consider expanding the definition of customer perceived value to include more dimensions, such as the utilitarian value, health and well-being value. Future research could also investigate the causal relationship between GBHE dimensions and customer loyalty to the hotel. Finally, this research examined the effect of GBHE dimensions on behavioral intentions using self-reported measures. Future research could consider using financial indicators such as the rate of occupancy and sales targets.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to measure customer-based brand equity in the context of hotels, and to develop and empirically validate a new scale, named guest-based hotel equity (GBHE), by incorporating the customer perceived value of hotels as a multidimensional construct in addition to its traditional dimensions (i.e. brand awareness and brand image).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting 348 hotel guests who were surveyed about their experience with the last hotel they had stayed in during the previous year. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, convergent and discriminant validity and composite reliability.\nFindings: The empirical findings indicate that GBHE is a multidimensional construct with nine dimensions, namely, hotel awareness, hotel overall image and seven dimensions of customer perceived value (i.e. the values of price, quality, self-gratification, aesthetics, prestige, transaction and hedonism). The new scale is found to have excellent psychometric properties; it has demonstrated its predictive power on behavioral intentions.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although the authors believe that the sample size was reasonable and adequate for conducting CFA analysis, a bigger sample would be better and might increase the robustness of the proposed scale. In addition, to avoid the retrieval failure problem, hotel guests should be surveyed just after their stay in the hotel or not long afterwards. Further, the hotel classification or hotel star rating was not considered in developing and validating the GBHE scale.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study provide hotel managers with a new tool to use in assessing the experiential value of the hotel brand equity, other than conventional hotel awareness and brand image. Further, using the multidimensional construct of perceived value provides hotel managers with more insights into what aspects of hotel brand equity they should focus on to influence the behavioral intentions of their guests.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this research is highlighted in several points. First, it develops and empirically validates a new scale to measure customer-based brand equity in the hotel context, that is, GBHE. Second, it incorporates the customer perceived value of hotels not as a unidimensional construct that is concerned only with cost, but as a multi-dimensional construct which includes in the GBHE scale dimensions that are both cognitive (i.e. of price and quality) and affective (i.e. of self-gratification, aesthetics, prestige, transaction and hedonism) in addition to its traditional dimensions (i.e. brand awareness and brand image). Third, it assesses the predictive power and relative importance of the GBHE dimensions for behavioral intentions (i.e. loyalty to hotels). Finally, no research has been done so far on the brand equity of hotels in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), although it is considered a fertile soil for tourism in the Arabian region.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Who am I and what am I doing here? Becoming and being a project manager	[ "Project management", "Work", "Identification", "Management roles" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Before I came in, I knew nothing. Well, I thought I knew nothing, but actually by learning, I realised that what I'd been doing all of my career is project management, but (...) I didn't realise I was doing it.In this paper we wish to empirically explore the nature of tensions that emerge within the process of becoming a manager in the post-industrial, post-bureaucratic organisation (Sennett, 1998; Bauman, 2000), by drawing on a specific set of empirical accounts from practitioners working in project-based organisations. The previous quotes reflect the experiences of self-reinvention in the \"accidental profession\" of project management. Specifically, we are interested in the place of project management in the prevailing contemporary discourse of post-bureaucratic, project-based organisations, by examining the experiences of those organisational members who have redefined themselves as project managers within their working environment.Within the post-bureaucratic organisation, it is argued, the process of \"making up\" managers becomes \"a material-cultural process of formation and transformation\" (Du Gay et al., 1996, p. 264). In this context, our intention is to provide insights into managerial being and becoming by paying attention to power, history, and the confluence of diverse interests in the constitution of the modern project manager. This paper reflects two themes of our inquiry; first, to understand the specific factors which drive the \"making up\" of employees as project managers, and second, to illuminate the tensions experienced in this process of transformation.\nPost-bureaucracy and project management: Project management as a field and occupation is closely implicated both rhetorically and practically in the broad shift towards post-bureaucratic organisations and societies in the late twentieth century. As a \"new occupation\", project management's history can be reliably traced back only as far as the mid-twentieth century (Morris, 1997). Its early expansion within engineering and construction derived in part from the prestige afforded by its association in the delivery of a number of high profile \"megaprojects\" in the USA, such as the Manhattan project and the Apollo space missions (Hughes, 1998). However, the new prominence of project management is built on broader foundations, reflecting the extension of project working across a range of other industries, most notably IS/IT, new media, and increasingly the public sector and public-private partnerships. Hence several reports highlight project teams as a core element in the reorganisation of modern corporations, and as a priority on corporate agendas since the mid 1990s (Whittington et al., 1999; PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2004). While engineering still constitutes the core of project management, projects have increasingly been promoted as \"universally-applicable templates for the deliberate integration of diverse specialisms, enabling the organisation of flexible, autonomous, and knowledgeable individuals into temporary teams for the timely, efficient and effective accomplishment of defined goals\" (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2007, p. 222), and therefore as an organisational form and management technique supremely suited to the new knowledge-based capitalist economy (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). Some have described this trend towards project work and project organisation as a process of \"projectification\" (Lundin and Soderholm, 1995), and emergent work has pointed to the widespread failure to address the social and political consequences of \"projectification\" for both project managers and the project managed (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2005).Various elements of the \"fast capitalism\" story have been invoked to explain the move towards project-based organising, including the speed of technological change, the transience of fashions, increased demand for tailored goods and services, increased levels of competition, and moves towards network organisations and other forms of cooperative, inter-organisational alliance (Drucker, 1988; Victor and Stephens, 1994; McSweeney, 2006); thus Gee et al. (1996, p. 40) argue:the fast capitalist world is one that celebrates temporary and fast-changing networks, whether of co-workers or different businesses. The networks come together for a given project and disperse into other configurations as products, projects, and services change in the hypercompetitive and fast-paced environment of the new capitalism.Crucially, then, projects are increasingly depicted as the means to deliver new products, innovative organisations and even change itself in uncertain and knowledge-intensive business environments (Whitley, 2006). At an organisational level, the consequences of this shift have typically been identified in the changing form of organisations, away from the traditional \"machine bureaucracy\" towards matrix organisations in the 1970s (Davis and Lawrence, 1977) which remains the prime organisational structure to accommodate organisations which rely on projects for the production of goods, services, or knowledge (Hobday, 2000). However, the emergence of the network organisation (Powell, 1990; Castells, 1996) is argued to be a further step towards the flexible, adaptable and internationally mobile antithesis to monolithic bureaucracy, and one, which relies to a great extent on project working for the delivery of its objectives. Indeed, as Marchington et al. (2005, pp. 14-15) suggest, \"if there is anything 'new' about the network form, it is probably the increase in (reengineered) cross-functional, temporary project working within organizations\". Within this category, the \"projectified\" organisational form ranges from the basic functional matrix (with occasional recourse to specialised project teams) to the pure \"project-based organisation\" where \"the project is the primary business mechanism for coordinating and integrating all the main business functions of the firm\" (Hobday, 2000, p. 874) - an organisational form increasingly prevalent in industries such as advertising, consulting, film and TV (Miles and Snow, 1986; DeFillippi and Arthur, 1998; Gann and Salter, 2000).The growth of project management has been mirrored by the number of employees who are now choosing to take on project management roles (Kunda, 1992) and more recently, project management has developed into a discrete occupation (some would describe it as a new \"profession\"1) with the emergence of dedicated training courses at the postgraduate level and rapidly expanding professional associations - the US-based Project Management Institute (PMI) now boasting some 280,000 members across 170 countries (Project Management Institute, 2008). Through the actions and choices of such individuals, project management techniques and procedures have been framed, promoted and packaged to become part of the established \"toolkit\" in many management fields. As a result, project management is gaining significant influence in contemporary organisations which attempt to follow the \"post-bureaucratic\" template.In the remaining sections of the paper, we examine reflective accounts of practicing project managers charged with implementing and sustaining the new practices. We use these accounts to discuss the ways in which the project managers reflect on their self-created and/or given space within projectified environments. We highlight a number of salient themes, including status, organisational value, power, influence and ambiguity, to focus attention on the consequences of the constitution of the project manager as an attractive yet insecure organisational actor in many modern organisations.\nMethodology: The empirical research was conducted through a series of structured group discussions, a method chosen for both methodological and pragmatic reasons. In a pragmatic sense, the group discussion enabled the acquisition of rich data while allowing for the flexible exploration of research themes in a cost-effective and time-effective manner (Frey and Fontana, 1991; Gibbs, 1997). Methodologically, the value of the group discussion was the opportunity to observe the construction of a work identity in a social setting, allowing for the \"synergy, snowballing, stimulation, and spontaneity\" that a group dynamic can generate (Catterall and MacLaran, 1997, p. 1.3). Given our broadly phenomenological and interactionist perspective, the group discussion was valuable in that it allowed us to examine the interplay and intersubjective modification of opinion through the course of the encounter, a dimension which makes this form in many ways \"more ecologically valid than methods that assess individuals' opinions in relatively asocial settings\" (Morgan, 1993, p. 54).The research involved five groups, which were convened in South West England and central Scotland between December 2004 and April 2007. All of the research participants were project managers or had project management responsibilities, all but two were male, and all were located in organisations with a structure which was to a greater or lesser extent \"project-based\". All five focus groups included participants with different levels of experience and from distinct occupational backgrounds (see Table I).The group discussions were semi-structured, following a core set of themes; work history, professional identity, PM professional affiliations and PM knowledge employed. Participants were informed of these themes at the outset, after which discussion was initiated and maintained by two facilitators in each group. The discussions were recorded, transcribed and then coded with the aid of Atlas-ti qualitative data analysis software according to themes derived from relevant literature and/or developed inductively from the empirical material itself. At the same time, to avoid fragmenting the data by this coding process, the transcripts were read through and considered holistically, to reveal recurrent themes and emergent positions/tensions through the course of each encounter.\nDiscussion/analysis: In this section, we discuss the ways in which the focus groups participants reflected on their own journey towards the role of project manager, their positioning within organisational power relations and the project manager's autonomy, status and authority within project-based environments.Becoming project manager\nDiscussion: Our empirical evidence points to an understanding of how a particular new managerial role, that of the project manager, is created and embedded in organisational contexts, through the discursive construction of project management as both a ubiquitous contemporary organisational phenomenon and as a strategic imperative in the current economic and technical climate. The research indicates tensions in the experiences of project managers. On the one hand. the discursive promotion of project management has created, to some extent, the organisational and social context within which technical specialists in various sectors see the project manager role as one which promises status, influence and authority within particular organisational settings. In \"becoming\" a project manager, personal identity becomes closely wedded to the value of the new occupation. At the same time, while still maintaining this understanding of PM as vital and of their position in the organisation as equally vital, the same project managers describe their experiences of this role as quite the inverse; their status and perceived competence is disputed, their influence is diluted and undermined and their decision-making authority severely curtailed.These tensions first arise during the process of becoming a project manager, as converts embrace a value system, which affirms the importance and centrality of project working. The process of leaving behind the previous occupational role is typically fraught - while the transformation is often driven by the need to progress one's career, enhance one's status and expand one's role by making a step toward management, the accounts given suggest difficulties in making this transformation. These difficulties centre on the difficulty encountered in leaving what is often an established and respected occupation to enter a newer, less recognised and often less valued occupation. These difficulties are increased by the lack of an established training program that familiarises the entrant with what is expected of them and the skills/competencies they require.These tensions do not abate as new project managers attempt to enact this role within an organisational context. Here, the conflict centres around the lack of institutionalised identity associated with the role, as the organisational identity of a project manager varies from an administrator/information gatherer to a senior manager accountable for the completion of major deliverables. Typically, both identities often exist in the same organisation, or relate to the same position, such that the level of accountability is not matched by the resources or the authority to discharge the role. This situation is aggravated by the lack of credibility of the occupation overall and a broader lack of understanding of the occupation, its capacities and its limits.\nConclusion: Project management is developing as a discrete occupation, which is central to the managerial regime within a specific but important form of post-bureaucratic organisation. The increasing contemporary importance of the project management role relies in part on a broader post-bureaucratic discourse; as it is the need for flexibility, for delivering change, and the restructuring of organisations around the project form, which legitimise the project manager and the discipline that s/he embodies.As part of the discursive processes of identity formation evinced in the discussions analysed previously, project managers make various claims regarding the importance of project management in an attempt to overcome the historical structuring of power relations across organisations and occupational boundaries. The levels of scepticism encountered by project managers across sectors undermine the confidence of those who assume the status of \"project manager\", exacerbated and reinforced by the lack of authority and legitimacy of the role.In particular, the research highlights that this role is typically compromised by structural and cultural aspects of the organisational and industrial context, the credibility of project management and the authority, resourcing and autonomy afforded to those taking up this role. These challenges illustrate the difficulties involved in adopting and effectively enacting the discrete project management role, and bring into question the contribution that project management can currently make in delivering the post-bureaucratic organisation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to empirically explore the nature of tensions that emerge within the process of becoming a manager in the post-bureaucratic organisation, by focusing on the emergence of project management as a key carrier of post-bureaucracy. The paper seeks to address two aspects of individual transformation into project manager; first, it aims to understand the specific factors, which drive the transformation of technical specialists into project managers and, second, to illuminate the tensions and challenges experienced in this new position.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The empirical base for the study is a series of structured group discussions with project managers from a range of distinct industrial sectors and organisations.\nFindings: - The paper illustrates the tensions implicit in the process of becoming a project manager. It identifies a number of conflicts that arise between the overarching philosophy of project management and the process of enacting the role of project manager around the themes of status, organisational value, power, influence and ambiguity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research approach is empirically rich yet exploratory, providing directions and inspiration for more extensive research in specific contexts.\nOriginality/value: - The research points to an understanding of how new managerial roles are created and embedded in organisational contexts, and the pressures, which are brought to bear on the incumbents of these new roles through this process.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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