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Trust, integrated information technology and new product success
|
[
"Information technology",
"Trust",
"Organizational innovation",
"New product success"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Trust has been defined in the literature as \"the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party\" (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712). But the number of applications of the concept, especially when examining innovative settings, has been limited. The literature assumes that trust is integral for innovation and product development, but little systematic testing of this proposition has actually been documented (e.g. Bunduchi, 2013).\n2. Trust: Trust as a concept has a rich research tradition in the academic literature. Since this general, applied concept has been dealt with extensively elsewhere (Fulmer and Gelfand, 2012; Mayer et al., 1995), an in-depth treatment of the concept will not be repeated here. However, the general definition and its key components are worth presenting as an introduction to trust's application to the technological innovation process. The operating definition of trust adopted here has several key elements, including vulnerability, which suggests expectations about the actions of others not directly monitored or under control (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712). More recently, Schoorman et al. (2007) demonstrated the consistency of this construct and additionally allowed for differences in perception of risk depending upon the power relationship between the parties, which could moderate outcomes by context. This is potentially quite important for the innovation process where uncertainty is the norm.\n3. Methodology: The first phase of this project began with five in-depth case studies of companies chosen for their known, recent experience with collaborative engineering technologies. The companies represented a diverse set of industries: eye care, automotive and truck assembly, film and chemicals, and one small firm in contract plastic mold and prototype manufacturing. We spoke to over a dozen managers and technical support people in these five firms and had two complete demonstrations of collaborative engineering systems in order to begin developing our survey and interview protocols.\n4. Results: We first examined the qualitative responses to two open-ended questions to frame the context of the survey results. First, we asked what best practices these companies adopted in the NPD process; and second, what were the current challenges they faced in NPD (exact wording of the questions appears below). The results of the tabulated responses to these open-ended questions are presented first.\n5. Discussion: A new perspective on managing technology deployment emerges from the findings of the current study. This new view could be called the tri-core model of the innovation process. In Daft's (1978) original dual-core model, technological and administrative cores supplied ideas for change in each core. Our findings suggest that a third core is required: the IT core. Our model predicted how new product success was directly associated with integrated IT and R&D-IT trust, and indirectly by organizational innovations and industry context (R&D ratios of firms in our sample). These hypotheses were supported (Tables IV and V). Organizational innovations appear as significant, exogenous predictors, but indirectly act on outcomes through an integrated IT strategy. Core technology, as represented by the R&D ratio, also showed significant indirect impacts on outcomes. But information strategy and trust now emerge as the quintessential direct causal factors of the NPD process. The conclusion: in order to promote successful outcomes in the innovation process, all organizations need to take three cores into account simultaneously - administration, innovation core, and information core. Misalignment between one or more of these cores may lead to poor fit (Siggelkow, 2002), which leads to sub-optimal intra- and inter-organizational innovation.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined roles via trust relationships of the two technology cores of the firm: information technology (IT) and R&D and their impact on new product success.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A model was tested whereby trust and the integrated IT strategy account for a significant amount of the variance in a broad range of new product development (NPD) outcomes for a survey sample of 223 manufacturing firms. Respondents said design practices and quality methods like Six Sigma accounted for a total of over 25 percent of the reports of the most helpful approaches in promoting effective NPD. At the same time their biggest challenges were having a clear strategic direction within which to operate and resolving cost and resource issues which accounted for over a third (34 percent) of barriers to success.\nFindings: Respondents reported that a total of over 25 percent of the reports of the most helpful approaches in promoting effective included these quality methods. At the same time their biggest challenges were having a clear strategic direction within which to operate and resolving cost and resource issues which accounted for over a third (34 percent) of barriers to success. High-tech firms were less likely to report integrated IT strategies, but this tended to be counterbalanced by high levels of trust in the IT function and adoption of organizational innovations for execution of strategic intent. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.\nResearch limitations/implications: Survey methods produce broad results with low response rates in most studies involving R&D and NPD, and this study is no exception.\nPractical implications: With the challenge of strategy alignment reported by many of these firms, it seems clear that the top management team cannot afford to leave NPD challenges to engineering teams and NPD programs without guidance and general vision.\nSocial implications: NPD has become the staple of most manufacturing firms as a way of meeting and beating the competition worldwide. However, trust between functional areas often starts before people are even employed and should begin in training and educational programs.\nOriginality/value: Designing NPD programs is at the heart of many firms' competitive strategies and the fast learning companies are the winners. Very little is known about the trust relationship between IT and R&D and their combined effects on new product success which we have found to be significant and unexpected in their impacts.\n",
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The vulnerability of human sensory evaluation and the promising senses instrumentation
|
[
"Sensory evaluation",
"E-nose",
"E-tongue",
"Food quality system",
"Human panels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A trustworthy manufacture must possess a great quality system, which is supported by a reliable quality control. The whole system must assure the quality of raw materials, process, as well as the final products. Sensory evaluation is the most simple way to analyze the quality of product. Not only measuring the sensory characteristic of food, sensory evaluation also has its own social, economic, and cultural facets. It has been extensively used in the study of consumer items, and lately on behavioral and physiological reactions. Due to its potential future development, sensory evaluation has been an integral part of the food science curriculum in various universities (Villarino, 2009).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Sensory threshold\n3. Method: As discussed in the previous chapter, because a single assessment could not fully interpret the products sensory characteristic, a comprehensive sensory evaluation requires the good combination of taste and odor analysis. However, compared to taste assessment, there are wider individual differences in olfactory acuity (Lawless, 1991). Thus, theoretically, compared to taste evaluation, odor evaluation would be more vulnerable to individual variability, subjectivity, and adaptation or fatigue effect. Considering this fact, the following experiment design would evaluate sensitivity level and fatigue effect on the basis of taste evaluation to represent general sensory evaluation. The evaluation object for this experiment was Acesulfame-K which is carried by juice powder.\n4. Results: 4.1 Sensory threshold\n5. Discussion: 5.1 The vulnerability of human sensory evaluation\n6. Limitation and future research directions: Although this study has several implications to improve a company's quality system, there are some limitations remain. The first limitation is the small number of panelists. They could only represent the inspectors population but not fully represent the general population. Furthermore, the E-tongue and E-nose proposed in this paper also have not been through a proper validation for practical use in the target workcenter. Therefore, for future research it is highly recommended to use a larger number of panelists which statistically represents the general population. It is also suggested to do a proper validation on the instrument application to measure its suitability in the target workcenter.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate subjectivity issue, particularly sensitivity variance and fatigue effect, in human sensory evaluation, as well as review the feasibility of human-independent quality system, using E-tongue and E-nose.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sensitivity level is evaluated by measuring the threshold of Acesulfame-K, while the fatigue effect is evaluated by measuring the accuracy level of evaluation through the time. The experiment was administered to six trained sensory panelists.\nFindings: The experiment result shows that each panelist has a different level of sensitivity and tendency in evaluating samples containing Acesulfame-K. Furthermore, by simulating the panelists' daily inspection, the fatigue effect is also found in one out of six panelists. The use of E-nose and E-tongue, may eliminate the subjectivity issue, supporting the development of human error-free quality system.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research findings indicate the needs of human substitution-built into the quality system to avoid both of subjectivity and error judgment while defining the products quality. However, the small numbers of panelists as well as the unvalidated substitute instruments application in the target workcenter were the main limitation of this study. Human-independent quality system could be applied only when the instruments have been calibrated to human response in perceiving taste and odor.\nOriginality/value: The research finding supports the theory of human panels' tradeoffs in a sensory analysis in terms of sensitivity level variance and fatigue. It has provided additional contributions to the existing theories as well as developed effective strategies for the development of the human-independent quality system.\n",
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Updated proportional hazards model for equipment residual life prediction
|
[
"Condition‐based maintenance",
"Proportional hazards model",
"Residual life prediction",
"Updating scheme",
"Condition monitoring",
"Maintenance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Traditional maintenance strategy is either corrective maintenance (CM) or time-based preventive maintenance (PM) (Pham and Wang, 1996; Wang, 2002). With advancement of sensor technology and signal processing techniques, we have witnessed the rapid development of condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy. CBM is a maintenance program that recommends maintenance decisions based on the information collected through condition monitoring (Jardine et al., 2006; Heng et al., 2009). The \"condition\" can either be some physical quantities directly related with system health (e.g. crack length, corrosion level, etc.) (Meeker and Escobar, 1998), or be some measurable performance variables indirectly but closely related with system failure mechanisms (e.g. thrust force, vibration amplitude, etc.) (Lu et al., 2001; Huang et al., 2007). As most system failures/degradation can lead to abnormal condition, we now have extensive evidence that CBM is superior to traditional maintenance strategy in reducing unexpected system failures and improving operation safety (Jardine et al., 2006, Liao et al., 2006, Lin et al., 2009).With the development of CBM strategy, it is important to note the enrichment of available data types. In traditional maintenance strategies, only event data are typically obtainable. In CBM, in addition to the event data, various informative attribute data (condition monitoring data) can be collected. Note that event data includes the information on what happened (e.g. installation, breakdown, etc.) and what was done (e.g. minor repair, entire replacement, etc.), while attribute data includes the measurements related to the health/condition of the physical asset, i.e. system performance variables (Jardine et al., 2006).In literature relevant to CBM, most studies focus on the modeling of attribute data (Gebraeel, 2006; Grall et al., 2002; Lu et al., 2001, 2007), which reflects the status of each individual in-operation system. In these studies, system failure (event data) is naturally related with the monitored performance variable(s) (attribute data) by defining a threshold value (or plane for multivariate cases). Once the magnitude of the performance variable exceeds the threshold value, the underlying system is considered failed. The threshold value/plane is typically defined according to operation experience or industrial standard (Gebraeel, 2006). However, in practice, there are cases when it is hard to find a deterministic value/plane for failure definition, although system failures are observable. For example, the crack length that causes structural failure is usually unclear; the wear level of a cutting tool that causes unacceptable defective product rate is hard to explicitly define (Wang and Coit, 2007). In such cases, it is especially beneficial to take advantage of both event data and attribute data.Among the CBM models simultaneously working with event data and attribute data, the effectiveness of the proportional hazards model (PHM) with time-dependent covariates has been demonstrated through several simulations and real applications in different industrial areas (e.g. food industry, mining industry, defense, etc.) (Jardine et al., 1999, 2001, Lin et al., 2004). A PHM is usually applied for CBM optimization or reliability evaluation for a batch of identical systems (Makis and Jardine, 1992; Banjevic et al., 2001; Ghasemi et al., 2007, 2010). A PHM has also been applied for on-line reliability assessment and residual life (RL) prediction for a signal unit (Liao et al., 2006).With emerging on-line condition signals (attribute data), there are several practical issues to be addressed for PHM application. Lin et al. (2006) considered the problem of dimension reduction for the superfluous available covariates and the problem of co-linearity between the covariates. In most of the CBM models using PHM, it is typically explicitly or implicitly assumed that a large volume of historical data are available, to build a PHM. However, in many practical cases, this assumption is too demanding, which may be attributed to the high cost or complexity in preparing training datasets for establishing a PHM prior to real practice.Motivated by the above realistic concern, this paper is devoted to the problem of limited volume of historical training samples in the use of PHM for RL prediction. We address the problem by taking advantage of the emerging new samples created in the application/implementation phase of a PHM. Actually, such samples can be adopted to enrich the training dataset, and consequently the model parameters need to be updated given these new samples. An extensive simulation based on a typical degradation process is conducted to evaluate the necessity and benefits in adopting the updating scheme.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 introduces the PHM, its establishment, its application in RL prediction, and provides a scheme for model update. Section 3 conducts a numerical simulation based on a typical degradation process to evaluate the necessity and benefits of model update. Finally, section 4 concludes the paper.\n2. Modeling: In this section, we first briefly review the typical structure of a PHM, then discuss the establishment of a PHM based on the training/historical samples. Afterwards, we discuss RL prediction by the trained PHM above. Finally, we present an updating scheme for a PHM with newly generated training samples.2.1 PHM\n3. Evaluation: This section is devoted to the evaluation of a PHM with the updating scheme, based on a simulation model for a typical degradation process. First, the process of data generation is introduced in subsection 3.1. In subsection 3.2, the cycle of establishment, implementation and updating of a PHM is discussed, with emphasis on the influence of the updating scheme on RL prediction. Finally, in subsection 3.3, we discuss several remarkable issues regarding the implementation and limitations of a PHM in current practice of CBM management.3.1 Data generation\n4. Conclusions: This paper emphasizes the necessity and benefits of updating a PHM with newly generated samples in operation. The results from the simulation evaluation based on a typical degradation model demonstrate that more accurate and reliable RL prediction can be obtained close to system failure by adopting the updating scheme. We believe that the updating scheme is especially useful when the volume of historical records for establishing an original PHM is limited.In the future, more efforts are needed to extend the PHM to handle imperfect maintenance. To do this, the key challenge will be how to model the effect of imperfect maintenance acts on a system's hazard function. It is also necessary to evaluate the effect of the updating mechanism on the performance of an optimized PHM based maintenance policy, in terms of average system availability, overall maintenance cost, etc.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - Most current condition-based maintenance (CBM) systems using proportional hazards model (PHM) assume that enough historical data are available. However, in many practical cases, it is usually costly to collect much historical data prior to real practice (model implementation). This paper aims to focus on the necessity and benefits of updating a PHM with new samples generated in the process of model implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - First, an updating scheme is presented and embedded into the entire cycle of PHM establishment, its application/implementation, and its updating. Next, a simulation evaluation is conducted based on a typical degradation model.\nFindings: - By updating a PHM using newly generated samples, the precision and reliability of residual life (RL) prediction can be improved, especially close to system failure.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The current version of PHM is typically for non-repairable systems or those systems only receiving renewal maintenance. Further research should focus on the inclusion of the effect of imperfect maintenance.\nPractical implications: - The updating scheme enables maintenance practitioners to more precisely and reliably predict the RL of an in-operation system, and enhances further CBM decision making.\nOriginality/value: - This paper highlights the necessity and benefits of updating a PHM using emerging new training resources, which has not received enough attention in existing research/practice of a PHM.\n",
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Organizational change as practice: a critical analysis
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Particularity",
"Practice",
"Practitioner",
"Praxis",
"Universality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is widely accepted among scholars that organizational change is an extremely difficult reality in practice, as over 70 percent of organizational change efforts fail (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Burke, 2011; Cinite et al., 2009). A planned organizational change means intentionally increasing employee stress levels (Dahl, 2011), knowingly disturbing the ongoing operations (Currie et al., 2009; Pache and Santos, 2010) and consciously gambling with the organization's future as the outcome is often different to the original plan (Jian, 2011; Whittle et al., 2010). Thus, organizational change practices are in the interest of both scholars and practitioners. Research about organizational change mostly concern topics like change processes (Schreyogg and Sydow, 2011), leadership (Battilana et al., 2010), change execution (Van de Ven and Sun, 2011), change reception within the organization (Stensaker and Falkenberg, 2007), discourse (Grant and Marshak, 2011), or paradoxes (Smith and Lewis, 2011). Although the role of practices in this literature is quite significant, some assumptions related to them are rarely questioned.\nResearch methodology: This article is developed based on a literature review and a complementing critical analysis utilizing practice theory lens. As the purpose of this research is to critically evaluate how the taken-for-granted assumptions regarding organizational change condition organizational change as practice, practice theory is a logical choice since it analyses practice (change) in its social environment (organization). Practice approach is also suitable in analyzing discursive interaction and related social practices (Fenton and Langley, 2011; Grant and Marshak, 2011), which organizational change is mostly about (Jian, 2011).\nOverview of organizational change research: Despite the rich variety of research on organizational change, a current, holistic review of the topic is missing, the reason most likely being the complexity and the depth of the phenomenon. Topical reviews about organizational change do exist, but their analysis is presented from a specific perspective, such as reactions to change (Oreg et al., 2011; Thomas and Hardy, 2011), duality characteristics in organizing (Graetz and Smith, 2008), or sustaining organizational change (Buchanan et al., 2005).\nA critical analysis of the taken-for-granted assumptions utilizing the practice theory lens: Organizational change practices\nConclusions: The purpose of this research was to challenge some taken-for-granted practices related to organizational change and find out how organizational change as practice is conditioned by these mundane assumptions. The literature review resulted in three examples of taken-for-granted assumptions in the current organizational change literature:\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to challenge some taken-for-granted practices related to organizational change in order to understand how organizational change as practice is conditioned by mundane assumptions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A critical analysis of the taken-for-granted assumptions revealed by a literature review was conducted utilizing practice theory approach in which human behavior and social context are intertwined. Hence, the analysis of this theoretical paper focuses on practices, praxis and practitioners in organizational change.\nFindings: The results suggest that certain elements that are believed to be universal in organizational change are, in fact, particular within context. The key finding and message of this research is that organizational change in practice is a manifestation of particularity. The conclusion is that certain mundane assumptions condition organizational change practices by ignoring the importance of power, phronesis and paradox, which lie in human interaction within social context.\nResearch limitations/implications: The proposal that the dominating discourse on organizational change involves some taken-for-granted assumptions, challenges scholars to question the ways organizations are currently studied, and perhaps draws more attention to power, context and particularity in future research.\nPractical implications: The analysis demonstrates that the social aspect of organizational realities is crucial in organizational change, and should not be underestimated by the practitioners in the process. This realism of practice complexity indicates that the pitfalls of organizational change are more context dependent and thus, more numerous than generally is assumed.\nOriginality/value: This research contributes to both theory and practice by offering a critical view on some of the taken-for-granted organizational change practices. This paper also demonstrates originality by introducing the concept of \"organizational change as practice\" in analogue of \"strategy as practice\" (SAP).\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Digital banking, customer experience and bank financial performance: UK customers' perceptions
|
[
"Service quality",
"Financial performance",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Customer loyalty",
"Customer experience",
"Digital banking"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of technology in the banking sector has significant implications for banks' marketing efforts (Dootson et al., 2016), especially in digital banking (DB) as it affects customer interfaces. DB via telephone, internet and mobile has become a major way of delivering multi-channel services to customers, which is challenging traditional banking models (Cortinas et al., 2010). As customers' expectations increase, capturing and retaining them and improving profitability becomes important, especially after the financial crisis of 2008 (Monferrer-Tirado et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 DB\n3. Conceptual model for the research: Figure 1 illustrates the research conceptual model. In the model, \"em\" symbolises the dependent variable while the rest are independent variables, \"BK\" means banking, \"Egt\" engagement and H is hypothesis. Many of these hypotheses are secondary exploratory hypotheses, whilst the primary research hypotheses relate to the links among customer experience (satisfaction and loyalty), bank FP and marketing.\n4. Methodology: This research used a web-based questionnaire method supported by e-mail (Ritter and Sue, 2007; Kwak and Radler, 2002), and was conducted at the Sheffield Hallam University, UK. A web-based tool called Bristol Online Survey (2015), developed at the Bristol University for higher education research, was used to design the questionnaire. Prior to sending out the main questionnaire, a pilot survey to assess validity and correct errors was conducted. The questionnaire URL link was sent to ten selected respondents from each of the sample strata to get their feedback and ensure the expected data would address the research objectives. Their feedback was used to reshape the questionnaire, remove ambiguity and make sure the questions were understandable. A total of 49 questions were asked after the pilot survey.\n5. Measurement development: To construct the questionnaire items, the existing literature was studied extensively. This was complemented with an \"Idea Tournament\" exercise, in which the research team conducted a debate around the research objectives, to ensure that crucial aspects of the study were covered. This ensured that enough questions were asked to measure the study factors and support the hypotheses. Table I shows the items used to measure the model factors.\n6. Empirical analysis results: The results are presented in line with the research objectives as follows.\n7. Theoretical and managerial implications of results: This section summarises the results in light of the research objectives and implications for bank marketing. The results in Objective 1 show that DB experience in the UK differs by customer characteristics; hence bank marketing strategies aim to satisfy the customers need by targeting specific segments. Objective 2 results show the different questionnaire items and underpinning customer expectations, which moderate DB variables, thereby providing further evidence base for constructing appropriate bank marketing strategies referred to above. Objective 3 results provide the sets of positive hypotheses linking customer experience to the first nine factors, and importantly customer experience and other dependent variables in the study: customer satisfaction, loyalty and FP (FP1 and FP2). New SEM path analyses generated additional hypotheses linking some of the explanatory factors to each other. These provide handles on plausible bank marketing strategies to consider in order to enhance customers' DB experience. Finally, Objective 4 ANOVA test results show how different DB experience factors are affected by different customer characteristics. This reinforces the evidence base for future bank marketing approaches suggested above.\n8. Conclusion: This paper presented an integrated understanding of customers' perceptions of the links among DB, customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty, two measures of FP, namely financial ratios (FP1) and NPS criteria (FP2), and the implications of these links for bank marketing. The research demonstrated that banks can improve FP using DB. The overall customers' NPS is positive (16.99); however, passive customers are more than promoters. UK banks need to target passive customers and turn them into promoters to improve their NPS using the identified factors, which can help improve customer experience and FP. Customers are looking for value and demanding more mobile banking services, so banks should be delivering these. The methods and the type of analysis undertaken show the robustness of the developed DB models, which can be used to explore customer experience and FP in future studies.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine customers' perceptions of digital banking (DB), customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty and financial performance (FP) in UK banks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research consists of a survey of UK bank customers' perceptions of the above themes; use of banks' financial reports to obtain FP ratios; multivariate factor analysis; structural equation modelling; and analysis of variance tests to explore research hypotheses on the relationships among the study factors.\nFindings: The main factors which determine customer experience in DB are service quality, functional quality, perceived value (PV), employee-customer engagement, perceived usability and perceived risk. There is a significant relationship among customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, which is related to FP.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study concentrates on UK bank customers which limits its generalisability to other banks globally. However, the fact that banks typically adopt common standards in bank financial management implies that the findings are potentially robust for global bank management. Replicating the study in banks in other countries will further enhance this robustness.\nPractical implications: Some significant effects of customer characteristics on the study factors were observed, which have useful implications for DB, bank marketing services and bank FP.\nOriginality/value: Unlike previous studies, this study uses both Net Promoter Score and financial ratios as dependent variables, to provide a combined study of the relationships among 14 study factors, with implications for bank marketing and FP.\n",
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The imitation-innovation link, external knowledge search and China's innovation system
|
[
"Innovation",
"Imitation",
"New product development",
"Knowledge search",
"China innovation System"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: How is imitation tied to innovation? Two lines of research have addressed the topic of the relationship between imitation and innovation. In the economics literature, the argument is often made that imitation is related to convergence or catching up of frontier firms (Aghion et al., 2001; Davidson and Segerstrom, 1998; Zeng, 2001). In this literature, innovation and imitation were conceptualized as unrelated, as each was considered to embody a distinct mindset. While innovation is a necessary condition for an organization's survival and growth, imitation is often considered as a spontaneous and haphazard act impeding innovation (Ethiraj et al., 2008; Lenox et al., 2006; Rivkin, 2000, 2001; Winter and Szulanski, 2001). Some innovation management scholars, however, provide a different argument. Imitation is not contradictory to, but rather supportive of, innovation because it develops capabilities consistent with innovation (Bolton, 1993; Hurley and Chater, 2005; Iacoboni, 2009; Wu et al., 2017).The question thus arises whether imitation is an enabler or a hindrance of innovation. The discrepancy between the two arguments on the relationship between imitation and innovation may be partly due to different foci. The first line of research tends to concentrate on the imitation-innovation problem of finding effective ways of reconciling the two strategies, while the second line tends to focus on the assistance of imitation to innovation. Anecdotal and empirical evidence of a few consummate innovators also acting as imitators (e.g., Wal-Mart, IBM, Apple, Procter and Gamble, Sherwin-Williams) has suggested a more complicated relationship. \"Even if we're trying to innovate, we also want to know what other people have out there, so some of the innovation ... is driven by imitation,\" exclaimed by Lionel L. Nowell, former senior vice president and treasurer, PepsiCo. As Levitt (1966, p. 70) notes, \"to behave lopsidedly as if innovation were a messiah, and especially at the awful expense of a realistic appreciation of the fructifying power of more systematic imitation, would be an even greater mistake.\" Many successful organizations have used imitation as an important strategy to outperform competitors and combined it with innovation to offer a superior product or service features, in particular, the firms from developing economies (e.g., Tata and Ranbaxy in India, Odebrecht and Promon in Brazil, Huawei, and Lenovo in China) having successfully emerged as key players challenging dominant innovators in international markets. Drawing on these business realities, we define imitation as an independent, rather than equivalent, to innovation: copying innovations developed by others (i.e., imitation) will usually be cheaper than executing a firm's innovative activity (Cappelli et al., 2014), and conceptualize the relationship between imitation and innovation as the complementarity.Although several innovation management scholars have argued that imitation only provides cost benefits under certain conditions and are less beneficial than innovation in providing new ideas and technologies, these scholars have tended to conceptualize imitation as part of an overarching innovation strategy (Arora and Gambardella, 1990; Lichtenthaler, 2009). For example, by distinguishing between pure knowledge transfer and \"reflective imitation,\" which requires active adaptation of technology to establish a new setting and reflects a new user's particular requirements, Bolton (1993) elevated reflective imitation strategy beyond simple copying and knowledge transfer to something closer to innovation strategy. On the other hand, Posen et al. (2013, p. 151) characterized imitation as \"a search process in which a firm attempt to replace a subset of its attributes with those of a high performing firm.\" Moreover, previous studies have typically criticized findings from business cases, ideas from managerial practices, and anecdotes that provide compelling accounts of the complementarity between innovation and imitation. Moreover, whether the relationship between imitation and innovation is affected by certain contextual variables has not been studied. This represents a significant lacuna because the interplay of innovation and imitation does not occur in a vacuum and is subject to specific organizational characteristics. To effectively manage these two types of strategies, understanding organizational conditions under which imitation and innovation interact is at least as important, if not more important, than determining the relationship between the two.We investigate the relationship between innovation and imitation in new product development undertaking by Chinese industrial firms in the 2000s. This is an excellent context to examine the effects of different combinations of imitation and innovation on new product development, as imitation and innovation are two important strategies for Chinese industrial firms to develop cutting-edge products (Bi et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2016). On the one hand, many Chinese industrial firms focus on specialization on original equipment maker (OEM) business, which enables them to learn new technologies avoiding very costly R&D expenditure through imitating advanced technologies embedded in the parts or subsystems provided by more developed countries (Wu et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2017). On the other hand, Chinese firms' catch-up strategy is featured by intertwined imitation and innovation. For example, the process of new product development from imitation to innovation prompts Chinese firms to invest in-house R&D to improve innovative capacity (Bi et al., 2017). Moreover, the historical context of China's innovation system in the 2000s evolving into an innovative champion reflects a leap from imitation to innovation over a technologically turbulent period.This article thereby makes three contributions. First, in search of evidence of the existence of complementarity, we present a rigorous and careful study to unravel the intricate relationship between imitation and innovation strategies. This study provides a theoretical foundation and examines systematic data for analyzing the complementarity between innovation and imitation strategies. Second, rather than merely searching for complementarity, we aim to identify the contextual variables that affect such complementarity. We identify external knowledge search as an important contextual variable that influences the extent to which imitation and innovation activities complement each other that heretofore has remained unexplained. Third, the findings contribute scarce empirical evidence to the debate outlined at the beginning.The article proceeds as follows. We first review the relevant literature and China innovation system in the 2000s. Second, we build on algebraic lattice theory to show the existence of complementarity. Third, we discuss the theoretical issues surrounding complementarity and provide a general model. Fourth, we outline the empirical context for assessing the complementarity of imitation and innovation and discuss the measures of key variables and explain econometrical modelling. Fifth, we present the results of the analyses and the robustness analyses. Finally, we discuss the contributions and limitations of the study.\nLiterature review: Imitation and innovation\nBasic model: Supermodularity and complementarity\nData and methods: Data\nEmpirical results: The results of complementarity of innovation and imitation\nDiscussion and conclusion: How is imitation tied to innovation? We address this basic question in the context of China's innovation system in the 2000s where Chinese industrial firms simultaneously execute innovation and imitation strategies in their new product developments. We first draw on the lattice theory and supermodularity theory to offer a mathematic illustration of the existence of the complementarity between innovation and imitation strategies. Empirically, we employ original data on Chinese industrial firms' innovation and imitation strategies in the development of new products to provide valuable evidence. The results are consistent with the idea that innovation and imitation complement each other in promoting a firm's innovation performance, and external knowledge search strengthens the effect. The findings have important implications for both theory and practice.First, this research was motivated by an apparent discrepancy between two lines of research in extant researches. Whereas some researchers studying imitators as simple copycats suggest that imitation is a spontaneous and haphazard act impeding innovation, some innovation management researchers have argued that imitation is not contradictory to innovation but rather supportive of it. This discrepancy exists because one line of research treats imitation as an opposite of innovation, and the other line of research considers imitation as part of innovation. Instead, imitation and innovation in this study are interdependent. If either imitation or innovation was considered alone, their joint impact would have not been elucidated. As Levitt (1966, p. 70) notes, \"Hence an affirmative policy of supporting a strategy of imitation in some organized fashion would have the virtue not only of getting necessary imitative activities into motion early, but of communicating to the entire organization that while innovators are valued, so are the creative imitators. It would legitimize systematic imitative thinking as much as the more glamorous innovative thinking.\" The implication calls into question the two lines of research that have either characterized the two strategies as unrelated to, or as a substitute, for the other. The findings of the imitation-innovation complementarity suggest that imitation is not only an indispensable strategy independent of innovation, but also is vital to the effectiveness of innovation.Second, the finding in this study of external knowledge search moderating the complementarity effect of innovation and imitation enriches a paucity of literature on the boundary condition of the imitation-innovation link. Although innovation management researchers have argued that imitation and innovation are intertwined, many scholars have remained agnostic with respect to external knowledge search that may facilitate or inhibit the interplay of imitation and innovation. Previous studies suggest that broad and deep search has been found to impact innovation performance (Laursen and Salter, 2006; Wu et al., 2019) and external knowledge search is an important strategic decision (Wu, 2014; Wu and Wu, 2014). This study draws on these insights to introduce external knowledge search as a boundary condition on the innovation-imitation complementarity relationship. The findings that the imitation- innovation complementarity is context-specific, and external knowledge search is a reinforcement of the innovation-imitation complementarity send a meaningful message to managers on how to effectively utilize the joint benefits of innovation and innovation activities. Excellent innovation performance depends not only on combining various innovative or imitative strategies, but also on searching, absorbing and using different sources of external knowledge. Effective innovation management thus requires a balanced approach to different innovation strategies along with an open attitude toward different sources of knowledge.Third, the findings of this study have policy implications. As noted above, the Chinese governments and its public policies shape the national innovation system in the 2000s. On the one hand, the \"Open Door Policy\" have attracted trillions of inward foreign direct investments (FDIs) from developed countries. The entries of foreign multinational enterprises have greatly motivated local Chinese firms to imitate and digest foreign counterparts' innovative ideas and technologies and add significant value to their own innovative products (Wu and Pangarkar, 2006), but sometimes take a short cut by optimizing knowledge-creation, technologies, and resources for making their products competitive (Bi et al., 2017). Meanwhile, the \"Go Global Policy\" has encouraged thousands of Chinese firms to embark high-tech exports and motivated them to learn to innovation (either by investing more in R&D or by imitating or even copying readily available technologies created by foreign counterparts), which have significantly contributed to Chinese firms' ability to produce cutting-edge technologies (Hu and Mathews, 2008; Wu et al., 2016). The imitation-innovation complementarity finding provides some evidence for the contention that Chinese latecomers exploit the synergies of imitation and innovation, transforming themselves from imitators to innovators and vibrant competitors in the global market (Wu et al., 2016) and, as a result, national innovation system has evolved from a state-sponsored imitation program to the imitation-innovation mixture. The significant moderating effect of external knowledge search complements a small but growing number of studies that have emphasized a balanced approach to external vs. internal knowledge by the Chinese firms (e.g., Wu and Wu, 2014; Wu et al., 2019), as their rise to be a contender to foreign firms drive the latter to be more innovative in order to maintain their dominant position, which in turn excites many Chinese firms (e.g., Huawei) with the effective imitation-innovation mixture to catch up foreign rivals (Wu and Pangarkar, 2006). As a result, China's innovation system is rising to a global innovation champion.Implications for future research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The authors attempt to answer the basic questions: How is imitation tied to innovation? This question is addressed in the context of China's innovation system in the 2000s where Chinese industrial firms simultaneously implement innovation and imitation strategies in their new product developments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors first build on lattice theory and supermodularity theory to provide a rigorous and careful mathematical proof. The authors further conduct the empirical analyses using an original data on Chinese manufacturing firms' innovation and imitation strategies in the development of new products in 2002.\nFindings: This article reveals the complementarity relation between imitation and innovation strategies and identifies external knowledge search as the boundary condition that influences the extent to which two strategies reinforce each other.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings of the imitation-innovation complementarity suggest that imitation is not only an indispensable strategy independent of innovation, but also is vital to the effectiveness of innovation itself.\nPractical implications: The imitation-innovation complementarity finding provides some evidence for the contention that Chinese latecomers exploit the synergies of imitation and innovation, transforming themselves from imitators to innovators and vibrant competitors in the global market (Wu et al., 2016) and, as a result, national innovation system has evolved from a state-sponsored imitation program to the imitation-innovation mixture.\nOriginality/value: In contrast to earlier innovation studies in which innovation and imitation are unrelated, this study reveals that imitation complements innovation, and the extent of Chinese firms' external knowledge search affects the complementary relationship between imitation and innovation. These findings add important insights to the innovation management literature and contribute empirical evidence to the interplay of innovation and imitation enhancing national innovation system.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
CSR types and the moderating role of corporate competence
|
[
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Corporate competence",
"Philanthropic CSR",
"Promotional CSR",
"Value-creating CSR"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities can be classified into three broad orientations based on the corporation's strategic goals: philanthropic CSR (CSR with a charitable donor-recipient nature), promotional CSR (CSR that enhances mutually beneficial relationship exchanges) and value-creating CSR (CSR integrated into firms' mission and core business agenda) (Austin, 2000; Pirsch et al., 2007; Varadarajan and Menon, 1998). Today, the same firm can simultaneously engage in different types of CSR. For instance, McDonald's conducted various social programs, including supply-chain CSR, alliance with Ronald McDonald House Charities, cause-related marketing for its new products (e.g. McCafe's Shakes) and philanthropic donation of US$24m (McDonald's, 2010). A meta-analysis of research in this field by Peloza and Shang (2011) shows that the majority of previous studies target only a single CSR activity, with 55 per cent focused on cause-related marketing (a form of promotional CSR) and 22 per cent on other specific CSR initiatives. While all types of CSR activities provide support for worthy causes, the ways in which companies affiliate themselves with the causes may lead to divergent individual perceptions and judgments. By investigating the impact of different types of CSR on consumer responses, this study responds to the long-standing call by marketing researchers to move CSR research beyond the study of a single CSR type and to paint a more holistic picture that includes an array of CSR activities (Peloza and Shang, 2011; Sen et al., 2016; Vaaland et al., 2008). Such investigations advance our understanding about the differential effects of various types of CSR, ideally guiding managers to adopt the right CSR programs that fit with the firm's characteristics and strategic goals.\nConceptual framework: Corporate social responsibility types\nHypothesis development: We expect that different types of CSR will generate differential effects on consumers' corporate evaluations, including judgments of CSR image and corporate trustworthiness. CSR image as an important outcome variable has been widely used in CSR research, which reflects the value a firm places on being seen as a good corporate citizen (Brown and Dacin, 1997). We introduce corporate trustworthiness as another dependent variable into our study for two reasons. First, it is argued that corporate trustworthiness often serves as the key element around which consumers form opinions when they process comprehensive issues associated with an organization rather than with specific product attributes (Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). When dealing with complicated and incongruent information about a corporation and its activities, consumers tend to seek a harmonious view of the company by synthesizing their thoughts on the credibility of the company (Alcaniz et al., 2010). Second, previous research has shown that CSR has a direct positive effect on corporate brand credibility (Hur et al., 2014). Furthermore, corporate trustworthiness has been proven to play an important role in influencing consumer responses such as customer satisfaction, loyalty and perception of company image (Busacca and Castaldo, 2003; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999). Given that modern consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical of the sincerity and honesty of CSR programs, we consider trustworthiness to be a key construct in the context of CSR evaluation.\nStudy 1: Design and sample\nStudy 2: Study 1's experimental design incorporated a single condition, CSR type, and utilized a within-subjects design. Though a within-subjects design ensures that participants contemplate and compare different CSR options with minimum confounds, the study design does not provide a full story that reflects a more realistic situation where options for comparative decision-making usually are not present in consumers' encounters with firms. Also, the moderating role of perceived corporate competence was tested in an exploratory manner, as it was not manipulated in Study 1. Acknowledging these limitations, Study 2 was conducted for two purposes:\nDiscussion: In two studies, this paper investigates the impact of different types of CSR (i.e. value-creating CSR, promotional CSR and philanthropic CSR) on consumer responses and the moderating role of corporate competence. The findings suggest that, in general, consumers respond to value-creating CSR more favorably than to philanthropic CSR or promotional CSR. In addition, corporate competence moderates consumers' responses toward different types of CSR in such a way that promotional CSR is more likely to have the desired effects when carried out by low-competency rather than high-competency firms, whereas value-creating CSR is more effective for high-competency firms than for low-competency ones. Philanthropic CSR works equally in both types of firms.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of corporate social responsibility (CSR; i.e. value-creating CSR, promotional CSR and philanthropic CSR) on consumer responses and the moderating role of corporate competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors tested the hypotheses by using two empirical studies - a survey and an experimental study. The evidence is generated based on generalized linear model repeated-measures ANOVAs for the survey study and two-way factorial ANOVAs for the experimental study.\nFindings: The findings show that in general, consumers respond to value-creating CSR more favorably than to philanthropic CSR or promotional CSR. In addition, corporate competence moderates consumers' responses to different types of CSR in such a way that promotional CSR is more likely to have the desired effects when carried out by low-competency rather than by high-competency firms, whereas value-creating CSR is more effective for high-competency firms than for low-competency ones. Philanthropic CSR works equally in both types of firms.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research answers a long-term call to study the differential consumer effects of various CSR types. It also identifies perceived corporate competence, an important consumer-based corporate factor, as a potential moderator of consumers' response to CSR types.\nPractical implications: Armed with the findings, companies can choose CSR practices that fit with their company characteristics. This research offers important and specific managerial implications to firms with different company profiles on their CSR choices.\nOriginality/value: Given that today's managers are faced with the challenge of selecting desirable CSR activities from a group of options, the authors answered the call by studying the differential effects of a wide array of CSR choices and provide important practical guidance to managers. For the first time in the literature, the study also investigates the potential interactive effects between specific CSR types and corporate competence on consumer reactions. This inquiry bears significant relevance to the ongoing discussions concerning whether and how company characteristics generate influences on the outcomes of CSR strategies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
"Usability + usefulness = trust": an exploratory study of Australian health web sites
|
[
"Health services",
"Information retrieval",
"Trust",
"Australia",
"Online operations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Internet health information search statistics suggest a growing trend in using the Internet as an information source, at least in the US (Bomba, 2005). Luo and Najdawi (2004) report that 52 million Americans search for health information at least monthly and 80 per cent of American Internet users have searched for health information (Fox, 2006). Currently there are between 10,000 and 20,000 health related web sites and over 21 million people have been influenced by health information they have retrieved (Sillence et al., 2004). As health spending continues to rise with populations age many governments and medical/health agencies worldwide are using the Internet as a cost-effective way to distribute health information. Delivering Internet-based health information however is not as straightforward as it might seem.Boyer (2006) makes the point that when people try to make decisions about what health information they should trust, they need to know the standards applied to health information selection and publishing on the web sites, this includes the information source. Health information web sites need to ensure that information is comprehensible, accessible, be of high quality and reviewed by experts (Gustafson et al., 2008; Boyer, 2006).The research presented in this paper sought to understand users' perception of web site quality, the trust users had in the web site, how easy it is to retrieve relevant information and overall web site usability. The three non-commercial Australian health information web sites were selected to ensure that the users accessed the most relevant locally-focussed information.. We observed users' interactions and response to their search experiences while accessing these web sites. Specifically, our research involved an analysis and usability testing of two Australian government-sponsored health web sites and one other non commercial health web site. The focus on government and non-commercial web sites was made on the assumption that these are less affected by marketing forces and are designed specifically to satisfy users' needs for authoritative, \"up-to-date and quality assessed information on important health topics\" (HealthInsite, 2008). We identified factors impacting on the users' perception of quality and effectiveness of web sites, the role usability plays in engendering trust. The aim of our study was to provide insight and recommendations for designing more effective health information web sites.\n2 Health information web sites: Health consumers are accessing Internet-based health information for a number of reasons: to educate themselves about health matters, to gather information before visiting a doctor, to get a second opinion, to become more actively involved in decisions relating to their health, lifestyle choices, and to participate in virtual health care activities (Dannecker and Lechner, 2006; Pew/Internet, 2006; Bliemel and Hassanein, 2007).Australian governments both State and Federal have in recent years have overseen the development of a number of health information web sites providing the public with an authoritative source of information about medical conditions, medications, healthy lifestyles and many other topics related to health. In establishing the HealthInsite portal the Australian government stated: \"HealthInsite addresses two major deficiencies associated with the increasing tendency of Australian health consumers to source information from the Internet: finding relevant material, and quality assurance\" (NIHIMA, 2001). There is limited data on the extent to which Australians search for Internet based health information. In March 2008, HealthInsite reported that in excess of 330,000 visited the web site (HealthInsite, 2008).Health on the Net Foundation (HON) is a not for profit organisation established in 1995 to \"promote the effective and reliable use of the new technologies for telemedicine in healthcare around the world.\" (HON, 2006a). Among its activities HON conducts regular research on the use of the Internet for searching for health information, it supports a medical information portal and the HONcode(c) is one of the most popular quality \"seals\" (Luo and Najdawi, 2004). In the latest HON survey the four most important features identified for a health web site were: information availability, finding information easily, trustworthiness or credibility and information accuracy. There are many other issues relating to health information web sites. This research evaluates Australian health information web sites in particular the user's perception of the quality of the information retrieved, the trustworthiness of the web site, usability and usefulness and the relationship between these characteristics.2.1 Trust and a user's perception of quality\n3 Research design: Kunst et al. (2002) suggest that the Internet has \"the potential to facilitate but also to jeopardize health care provision\". The questions we sought to answer therefore were:* How do users perceive the quality of health information web sites?* What features and functionality are provided on health information web sites to help users search and retrieve relevant information?* How usable are health information web sites and what is the impact of ineffective sites?* Does perceived usefulness and ease of use impact on the level of trust a health consumer might have in a health information web site?Three generic non-commercial, Australian health web sites were used for this research. The sites were selected based on the following criteria:* Australian based. As the research was conducted in Australia it was appropriate to use only Australian based web sites. As noted by Childs (2004), health consumers face some difficulties when accessing information from web sites in other countries including different health systems, different cultural practices and the use of different terminology.* Generic health information provided, that is not specific to a disease, age group, etc. This was to ensure the relevance of the task to all users. It could also be argued that generic sites are likely to be accessed by more people than disease specific web sites. Our purpose was to investigate web sites health consumers are most likely to visit.* Non commercial. No commercial web sites were examined in this study because other research indicates that most people will not visit a health web site if it is too commercial (Williams et al., 2002; Huntington et al., 2004).* Government sponsored. The HON Survey (2005) identified that 79 per cent of health consumers preferred a government agency to be responsible for online health information provision.Only two government sponsored web sites met these criteria; HealthInsite (www.healthInsite.gov.au) and Better Health (www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au). A third web site, Health Network (www.healthnetwork.com.au) was included on the grounds that it was not a commercial health web site and met the other criteria.3.1 Web site analysis\n4 The health web sites: Each web site is described next with evaluators' comments. Evaluators were asked to describe the best and worst feature of each web site.4.1 HealthInsite\n5 Results: The results of the two phases of the research, the web site analysis and usability test conducted are described next.5.1 Analysis of the content, features and functionality\n6 Discussion: Usability and willingness to purchase from a web site is frequently discussed in the e-commerce literature (Venkatesh and Agarwal, 2006; Araujo and Araujo, 2003). It is not surprising that consumers are unlikely to purchase from a web site they do not trust and trust is strongly linked to usability. An experiment conducted by Roy et al. (2001) examined usability (consisting of the factors ease of navigation, consistency, ease of learning, perception and support) and perceived trustworthiness. Students were asked to complete a task and answer a questionnaire. Roy et al. (2001) found that all components of usability except consistency impacted on trust. Our research has established that there is a strong link between users trust of a health information web site and ease of use. In addition in our study most users reported they did not have a good experience, 35 per cent of users would not use these web sites again to search for health information, 17 per cent did not trust the information provided suggesting there are serious design problems. The rest of the discussion is organised around the three areas explored through this research.6.1 Users' perceptions of quality and trust\n7 Developing effective health information web sites: The research reported here was exploratory in nature and involved only three Australian health information web sites, however, we believe these results contribute to a better understanding of what is needed to develop effective health inforamtion web sites. Although there has been significant research in the area of information quality and Internet-based health information, very little research has focused on the delivery of health information from the perspective of trust and the perceptions of quality, features and functionality and web site design and usability. Figure 4 describes the three areas investigated, and the design elements that are important for each area. The arrows indicate the factors relating to retrieving relevant information and ease of use impact on users' perception of quality and trust.The message for those designing health information web sites therefore is, that attention needs to be paid to each of these areas if web sites are to be effective and useful for health consumers.\n8 Conclusion limitations and future research: Although this study was limited to investigating three Australian health web sites, the results suggest further research involving health web sites outside Australia is needed to establish, firstly, if other health web sites are different in these areas and secondly to test further the factors we have identified. Further research is also needed to explore other sources of searching for Internet based health information used by health consumers such as search engines.The authors acknowledge there are other factors likely to impact on the effectiveness of health information web sites including who develops and maintains them. The importance of web sites distributing health information cannot be underestimated it is therefore important that the designers and sponsors of these web sites understand what is important to health consumer to ensure continued use. Our research has demonstrated that users of the web sites studied are likely to have a less than satisfactory experience and many will not return. Users may turn to other health web sites or to non specific search engines such as Google where information reliability and quality is so variable to the point of being dangerous (Kunst et al., 2002). Given the limitations of this research include the use of students and the limited number of web sites investigated. Further research is needed to explore the value users place on the different features and functionality we have identified. We hope through this research to understand what is needed for building better health information web sites.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim is to explore users' reactions to health information web sites from the perspective of trust, retrieval of relevant information and ease-of-use, and to establish the link between perceived quality, trust, and usability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An analysis of three Australian health web sites was undertaken. A usability test was conducted on those three web sites resulting in 207 completed user evaluations. The evaluations included both quantitative and qualitative data.\nFindings: - The three investigated health information web sites do not meet the needs of health consumers. More details such as how information is selected to engender greater trust need to be provided. The retrieval of relevant information could be improved through the implementation of functionality such as spell checking and information differentiation. Finally, ensuring web sites are easy to use contributes to the level of trust users have in a web site.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This was a relatively small study investigating only three generic Australian health web sites, the results however suggest that a larger study looking at other health web sites is needed.\nPractical implications: - For government agencies developing health information web sites more attention needs to be paid to the design of these web sites if users are to be encouraged to use the web site and return. The research suggests that effective health information web sites must be perceived to be of reliable quality, be trustworthy, have some level of intelligence to assist in the retrieval of relevant information, and be easy to use.\nOriginality/value: - Although there is much research relating to the relationship between web site design and trust for e-commerce transactional web sites this work has not been undertaken for web sites designed for information retrieval, in particular little work has been done of health information web sites. This paper fills in some of the gaps.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Work-home interference and work values in Greater China
|
[
"Stress",
"Confucianism",
"Work family issues",
"Job attitudes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Due to the pressure of rapid changes caused by social and industrial modernization in recent decades, Chinese employees are currently experiencing high levels of work stress (Lu et al., 2011). However, they still place great importance on family responsibility and therefore face increasing demands in both the work and family domains (Luk and Shaffer, 2005; Yang et al., 2000). Interference between work and family is inevitable and negatively affects both individuals and organizations (Allen et al., 2000). There are inconsistencies in the term and measurements of work and family interference in the literature (Geurts and Demerouti, 2003; Tetrick and Buffardi, 2006). We focus on the home domain rather than the family domain, because the former label embraces various life roles beyond work roles. Work-home interference (WHI) refers to the experience of incompatibility between work and non-work roles (Geurts et al., 2003; Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014; Ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012), including WHI and home-to-work interference (HWI). In this study, we specifically focus on WHI because individuals tend to experience it more than HWI (Frone et al., 1992; Eby et al., 2005).\nResearch hypotheses: The mediating effects of WHI\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: Table I shows the means, standard deviations, correlations for the variables, and the a coefficients. A multi-group SEM was conducted to examine the measurement equivalence of the six constructs across three subsamples. We formed item parcels to create three indicators for AOC, and treated the eight dimensions of CWV as eight indicators. Because the number of items for work demand, WHI, job satisfaction, and job performance is not more than five each, we used each item as a separate indicator for these four constructs. Items parcels could reduce the sample size to parameter ratio, because this ratio impacts the standard errors and stability of the estimates (Little et al., 2002). We conducted an omnibus test in which the variances and covariances among the indicators of the six constructs were constrained to be identical across the three subsamples. This model provided an acceptable fit to the data (kh2=2283.99, df=1,011; CFI=0.93; NFI=0.92; RMSEA=0.06), which indicated that the measurement properties of our six constructs were equivalent across all three samples. Thus, the three samples were combined for data analysis. Further, the results of a confirmatory factor analysis for the whole sample showed that the proposed six-factor structure fit well (kh2=1159.66, df=309; CFI=0.96; NFI=0.94; RMSEA=0.05), which demonstrated the valid measures in our study.\nDiscussion: The purpose of our study was to examine the mediating effect of WHI on the relationships between work demand and employees' work outcomes, namely, job satisfaction, AOC, and job performance in the Chinese setting. We also examined an integrated moderated mediation model to address individual cultural values, specifically CWV, as a moderator of the proposed mediating relationships. The findings of our study, which were based on data from three regions of Chinese society, contribute to existing knowledge in two ways. First, we found support for the hypothesized mediating effect of WHI, except for the relationship between work demand and job performance. The effect of work demand on an individual's well-being via WHI has been thoroughly studied in Western countries (e.g. Boyar et al., 2008; Geurts et al., 2003), and the model was also supported by a recent study in Mainland China (Choi, 2008). The present study was extended to focus on work outcomes by drawing a more representative sample from Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). In particular, the results demonstrate that work demand interferes with Chinese employees' home lives, which in turn negatively influences their attitudes toward their jobs and organizations. These findings are consistent with the loss spiral of resources (Hobfoll, 1989) and also suggest that all Chinese employees in the three regions have to struggle with work and home lives under the pressures of increasing work demand.\nConclusion: By recruiting samples from Greater China (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), the current study has extended previous studies by demonstrating the important role of CWV, a specific cultural value construct, in the WHI process. This study helps to establish a culturally sensitive model of WHI. It is hoped that these contributions will facilitate more studies in the future to enhance the understanding of cultural influences on work and home research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effects of work-home interference (WHI) on the relationships between work demand, work attitudes, and job performance, with a focus on the moderating effect of Chinese work values (CWV).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A self-administered survey method was used. The sample comprised 1,032 employees from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The moderated mediation framework was used to test the proposed model.\nFindings: The results showed that WHI mediated the relationships among work demand, job satisfaction, and affective organizational commitment (AOC), but did not mediate the relationship between work demand and job performance. CWV moderated the mediated relationships and exacerbated the mediation effects of WHI on the relationships between work demand and job satisfaction and AOC.\nResearch limitations/implications: The use of a cross-sectional design prevented the drawing of causal inference. With the exception of job performance, the self-reported measures are all subject to the problem of common method bias.\nPractical implications: Organizations in Greater China could implement stress management programs to reduce the negative effects of work demands. HR practitioners and managers should understand what values their employees hold to provide the proper interventions for them.\nOriginality/value: By integrating both the mediator (WHI) and a moderator (CWV), this study investigated how CWV, an individual-level cultural value, affects the influences of WHI. The results highlight the importance of incorporating culturally specific value constructs when examining the underlying mechanisms of WHI.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Planning to rescue Kuwait's oil wells: an environmental issue
|
[
"Disasters",
"Oil industry",
"Sabotage",
"Terrorism",
"Environmental management",
"Kuwait"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Intentions of sabotage pre-invasion\n2. Discussion: In contrast with all predictions, the estimated maximum sabotage of 100-150 wells turned out to be five times more than what was expected. The lower estimates, by the concerned oil executives, the \"BIG FOUR\" firefighting companies and the US intelligence, of oil wells that would be torched by Iraqi troops are really unclear and very strange due to the following plausible reasons:*It was obvious that the Iraqi regime clearly had the motives and intentions to devastate Kuwait's oil infrastructure as mentioned earlier.*The US and the Allied Forces were insisting, from the beginning of the crisis, to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait and put an end to the occupation. Accordingly, the threat of the scorched-earth tactic developed by the Iraqi regime was a must to counteract such a decision.*The scale of the oil holding in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations was enormous and could not be ignored since there were more than 1,200 producing oil wells, which would be targets (see Table I).*As the US Intelligence estimated that Iraq had the resources to sabotage \"only\" 150 oil wells, this was an indication that the appropriate agencies did not properly collect, evaluate, analyze, or disseminate the available indications and warnings.Due to such underestimation Kuwait suffered severe losses to both its oil industry and to its ecological system. The scale of damage was waste, ranging from destruction resulted by oil fires and oil spills to economic deterioration of Kuwaiti oil industry. The retreating Iraqi army demolished oil wells and other oil installations with explosives. At the end of the war, a total of 606 oil wells were on fire, while other 147 that did not catch fire were either destroyed or were gushing oil. This led to large areas of desert flooded with crude oil, forming large oil lakes. Each of these lakes also contained partially burned crude oil, soot, associated toxics, and carcinogenic pollutants. The formation of those oil lakes was a unique event as such a massive and widespread terrestrial oil spill has never been seen before. Furthermore, the atmosphere had its own share of the damage. It was polluted to some extent from the fires and smoke generated by explosives and oil fires.\n3. Conclusion: The instructions included in the Iraqi documents showed undoubtedly that the sabotage operations; which involved engineering, logistics, management, training, implementation, and operational safety were not a random last-minute attempt to destroy the oil wells, but it was a cautiously supervised and systematically well planned endeavor to completely destroy Kuwait's oil infrastructure. Although there were clear evidences and proofs of Iraq's intention to target Kuwait's oil wells, the reasons for the lower estimates to a maximum of 100-150 oil wells are really unclear, strange and need further investigation. If Iraq's intentions to sabotage Kuwait's oil wells had been taken seriously by the concerned oil executives in exile, the \"BIG FOUR\" firefighting companies and the US intelligence, then billions of dollars could have been saved, high oil reserves percentage conserved, and enormous environmental impacts and degradation could have been mitigated.Kuwait's catastrophe brought to attention environmental worries that should receive immediate consideration since the high cost of environmental degradation only gets more expensive when left unattended. The price is not only paid in hard currency for firefighting, but for the damage of public's health and other environmental components.The scorched-earth tactic applied in Kuwait and the resultant environmental disaster led to a positive reaction by the international community and gave birth to a new environmental treaty at the regional level. At an international level, a special fund dedicated to finance involvement in cases of emergency was suggested by the Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev to ensure that environmental concerns would receive the immediate attention that they need. Such an Emergency Fund to be financed by nations, companies and foundations; was suggested to be created before future catastrophes occur so that financial assistance would be available immediately. At a regional level, Kuwait's environmental disaster has stimulated Arabian Gulf policymakers to pay closer attention to the potential economic and environmental consequences of conflict in their region. Kuwait and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states have sought to tighten existing environmental regulations so as to prevent any similar environmental disasters in the future. In November 1995, the GCC states met to discuss the views for unifying their environmental laws, outlining new uniform standards for environmental protection, and setting up environmental safeguards in the Gulf.Finally, the conflagration in Kuwait demonstrates the danger in conducting large-scale modern combat in an environmentally fragile area, and shows how exposed all oil-producing nations are to this type of environmental and economic disaster in the future.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to review the reasons for which Saddam's regime intended to destroy and eliminate Kuwait's entire oil infrastructure before and after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The underestimation of oil wells that would be torched by Iraqi forces is also discussed in this paper.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To approach the scope of this paper, the intentions and the practical evidence of such sabotage are pointed out. Efforts to rescue Kuwait's oil wells in addition to planning for the expected catastrophe are highlighted. The plausible reasons that made such underestimation unclear are elaborated.\nFindings: - The instructions included in the Iraqi documents showed undoubtedly that the sabotage operation was not a random last-minute attempt to destroy the oil wells, but it was a carefully supervised and well planned endeavor to completely destroy Kuwait's oil infrastructure. Owing to those efforts and planning, more than 100 oil wells were rescued throughout Kuwait. Due to such underestimation Kuwait suffered severe losses both to its oil industry and to its ecological system.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Since the reasons for the lower estimates of oil wells, torched by Iraqi troops, to a maximum of 100-150 wells were unclear, this paper attributes Kuwait's economic losses and environmental degradation to such underestimation and suggests more investigations on this issue.\nPractical implications: - Kuwait's catastrophe brought the attention to environmental concerns that should receive immediate consideration, while the scorched-earth tactic applied in Kuwait and the resulting environmental disaster led to a positive reaction by the international community and spawned a new environmental treaty at the regional level.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first paper that addresses the underestimation of Kuwait's oil disaster. The conflagration in Kuwait demonstrated the danger in conducting large-scale modern combat in an environmentally fragile area, and shows how exposed all oil-producing nations are to this type of environmental and economic disaster in the future.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Strategic planning and foresight: the case of Smart Specialisation Strategy in Tuscany
|
[
"Decision making",
"Regional innovation systems",
"Foresight",
"Strategic planning",
"Roadmap",
"Smart specialization",
"Innovation policies"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, the concept of Smart Specialisation assumed centrality for innovation and economic development policies at European level.\n2. Regional innovation policies and foresight: Recent decades have been characterised by a profound change in the way production of goods and services is organised, with a significant shift to a knowledge-based economy, an acceleration of innovation and technological change processes, as well as the importance of learning capabilities for the purposes of competitive positioning of enterprises (Lundvall and Johnson, 1994; Archibugi and Lundvall, 2001).\n3. Decision-making and foresight for strategic planning: Decision-making is a process of cognitive selection of beliefs and meanings among several alternative possibilities (Simon, 1976), the study of identifying and choosing solutions of problems/opportunities among alternatives. The usual representation of a decision process is generally made of three macro-categories intelligence, design and choice (IDC):\n4. Decision-making and Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation: the case of Tuscany: The scheme suggested has been adopted by Tuscany Region during the implementation of EDP[3] for the definition of Smart Specialisation Strategy.\n5. Discussion section: With regards to regional innovation strategic planning, the paper has argued that a methodological rationale based on a continuous and narrowing succession of opportunities-exploration and alternatives-selection processes is able to engage social and political negotiations among alternatives and facilitate priorities selection for policy makers.\n6. Conclusions: In Section 5, main implications have been discussed in a practitioner perspective. The rationale suggested has allowed Tuscany Region to implement EDP, combining both wide participation and shared vision construction processes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Within the theoretical framework of Regional Innovation Systems, the purpose of the paper is to introduce an innovative methodological scheme for strategic planning decisions in public administrations, based on foresight, roadmapping and large participation processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Starting from the main literature contribution on Regional Innovation Systems, foresight and decision-making processes, an innovative methodology has been elaborated for strategic planning, based on innovation and large participation processes. A practical application is also described with regards to strategic planning in Tuscany (IT) for Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3).\nFindings: On a practitioner perspective, the methodology elaborated addresses strategic planning uncertainties, both when problem setting and in solution finding; a detailed application is provided, easily to be adapted to other regions, and main findings are related to regional innovation governance enforcement.\nResearch limitations/implications: Being the Tuscany S3 in the implementation phase, it is not possible to verify the adequacy of alternatives selected. Only mid-term evaluations will allow a deeper insight on the effectiveness of the methodology adopted.\nPractical implications: The methodology represents a useful tool for public administrations in charge of strategic planning and in particular for S3, as an ex ante requirement for European Structural and Investment Funds. The description of the case of Tuscany provides practical hints for the methodology application.\nSocial implications: The methodology presents interesting social implications related to the large involvement of stakeholders and quadruple helix within regional strategic planning.\nOriginality/value: Within the framework of Regional Innovation Systems, strategic planning decisions are addressed with a scheme based on foresight and large participation processes. European Commission requirements are fully taken into consideration by the methodology. The methodology is easy to be adopted and customised to specific needs of other regions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Agent-based modeling and simulation of the decision behaviors of e-retailers
|
[
"TOPSIS",
"E-commerce",
"Cross-selling",
"Agent-based modelling",
"Collective dynamics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Inquiring about and sharing product or service information online through reviews and social media have become popular online shopping practices. Participants can easily exchange relevant information concerning products and services using social media tools (Kim and Park, 2013). Stelzner (2013) found that 86 percent of e-retailers in the USA regarded social media as vital for their businesses. China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) (2014) reported that 32.5 percent of consumers who purchased products online were driven by social factors.\n2. Literature review: This work draws from two research streams. First, we extend the existing literature on online price dispersion and adjustment by building a pricing decision tree model using the pricing strategies of e-retailers to explain consumer-e-retailer interactions. Second, we construct an agent-based model to simulate the evolution of profit from products using several pricing strategies and recommendation combinations.\n3. Methods: This study synthesized TOPSIS (Hwang et al., 1993) and ABM (Gilbert, 2008) driven by actual data collected from an e-commerce site to explore the strategies adopted by e-retailers in competitive online markets.\n4. Computational-experimental system and simulation study: We programmed the computational system in NetLogo and simulated the evolutionary process of consumer decisions and e-retailer profits, and then analyzed the simulation data.\n5. Discussions and implications: Social media proliferate digital marketplaces in the new e-commerce era. Social e-commerce involves various selling modes with newly emerging price-dispersion features. Many researchers have studied pricing and selling strategies in this type of market. However, most models have been based on specific product features and have failed to consider a few factors, such as consumer WOM and brand image, which affect pricing and selling strategies. We employ an agent-based model driven by actual data to simulate the evolution of interactions between consumers and e-retailers. We also explore the effect of network structures, selling strategies and price adjustments on e-retailer profits to bridge the gap between complex collective dynamics in online markets and existing price-dispersion theory. This approach yields several interesting findings and significant implications.\n6. Conclusions and recommendations for future research: This paper contributes to the literature on selling and pricing strategies by providing new insights into the evolutionary dynamics of online markets. The proposed agent-based network model advances the research of the evolutionary dynamics of competing online markets. Our results showed that network structures significantly affect the profits of various e-retailer brands and micro-effects vary under different brands. Moreover, the simulation experiments provide insights into selling and pricing strategies by revealing which selling model is best for each brand, including price dispersions under various selling strategies. The cross-selling mode is better than the single-selling mode but is not optimal when other e-retailers adopt the cross-selling strategy. We also discovered that the varying frequencies of price adjustments primarily depend on the comprehensive strength of e-retailers. Thus, managers can better understand the selection of a selling strategy under simulation systems and develop an appropriate price strategy to improve competitiveness.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Social media facilitates consumer exchanges on product opinions and provides comprehensive knowledge of online products. The interaction between consumers and e-retailers evolves into a collective set of dynamics within a complex system. Agent-based modeling is well suited to stimulate such complex systems. The purpose of this paper is to integrate agent-based model and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to simulate decision behaviors of e-retailers in competitive online markets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An agent-based network model using the TOPSIS driven by actual price data is developed. The authors ran an experimental model to simulate interactions between online consumers and e-retailers and to record simulation data. A nonparametric test is used to conduct data analysis and evaluate the sensibility of parameters.\nFindings: Simulation results showed that different profits could be obtained for various brands under different social network structures. E-retailers could achieve more profits through cross-selling than single-selling; however, the highest profits can be achieved when some adopt cross-selling, whereas others use single-selling. From a game perspective, the equilibrium for price-adjustment frequency can be determined from the simulation data. Thus, price adjustment differences significantly affect e-retailer profit.\nOriginality/value: This study provides new insights into the evolutionary dynamics of online markets. This work also indicates how to build an integrated simulation model with an agent-based model and TOPSIS and how to use an integrated simulation model and interpret its results.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Relationships between intra-organizational resources, supply chain integration and business performance : An extended resource-based view
|
[
"China",
"Information technology",
"Business performance",
"Supply chain integration",
"Top management support"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Supply chain integration (SCI) refers to \"the degree to which an organization strategically collaborates with its supply chain partners and manages intra- and inter-organization processes to achieve effective and efficient flows of products, services, information, money and decisions, with the objective of providing maximum value to its customers\" (Zhao et al., 2008). To improve performance and survive in a competitive environment, companies strive to collaborate and build close relationships with upstream and downstream partners, which are beneficial for every company along the entire supply chain. Previous studies have mainly examined the relationship between SCI and performance in terms of competitive capabilities and operational and business performance (O'Leary-Kelly and Flores, 2002; Rosenzweig et al., 2003; Vickery et al., 2003; Droge et al., 2004; Swink et al., 2007; Flynn et al., 2010). The antecedents of SCI have recently been attracting the attention of academics (Zhao et al., 2008, 2011).\n2. Theoretical background and research hypotheses: 2.1 Theoretical background and conceptual model\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Questionnaire design and measures\n4. Analysis results: 4.1 Unidimensionality tests\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Findings and contributions\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, we investigate the effects of intra-organizational resources (TMS and IT) on SCI (SI and CI) and business performance based on the ERBV. Our findings indicate that TMS and IT are two vital enablers of SCI, corroborating and extending the ERBV and socio-technical systems theory. Although both TMS and IT are important for implementing SCI, TMS is more beneficial to SI and IT is more beneficial to CI. In addition, TMS is more powerful in enhancing SCI than IT. Furthermore, our findings show that SI has a significant effect on business performance, and that CI plays only a marginally significant role.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of intra-organizational resources, including top management support (TMS) and information technology (IT), on inter-organizational capabilities including supply chain integration (SCI, with a focus on supplier integration (SI) and customer integration (CI)) and on business performance via a resource-based view (RBV), socio-technical systems theory and an extended resource-based view (ERBV).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Partial least squares is used to analyze a sample of 176 manufacturers in China.\nFindings: TMS and IT are two vital enablers of SCI and have different roles in improving SCI. In addition, SI has a significant effect on business performance, and CI has a marginally significant effect.\nOriginality/value: Based on the RBV/ERBV, this study explores the enablers of SCI and their effects on business performance, ultimately contributing to both SCI theories and practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Mainstreaming corporate environmental strategy in management research
|
[
"Corporate sustainability",
"Sustainable development",
"Corporate environmental strategy",
"Green management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since the Brundltland Report (1987, WCED) gave a wakeup call to the international community, business communities (e.g. World Business Council for Sustainable Development) have devoted their resources and efforts to improve ecological performance over the last four decades. Further, issues such as global warming and environmental sustainability are becoming key concerns for many firms globally. At present management scholars face a paradox on business and the environment: on the one hand, environmental or green management is no longer a fringe topic and companies routinely invest in eco-efficiency and corporate sustainability management. On the other hand, ecological data and statistics indicate that our planet has become less sustainable. Why does a disconnection between business and the environment exist? Part of the problem may be \"we simply do not know to what extent corporate greening actually contributes to ecological sustainability or whether it does at all\" (Kallio and Nordberg, 2006, p. 447).\n2. Methodology: The present study implemented a systematic literature review looking for relevant studies in the scientific literature (see Figure 1). The scientific literature is represented by academic studies published in peer-reviewed journals. On the contrary to heuristic approaches, a systematic literature review uses explicit methodology to perform a search and critical evaluation to improve the quality of the review process and outcome (Ginsberg and Venkatraman, 1985; Tranfield et al., 2003).\n3. Findings: 3.1. CES in top management journals\n4. Discussion: Environmental concerns have become a serious strategic issue for corporations (Aragon-Correa and Rubio-Lopez, 2007; Banerjee, 2001a; Clarkson et al., 2013; Villiers et al., 2011). Many scholars have attempted to re-establish the global role of the business corporation (Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Both researchers and practitioners have witnessed the importance of CES in thousands of academic papers (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010). However, despite the significance of CES, our literature review results indicate that there have been insufficient systematic reviews on CES in top management journals. In this section we will identify four major topics to understand the status of academic research on CES.\n5. Conclusion and future directions: Having reviewed and addressed the evolution of CES in the context of business and management trends, we can conclude that, in general, the CES field seems to have developed in response to global business and management trends. In our study, we used seven aspects (geographic focus, research method, industry focus, theoretical framework, management variable, performance variable and major findings) to categorize and identify the current status of CES in the business and management field.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current status of corporate environmental strategy (CES) in mainstream business and management literature, and to provide new insights on current studies and future directions for this field of study.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study performs a systematic literature review of 19,839 papers in selected mainstream management journals and takes 48 CES-focused papers into account for in-depth analysis in the period between 1990 and 2013.\nFindings: This study shows that the majority of studies have been conducted using data from the USA, focused on a single country, utilized a resource-based view (RBV), and analysed mixed industries. The most popular issue in CES studies is the examination of causality between environmental strategy and a firm's performance. Second, the stakeholder theory and institutional theory are most frequently used to explain a firm's motivation to develop CES. A RBV theory is commonly used to explain a firm's sources in initiating CES. Finally, the results show a lack of comparative studies in mainstream management research.\nResearch limitations/implications: Due to the limited focus of this study, the findings of this paper can be generalized only to the specific group of databases selected for this research for a given period of time.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfils the need for a comprehensive review of CES literature. It provides a literature review and bibliography for the period between 1990 and 2013 for use by both academics and practitioners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Combining means-end chain analysis and goal-priming to analyze Tanzanian farmers' motivations to invest in quality seed of new potato varieties
|
[
"Gender",
"Smallholder farmers",
"Goal priming",
"Means-end chain analysis",
"New variety",
"Quality seed"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Potato (Solanacea tuberosum) is the fourth most important crop globally and a major food staple in the tropical and sub-tropical highland regions of Africa, where it plays a major role of relieving pressure on cereals caused by the world food price inflation (Muthoni et al., 2010). In the tropical highlands of Eastern Africa, potato is mainly grown by smallholder farmers for both home consumption and cash income (de Graaff et al., 2011). It is estimated that potato constitutes more than 50 percent of the income sources for households in the highlands of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania (Blanken et al., 1994; Muthoni and Nyamongo, 2009), is a multibillion Naira enterprise in Nigeria (Zang, 2014), and is growing in importance in the tropical highlands of Ethiopia (Abebe et al., 2013), Rwanda and Burundi. Potato is therefore a major food security crop in tropical highlands of Africa.\n2. MEC theory and the concept of goal priming: 2.1 MEC theory\n3. Empirical methods: 3.1 The goal priming auction experiment\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Demographic characteristics of the respondents\n5. Summary, conclusions and implications: This study used MEC analysis with goal priming to examine motivations by potato farmers to invest in quality seed of new higher yielding varieties. It found that \"high yield\" was the dominant driver of the decision to invest in such seed. As predicted by the neoclassical economic theory, the study also found that the decision to invest in quality seed of a new variety is largely driven by the desire to earn higher/more income. However, over and above the increased returns, the study found that monetary gain was not an end, but only a means to realizing personal life goals that motivate potato production in the first place. These personal values include happiness, a sense of peace, good reputation, good health/life, security and freedom from want. The increased income simply accords the farmer the capability to meet personal and family needs including educating children, investing in better shelter, purchasing clothes and food. The study also finds some differences in the structure of mental models associated with the decision to invest in quality seed of a new potato variety between male and female farmers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Potato is a major food staple in Africa, but its production is constrained by poor quality of seed. A recent private-public partnership in Tanzania resulted in introduction of new higher yielding varieties. The purpose of this paper is to examine smallholder farmers' motivations to invest in the purchase of quality seed of new potato varieties, and if the motivational structure differs by gender.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper used means-end chain (MEC) theory combined with goal priming, and laddering interviews on randomly sampled participants (n=45) of an experimental auction conducted among smallholder farmers in Tanzania. The auction was designed to goal-prime respondents on benefits of quality seed. The mental constructs obtained were grouped into attributes, consequences and values, and MECAnalyst software used to generate hierarchical value maps.\nFindings: Farmers invest in quality seed of a new variety to increase yields, hence income, and also to pursue personal life goals (values) or meet psychosocial needs. The structure of mental constructs associated with the decision to invest in quality seed of a new variety differ by gender.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study focused on only two new varieties, hence not robust to all new potato varieties. Results need to be tested under different socioeconomic contexts. Furthermore, the MEC approach does not allow for control of other variables that likely influence farmer adoption decision-making process. Future studies should be designed to tackle these limitations.\nPractical implications: Investment in quality seed of new variety is driven by monetary goals and psychosocial factors, and some of these factors differ between male and female farmers.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to explore drivers of farmers' decision to use quality seed of a new variety using MEC analysis, and role psychosocial factors play.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The individual and the collective: Factors affecting knowledge sharing in Saudi Arabian companies
|
[
"National cultures",
"Learning organizations",
"Saudi Arabia",
"Knowledge management",
"Information sharing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As the discipline of knowledge management (KM) has developed, there have been numerous studies and analyses of information seeking and information sharing in KM contexts (Bawden and Robinson, 2012; Jashapara, 2004; Tsoukas, 2005; Desouza and Paquette, 2011; Martin, 2008; Srikantaiah and Koenig, 2008). Such studies have, for the most part been carried out in the developed world - Europe, North America and parts of the Far East and Australasia - as is reflected in the great majority of reports of such studies. An exception is the set of examples in the volume edited by Malhan and Shivarama Rao (2008), which cover a much wider geographical range.\nCultural contexts of KM: \"The failure of many information or knowledge management systems\", writes Jashapara (2004, p. 186) is often as a result of cultural factors, rather than technological oversights. The significance for KM of national cultures, particularly when a standard KM programme is put in place across varying national cultures in a multinational organisation, is emphasized by Ford and Chan (2003) and by Ardichvili et al. (2006). Sabri (2005), Nazari et al. (2009), Al-Maliki (2013) and Seba et al. (2012b) reflect on its particular significance in the Arab world, while Zakaria et al. (2003), Straub et al. (2001), Baker et al. (2010) and Hill et al. (1998) consider the influence of culture on IT implementation generally, in the Middle Eastern context. These papers are not reviewed in detail here, but they inform the discussion below.\nThe Saudi Arabian context: Saudi Arabia, part of the Middle Eastern Arab world is a developing country, wealthy through natural resources, and with a strong traditional culture being influenced through external influences and modernisation. The Arab world is often treated as one, but in fact there are considerable differences between the Arab countries in their adoption of, and approaches to, information and communication technologies (ICTs); in general, however, indicators of a knowledge-based society, such as literacy rates and access to Internet, are lower than in the developed world (Chatfield and Alhujran, 2009; Mohamed et al., 2008).\nSurvey and literature analysis methods: A web-based questionnaire, largely quantitative in nature using Likert scales, was used, in order to obtain basic information from a wide spectrum of participants. Inevitably this meant that qualitative in-depth results could not be obtained, and this survey is therefore indicative, intended to draw out issues for future more detailed research.\nResults: The results, of the survey and the literature analysis, are reported under three main headings: the effect of demographics; the relative significance of human and digital sources; and the main influences in, and motivations for, knowledge sharing.\nConclusions: Despite the limited nature of the survey, taken together with the literature analysis it casts light on a number of issues for KM, and for information behaviour generally. We may summarise these indicative findings as follows:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report a study which investigates some factors in the current state of knowledge management (KM) in Saudi Arabia, and to consider the relevance of the findings for KM and information sharing generally.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey of Saudi Arabia private companies with a KM policy was carried out, and the issues raised were investigated further by literature analysis.\nFindings: Issues examined include the effect of demographics, the balance between human and digital resources, the relation between KM and organisational learning, the effect of the cultural context, the nature of reward for knowledge sharing, including enhancement of self-worth, and the relation between the personal and individual, and the collective and social.\nResearch limitations/implications: The survey has a self-selected convenience sample, which is rather skewed demographically. The literature analysis is selective rather than comprehensive.\nOriginality/value: Presents an analysis of some general issues of KM and information sharing through the lens of one cultural context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The maturation process of incorporating sustainability in universities
|
[
"Sustainable development",
"Universities",
"Education",
"Higher education",
"Sustainability in university campuses"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Sustainability and university campuses: Sustainability is defined as an equilibrium among ecological, social and economic dimensions in human life. Over the past years, sustainability initiatives have flourished in many organizations worldwide, including in higher education institutions (HEIs) (Lozano et al., 2013; Lozano et al., 2014).\nThe social issue maturation framework: In this section, a brief theoretical background of evolutionary processes toward sustainability in universities is presented.\nExperiences in Belgium: UGent is one of the largest Belgian universities (41,000 students, 9,000 staff members and 117 research units spread over 17 faculties). Since 2012, a group of frontrunners consisting of professors and students has initiated a bottom-up process to foster sustainability at the university. This process has been strongly supported by the university's Environmental Coordination Unit and by its Centre for Sustainable Development. Ultimately, the process has been actively supported by the main governing bodies too. This initiative, known as '\"Transition UGent\" (or the UGent Transition Initiative) (Sustainability Exchange, 2015) is now a think tank as well as an open network, and it has produced two \"Memorandums\" (in March 2013 and October 2014). At the moment, Transition UGent engages over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the sustainability policy of UGent (Huge et al., 2016).\nExperiences in Chile: Founded in 1842, the University of Chile is the main and oldest institution of higher education owned by the State in Chile, with a national and public character. It is a research-oriented institution, and it is organized in 14 faculties. The FCFM, in which our work is focused, hosts the School of Engineering. It has 425 professors, 1,100 graduate students and 4,860 undergraduate students.\nCritical aspects: Requirements and implementations: Now moving beyond the history and accomplishments of the Belgium and Chile experiences previously described, the main lesson learned are here presented.\nConclusions: The experiences of Belgium and Chile presented reflect some of the diversity in pace of adoption and the wide range of interpretations and practices in sustainability incorporation in HEIs, where the social issue maturation framework was applied to identify and describe patterns of change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In the past few decades, sustainability in higher education has become ever more prevalent, although the diversity in pace of adoption and the wide range of interpretations and practices is huge. The purpose of this study is to present recent research on organizational change processes in universities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodological approach applied corresponds to the social issue maturation framework, to identify, describe and assess patterns of change across higher education institutions. The maturation of sustainability in universities can be divided into four stages: emergence, popularization, formalization and maturity.\nFindings: The findings indicate that sustainability processes often begin as ad hoc processes which grow and mature over time as a range of different actors join in. However, sustainability in universities is increasingly connected with sustainability in the private sector and with other public actors. Moreover, there is a growing acknowledgement of the interactions between society, industry and academia.\nOriginality/value: The value of the paper is to provide a critical assessment of the potential of living lab projects initiated in Belgium (Brussels) and Chile (Santiago de Chile) to anchor sustainability firmly both in the functioning of the university and in the interactions with the neighborhood. The authors reflect on the requirements and the implementation of these initiatives as a strong indication of mature sustainability integration in, and by way of, universities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
E-voting: from apathy to adoption
|
[
"Internet",
"Government",
"Innovation",
"Trust",
"Electoral systems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 2002, USA Votenet released a report - \"A Blueprint for Voter Outreach\" - outlining the best and worst voter outreach practices. The report highlighted the internet as a valuable medium for voter outreach, especially among the younger population. Rock the Vote began online voter registration in 1996 and was able to register 160,000 voters through the internet in 2000 (USA Votenet, 2002). The report also notes that the internet is most effective in reaching young voters who use e-mail and web sites regularly to communicate and retrieve information.The report went on to cite that there is a continuing need for voter outreach programs that target young voters who remain less likely to vote than middle-aged and senior citizens. According to the US census bureau, only 16 percent of all eligible 18-24 year olds voted in the last presidential election. This percentage is a half of the percentage of voters over the age of 65 who participated in the election (USA Votenet, 2002). Voter apathy runs particularly rampant among college students. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2000 general election, of the nearly 24 million college students, only about 8.6 million registered and cast a ballot, which is the lowest rate of turnout of the populace's age groups (The State News, 2004).Advocates of online voting posit that the internet may make the voting process less intimidating to a demographic that is increasingly computer savvy and decreasingly inclined to vote (Hall and Alvarez, 2004; Done, 2002; Eggers, 2005; Thomas and Streib, 2003). Jaeger (2003) posits that \"by creating a noticeable presence government agencies can engender interest in the political process among young citizens who regularly use the internet\". The internet gives the government the opportunity to improve service quality by making the current paper or counter based services more convenient and accessible to citizens (Burn and Robins, 2003). E-voting would make the election process more convenient and accessible to computer savvy young voters. Opponents of e-voting initiatives argue that apathetic voters are to blame for low voter turnout. Simply making the process more convenient will not alleviate the voter turnout problem among young voters. Opponents also site security concerns as a major barrier to e-voting adoption (Hall and Alvarez, 2004).Various studies have explored the relationship between e-services and the democratic process (Collins and Butler, 2002; GAO, 2004; Macintosh and Whyte, 2000; McMillen, 2004; Toregas, 2001; West, 2004). The question that becomes evident is whether bringing the voting process online will increase this demographic's intention to vote. Already this target demographic relies heavily on the internet for information on elections and candidates. Will online voting encourage apathetic young citizens to actually vote? There are numerous benefits of online voting for college students. One obvious advantage, particularly for out-of-town college students, is that e-voting eliminates the need to request and return an absentee ballot. Also, it is convenient and consistent with a college student's lifestyle, which is replete with internet enabled interaction through e-mail messages, discussion boards, online classes, chat sessions, etc.Despite its benefits, a potential barrier to e-voting adoption is citizens' lack of trust in the security and reliability of the technology used to implement this innovation. Before citizens will entrust such a significant portion of their civic voice to a computer-based system, they must have confidence in its ability to perform accurately and reliably. So, the question remains: despite security concerns, will young citizens adopt online voting if and when it is made available?This study uses Carter and Belanger's (2005) e-government adoption model to explore citizens' intention to use an online voting system. The model integrates constructs from Davis' (1989) technology acceptance model (TAM), Rogers' (1995) diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, and web trust (McKnight et al., 2002) research.\nBackground information: E-voting\nE-government adoption model: Carter and Belanger's (2005) model of e-government adoption integrates constructs from three adoption models - TAM, DOI, and web trust - to create a comprehensive yet parsimonious view of e-government adoption. This model identifies the major factors that influence citizen adoption of online government services. Its design is comprehensive enough to explore various levels (local, state, federal), agencies (Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Taxation, etc.) and applications (e-license renewal, e-voting, etc.) of e-government services. The TAM, DOI, and web trust model each make valuable contributions to the e-government adoption model.Technology acceptance model (TAM)\nE-voting adoption: Carter and Belanger's (2005) e-government adoption model is encompassing enough to be applied to various applications of e-government, including e-voting. The model captures the fundamental factors of adoption that are relevant to diverse e-services provided by the public sector. In the following section we explore each construct's relevance to e-voting adoption.Perceived usefulness\nMethodology: This study surveyed young citizens to elicit their perceptions of electronic-voting. By administering a survey we were able to elicit responses from a relatively large group of young citizens. All constructs were operationalized using validated scales (Davis, 1989; Gefen and Straub, 2000; McKnight et al., 2002; Pavlou, 2003; Van Slyke et al., 2004). The following sections provide details on the sample and the instrument.Sample\nResults: We test our hypotheses using multiple regression analysis. Prior to hypotheses testing, a regression analysis was performed to assess the significance of the demographic characteristics. The demographic characteristics were used as independent variables and USE as the dependent variable. Prior use of an e-commerce service and prior use of an e-government service were the only significant demographics.Assumptions of multivariate normal distribution, independence of errors, and equality of variance were then tested. There were no violations of these assumptions.The model explains an acceptable percent of the variance in citizen intention to use an e-voting system; adjusted R2 is 0.765. Since the overall model is significant (F=40.66, p=0.000), we tested the significance of each variable. PU, compatibility and trust are found to be significant (Table V).\nDiscussion: The intent of this research was to test internet voting adoption among college-aged citizens. Several adoption factors - PU, compatibility and trust - were found to be significant in predicting citizen intention to use e-government services. These factors are presented below in Figure 2.\nSignificant results: Perceived usefulness\nNon-significant results: Perceived ease of use\nLimitations and suggestions for future research: Our sample consists of undergraduate students at a southeastern research university between the ages of 18-24. Although this is the target age group, all of our subjects were college students. Not all citizens between the ages of 18-24 are college students/graduates. The demographics and computer experience of citizens of this age group who never attended college may be very different from our sample. Future research is needed to evaluate the appropriateness of the selected model to alternative samples. The chosen model should be applied to different contexts in addition to student subjects in order to paint a clearer picture of the general public's intention to use an e-voting system. Specific suggestions would be to target subjects who do not use the internet as frequently as the subjects in this sample, but may find e-voting to be an attractive option.Additionally, the applicability of TAM and DOI in the context of e-voting needs to be explored in future research. To this point TAM and DOI have predominantly been used to explain IT adoption dealing with technologies that have already been in place and used by subjects that participated in the study. Respondents in this study evaluated their usage intentions based on their perceptions of an ideological e-voting system and as a result factors that were found to be insignificant may in fact be found to be significant if subjects were surveyed after actual usage. Additional research is warranted along these lines. The testing of our model in a pre-implemented and post-implemented system would be of great interest. Collectively these limitations need to be addressed in future research studies.Finally, other factors affecting intention to use e-voting may exist. Further testing and expansion of our model may capture factors not contemplated herein.\nImplications for research: This study validates Carter and Belanger's (2005) adoption model in another context of e-government, online voting. It also extends application of the model beyond adoption of state e-government services. We use the model to test adoption of e-voting, which can occur at all levels of government - federal, state and local. The model explains 76 percent of the variance in intention to use an e-voting system. It will hopefully spark more research into the factors that influence adoption of other technical innovations.\nImplications for practice: This model offers insight into the factors that influence apathetic citizens' intentions to participate in online voting. PU, compatibility, and trust were all significant indicators of citizens' intention to use e-voting services. E-voting, which is compatible with the way students like to interact, may be used to increase voter participation among this group of technically savvy, internet adopters. Government should assume a proactive role in communicating and publicizing the benefits of e-voting to college students. The convenience and compatibility of e-voting may be influential enough to motivate this normally apathetic demographic to participate in the election process.In addition to perceptions of usefulness and compatibility, citizens' trust of government and technology influences e-voting adoption. To enhance citizens' perception of government competence, where applicable, agencies should emphasize the accuracy with which they have implemented e-voting services. Government agencies should also collaborate with well-respected businesses in the private sector, such as Accenture, to develop e-voting systems. Since citizens are more likely to trust businesses in the private sector than agencies in the public sector, an alliance between business and government may improve citizens' trust of e-voting systems (Hoeing, 2001; Toregas, 2001).\nConclusion: Improvements in technology have made government information and services more accessible and convenient to constituents. E-government applications, such as e-voting, will undoubtedly have a major impact on government-to-citizen interaction. Benefits such as convenience and accessibility are very attractive to young voters, the generation most receptive to online voting systems (Hall and Alvarez, 2004). In this study, we utilize constructs from an established e-government adoption model to explore e-voting diffusion among young citizens. The study identifies factors that influence this demographics' intention to use an online voting system. An understanding of these factors can be used to increase voter participation.Young voters' decision-making process and its relationship to the choice of voting online are not well understood. This study offers insight into the factors that encourage migration from apathy to adoption. Perceptions of the usefulness, compatibility, and trustworthiness of a system influence citizens' intention to adopt it. The findings of this study lay the foundation for future research on e-voting adoption. Future studies should:1. Evaluate the appropriateness of the selected model to alternative samples; it should be applied to different contexts in addition to student subjects in order to more accurately portray the general public's intention to use an e-voting system.2. Identify other potential factors affecting intention to use e-voting which may exist.3. Evaluate an actual e-voting system that has been completely designed and built.Evaluation of the model in a pre-implemented and post-implemented system would be of particular interest.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - To identify the factors that influence adoption of e-voting services by citizens between the ages of 18-24.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study uses Carter and Belanger's (2005) model of e-government adoption to assess young voters' intention to use an online voting system. The study integrates constructs from technology acceptance, diffusion of innovation, and web trust models. A survey is administered to 208 young voters. The data is analyzed using multiple regression analysis.\nFindings: - Results indicate that user perceptions of compatibility, usefulness, and trust significantly impact their intention to use an electronic-voting system. The model explains 76 percent of the variance in young voters' intention to use an e-voting system.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study only explores the perceptions of one age group. Future studies could use the model to access adoption perceptions of a more diverse pool of citizens.\nPractical implications: - Government agencies should emphasize the benefits of this electronic service to young voters. If marketed properly, the convenience and compatibility of e-voting may be influential enough to motivate this normally apathetic demographic to participate in the election process.\nOriginality/value: - This study explores adoption of internet voting by young citizens. An understanding of the factors that influence this demographics' intention to use e-voting systems can be used to increase voter participation. The findings of this study also lay the foundation for future studies on e-voting adoption.\n",
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Ethnicity and consumer choice: A study of consumer levels of involvement in Indian ethnic apparel and contemporary American clothing
|
[
"Retailing",
"Demographics",
"Clothing",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: America is becoming increasingly diverse as a result of growing immigration and increasing birth rates among various ethnic and racial groups (Kara and Kara, 1996; Khairullah, 1985). Immigrants coming to the USA experience a sociocultural system different from their own (Khairullah and Khairullah, 1999). They may adapt to that system over time. Acculturation is a learning process through which at least some of the cultural patterns of the host country are adopted (Celano and Tyler, 1991).\nAcculturation: This is an important area to study because immigrants in the past adopted the prevailing culture in an attempt to assimilate with the larger population. However, recent trends show that immigrants are increasingly trying to maintain their cultural identities (Miller, 1993). Wearing or owning a traditional ethnic dress can be a manifestation of ethnic identity (Forney and Rabolt, 1985-1986). Ethnicity is symbolically represented by variations in language, customs, religions, cultural traditions and rituals of individuals and families (Gordon, 1964; Kang and Kim, 1998). Apparel marketers should benefit by becoming aware of the apparel needs of this select group of consumers and their impact on the population as a whole.Asian immigrants coming from India is a recent phenomenon spanning almost three decades. This increase in the number of Asian consumers in the US merits examination of their consumer behavior patterns. Changes in the immigration policy in 1965 spurred an influx of highly qualified Asian Indians into the US. This bias in the immigration policy led to a congregation of a middle class, young, educated group (Das Gupta, 1998; Khairullah and Khairullah, 1999). For the past 30 years that Asian Indians have been in the US, they have tried fiercely to maintain their ethnic self-identity against assimilatory forces. They have also attempted to successfully transfer culturally significant behaviors such as wearing Indian apparel and celebrating Indian functions and festivals to a generation of young adults reared in the US (Das Gupta, 1998).The 1999 census estimate shows that of the total US population, 270,835,000 were foreign nationals and of these 1,899,599 were Indians (US Census Bureau, 2000b). It is estimated that 381,000 Indian nationals entered the United States in 1999. Between 1980 and 1994 the Asian-Indian population grew by 125.6 percent (Florida International University, 1994) and by another 89.9 percent between 1994 and 1999 (US Census Bureau, 2000a). Their largest concentrations are found in coastal/urban areas and areas that typically are located in proximity to colleges and universities (US Census Bureau, 2000a). Asian Indians are largely professionals and are more highly paid than those born in the US (Dasgupta, 1989). Leading Indian designers are redefining Indian fashion. Rohit Bal, a leading Indian designer, presented his latest collection at a New York benefit and stunned the audience with his exquisite embroidery, tie-dye, and beadwork fashions with a decidedly Indian flair. Western culture is developing a grand love affair with the distinctive fashion style that is India (Thayil, 2000; University of Hartford, 2002).A current pattern is that the US can no longer be seen as a melting pot where different ethnic groups, over time, blend in and become a homogenized group. This phenomenon is already seen in the food market. Supermarkets have recognized the importance of targeting ethnic segments, not only to increase sales, but also to differentiate themselves from their competition. Food chain executives believe that ethnic mixes will continue to expand and diversify population. According to Swetal Patel, Vice-President of Raja foods, a national distributor of Indian foods, ethnic consumers are touched emotionally, and they appreciated businesses that took the time to research their consumption patterns (Karolefski, 2003). This trend has been observed in supermarkets in the Washington DC area. One of India's premier fashion designers and an alumnus of the Wharton School, Tarun Tahiliani, believes that the US could serve as a lucrative market for Indian ethnic apparel given the size of the Indian population living in the US (Thayil, 2000).From a consumer behavior point of view, acculturation may be thought of as a process by which an individual raised in one culture acquires through first hand experience the consumption related values, behavior, and customs of a foreign country (Schiffman et al., 1981). Studies (Kang and Kim, 1998; Kara and Kara, 1996; Lee and Um, 1992; O'Guinn et al., 1986; Shim and Chen, 1996) on relationships between acculturation and consumption patterns of products show that ethnic consumers are not a homogenous group. Their consumption and buying patterns vary with the level of acculturation (Khairullah, 1985).The purpose of this study is to determine the level of involvement of Asian-Indian consumers in the selection and purchase of Indian ethnic apparel and contemporary American clothing at different stages of acculturation. Antecedents of involvement, such as personal factors; product factors; and situational factors indirectly measured the level of involvement.The following hypotheses were proposed:H1. There will be a significant relationship between the levels of acculturation and demographic characteristics of Asian-Indian consumers.\nReview of literature: Conceptual framework\nMethodology: Selection of the sample\nFindings, results and discussion: Sample\nConclusions: H1, which suggested that certain demographic characteristics would be positively associated to the level of acculturation, resulted in limited findings. Income was found to have a positive influence on the level of acculturation and subjects who practiced Christianity were more acculturated than subjects who were Hindu. Respondents who were originally from urban areas in India had higher acculturation scores than those who were from towns and villages.This study was designed to better understand the process of adjustment and adaptation that Asian-Indian immigrants undergo on coming to this country. Therefore, this study proposed to explain the influence of acculturation on perceptions toward apparel. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of involvement of Asian-Indian consumers in the selection and purchase of Indian ethnic apparel and contemporary American clothing at different stages of acculturation. H2 suggested that Asian-Indian consumers would be more involved in the purchase of Indian ethnic apparel as opposed to contemporary American clothing. This study found that if respondents were involved in apparel selection and purchase, a similar level of involvement held true toward both Indian ethnic apparel and contemporary American clothing.H3 stated that a low level of acculturation would result in higher involvement with Indian ethnic apparel and a lower level of involvement with contemporary American clothing and vice-versa. This study found that though a low level of acculturation process did result in a higher level of involvement in Indian ethnic apparel, the reverse did not hold true. The study also found that consumers who were less acculturated to western culture was less involved in Indian ethnic apparel but became increasingly involved as they became increasingly acculturated to the US culture. Asian Indians who are new to this country may try to identify with the new culture leading to a decline in involvement with Indian ethnic apparel. As they get comfortable in their new environment they may feel a need to connect with their original culture and this may lead to a renewed interest in Indian ethnic apparel. Finally the addition of two dress variables to the acculturation may be an effective variable in measuring the level of acculturation among Asian-Indian consumers.\nImplications to fashion marketers: One of the respondents in the study stated that the accessibility to retail stores carrying Indian apparel hampered their ability in acquiring them. This group of immigrants has tremendous buying power with a mean income of $59, 777, the highest of any Asian group in America, and with an average per capita income that is more than 25 percent higher than the national average (Florida International University, 1994; US Census Bureau, 2000b). India is one of the few countries where traditional clothing remains very popular among its consumers even though there is a growing market for western clothing. This sentiment is carried with them even after they move to the US. Indian fashions are also influencing mainstream western fashions. The trickle-up theory or the subcultural leadership theory proposes that fashion trends could be initiated by ethnic groups, racial groups, the youth culture and the lower class (Sproles and Burns, 1994). Fashions worn by the Asian-Indian community are having a trickle-up effect influencing global fashions. The latest designer shows from Armani, Fendi, and Miyake all draw on elements from the exotic Indian culture, such as beading or interesting textile textures (University of Hartford, 2002). Lazaro (2000) observed that US bedding, rugs, windows, and bathroom patterns were dominated by Indian and Moroccan patterns. Thus the demand for Indian apparel among the Asian population residing in the US, Indians with the ability and the willingness to purchase Indian apparel, and the love affair of the mainstream western culture with Indian fashions warrants apparel designers, fashion marketers, and retailers to take notice and create for themselves a niche in the apparel retail sector.\nRecommendations: The following recommendations are made for future research:1. More extensive research needs to be conducted in different parts of the country where a greater concentration of Indians can be found. One limitation of this study was the size of the sample as it collected regionally for Asian Indians living in the southeastern US.2. The Indian population within itself is not a homogeneous group. A suggestion that was received from one of the respondents was that the Asian-Indian population is a multicultural group speaking different languages and practicing different faiths and beliefs. When studying this group this diversity among Asian Indians is an important criterion that needs to be considered.3. When examining demographic characteristics of Asian Indian the survey should include a question on the region in India of which the subject was a native.4. Finally, this study should be expanded to include different types of products.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to explain the level of involvement of Asian-Indian consumers residing in the US when purchasing Indian ethnic apparel and contemporary American clothing at different levels of acculturation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were gathered by a questionnaire administered to 254 Asian-Indian consumers from the southeastern United States.\nFindings: - Low levels of acculturation among Asian-Indians did result in a higher level of involvement in Indian ethnic apparel. Consumers who were moderately acculturated to western culture were less involved in Indian ethnic apparel but became increasingly involved as they became more acculturated to the US culture. In conclusion, Asian-Indians, who were new to the US, may try to identify with the new culture leading to a decline in involvement with Indian ethnic apparel. As these consumers became more comfortable in their new environment they may have felt a need to connect with their original culture, and this could have led to a renewed interest in Indian ethnic apparel.\nOriginality/value: - This study fulfills a need for literature on how ethnic groups residing in a foreign land view products indigenous to their original culture across the stages of acculturation. Understanding consumer interests of targeted market segments and their impact on the overall population may benefit fashion marketers.\n",
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Developments in South African document supply: the experience of the University of the Witwatersrand
|
[
"Trade barriers",
"South Africa",
"Document delivery"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The essence of document supply\nChanging technologies: from telex to fax, the internet and beyond: On 15 June 1994 we saw the end of the telex era at Wits University Library as our PC telex machine was disconnected. We had previously upgraded from a Teletex machine to a PC telex machine the year before. Telex machines had become outdated technology for our environment and were replaced by fax machines and an interactive document supply request system from SABINET (South African Bibliographic and Information Network) instead.The old telex machines used triplicate paper, which had filing ramifications for record keeping. It was interesting to note how some librarians were unable to adapt to the new technology, as their systems were based on triplicate records, and insisted on having multiple copies faxed to them to accommodate their record-keeping process. If ever there was a reality check and systems check it should have been done then, as it was a forerunner of what was to come. Old work methods would no longer be appropriate in \"new technology environments\".The demands of technology became even greater as departments became \"technology aware\". There was a change from using mainframe computers to personal computers on Library Local Area Networks as access to SABINET was slow via mainframes. This slowed work down considerably and alternative methods had to be sought.The most radical change started in 1993 when Sabinet BETA tested it's new document supply programme, Erudite, and in 1994 the community came on board and we had a system which resulted in greater efficiency and productivity. It facilitated bibliographic checking, identification of a record and the ability to order that record within a couple of keystrokes. A tracking system was now in place which could accurately inform users of the status of their requests.The work routines and processes changed radically as it was no longer necessary to write out telex operator forms, or complete postal forms. This could be done as one operation when checking the up-to-date bibliographic record details. The information was current and up to date - one didn't have to wait for the next set of bibliographic microfiche such as JC (SA joint catalogue of monographs on microfiche) or PISAL (Periodicals in Southern African Libraries) to arrive to be able to source new material or to send out speculative requests.Internet\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To examine and report on the challenges and trials of document supply at the University of the Witwatersrand during the recent past.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The article explores the impact of international trade embargoes on document supply and academic research, the role played by the individual and new technologies on document supply and its future.\nFindings: - The role of the individual is an essential part of document supply. Politics can adversely affect academic research capabilities and the invisible college and networking within the academic community has a role to play. Changing technologies have an impact on work flow and work methods.\nOriginality/value: - Provides insight for those working in document supply, particularly for those with an interest in South African developments.\n",
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Intentions of New Zealanders to purchase lamb or beef made using nanotechnology
|
[
"Meat",
"Food industry",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Nanotechnology",
"Food technology",
"New Zealand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Nanotechnology is a new and sophisticated technology that is expected to develop radical new products and processes. Nanotechnology is based on the scientific study of molecules, compounds or particles at the extremely small scale of about a millionth of a millimetre. For food production, it involves the use or manipulation of non-living things and living things at the nano-scale. Nanotechnology has already led to the development of emulsions to enable personally selected flavour and nutrient release, more efficient toxin filtering, antibacterial additives and food additives to treat allergies (Sanguansri and Augustin, 2006). These and other new developments mean that nanotechnology is projected to be used in the production of US$20 billion worth of food products by 2010.While rapid advances are expected from nanotechnology, public attitudes towards its use in the food industry have yet to be investigated. Following public concern over the use of genetic modification (GM) in agriculture it would seem foolhardy to ignore public attitudes, given that the new technology may be similarly received. This suggests it would be prudent to be responsive to public attitudes rather than have to deal with possible controversies afterwards. This did not occur with the introduction of genetic modification (GM). For example, in New Zealand only poll type research was conducted prior to 1995 showing dispositions towards the use of GM in food production were mostly positive (Couchman and Fink-Jensen, 1990; Macer, 1994; Fitzgerald et al., 1996). Only when aversion had become prominent did analytical studies become more common (e.g. Cook and Fairweather, 2004; Forton and Renton, 2003; Kassardjian et al., 2005). However, these findings were too late to inform the development of the biotechnology research and industry, before adverse views became entrenched.Studies of attitudes towards nanotechnology, like the early studies of attitudes towards GM food, are similarly few in number, deal generally with the topic in broad form and consequently fail to evaluate reactions to specific applications (Bainbridge, 2002; Cobb and Macoubrie, 2004; Lee et al., 2005). In consequence, concern about nanotechnology is shown to be linked, for example, to loosing jobs, the arms race, loss of personal privacy and self replicating robots (Lee et al., 2005), and has little to do with the use of nanotechnology in food production.There is a need for detailed research to usefully inform and guide the development and introduction of nanotechnology to the food industry. Rapid technological advances also suggest a need for pre-emptive attitude studies of sufficient detail to enable the public to be appropriately informed and involved. Given lack of research in the topic area and controversy over the use of GM in agriculture, this study had the general aim of modelling public attitudes to understand reactions to the use of nanotechnology in GM food production. For food production, GM techniques using nanotechnology have been expected (Rutzke, 2003) and there is early stage GM food research using the new technology in the US. It is expected that nanotechnology will be involved in GM through the development and use of medical techniques that use nanoparticles to transfer genetic material into cells (e.g. Anderson et al., 2004). Another example is GM rice, which has used a nitrogen atom to trigger the rearrangement of DNA (ETC, 2004). Such uses of nanotechnology are claimed to have the potential to sidestep the controversy over GM food (Burgi and Pradeep, 2006). However, as yet there are no empirically based estimates of the level of public acceptance of the use of nanotechnology for GM. Nevertheless, the production of value added animal products through use of nanotechnology is predicted to be developed as early as 2008 (Rutzke, 2003).In this study the attitude target was lamb or beef that had been genetically modified using nanotechnology to be low in saturated fat that causes cholesterol and subsequently increases the risk of heart disease. Public health initiatives already promote leaner meat, with product labelling promoting healthy consumer choices that encourage the food industry to produce leaner meat products (Rayner et al., 2001). Consumers can then choose lean over higher fat meat products to reduce saturated fat intake. Consumers may also choose to modify their behaviour by cutting off skin and fat before cooking or eating, choose how meat is cooked, or simply consume less meat. Regardless of these actions, the offering of a guaranteed low fat alternative would reduce fat intake. Therefore, the aims of this research were to predict and understand attitudes and intentions to purchase the new lamb or beef. The achievement of these aims involved an adaptation of the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and a national survey of the New Zealand public.\nThe theory of planned behaviour: The TPB is a model of how people choose to behave and has been useful for explaining food choice (Conner and Armitage, 2002), purchases of GM food (e.g. Spence and Townsend, 2006; Cook et al., 2002) and reducing fat intake (e.g. Paisley et al., 1995; Conner and Norman, 1996). The model is based on the assumption that attitudes towards performing a behaviour, coupled with motivations to comply with perceived social pressures (subjective norm), and personal control over behaviour performance (perceived behavioural control), are joint determinants of behavioural intention. A central concept is that attitudes are formed from beliefs regarding consequences of performing a particular behaviour. The belief - attitude - intention sequence is proposed as valuable for identifying beliefs that influence the performance of a behaviour and it is assumed that these underlying beliefs are useful for understanding the behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). However, while in many cases the TPB has been found to be useful for explaining intentions, it has been found that for some behaviours, other factors are likely to be involved (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). An often useful addition is self-identity, which became common in explanations of intention in the late 1980s (e.g. Charng et al., 1988; Biddle et al., 1987) and has since been used with the TPB (e.g. Sparks and Shepherd, 1992; Sparks and Guthrie, 1998). Self-identity can be understood as a label that people use to describe themselves that suggests identification with a social group or category. Self-identity is therefore the product of social interaction and more importantly it can be argued that it is the cause of subsequent behaviour (Biddle et al., 1987).\nMethod: Focus groups were used to identify beliefs associated with the new food. Four groups each met three times to discuss various aspects and examples of nanotechnology (total N=40). The design of the TPB measures were drawn principally from Ajzen's (2006) recommendations for TPB questionnaire construction. The intention to purchase statement and measurement scale was recommended by Conner and Sparks (1995) and the method for measurement of belief statements followed Bredahl (2001). The self-identity measure was derived from Cook et al. (2002) and has similarly been used by Spence and Townsend (2006). All variables were measured using five-point Likert scales (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and all points on the scales were anchored with a corresponding statement.The questionnaire contained measurements of reactions to a number of nanotechnology and biotechnology examples. The questionnaire began with the following introduction to nanotechnology:What is nanotechnology?You may not have heard of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a new development in science that involves the use of materials of an extremely small size, often less than a billionth of a metre. At this scale specialised instruments are being used to construct new materials often called nanoparticles. Overseas, nanoparticles have been used to develop clothing with stain-resistant fibres and formulate more effective sun-screen lotions. Nanoparticles are also helping to deliver drugs to targeted tissues within the body affected by cancer. Nanoparticles are also being used the automotive industry, and in electronics, computers and communication. As these examples show nanoparticles can be useful. However, scientists have also found that some particles can be poisonous or toxic. This has led to calls to avoid the possibility of nanoparticles becoming hazardous to people or the environment.Then, for the section that measured reactions to the new lamb or beef, the following information was provided:GM has been used in New Zealand to modify the cells of animals and plants by using genetic material from other plants or animals. With the development of nanotechnology a possible new method uses nanoparticles to penetrate the wall of a cell and enable the genetic material within the cell to be rearranged. The new method would avoid using genetic material from other plants or animals because it would only alter the genetic material within the cell.Using the new method it could be possible to raise farm animals that would produce lamb or beef with 20 per cent less cholesterol-causing fat.The dependent variable of intention was measured by using the statement \"I would definitely buy this product\". Attitude towards purchasing was measured using the statements \"It would be wise for me to buy this product\" and \"It would be wrong for me to buy this product\". The subjective norm was measured using \"Most people whose views are important to me would approve of my buying this product\" and perceived behavioural control was measured using \"Whether or not I buy this product would be entirely up to me\". Self-identity was measured using \"I am the type of person who would avoid buying this product\". A total of 13 statements that were used to assess beliefs about the low fat lamb or beef are shown in Table I.Four questions gathered demographic information about the survey respondents. The questions were designed to gather data sufficient for testing for representativeness of the survey sample against New Zealand census data.Questionnaire items were presented in an A5-size booklet with questions on facing pages. A letter of introduction stating the purpose of the questionnaire, introducing the aim of the research and the topics covered in the questionnaire while also inviting voluntary participation, was included with the booklet. Overall, 99 separate items formed the questionnaire. A draft of the questionnaire was tested on 13 volunteers. The time for completion was approximately 30 minutes. This length may have lowered the response rate, however, reviews have shown that moderate changes in length have only small or inconsistent effects on response rates and that a lower response rate does not seriously bias the results (Bean and Rozkowski, 1995).Distribution and response rate\nResults: Statistical methods\nDiscussion: The results reveal that intentions to purchase low fat lamb or beef that had been genetically modified using nanotechnology was influenced by self-identity, attitude and subjective norm and that the model predicted a significant proportion of intentions to purchase. The results also show that many were positive about the new lamb or beef and it was shown that beliefs were important in influencing attitudes and purchase intentions.The theory of planned behaviour\nConclusion: The general aim of this research was to predict and understand the use of nanotechnology in food production. Rapid advances in nanotechnology suggest that its products and services will be developed with little time to consider public reactions. This makes important the early assessment of attitudes so that if needed the public can be appropriately informed and in turn, their attitudes can inform the development of new technologies. This study showed that most New Zealanders would buy lamb or beef with less cholesterol causing fat that had been made using GM and nanotechnology and importantly, it has been shown how the realisation of benefits and evidence of low or acceptable risk will modify attitudes and intentions.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to provide an early assessment of key influences on intentions to purchase low fat lamb or beef made using nanotechnology.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data was gathered using a national postal survey of New Zealanders (N=565).\nFindings: - The new product was more acceptable than GM food. Most had a positive attitude and intention to purchase and were the type of person who would purchase (self-identity). Most considered they had the support of people whose views are important to them (subjective norm) and few felt an impediment to purchasing (perceived behavioural control). Attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and self-identity explained a good deal of intention (R2=0.64). There was also a strong link between a sum of beliefs about the risks and benefits of the new product and attitude (r=0.79).\nResearch limitations/implications: - Differences between the sample and the population could marginally affect projections of the descriptive results onto the population.\nPractical implications: - Identifies a range of potentially dynamic factors that affect intentions. These have implications for informing the public and informing technology development.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is of immediate value for those interested in public reactions to the new topic of the use of nanotechnology in food production.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
DRR technology sharing and transfer through web-based platforms: Lessons learned from Korean studies
|
[
"Disaster risk reduction",
"Architecture and governance type",
"Community-based and problem-solving approach",
"DRR technology sharing and transfer",
"Web-based platform"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Advanced economies currently engage in a variety of activities to assist developing countries in improving their socio-economic development. For example, South Korea offers credit assistances to Lease Developed Countries (LDCs) via the Economic Development Cooperation Fund; sponsored by the Korean Export-Import Bank and Overseas Development Aid given by the Korea International Cooperation Agency. Although these overseas aid programs contributed to poverty reduction and economic development in LDCs, the lack of interconnection between donor countries and beneficiary developing countries remains, creating barriers to deliver aid programs effectively. Therefore, a new approach has been brought forward to pursue a strategy based on the clear understanding of recipients' needs over direct economic assistance programs.\n2. Current issues on technology sharing on DRR: 2.1. Technological approach for DRR\n3. Methodology: The methodology in this research follows three leading steps: identify barriers to DRR technology sharing through literature review and a case study; find the potential of a web-based platform to solve identified barriers; and evaluate the four types of evolving web-based platforms initiated by NEMA Korea. These three steps in conjunction with lessons learned and experts' opinions are the basis for our recommended suggestion for a successful DRR technology sharing web-based platform.\n4. Barriers to technology transfer and web-based platform as a solution: 4.1. What are the barriers to technology transfer?\n5. Evolution of web-based platform developed by NEMA Korea: 5.1. Evolution of web-based platform\n6. Conclusion: The demand for DRR technology sharing and transfer has been increasing. In particular, in Asia-Pacific countries, which have experienced various catastrophic disasters recently and have expressed greater interest toward a DRR technology sharing platform. Even though many countries are willing to share lessons from failure, sound practices and technologies for DRR, it is hard to find web-based sites where developers, practitioners, government officials, and experts in developing countries can find appropriate DRR technologies and DRR technology developers to solve issues and risks.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Disaster risk reduction (DRR) technology sharing has emerged as an important global issue across national boundaries. As a result, the DRR technology-sharing environment needs strengthening based on the findings of difficulties in sharing, investment, and commitment. The purpose of this paper is to three fold: first, it will clarify that a web-based platform is the best conduit for linking DRR technology from the supplier to the beneficiary developing countries. Second, it will find the most evolutionary path based on Korean case studies. Finally, it will make recommendations for the efficient implementation of a web-based platform for DRR technology sharing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper posits that DRR technology sharing is a necessary part of enhancing resilience to disasters in the Asia-Pacific region. The evolution of web-based approaches (a merchandise display-type platform, a journal-type platform, an electronic market-type platform, and an architecture and governance-type platform) and an actual case of space technology sharing providing support for an evolution toward community-based technology sharing in DRR. The research will find the most efficient way going forward based on the case study of a four-year R\nFindings: Sharing of DRR technology through a web-based platform among Asia-Pacific countries is necessary in order to equip all parties with essential technology to mitigate intensifying disasters, to overcome the barriers of technology sharing, to breakdown transfer issues due to language barriers, and to strengthen insufficient DRR budgets. Among the four types of web-based platforms, the architecture and governance-type platform proved to be the most effective and efficient. In addition, four principles for an efficient implementation are identified through case studies, analysis, and research.\nOriginality/value: This paper reports on the reasons why it is difficult for DRR technology sharing in the Asia and Pacific regions and suggests a web-based DRR technology-sharing platform as a solution for the region. Moreover, it substantiates that the architecture and governance platform type as the most efficient and effective evolution with four principles: develop based on end-user's needs; take a problem-solving approach; contain interactive communication tools; and provide business opportunity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effects of ownership structure on the relationship between multinationality and downside risk: Evidence from China
|
[
"Ownership concentration",
"Ownership structure",
"Managerial ownership",
"Multinationality",
"Institutional ownership",
"Downside risk"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Multinational company (MNC) is an important link among countries in the process of economic globalization. One of the MNCs' outstanding characteristics is that they have the ability to do business across a number of countries with heterogeneous environments. Based on the distinctive advantage of multinational operations, real options theory argues that MNCs' business network across multiple countries equals to a portfolio of switching options, which enables MNCs to shift business activities among their subsidiaries in different countries when the external environmental conditions changes, such as exchange rate fluctuations (Kogut and Kulatilaka, 1994). Followed with the theoretical logic of real options theory, scholars argue that multinational operations will enable MNCs to operate more flexibly, and thus reduce MNCs' downside risk, the performance that falls below certain target (Belderbos et al., 2014; Miller and Leiblein, 1996; Reuer and Leiblein, 2000; Tong and Reuer, 2007).\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 Ownership structure in emerging markets\n3. Method and data: 3.1 Model\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Conclusions and managerial implications: 5.1 Conclusions\n6. Limitations and further research: There are several limitations in this paper. These limitations can provide some directions for future studies. First, the sample in this study is constrained to the unique context of Chinese firms. Future studies with samples from other countries may provide new evidence. For example, future studies could present a comparative analysis by using the data from different emerging markets or the data from both emerging market countries and developed countries to generalize the finding of this paper.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how multinationality affects multinational companies' (MNCs) downside risk and the moderate effects of ownership structure in the setting of emerging markets based on Chinese publicly traded manufacturing MNCs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author derives hypotheses based on real options theory and agency theory, and tests hypotheses by using Tobit model and a unique data set of Chinese A-shared publicly traded manufacturing MNCs in the period of 2010-2016.\nFindings: The empirical results suggest that multinationality is positively related to downside risk and this effect is subjected to ownership structure for firms in emerging markets. In particular, multinationality of MNCs with a high level of ownership concentration, managerial ownership and institutional ownership is more likely to reduce downside risk.\nPractical implications: The main conclusion of this paper highlights the importance of ownership structure of MNCs in explaining the real options value of multinationality, and conveys to owners of MNCs in China and other emerging markets the need to strengthen firms' governance if they want to maximize the benefits of multinational operations.\nOriginality/value: This study extends existing studies by taking ownership structure into consideration and highlighting the importance of agency problem in the examination of multinationality and downside risk, which provides a potential explanation for previous mixed evidence. This study also provides new evidence for the relationship between multinationality and downside risk by using a unique sample from China, an emerging market country.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Supply chain resilience: a benchmarking model for vulnerability and capability assessment in the automotive industry
|
[
"Supply chain resilience",
"Benchmarking",
"Vulnerability",
"Capability",
"Fuzzy logic",
"Automotive industry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Background\n2. Literature review: This section provides an in-depth literature review in the field of SCRE and its evaluation. In the end, the relevant studies on the SCRE assessment problem will be summarized, and the research gap will be highlighted. 2.1 Resilience in the SC\n3. Hypotheses: 3.1 Capabilities of SCRE\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Data collection and sample\n5. Results and discussion: 5.1 Analysis of the outcomes\n6. Discussion: It is evident from the results of this study that SCRE has a direct impact on the overall supply chain performance. To compete in this challenging environment, supply chain management has been changed from a fragmented chain to an integrated chain. Moreover, due to globalization and digitization and after the introduction of information technology, supply chain activities are becoming more uncertain and vulnerable. Variations in supplier's delivery due to the increasing trend of having global suppliers and frequent customer preference changes made the supply chain riskier. Therefore, organizations need to design their supply chain so as they can predict disruptions or, in case of disasters, minimize their impact on supply chain performance. In line with this premise, in this study, we have analyzed the effect of supply chain capability and vulnerability elements in a specific context, i.e. the Iranian automotive industry. The results obtained show that the automotive industry of Iran should counteract five main elements of vulnerability, i.e. \"external pressures,\" \"sensitivity,\" \"connectivity,\" \"supplier/customer disruptions,\" and \"resource limits.\" A suitable way to counteract \"supplier/customer disruptions\" could be, for instance, to redesign the purchasing process by distributing the supplies among both 1st tier suppliers and 2nd tier ones. This is also expected to increase the flexibility of automotive industries, making them more prepared in case of any disaster. As far as the resilient capabilities are concerned, the automotive supply chain should enhance \"flexibility in order fulfillment,\" \"capacity,\" \"efficiency,\" \"visibility,\" \"adaptability,\" \"recovery,\" \"dispersion,\" \"organization,\" \"market position\" and \"security\" as the most effective countermeasures to vulnerability.For example, Toyota Motor Corporation faced significant production loss due to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011. In response, to build a disaster-resilient future, Toyota moved some of its production to other countries to improve flexibility and manage vulnerability in case of future disasters. Vulnerability and flexibility are inter-related concepts. In this respect, we demonstrate the Iranian automotive industry is in a transition phase, from traditional supply chain management to resilient supply chain management, compared to the world-class automotive manufacturing companies. It is noteworthy that by flourishing the capability elements and overcoming the vulnerability factors, the Iranian automotive industry can gradually implement resiliency to cope with disruptive events, even in light of the economic sanctions.However, more awareness and cultural change are required to adopt and designing resilient supply chains. Similarly, this study demonstrates that collaboration and visibility are also perceived as important for companies to improve their performance and increase the surplus. 6.1 Managerial implications\n7. Conclusion and future research directions: 7.1 Summary of the contribution\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate two supply chain resilience key elements of vulnerability and capability in the automotive industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: We propose a fuzzy approach for statistical hypothesis testing and analyze two research hypotheses by synthesizing the results of a questionnaire given to 44 companies in the Iranian automotive industry.\nFindings: The results indicate that the automotive industry in Iran should: (1) resist five elements of vulnerability, i.e. \"external pressures,\" \"sensitivity,\" \"connectivity,\" \"supplier/customer disruptions,\" and \"resource limits,\" and (2) embrace nine elements of capability, i.e. \"flexibility in order fulfillment,\" \"capacity,\" \"efficiency,\" \"visibility,\" \"adaptability,\" \"recovery,\" \"dispersion,\" \"organization,\" \"market position\" and \"security\" to achieve greater resiliency elasticity in the supply chain.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study on the supply chain resilience vulnerabilities and capabilities in the Iranian automotive industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Developing English
|
[
"Curriculum development",
"Classroom communication and interaction basis",
"Integrating the dramatic and literary arts with social concerns",
"International modeling of English",
"Sampling achievements versus constraining tests",
"Teacher participation",
"Fallacies of competitive models",
"Political versus professional goals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: English is a complex subject. One foot belongs to the creative arts. The other concerns everyday social life and the way it is represented in all its variety (including a critical engagement with the Media). Few university degrees - if any - provide for that range; indeed, learning to tackle and integrate this immense spread becomes a lifetime's work (as I can testify), with many rewards and - let us acknowledge - shortfalls on the way.\nA final lesson?: A model that combines teacher self-education; a form of in-service that encourages exciting experiment, discussion and serious analysis; a combined national discussion, guided by a team keen to foster participants' insights and knowledge; with the chance of filtering in advice from abroad; leading to more than one form of curricular outline, according to local or regional circumstances [...] with appropriate forms of assessment worked out for a subject that combines creative arts and language for living. It is not easy to see how to improve - let alone replace - this.\nThe current approach: Since the 1990s, Ministers have changed the goals. Call it a top-down model, but it is more than that. Their prerequisite has been to produce a rank order of teachers, schools and local authorities through national testing. The focus, therefore, has switched away from curriculum to getting \"reliable\" test scores - that is an arithmetical distribution that could be repeated for the whole sample, if not for the individual student. So the test items ideally should produce yes/no answers (and thus become marker independent). Mistakes in spelling, in usage, in grammatical knowledge or rhetorical blemishes form the obvious start. (It is like saying that in History we all start by checking who knows the dates of the kings and queens. On this reckoning the Industrial revolution and the Electronic era, or the Reformation and the Puritan revolution, form a submerged background that has to broken down into testable chunks for fail-proof marking.)\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: An overview of English aims, theoretical scope and methods is badly needed. Ministries throughout the English-speaking world have become dominated by a demand for testing - stimulated no doubt by regular Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveys - and lost sight of first principles. The purpose of this article is therefore to set out a model of English drawn from the best international experience since the 1960s, collected during seminars and practical workshops on four continents.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses a collection of experiences drawn from seminars and practical workshops over the past 50 years. It incorporates researches and reflections generated with the author's former colleagues.\nFindings: The paper gives an insider's account of the carefully designed movement for English development and teacher participation that started during that decade in England, ramifying and attracting new energies in Canadian provinces, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Founded in new theories of classroom communication and interaction, the emerging models also demonstrated the urgent need for new approaches to assessment, sampling students' optimal achievements. The regime that is universally replacing this major work depends, it can be shown, on a model designed by ministers (disregarding professional advice) and avowedly intended to promote competition among pupils, teachers and schools - thus stifling the kinds of cooperation essential to any classroom, especially in the arts, and indeed to Education in general. But the historical foundations remain, from that creative period, and can be reclaimed.\nOriginality/value: This is an original view from an author who is one of the handful of survivors and who has been active in each stage since 1960, and has been privileged to be invited to four continents to convene seminars and practical workshops over many years.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Business process management: a missing link in business education
|
[
"Process management",
"Business schools",
"Curricula"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Business processes are now considered critical corporate assets. They constitute a significant portion of organizational costs and managing them offers significant opportunities for improving market share, managerial decision making and performance. In fact, effective business processes are considered the key differentiators in this global competitive environment. Business processes have been the subject of formal study from multiple perspectives over a lengthy period from the start of the industrial age to the current information technologies (IT)-enabled services age. In spite of this focus, processes still are too often left unmanaged. Organizations struggle to develop process management capabilities and are finding it hard to become sufficiently process centric.The challenge to business schools is not different. They are typically structured according to functions or disciplines such as marketing, operations, accounting and human resources and carry our teaching and research. Teaching of cross-functional processes and the integration of functional areas is left either to the individual student or to the academic. Employers and professional associations complain of graduates' inadequate process management capabilities and insufficient process focus and observe that they are not sufficiently prepared to work in a customer and process centric, IT-enabled, integrated world of work. Increased competition, regulatory demands, customer power, changing workforce, information overload and relentless technology push have all made rediscovering, understanding and transforming business processes an imperative need for organizations and rejuvenated the interest in business processes. For that reason, education in business schools that takes a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching and learning business processes is also becoming an imperative.This paper first analyses the inadequacies of business education in general and in the context of processes in particular. It will then present the background to business processes in a historical perspective and posits the significance of business process management (BPM) for today's business education in general and in Australian business schools in particular. It argues the importance of business processes and BPM in the context of the current and emerging IT and business education and highlights its ability to offer a missing link between business, IT and strategy.\nBusiness education: The pedagogical model of business education was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century and was based on a functional structure that typically included marketing, logistics, accounting and human resources. These functionally specialized schools/disciplines were designed to meet the needs of large, highly bureaucratized organizations that were also organized around functional areas. Several twentieth century management initiatives, including just-in-time (JIT), total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR) have process and process management as their underlying theme. As a result of implementing such initiatives, many organizations have shifted their focus towards business processes that are cross-functional and customer focused, and shifted the management development emphasis away from functional specialization and towards the integration of different functional departments (Malekzadeh, 1998; McCormack and Johnson, 2001; Welke, 2005).Although some of the leading organizations have begun to adopt process centric organizational structures, most business schools still use this specialized function-based model. Even though business schools are good at developing specialist technical professionals in accounting, operations, human resources, finance or information systems, they are criticized for their inability to produce well-rounded business graduates and, in particular, those who understand business process orientation and cross-functional integration (Tippins, 2004; Kavanagh and Drennan, 2008; BCG, 2001). This perception is reflected in the importance given by accreditation bodies like the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in their evaluation of business schools to the level of cross-functional integration and process orientation facilitated by the curriculum (AACSB, 2002, 2003; AACSB International, 2007).Inadequacies of business education\nBPM - an evolving paradigm: Perspectives of business processes\nConclusions: The value of understanding, discovering and transforming business processes is further enhanced by considering them in combination with the current and emerging information and communication technologies such as enterprise systems, process modeling and management, service oriented architecture, web services, cloud computing and general IT-enablement of services. BPM is therefore now considered as the \"missing middle\" between business strategy and IT that will help converting strategies into business processes for consistent and efficient execution according to the overall management direction.BPM of the future will draw knowledge and expertise not only from traditional business and IT but also from diverse fields such as psychology, neuroscience, service science, anthropology, sociology and behavioral economics. Thus, BPM is ever more important in the current age. By understanding, documenting, modeling and analyzing business processes, organizations can achieve improvements in visibility and transparency and reduction in costs and resources requirements, which will result in enhanced business performance and compliance. Business schools may have to break their functional silos and initiate realignment and reallocation of resources, and consider delivering cross-disciplinary courses with renewed focus on pedagogy. Given the slow response rate of business schools in translating business requirements into academic curriculum and pedagogy, the difficulty of breaking 100 year old functional silos, and challenges in incorporating process-centric thinking and cross-functional integration into curriculum design and delivery, changes may be slow. Changes required to reposition the business courses require significant shift in academic thinking, improvements in traditional teaching and research models and importantly a strong external push from accreditation agencies and business.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the inadequacies of current business education in the context of \"process\". It presents an analysis of the background to business processes in historical perspective and posits the significance of business management for today's business education. It argues the importance of business processes and business process management (BPM) in the context of the current and emerging information technologies (IT) and business education and highlights its ability to offer a missing link between business, IT and strategy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach involves analysis and review of the literature and analysis of secondary data.\nFindings: - Even though business processes have been the subject of formal study from multiple perspectives for a long time, since the start of industrial age, processes still are not well understood, left unmanaged and poorly executed. With business schools teaching primarily function specific and narrow and IT schools focused on narrow technical skills, learning and understanding \"process view\" and \"integration\" is left to the individual student or academic, this study observes. It posits the significance of BPM and highlights its ability to provide the missing link to business education. It reports on the strategies employed by business schools and discusses the challenges in BPM education.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Recognising the importance of BPM by business schools and embedding the BPM concepts and tools in a unified integrated curriculum across the business school with an inter-disciplinary focus is challenging for business schools. Further studies, investigating how practitioners perceive this gap and on the effectiveness of different strategies of teaching BPM, are important.\nPractical implications: - These findings will help practitioners in understanding the gap between university education and practice and to develop appropriate training and development strategies.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides an analysis of the concept of \"process\" from an historical perspective and posits BPM as a missing link in business education that delivers \"integration\" and \"process orientation\" to business students.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Why do informal service enterprises remain informal? A RIDIT approach
|
[
"India",
"Informal economy",
"Formalization",
"Service enterprise"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The informal economy (IE) is a tenacious and expanding feature of developing countries. It constitutes a considerable share of employment and output. \"The IE refers to different situations with different causes, posing different problems that require different solutions[1]\". Due to inherent market imperfections such as unemployment, underemployment, poverty, illiteracy, inequality and many more, this sector is burgeoning in developing economies. It provides earning opportunities to the poor who are marginalised from the formal economy. Though working in this sector is characterised as low waged, and with poor working conditions (Chaudhuri and Banerjee, 2007; Gurtoo and Williams, 2009), it is expanding. The mushrooming of this sector is due to ineffective social policies, which are inappropriate considering the ground realities or due to the absence of appropriate legal framework and inefficient implementation of the policies and laws. The informal service sector (ISS) is heterogeneous and offers a diverse range of services - from doorstep car washing service to money lending services. For covering such a varied set of enterprises and workers, several instruments (coordinated) are required. International Labour Organisation (ILO) classified the workforce of the informal service economy in 2014. According to it, the workforce was classified in terms of earnings (regularity of income, level of earnings and seasonality), employment status (self-employed, employee, casual and domestic), type and size of enterprise (own account enterprise, shift shop and service station), location (urban, suburban and rural), social protection (contribution towards social security) and employment protection (form and period of contract and yearly leave protection).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 An overview of the IS\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Data analysis: The RIDIT analysis proposed by I. Bross has been applied to the study. It is distribution free and makes no assumption about the distribution of the population under study. For RIDIT, frequency (fj) and mid-point accumulated frequency (Fj) were computed for each category of response as follows:(1.1)\n5. Results: The factor with lowest r-value is marked as the most prominent issue or reason and is labelled as 1. The r-values are arranged in ascending order to find out the top ranking challenges. If ri value of scale \"i\" item statistically deviates from 0.5, it implies that there is a significant difference in response data and comparison data set of particular item. If ri=0.5, it means that the mean value is not significantly different. A low value of ri indicates a lower probability of being in a negative tendency and due to this a low value of ri is preferred over high value of rI, and so lowest value of ri gets the highest rank in the list of identified factors. All the identified factors are prioritised by RIDIT analysis. The most dominant reasons due to which the informal firms do not move towards formalisation are competition, lack of awareness, and state and local taxes apart from other discussed factors (Table V).\n6. Conclusion: The ISS is enormous in size; there are more number of survivalist entrepreneurs in this sector than the opportunist entrepreneurs. Though, according to the theories of development economics, its size should reduce with time, at ground level it does not hold true. From the results obtained in the survey, we conclude that there are various factors, individual and organisational, on which the decision on moving towards formalisation depends. In the study conducted, on the organisational-level factors, we find that the core of all the elements responsible is the perception of increasing cost of operation, and as the capital acquisition is difficult for them they are not ready to move or are hesitant in moving towards formalisation. When we see the individual factors identified in the literature survey and some factors mentioned by the respondents, we conclude that the informal service enterprises lack access to both capital and credit. Informal enterprises do not pay taxes or benefits, or entitlements to workers, which not only denies the protection of workers but also means that they compete unfairly with other enterprises. The shortfall in tax and contribution payments due to informal enterprises poses an unfair burden on registered enterprises who abide by the rules and regulations imposed by the government.\n7. Originality and limitations: This work is based on the primary data collected by the author from the entrepreneurs operating in the ISS. The factors mentioned by the respondents as the main reason for not moving towards formalisation has been taken into considerations during the analysis apart from the ones found in the literature. As the objective was limited to informal service units, we did not cover manufacturing units operating informally. Spatially we limited our research to the national capital of India and the peripheral areas. A large-scale survey, with large sample size, if conducted, may give a different result.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify reasons as to why firms operate informally, and to explore the rationalisation of not moving towards formalisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Building on empirical data collected through interviews with the entrepreneurs of the informal service enterprises of Delhi and peripheral areas, this paper presents the results of the survey conducted in 2017. By using the analytical tool developed by I. Bross, the authors have identified the most significant contributing factors to informality.\nFindings: In the research, the authors establish that competition and lack of awareness are the most dominant reasons due to which informal firms are hesitant in moving towards formalisation. For successful transition towards formalisation, a \"new pact\" between the workers, enterprises and governments needs to be developed, based on capacity building, productivity gains, enabling business environment, empowerment and entitlements to social and economic rights.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is limited only to informal service enterprises located in Delhi, the national capital of India, and the peripheral areas.\nPractical implications: By identifying the most dominant factors, focussed steps can be taken to reduce the size of the informal sector.\nOriginality/value: The informal service enterprises are not a widely explored community by researchers and policy makers. This sector can employ more people with less investment, and hence requires intensive study. The use of RIDIT approach to rank the identified factors due to which the firms do not move towards formalisation is the novelty of this work.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Dirty work, masculinity and giving voice through innovative qualitative methods: Ruth Simpson's contributions
|
[
"Qualitative methods",
"Masculinity",
"Dirty work"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper aims at recounting my personal and professional experiences of working with Professor Ruth Simpson on two interconnected projects: the exploration of meanings that butchers attach to their jobs and the research on the experiences of those involved in such occupations as street cleaning, refuse collection and graffiti removal. Both studies were triggered by our interest of the neglect in the organization studies area of dirty work (i.e. jobs or roles that are seen as distasteful or \"undesirable\"). Drawing on qualitative data, we examined how manual work can open up meanings integral to an enduring gendered, working class habitus and can offer the potential to maintaining self-worth and self-respect through symbolically meaningful position taking. In both projects, we also demonstrated how experiences of vulnerability and displacement, as well as the responses to devaluation, cannot be reduced or understood by attending to just one aspect of difference as they are formed at the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity and occupation (Slutskaya et al., 2016). The paper, first, reflects on how innovative qualitative methods can help establish a more democratic, collaborative and mutually beneficial research relationship (Slutskaya et al., 2016) with those who might be reluctant to participate in research, then briefly describe two projects and at the end summarize the experience of working with Professor Simpson.\nWriting and innovative qualitative methods: My first encounter with Ruth happened before I joined Brunel: it was at the European Group for Organizational Studies conference in Berlin. What gripped me about Ruth's presentation was its rigor and elegance - there was no sense of sloppiness or quest for self-gratification. Her scholarly skill and gift as a writer were exposed in the academic precision of that paper - the precision that was so unexpectedly accompanied by the rhythm and grace of her writing. The paper was also beautifully read. Until today, it remains one of the most memorable presentations I have attended.\nDirty work and masculinity: My first project with Ruth started at the research group's meeting where Ruth asked whether anyone shared her interest in conducting a study on butchers. I had no prior knowledge of literature on dirty work, however, the idea was so novel and promising, there were so many avenues to explore including skills, craftsmanship, masculinity and conventional and unconventional occupational journeys that I had trouble resisting getting involved. Our collaboration was sealed as the two of us looked for where to buy muesli in a small town in Devon (with a variety of butcher's shops but no supermarkets). The project was full of unexpected adventures - a trip to Devon, early morning outings to meat markets, mugs of tea with local butchers, learning to make sausages and black pudding tastings. And of course, one has to mention Ruth's concern that her posh accent might sound out of place at the back of a butcher's shop. However, along with being productive and exciting, the project was also a discovery of hidden injuries and a reminder of how easy it is to lose sight of lives that are historically invisible (Berger, 1991); how those involved in dirty work, more specifically physical and manual labor have a history of no choice; and how, in the face of their hard and unforgiving working conditions, redundancies, unemployment and dislocation, they persevere in maintaining their dignity and remaining what Berger (1991) calls a population of individuals. The project intensified and distilled emotions such as those around loss and displacement. Butchers talked about closing shops, competition from supermarkets that had reduced the number of high street butchers and declining high streets. Most importantly, they regretted the erosion of skills and practices, which in the past offered butchers a sense of permanence and stability - a sense that keeps waning as more shops have closed.\nCourage and giving voice: There is something else. In the book \"A Room of One's Own\" - a book Ruth gave me for my birthday - Virginia Woolf examines the ways in which sex might interfere with success in writing. She says:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to recount the author's personal and professional experiences of working with Professor Ruth Simpson on two interconnected projects: the exploration of meanings that butchers attach to their jobs and the research on the experiences of those involved in such occupations as street cleaning, refuse collection and graffiti removal.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper offers a discussion on how the turn to multiple research methods such as ethnography, photo elicitation and collaborative documentary could provide voice to participants and generate richer data sets.\nFindings: Drawing on Ruth Simpson's work on how gender is experienced by men in different occupations, the paper highlights how responses to stigma associated with dirty work cannot be understood by attending to just one aspect of difference, as they are formed at the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity and occupation.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides insights into how manual work can open up meanings integral to an enduring gendered, working class habitus and how exploring one axis of difference (for example, just gender) might fail to address the complexity and ambiguity of the negotiation of many categories that shape identities and experiences of workers in these occupations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Measuring the continuous quality improvement orientation of medical education programs : A validity study of the Baldrige "Are We Making Progress" questionnaire
|
[
"Performance measurement",
"Continuous quality improvement",
"Psychometrics",
"Medicine",
"Quality frameworks",
"Organizational performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is a rising interest in applying continuous quality improvement (CQI) processes and methodologies to medical education contexts (Bing-You, 1997; Barzansky et al., 2015; Blouin and Tekian, 2017). As part of a study exploring the relationship between the CQI practices of medical schools and their organizational cultures, we were interested in using a quantitative instrument to measure the CQI orientation of medical schools (Blouin, 2019). Previous studies investigating this relationship in varied contexts directed us to use the \"Are We Making Progress\" (AWMP) self-assessment questionnaire (NIST, 2011; Carman et al., 2010; Shortell et al., 1995; Wakefield et al., 2001). This questionnaire is associated with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) framework (NIST, 2015), which adequately captures the seven dimensions deemed critical for excellence: leadership, strategy, customer, measurement/analysis/knowledge management, workforce, operations, and results (Curkovic et al., 2000). These dimensions integrate the essential features of CQI reported in the literature (Rubenstein et al., 2014; Carman et al., 2010; Ettorchi-Tardy et al., 2012; Brandrud et al., 2011; Curkovic et al., 2000; Blouin and Tekian, 2017). The AWMP self-assessment questionnaire has been used extensively to measure the quality of implementation of CQI in various organizations (Shortell et al., 1995; Wakefield et al., 2001; Shields and Jennings, 2013; Lee et al., 2002; Carman et al., 2010; Rondeau and Wagar, 2004). Its results have been widely validated in the fields of business, education, and health care (Abdulla Badri et al., 2005; Shortell et al., 1995; Curkovic et al., 2000; Peng and Prybutok, 2015; Jayamaha et al., 2008). To our knowledge, the questionnaire has not been applied to medical education programs and its validation in medical education contexts was thus required before it could be used for our planned study.The literature reports AWMP survey scores as means with standard deviations (Carman et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2002; Rondeau and Wagar, 2004; Wakefield et al., 2001). However, since the instrument uses five-point Likert-type scales, estimates might not be amenable to parametric statistical analyses as Likert-type scales yield only ordinal raw scores (Merbitz et al., 1989; Wright and Linacre, 1989). A possible solution resides in the work of Georg Rasch, a Danish mathematician who developed a mathematical model that, among other attributes, can convert ordinal observations into linear measures if data meet model requirements (Linacre, 2004a). These linear measures are on an interval scale and would therefore be appropriate for parametric statistical analyses.In order to adequately analyze data resulting from the application of the AWMP questionnaire, data fit to the model requirements and support for the validity of intended inferences in a medical education context need to be investigated.\nStudy objectives: The primary objective of this project was to analyze the measurement properties of the \"Are We Making Progress\" questionnaire data using Rasch modeling to determine if validity evidence, based on Messick's unified view of construct validity framework, could support the interpretation of the results from the questionnaire administered in medical education contexts, more specifically in undergraduate medical education (UME) contexts (Messick, 1995; Smith, 2001). Full details on how to perform Rasch analysis can be found elsewhere (Tennant and Conaghan, 2007).\nMethods: Questionnaire\nResults: Eleven (11, 69 percent) of the 16 UME programs agreed to distribute the invitation to participate to their faculty members. A total of 491 faculty members completed the questionnaire. Incomplete but usable responses were included in the analysis.Structural aspect of construct validity\nDiscussion: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the data from the \"Are We Making Progress\" questionnaire of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program when applied to a medical education context. Our results showed that a seven-dimensional model with a four-point response scale better fit the data obtained from Canadian UME programs that participated in this study; two items were removed from the final analysis, leaving an instrument with 38 items.Our analyses found measures of internal consistencies (RSP of 0.67-0.85) comparable to the ones already published for the questionnaire when used in contexts other than UME programs (0.73-0.93) (Shortell et al., 1995; Wakefield et al., 2001; Abdulla Badri et al., 2005; Rondeau and Wagar, 2004).The validation of the AWMP questionnaire in a medical education context adds value to the questionnaire by broadening its usefulness to a broader range of environments. The use of this validated questionnaire in the exploration of the relationship between CQI orientation and organizational cultures of medical schools has been reported (Blouin, 2019). The validated questionnaire allows medical education programs to identify which dimensions associated with successful CQI implementation score lower and require more attention in their specific context. Resources can then be deployed more effectively toward the identified challenging dimensions. Additionally, medical education programs can administer the validated questionnaire longitudinally over several years to better appreciate the impact of CQI initiatives and response trends relative to each domain.Limitation and future research\nConclusions: The overall fit of the data to Rasch model requirements supports the use of person measures with parametric statistics where interval level data are assumed. The validity evidence supports the interpretation of the results from the Malcolm Baldrige \"Are We Making Progress\" questionnaire. This substantiates the value of this tool, modified with the removal of two items and rescaled to four-point, for use in contexts other than business and higher education, in this case in medical education contexts. Medical education leaders are encouraged to use this questionnaire in a serial manner to measure the progress of their school's CQI focus.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: There is a growing interest in applying continuous quality improvement (CQI) methodologies and tools to medical education contexts. One such tool, the \"Are We Making Progress\" questionnaire from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award framework, adequately captures the dimensions critical for performance excellence and allows organizations to assess their performance and identify areas for improvement. Its results have been widely validated in business, education, and health care and might be applicable in medical education contexts. The measurement properties of the questionnaire data were analyzed using Rasch modeling to determine if validity evidence, based on Messick's framework, supports the interpretation of results in medical education contexts. Rasch modeling was performed since the questionnaire uses Likert-type scales whose estimates might not be amenable to parametric statistical analyses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Leaders and teachers at 16 of the 17 Canadian medical schools were invited in 2015-2016 to complete the 40-item questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the ConQuest Rasch calibration program, rating scale model.\nFindings: 491 faculty members from 11 (69 percent) schools participated. A seven-dimensional, four-point response scale model better fit the data. Overall data fit to model requirements supported the use of person measures with parametric statistics. The structural, content, generalizability, and substantive validity evidence supported the interpretation of results in medical education contexts.\nOriginality/value: For the first time, the Baldrige questionnaire results were validated in medical education contexts. Medical education leaders are encouraged to serially use this questionnaire to measure progress on their school's CQI focus.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The North American third party logistics industry in 2004: the provider CEO perspective
|
[
"United States of America",
"Surveys",
"Distribution management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As the third party logistics (3PL) industry has continued to evolve, it has clearly become more global in nature. In responding to the needs of a customer base that is increasingly global in its sourcing, manufacturing, sales, and distribution, large 3PL service providers have been challenged to put global service networks in place. The providers have responded in a variety of ways that have included acquisitions in other countries, development of alliances with foreign providers, and initiating their own operations in new geographies. The task of designing, building, and effectively operating these broad networks around the globe is challenging, to say the least.Over the past 11 years, we have attempted to provide insights into these and other changes in the 3PL industry in the US by conducting annual surveys of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of many of the largest 3PL companies operating in the US, based on sales volume. While the CEOs surveyed were also asked questions concerning the international operations of their companies, the primary focus of the annual surveys was their operations in the US.This year, reflecting on the globalization of the industry discussed above, we decided to restructure our annual CEO surveys and focus on three separate 3PL marketplaces. The three areas selected were North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Questionnaires were developed that specifically focused on each of those regions, and the CEOs of major companies operating in each of those regions were asked to participate in the market-specific surveys. We were very fortunate that many of those individuals agreed to participate and share their perceptions of regional market dynamics with us. Collectively, the results of those three CEO surveys have allowed us to provide a truly global overview of the 3PL industry from the perspective of the CEOs of many of the major participants in the industry. This paper focuses on the North American survey.A questionnaire was developed that focused on a variety of issues in the North American 3PL industry, including the key marketplace dynamics, the industry's service offerings, the changing requirements of customers, and the current status and future prospects of the industry. The 2004 survey also gave considerable attention to such issues as the extent to which RFID technology has been embraced by North American 3PL service users, company sales strategies, and the efforts of providers to address long-standing industry problems.The CEO of each of the companies included in the survey was contacted by telephone or e-mail and asked to participate in the survey. A target group of 25 companies was contacted, and the CEOs of all of those companies agreed to participate. Twenty-three completed questionnaires were returned. The following list shows the companies that participated in the 2004 North American survey:* APL Logistics;* Cardinal Logistics;* Caterpillar Logistics Services;* C.H. Robinson Co.;* DSC Logistics;* Eagle Global Logistics;* Exel Logistics;* Geo Logistics;* Kuehne & Nagel Logistics, Inc.;* Landstar;* Menlo Logistics;* NYK Logistics;* Panalpina, Inc.;* Penske Logistics;* Ryder;* Schenker;* Schneider Logistics;* Sirva Logistics;* Tibbett and Britten Group, North America;* TNT Logistics;* Transplace.com;* UPS Supply Chain Solutions; and* USF Logistics, Inc.Two points should be noted before proceeding. First, due to individual company policies concerning financial disclosure, some questions were not answered by all respondents. Second, in a number of instances, average industry data is presented in the paper, but there is often substantial variability around those averages. That variability reflects a number of factors, including differences in company strategies, operating policies, and markets served.\nResults: Revenues and profitability\nSummary and implications: Summary\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Our annual surveys seek to provide insight into important market dynamics, opportunities and problems in the North American third party logistics (3PL) industry, from the perspective of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of major logistics service companies. The information generated is not only useful to managers considering using such services, but also to provider CEOs to facilitate industry benchmarking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - For the past decade, that insight has been sought by conducting annual surveys of the CEOs of many of the largest 3PL companies serving North America.\nFindings: - The CEOs projected substantial revenue growth in the North American 3PL marketplace over the next three years. Their companies are becoming increasingly customer selective, and aggressively selling along customer supply chains. They are increasingly focusing attention on the possible large-scale adoption of RFID technology in the industry, and seeking ways to overcome industry pricing pressures.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This survey focused on the largest 3PL companies operating in North America. However, many small-medium size companies now participate in that market, and little work has been done to document developments in that sector of the industry. Further, little research has been conducted concerning the provision and use of 3PL services in other geographies.\nPractical implications: - As previously noted, the findings not only give insight into the industry for those considering the use of 3PL services, but also give provider CEO a means of benchmarking their companies against industry averages.\nOriginality/value: - Data generated in this survey provide a basis for comparison with that generated in our previous annual surveys, and an understanding of current 3PL market conditions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
How do not-for-profit SMEs attempt to develop a strong brand in an increasingly saturated market?
|
[
"Brand management",
"Non‐profit organizations",
"Small to medium‐sized enterprises"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Much has been written regarding the branding of large commercial organisations. In fact, it is fair to say that the majority of published brand literature focuses on product branding and large multi-national corporations; Nike and McDonalds are frequently quoted examples (Kochan, 1996; Nilson, 1998; Ries and Ries, 1999; Schroeder and Salzer-Morlin, 2006). The role of brands in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the not-for-profit sector, on the other hand, has received limited, if any, attention. Branding is a concept that is only just emerging in the not-for-profit sector (Brand Channel, 2007) and published material investigating the existence of branding and its implications to not-for-profit organisations is scarce.The motivation behind this research is therefore to remedy an apparent gap in the literature on the role of branding within small to medium-sized not-for-profit organisations, which are not part of the charity/voluntary sector. They could be, for example, a small publicly-funded not-for-profit organisation operating in the private sector, whose primary activity is the provision of services of a personal nature rather than the manufacture and distribution of goods (Baldry, 2006).With increasing numbers of not-for-profit organisations - 73,500 in the UK at the start of 2004 (National Statistics, 2006) - branding may well be a key differentiating factor to help not-for-profit SMEs survive in an increasingly saturated and demanding environment. A comprehensive review of the literature in the areas related to the study was carried out before the primary research took place, which gave a \"good basic framework to proceed further with the investigation\" (Sekaran, 2003, p. 64).\nLiterature review: Branding has existed for hundreds of years and in this time has developed into a modern concept that may be applied to products, services, companies, not-for-profit concerns and even countries (Clifton et al., 2003).While the practice of branding is over 2,000 years old (Lury, 1998) many regard it as being a predominantly twentieth century phenomenon (Lury, 1998; Schultz et al., 2002; Tokarczyk and Hansen, 2006). For example, Schultz et al. (2002, p. 4) describe the connection that the individual makes with the brand as \"a unique and amazing characteristic of recent time - a cultural and sociological phenomenon.\"Re-branding\nThe role of branding within SMEs in the not-for-profit sector: Not-for-profit organisations possess certain characteristics, which makes them different to commercial organisations. Examples in the public sector proposed by Octon (1983, p. 34) may be the \"problematic formation and evaluation of strategies concerning social objectives; they need to serve many publics, often on a non-discriminatory basis, and a lack of continuity of policies due to changing political environment.\" With this in mind, \"it may not be possible to transfer conventional marketing theory and practices between the two sectors\" (Octon, 1983, p. 34). This research will examine, in the light of this, the role of branding (or its potential role) for not-for-profits, focusing on SMEs, since SMEs constitute the majority of this sector (Tan, 2003).The \"product\" offering\nResearch methodology: Aim\nEthical issues: Since this study takes the phenomenological research approach it deals with information that can be \"value-laden, personal, judgemental, and frequently, politically sensitive\" (Jankowicz, 2005). Hence, ethical issues are a very important aspect. Permission was obtained from respondents prior to the interviews taking place and they were reminded before, during and after the interview that company and individuals names would remain confidential and that the information provided would be used for the purpose of the academic research only. In order to adhere to this confidentiality, where respondents made direct reference to their organisation's identity, names were blocked out.\nData analysis and findings: Brand development\nDiscussion: Brand development within not-for-profit SMEs\nImplications of the model: Brand drivers\nConclusion: This study has demonstrated that branding is in existence at varying levels in not-for-profit SMEs, although for others it could mean entering into uncharted waters. Bennett and Gabriel (2000) in their UK study of the use of branding in the not-for-profit sector found many organisations not to be making efficient use of branding techniques. The model presented in this study attempts to clarify the apparent elements within the branding process for not-for-profit SMEs and demonstrate how they are all inextricably linked. It seeks to highlight the various steps, influences and barriers that a not-for-profit SME may encounter during the branding process.The academic literature review found no available research on the role of brands within not-for-profit SMEs not constituting part of the charity/voluntary sector. In fact a number of gaps were revealed concerning the role of branding in commercial sector SMEs and the role of branding in the not-for-profit sector as separate areas.In essence, this study sought to explore how not-for-profit SMEs develop their brands to begin to remedy a gap in the current literature. The findings have enabled implications to be considered and conclusions drawn, which show evidence of similarities between the more conventional models of branding, whilst also revealing new findings not currently in the literature. The objectives of the study, which the researchers set out to achieve, have been aided by the development of two models. As well as the intended development of the model identifying the role of branding within not-for-profit SMEs this study also encouraged the development of and an unanticipated additional model for brand development. However, since this area of research is very new further investigation is needed as suggested in the recommendations for further study.Limitations of the study\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The motivation behind this research is to remedy a gap in the literature on the role of branding within small to medium-sized not-for-profit organisations that are not part of the charity or voluntary sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To understand the role precisely, a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with not-for-profit small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) was undertaken. The study identifies how these organisations develop their brands and the role that branding plays within such organisations. Two new models are presented to visually demonstrate the processes - a brand development matrix as a guide to the brand development decision process, and a focal model for the role of branding within not-for-profit SMEs.\nFindings: - Significantly, the study finds that employees play an important role as \"ambassadors\" of the brand. Forging links and working in partnerships were found to be exceptionally valuable in helping the organisations establish \"a name\" as well as raising awareness. Consequently, associations linked to the brand come from interactions that customers and other stakeholders have had with employees.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study was qualitative and, therefore, more subjective in nature.\nPractical implications: - This study sought to explore how not-for-profit SMEs develop their brands to begin to remedy a gap in the current literature. The objectives of the study that the researchers set out to achieve have been aided by the development of two new models. The findings show evidence of similarities between the more conventional models of branding, whilst also revealing new findings not currently in the literature.\nOriginality/value: - The horizon for not-for-profit organisations is changing. This has put increasing pressure on such organisations to establish \"a name\" for themselves. Although a considerable amount has been published on the role of branding in large commercial organisations, the researchers believe this is the first study to explicitly explore the role of branding to not-for-profit SMEs (not part of the charity/voluntary sector).\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Team-based production in the Swedish manufacturing industry: Creating favorable learning conditions
|
[
"Team working",
"Production management",
"Team learning",
"Learning methods",
"Sweden"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Questions about learning, education and competence development in working life have been given increased importance in recent years and there is a widespread belief among decision makers and researchers that learning and competence development are essential for productivity, competitiveness and innovation in organizations.\nUnderstanding team-based production: An appropriate use of case studies can contribute to an increased understanding of team-based production. The following observations are based on three case studies of manufacturing companies in Sweden:1. a mechanical company;2. an engineering company; and3. a telecommunications company.The design of the team-based organization\nChallenges and limitations: It is reasonable to presume that a work organization based on teams, under certain conditions, can be considered to be supportive to learning. The introduction of a team-based production, however, demonstrates important limitations in relation to the support for developmental learning.To summarize, there are several groups of conditions that can be viewed as necessary to support developmental learning in a team-based production. These include:* challenging work tasks;* development of a team leadership;* organizational climate;* design and composition of teams; and* competence development and learning support.Team-based production has been seen as a way to reconcile learning at work with increasing demands on efficient production. This issue seems to be highly relevant today as many modern work organizations are claimed to consume, rather than regenerate, their human resources.From these experiences it seems apparent that the conditions for learning in a team-based organization can be seriously eroded in intensive production settings.The challenge, in order to create favorable conditions for learning in such intensive settings, can be seen as; to set aside certain indispensable resources for learning and to argue that the gains from the economization of the production should be reinvested in forms of supportive learning and competence development.\nComment: This is a review of \"The team as a learning strategy: three cases of team-based production in the Swedish manufacturing industry\" by Henrik Kock. This article examines three manufacturing companies based in Sweden, which had recently implemented teams and team-based production. The article is clear and concise, and employs an interesting and readable style. It is of interest to senior managers and executives wishing to introduce a team-based work organization to support developmental learning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: - Questions about learning, education and competence development in working life have been given increased importance in recent years and there is a widespread belief among decision makers and researchers that learning and competence development are essential for productivity, competitiveness and innovation in organizations.\nPractical implications: - Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Impact of training and professional development on health management and leadership competence: A mixed methods systematic review
|
[
"Training",
"Professional development",
"Competence",
"Health management",
"Health leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Competent management workforces are important for driving changes in healthcare organisations. Management and leadership are two distinct disciplinary and practice areas, but which also overlap, In the healthcare sector, the dichotomy between the two concepts is increasingly narrowing due to changes in the social context of healthcare (Jennings et al., 2007). One such change is the increasing involvement of clinicians in the planning and organisation of care. There are many theories which underlie management and leadership practices. Among these are the contemporary theories typified by two leadership practices: transformational and transactional leadership. Transformational leadership empowers followers to participate in the process of transforming the organisation and initiates changes (Bass and Avolio, 1994). In contrast, transactional leadership emphasises legitimate power and respect for rules and tradition (Yukl, 1981). Some authors have connected transactional leadership style with management functions in view of the practices associated with it (Jones et al., 2000).\nMethods: Inclusion criteria\nResults: Description of studies\nDiscussion: Summary of findings\nConclusions: Implications for practice\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Training to improve health management and leadership competence is recommended. However, there is limited evidence showing the impact of training on competence. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the evidence for the impact of training and professional development on health management and leadership competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic review was conducted using a mixed-methods design. Studies using qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods design were included. The following electronic databases were searched to October 2018: CENTRAL, CINAHL, EMBASE, ERIC, NEDLINE and PsycINFO. Study eligibility and methodological quality were assessed independently by two review authors. Data from qualitative studies were synthesised using thematic analysis. For quantitative studies, odds ratio (OR) or mean difference (MD) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated for each intervention. Where appropriate, qualitative and quantitative data were integrated into a single synthesis using Bayesian methods.\nFindings: In total, 19 studies were identified for inclusion in the review. Training and professional development interventions using flexible, multiple training techniques tailored to organisational contexts can improve individual competence and performance. Such training is typified by a leadership development programme. There was insufficient evidence to determine the effects of interventions on organisational performance.\nOriginality/value: This is the first systematic review evaluating the impact of training and professional development interventions on health management and leadership competence.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Entrepreneurial capacity-building in HEIs for embedding entrepreneurship and enterprise creation - a tripartite approach
|
[
"Entrepreneurial capacity-building",
"University–business collaboration",
"Entrepreneurship education",
"Entrepreneurial learning outcomes",
"Retail education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: University autonomy enables the higher education (HE) sector to respond effectively to a rapidly changing set of demands from a broad range of stakeholders whilst ensuring that they fulfil their mission as key components of national innovation systems. Societal expectations, as reflected in the three main roles of universities, include multiple objectives with the delivery of highly skilled career-ready graduates. They also need to be prepared to serve the demands of the knowledge economy with research and development (R&D) outputs leading to technological innovation and commercial utility and an attractive learning environment that meets the needs of increasing numbers of students (Simpson and Marinov, 2015).The development of enterprising graduates from an education system is key to economic and social capacity-building that underpins a knowledge economy (Zamfir et al., 2013). Embedding an entrepreneurial mind-set and skillset throughout undergraduate and postgraduate education is key to the success of developing career-ready graduates (Bjornali and Storen, 2012). In many sectors, innovative new approaches have enabled educators to adopt different approaches, such as in retail education, for example (Grewal et al., 2018). The retailing industry, for instance is characterised by a fast pace of innovation dictated both by advances in technology, supply chain management and consumer behaviour (Roggeveen and Beitelspacher, 2018), which requires a different mind-set.More rigorous strategic planning needs to take place at an institutional, national and policy level to ensure that universities adequately prioritise, resource and develop core dimensions of entrepreneurial capacity-building (Towers et al., 2019). These include embedding entrepreneurial learning in curricula design and personal development frameworks, the development of university-enterprise collaboration for gaining applied knowledge and developing enterprise incubation capacity. The pedagogy concentrates on enterprise formation and opportunity exploitation processes with students developing an entrepreneurial mentality, together with an agility in responding to challenges, and to cope with and enjoy uncertainty, as well as enhancing their tolerance to risk (Lourenco et al., 2013).Developing enterprising behaviours, attributes, skills and competences such as creative thinking, communication, problem-solving, decision-making, opportunity-seeking, autonomy and self-confidence are essential HEI objectives in supporting entrepreneurial career paths and opportunity recognition processes.The aim of this paper is to conceptualise entrepreneurial capacity-building as an integrated approach within the international HE sector. The paper firstly presents a rationale for embedding entrepreneurship education into the HEI curricula and assesses the challenges in the implementation of institutional strategies. Reference to the retail sector is used to show the relevance and need for the tripartite approach. The paper then argues the merits of a tripartite approach as an integrated solution and introduces a novel methodology for its implementation. The integrated approach is built on developing entrepreneurial learning outcomes across programme curricula, physical growth hubs as a space to facilitate university-enterprise collaboration and linked with start-up enterprise incubator activity.\n2. Literature review: The need for a tripartite approach to enterprise education is borne out of the need to address the rapidly changing demands from a broad range of stakeholders (such as academics, students, funding bodies, governments and the expectation in society). These demands include key components of national innovation systems. At the core of an HE institution's (HEI's) missions is the delivery of highly skilled career-ready graduates who will be prepared for the demands of the knowledge economy, the development of R&D outputs leading to technological innovation and commercial utility and an attractive learning environment, which meets the needs of increasing numbers of students (Simpson and Marinov, 2015). The development of enterprising graduates from an education system is key to the economic and social capacity-building that underpins a knowledge economy. The study of how new enterprises are created and the mind-set and skillset necessary to understand how to start and sustain a new business proposition is the basis for entrepreneurship (Ahsan et al., 2018). Embedding entrepreneurial, knowledge, skills and competencies throughout undergraduate and postgraduate education in a tripartite approach is key to the success of developing career-ready graduates.There is a need to move away from generic to contextualised approaches towards entrepreneurship teaching and learning education (Mehlhorn et al., 2015; Lourenco et al., 2013). Business schools, the traditional providers of entrepreneurial education, have tended to provide standardised approaches that are not relevant to all students across different disciplines (Gunn et al., 2017), which can create barriers to the effective embedding of entrepreneurial education in non-business fields, including for example humanities, arts and agriculture, that show considerably higher propensities towards graduate entrepreneurship (Zamfir et al., 2013). Best practice models towards delivering entrepreneurship education in non-business fields remain a subject of debate. Whilst Mehlhorn et al. (2015) advocated highly contextualised approaches towards entrepreneurship education that address specific competitive and risk factors, Lourenco et al. (2013) recommended an 80/20 approach with business schools delivering the majority of input focusing on transferable knowledge and skills.The proposed tripartite approach outlined within the paper provides a mechanism to promote an entrepreneurial education within a disciplinary or cross-disciplinary context more reflective of reality. The approach reconceptualises the entrepreneurial learning context as well as the role and contribution of staff, students and external industry partners into what has been referred to as \"a pattern of activities that is dynamic, recursive, and immersed in entrepreneurial practice\" (Shepherd, 2015, p. 489). The tripartite approach seeks value in the combination of integrated experiences typified by an empirical approach, rather than a theoretical reductionist approach.Many existing approaches are underperforming. Shim et al. (2002) suggested that leadership styles are influenced by various factors such as personal values, job characteristics, job satisfaction, organisational commitment, career progression and personal demographic characteristics. But, these factors alone fail to recognise the need for interactive approaches to education. Fischbach and Guerrero (2018) proposed the introduction of digital tools, such as mobile devices, to enhance education citing the retail sector as a case in point. Further, Sternquist et al. (2018) highlighted the need for stimulation of creativity in problem-solving to address the challenges posed by innovation in industry. Graduates have shown a lack of business and entrepreneurship knowledge and skills, limited entrepreneurial mind-set and limited interest in accessing financing and business support (Piperopoulos, 2012). To address these shortcomings, there is a need for a novel entrepreneurial framework. Entrepreneurial curricula development, enterprise skills and incubation creation and university-enterprise cooperation are already well understood (Zamfir et al., 2013), and combining them into a tripartite approach will provide a holistic and integrated approach. The tripartite approach in Figure 1 below is built on combining entrepreneurial learning outcomes embedded within disciplinary curricula, physical growth hubs as spaces to facilitate university-enterprise collaboration with external stakeholders and skills for enterprise creation. Facilitative components, which are not new but are integrated innovatively within the tripartite approach, focus on the entrepreneurial process that is influenced by the active participants within the facilitated learning environment. Cross-disciplinary entrepreneurial learning outcomes within an experiential learning environment involving active and meaningful collaboration between industry and the university is at the core of the tripartite approach. 2.1 Emerging entrepreneurs\n3. Discussion: HEIs worldwide are facing challenges of relevance. As societies and economies develop, HEIs are being asked to equip their students and graduates with the knowledge, skills and competencies required for the modern work environment and to create knowledge and solutions to many emerging societal problems. Learning must be informed and relevant to the modern work environment creating entrepreneurial and innovative students and graduates with the tools to contribute to society at large. The following discussion will address each proposition. 3.1 Entrepreneurship education to develop entrepreneurial skill and mind-set (P1)\n4. Conclusion and implications for further research and practice: An initial review of literature of entrepreneurship education and case studies of HE approaches has highlighted five main challenges with regard to the successful implementation of such programmes. Firstly, attempts by HEIs to embed entrepreneurship education show varying levels of sophistication and often fail to achieve their objectives due to a lack of funding or commitment of key individuals (Saad and Ariffin, 2016; Rae et al., 2012). Secondly, to develop entrepreneurial skills in graduates and nurture an entrepreneurial mind-set, a paradigm shift is required to move away from general management education to entrepreneurship education (Mehlhorn et al., 2015). Thirdly, this presents the challenge of delivering entrepreneurship education that is sufficiently contextualised to meet the needs of specific sectors (Lourenco et al., 2013). The fourth challenge rests in the level of sophistication of pedagogic models and the current understanding of their effectiveness (Fretschner and Weber, 2013). Finally, existing contributions or case examples address the different dimensions of entrepreneurship education in part, by separately focusing on either university-business collaboration, business incubation initiatives or pedagogical issues in the promotion of graduate entrepreneurship. The fifth challenge relates to an integrated approach that combines all three dimensions and thus delivers a holistic approach towards entrepreneurial capacity-building, which does not currently appear to exist (see also Nayyar et al., 2013; Varblane and Mets, 2010).The five challenges have identified a research gap that underpins an integrated approach throughout the whole learning journey in entrepreneurial education. The tripartite framework for entrepreneurial capacity-building can foster graduate entrepreneurship, university-business collaboration and business incubation within one strategic framework. We have made reference to the retail sector to show relevance and support for the need of the tripartite approach. By combining the expertise across an HEI, the development and implementation of the tripartite approach is capable of overcoming fundamental challenges associated with embedding entrepreneurial activity and will have significant impact at the national and international level.Future research should seek to gain a greater understanding of implementing the tripartite framework and investigate the design of multi-level (i.e. network, institutional and programme) learning outcome programme plans, embedded sustainable state-of-the-art and targeted entrepreneurial learning pedagogies for the training and development of university staff and the development of physical growth hub spaces.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to conceptualise entrepreneurial capacity-building as an integrated approach within the international higher education sector. Whilst university-enterprise collaboration is recognised as being essential to promoting graduate employability and entrepreneurship, the lack of an integrated approach towards embedding entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial capacity-building with an entrepreneurial skill and mind-set prevails in the higher education sector. With reference to the retail sector, increasingly competitive job markets and the need for entrepreneurial capacity-building place growing pressures on universities to nurture career-ready graduates with entrepreneurial acumen.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The theoretical paper presents a rationale for embedding entrepreneurship education into university curricula and for promoting university-business collaboration. Secondly, it reviews the extent to which entrepreneurial capacity-building is institutionally embedded to foster graduate entrepreneurship, university-business collaboration and business incubation within one strategic framework. Finally, the paper proposes five propositions within a tripartite approach that can foster graduate entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial skills and mind-set, useful for existing enterprises and start-ups. The implications for these propositions are discussed.\nFindings: The authors propose five propositions with a tripartite approach that can foster graduate entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial skill and mind-set, skills for creating enterprises and university-enterprise collaboration within one strategic framework.\nPractical implications: Increasingly competitive job markets and the need for entrepreneurial capacity-building place growing pressures on universities to nurture career-ready graduates with entrepreneurial acumen in social science (e.g. retail, business management and accountancy) and science (e.g. pharmacy, architecture and engineering) programmes centred within the tripartite approach.\nOriginality/value: Whilst university-enterprise collaboration is recognised as being essential to promoting graduate employability and entrepreneurship, the tripartite integrated approach embeds entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial capacity-building with an entrepreneurial skillset and mind-set in the international higher education sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Employee job performance: The interplay of leaders' emotion management ability and employee perception of job characteristics
|
[
"Job characteristics",
"Organizational citizenship behaviours",
"Employee job performance",
"Leader emotion management ability",
"India"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others -Jack Welch.Research has explored the role of moods and emotions in leadership and highlighted the vital role of emotion intelligence in leadership effectiveness (Rosete and Ciarrochi, 2005). As is evident, employee performance at workplace depends upon a number of factors such as nature of the job, organizational environment, workload, rewards, and fairness (Judge et al., 2002; Naqshbandi and Kaur, 2014). More importantly, a leader plays a critical role in employee performance. Since a leader gives meaning or shapes to the \"reality\" in which an employee performs, employee performance is rooted not only in her job (job characteristics) but also in the leader's attribute of emotion management ability (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006).\n2. Literature review and theoretical background: Leader's EMA\n3. Methods: Sample and procedures\n4. Data analysis and findings: Psychometric properties\n5. Discussion: Research has examined the role of emotions at different levels, ranging from the country level (Hasani et al., 2016) to the individual level (Ashkanasy and Humphrey, 2011). In this paper, we introduced a model on leader's EMA and employee job performance and tested it in the Indian context. The findings demonstrate that leader's EMA affects employee's extra-role behavior (OCB) and task performance positively while it relates negatively to WDB. Results also showed a significant relationship between EMA of a leader and employee's perception of job characteristics.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of emotion management ability of leaders on employee job performance by highlighting the mediating role of employee perception of job characteristics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Hypotheses were developed and tested using multi-source data collected from 65 dyads of heads of department and their subordinates.\nFindings: Results show that leaders' emotion management ability relates positively to employee job performance, and that this relationship is mediated by employees' perception of job characteristics.\nResearch limitations/implications: Cross-sectional data were used to test the hypotheses. Generalizability of the findings is limited as the sample is taken from only one industry in India.\nOriginality/value: The findings contribute to HRM and leadership literature. The study has implications for jobs that require a high degree of interpersonal interaction with subordinates. Unique value also lies in the context of the study as this study is one of the first to explore the phenomenon in India.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effective performance feedback for learning in organizations and organizational learning
|
[
"Organizational learning",
"Performance",
"Leadership",
"Communication",
"Appraisal",
"Learning organizations",
"Performance appraisal"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: It is well known that effective performance feedback is the architecture for learning organizations to maintain high quality of performance and work life. Yet before performance feedback can be applied for such organization wide objectives, a well-planned system must be created that enhances worker and organizational performance. An organizational structure promoting performance feedback is mandatory. Too often, performance feedback is positioned as a stand-alone human resources process. In brief, there must be an organizational chain linking individual worker performance with overall strategic objectives, including quality of work-life (Senge, 1990).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The article aims to describe a comprehensive performance feedback system that will enhance organizational learning and development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This model is based on a review of best feedback practices and theory.\nFindings: - Good performance feedback must be part of an overall organizational strategy.\nPractical implications: - Effective worker performance feedback provides a strong base for a learning organization.\nOriginality/value: - The paper recasts worker performance feedback into a holistic, open loop learning system for organizational development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Redrawing medical professional domains: New doctors, shifting boundaries, and traditional force fields
|
[
"Emergency services",
"Hospitals",
"Medical management",
"The Netherlands"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The debate on shifting boundaries between healthcare occupations in Europe (Buchan and O'May, 2002) triggers questions about the processes by and conditions under which the shifting occurs (e.g. Fitzgerald and Ferlie, 2000; Nancarrow and Borthwick, 2005). This paper reports the appropriation of a new medical occupation, an innovation that required the redrawing of the profession's structure.Similar organizations can appropriate innovations differently as the new is linked to and integrated with the old (Van de Ven et al. 1999, p. 55). Moreover, there is a growing recognition that innovations do not terminate with implementation. In an institutionalised, multi-professional setting, Bridges et al. (2007) showed that a work role can be implemented while its boundaries and practices remain emergent and innovatory for a long time. Part of their explanation is that new work roles are innovations of a less concrete nature than technological innovations; this increases the likelihood of a complex \"innovation journey\". Following Ferlie et al. (2005) we want to add that in a multidisciplinary system, cognitive and social boundaries between occupational groups slow down the innovation spread. Moreover, a new medical role's appropriation involves redrawing structural boundaries that, in an institutionalised setting, refer to professions' domains and will be political in nature. Ormrod et al. (2007) stressed the role of ideological power in the diffusion of new work practices. Institutionalized boundaries between occupational groups can be seen as part of the legitimizing structures (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Abbott, 1988); they thus constitute power (Freidson, 1970). This raises the question \"under which conditions a new occupational group will bring about the redrawing of professional domain boundaries in a multidisciplinary, institutionalized work setting?\"Since 1997, partly following public complaints about fragmented care, Dutch hospitals have put effort into creating intermediary occupations that integrate care and reduce specialization. Intermediary occupations especially affect institutionalized professional boundaries. Therefore, we focused on the appropriation of an intermediary occupation, the so-called emergency physician. We studied the appropriation of this non-specialist, cross-disciplinary medical occupation in five Dutch emergency care units (ECUs). Emergency Physicians (EPs) represent a case of vertical differentiation (non-specialist senior doctors) and horizontal integration (cross-disciplinary). This implies that EPs cross professional boundaries. The new occupation questions existing medical professions' domains and the accompanying division of tasks, authorities and responsibilities: Should non-specialists be allowed to autonomously see patients in a secondary care setting? Is it acceptable that a multidisciplinary physician provides care to patients who were formerly \"owned\" by a specialty?This paper shows the local forces at work during the appropriation and analyses subsequent differences in the extent to which this new occupation manages to shift professional boundaries.In analysing the forces at work we draw on force field analysis (Lewin, 1951) and social-organizational risk analysis (van Offenbeek and Koopman, 1996) as will be explained below. Section 2 describes the EPs' development in The Netherlands and compares it with the UK, who acted as pioneers within Europe. Then the research method is introduced and subsequently the results are presented in section 4. Based on the forces locally experienced in the five appropriation processes, section 5 reflects on the different extents to which professional boundaries were redrawn and how this may be explained by the local forces. This leads to propositions about conditions that may enable or constrain the redrawing of professional domain boundaries.\n2. The development of Dutch emergency physicians: ECUs in The Netherlands are organized as hospital facilities where doctors of different specialties and levels of seniority see their acute patients, diagnose them and decide on initial treatment. Specialties like surgery obtain many patients from the ECU, which hence plays an important role for generating income. In teaching hospitals, ECUs are an important training location for major specialties' residents. This organizational set-up has its drawbacks when it comes to efficiently delivering high quality care under changing conditions.2.1 Changes in patient demand and labour supply\n3. Method: 3.1 Case selection\n4. Results: As stated earlier, mere EP presence does not contribute to significant changes in organizational performance, although EPs deliver sufficient medical quality (Kathan, 2007; Gans et al., 2008). It is our understanding that the performance expectations were not met because boundaries were not or only partly redrawn. We show this by comparing the cases' local EP implementation contexts, the resulting changes in work structures and the implementation processes (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991). Below we first describe the cases' context and the resulting changes in terms of the three professional boundary domains. Then the implementation processes are compared.4.1 Change context\n5. Discussion: It was our intention to investigate the conditions under which and the domains in which an occupational innovation brings about redefined work roles in work systems within a multi-professional, institutionalized setting. In our comparative study of emergency care units, we analysed driving and restraining forces of the implementation process of a new medical occupation and we showed the extent to which they led to the local re-construction of occupational boundaries in order to enhance patient care.While EPs are able to deliver appropriate medical quality, they mostly do not go along with other expected improvements, e.g. shorter waiting and treatment times, because their envisioned role was appropriated to different - often limited - extents in the cases studied. It is our proposition that real organizational improvement can only be achieved if EPs substitute residents, interns, and specialists and independently treat routine patient streams. When the new doctors solely form an additional care layer, organizational performance can even get worse.Professional role development requires the construction of position and boundaries (Oliver and Montgomery, 2005). Here, the appropriated positions and domains differ greatly across the cases. This finding is in line with appropriation theory (e.g. Barley, 1986; DeSanctis and Poole, 1994). It is specifically interesting why in the \"linking of the new with the old\" (Van de Ven et al., 1999), assimilation wins over accommodation; i.e. boundaries in most cases remain largely unaffected by the newcomers - or even get reinforced - instead of being redrawn. In our cases, unlike Oliver and Montgomery's, the settings are already well-structured. Enacting the EPs' envisioned role would affect the other professions' authority, knowledge, and patient domains. Consequently, while the functional need for change was voiced unequivocally, we found local, mainly socio-political forces which strongly affect conditions that seem crucial for explaining the differences in appropriation:* the implementation's transition logic;* the differentiation and boundary permeability in large teaching versus small non-teaching hospitals; and* the ideological power developed through change leadership.5.2 Implementation's transition logic\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to investigate the forces that influence the shifting of professional boundaries on the entry of a new medical occupation in Dutch hospitals - non-specialist emergency physicians.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Five case studies of Dutch hospitals were conducted and the emergency physicians' implementation process was analyzed by means of force field analysis.\nFindings: - Emergency physicians were conceptualized as being the answer to unequivocal contextual changes. However, their contribution to better performance varies due to problems in the implementation process. Strong socio-political forces between traditional specialties and these new doctors mediate the intended improvement. The emergency physicians aim to establish their own organizational-, patient- and knowledge-domain by redrawing professional boundaries but they are not on a par with the specialists who set these boundaries. Consequently, emergency physicians only gradually redraw the existing boundaries, resulting in limited added value. Their reaction is to obtain power by striving to develop into a recognized specialty; ironically, by becoming an additional layer in the traditional medical hierarchy they might lose their envisaged added value.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper is based on the first Dutch hospitals that implemented emergency physicians. The number of cases is therefore limited. Moreover, the study took place at an early stage of emergency physician implementation.\nPractical implications: - The extent of successful redrawing depends on the implementation's transition logic, the existing degree of differentiation and boundary permeability and on the ideological power developed by the leaders.\nOriginality/value: - The introduction of emergency physicians is currently being discussed in many countries worldwide, and some countries consider following the Dutch example of non-specialist doctors. This paper supports health professionals and hospital managers in not falling prey to the same pitfalls as some Dutch hospitals.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Foreign direct investment and the law in Nigeria: a legal assessment
|
[
"Nigeria",
"FDI",
"Multinational corporations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This article aims to critically evaluate the laws and agencies that regulate foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria. The purpose of this evaluation is to ascertain how the legal framework is being utilized to foster the requisite attainment of sustainable development in Nigeria. Subsequently, the prevailing issues for determination in this research are whether the legal machinery for FDI is sufficient to obtain a viable and meaningful influx of FDI. In essence, this article focuses on the legal barriers in the different sectors or segments of the Nigerian economy highlighting their various regulatory frameworks. The agricultural, steel, banking, employment and oil sectors will be in focus in this article.\n2. History of company law and rise of multinational corporations in Nigeria: Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the pre-colonial Nigerian occupations included agriculture, hunting, cattle rearing and trading amongst others (Orojo, 1992). With the abolition of slave trade, and the establishment of British rule over Nigeria in the nineteenth century, legitimate trade grew tremendously (Orojo, 1992). Prior to 1912, when the Companies Ordinance was enacted, there were no local laws regulating the activities of companies in Nigeria and these companies were foreign with their inherent status (Orojo, 1992; Amao, 2008).\n3. Post-colonial legal developments in Nigeria: Nigeria attained its independent status from Great Britain on 1 October 1960. Because of the prevailing nationalist bent of that era, multinational companies were seen as seen as stumbling blocks to true economic independence of African states including Nigeria (Onimode, 1978). Nigeria promulgated a plethora of legislation to minimise the growth of multinational corporations and some of the laws enacted in the 1960s include the Exchange Control Act 1962[1] and the Immigration Act 1963. The Immigration Act in Section 8(1) (b) provides thus:\n4. FD1 in the agricultural sector: Nigeria is a major recipient of FDI in Africa, and is one of the top three leading African countries that have frequently attracted FDI in recent years. Recently, Nigeria has become the number one destination of FDI in Africa overtaking South Africa (Mordi, 2013). According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria received FDI of over $67 billion between 2000 and 2013 (Udunze, 2014). However, the level of FDI attracted to the agricultural sector is relatively low compared to the resource base and potential need. Nigeria's share of FDI inflow to Africa was about 20.68 per cent between 1976 and 2007 (Ajuwon and Ogwumike, 2013). In 2007, the percentage of agricultural investment stood at a shocking 0.37 per cent (Ajuwon and Ogwumike, 2013).\n5. FDI in the mining sector: The Nigerian Solid Minerals Sector is regulated by the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act of 2007. The 2007 Act repealed the earlier Minerals and Mining Act of 1999. The legislation controls all aspects of the exploration and exploitation of solid minerals in Nigeria and for related purposes. Section 1 of the Act states that control of property in minerals and water amongst others is vested in the state. The Act provides that the entire property and all mineral resources under or upon any land in Nigeria, its contiguous continental shelf and all rivers as well as any area covered by its territorial waters shall be vested in the Nigerian government. Section 2 of the Act prohibits the exploration or exploitation of minerals without lawful authority. It states that no person shall search for or exploit mineral resources in Nigeria or divert or impound water for the purpose of mining except as provided by the Act. The Act also provides that in respect of reconnaissance, exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in Nigeria shall apply to radioactive minerals with such modifications as may be determined by health and public policy considerations.\n6. FDI in the banking sector: The Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) regulates the banking sector in Nigeria[4]. The Act empowers the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to carry out all functions and activities that are necessary for the smooth running of the banking sector in the country by virtue of section. Therefore, the CBN is the banker's bank, and is vested with power to act as an agent for the federal, state or local governments of Nigeria[5].\n7. FDI in the employment sector: The foremost Nigerian legislation that caters to the needs of workers in employment is the Labour Act[6]. The Act is divided into four parts. Part one deals with general provisions on protection of wages, contracts of employment and terms and conditions of employment. Part two lays out guidelines for recruiters and recruiting generally. Part three of the Act focuses on the special classes of workers and other miscellaneous provisions. Part four, which is the last part of the legislation, focuses on other supplemental concerns such as records and returns, administration and functions of workers in labour officers. Section 1 (1) (a) (b) of the Labour Act stipulates that the wages of a worker shall in all contracts be made payable in legal tender; if the contract is made payable in any other manner it will be deemed to be illegal, null and void. The employer may provide food, a dwelling place or any other allowance or privilege as part of the worker's remuneration[7]. However, the Act prohibits an employer from paying a worker's wages or remuneration by giving the worker any intoxicating liquor or noxious drug[7]. These legal provisions appear to be quite ideal and indicate that the needs of the Nigerian worker is being promoted and protected. Hence, it is pertinent to assess the condition of the Nigerian labour force.\n8. FDI in the oil sector: In recent years, FDI inflow to West Africa has been largely dominated by inflow to Nigeria. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) records that, in 2007, Nigeria received 70 per cent of the sub-regional total inflow and 11 per cent of Africa's total Inflow (UNCTAD, 2008). Nigeria's oil sector received an estimated 90 per cent of the total investment (UNCTAD, 2008). The oil and gas industry in Nigeria is predominantly composed of multinational corporations operating in joint venture arrangements with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) (Kareem et al., 2012). The major oil companies investing in the Nigerian oil sector include Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and its subsidiaries, Chevron and its subsidiaries, Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), Mobil (Exxon-Mobil), Elf, Total, among others (Amaduobogha, 2009). Multinational corporations are endowed with legal status by virtue of the Petroleum Act[8] and the Oil Pipelines Act[9][10] of Nigeria. Arguably, these two statutes are the most important legislation regulating Nigeria's oil sector. It is argued that both statutes have been ineffectual in regulating the oil industry. In respect of the Oil Pipelines Act, the definition of compensation and circumstances it may be enforced are not clearly stated. Also, the Petroleum Act, on the other hand, lacks explicit provisions on penalties or sanctions.\n9. Legal barriers to FDI in the oil sector: There are many legal barriers inhibiting FDI in oil sector in Nigeria. This article will focus on compensation, inadequate provisions of the Petroleum Act and the Local Content Act. The next sub-section focuses on the compensation conundrum in the oil sector in Nigeria.\n10. Conclusion: There are several laws that govern the different sectors of the country's economy. The agricultural, banking, steel, employment and oil sectors were examined in this article. A close inspection will reveal that the statutes are beset with some limitations that impede the meaningful application of FDI. It is respectfully submitted that an amendment of the extant laws regulating the different sectors is necessary to encourage social and corporate responsibility; and improve and promote the inflow of FDI to the country.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore the laws that govern Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria. The history of company law and the rise of multinational corporations clearly illustrate the attempts by the Nigerian Government to encourage the inflow of FDI. The different stages of Nigeria's legal development will be examined in this paper and subsequently an assessment of the laws regulating FDI in the different investment sectors will be in focus.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses a doctrinal approach by undertaking a sectorial analysis of different sectors or segments of the Nigerian economy highlighting their various regulatory frameworks. The agricultural, steel, banking, employment and oil sectors is focussed in this paper.\nFindings: This paper demonstrates that for FDI to have positive impacts on the different sectors of the Nigerian economy, the various laws regulating the different sectors should be amended to reflect current realities.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a fresh illumination or analysis to the legal barriers inhibiting FDI in Nigeria. It does this by highlighting the various laws affecting FDI in different sectors of the Nigerian economy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Predictors of users' preferences for online health services
|
[
"MHealth",
"Rational choice theory",
"Transformative service research",
"EHealth",
"Discriminant analysis",
"Online health-care service quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As a human asset indicator, health is a crucial factor not only for economic prosperity but also for a socially productive life and personal comfort (United Nations, 2018). One of the critical targets for every emerging economy is to improve health conditions. Bangladesh, like other emerging countries, is stepping ahead to meet the growing demand for digital health services using online health information, online prescriptions and online health communities. The promises of the government regarding digitalization and the ubiquitous acceptance of information and communication technology (ICT) induce communication media to offer online health services effectively and efficiently for health-care consumers in the country. Because significant developments regarding the integration of ICT have reached almost all sectors in Bangladesh (a2i, 2018), it is desirable to blend these advantages into electronic health (eHealth) sectors to offer a new hospital design and a new protocol for patient information and service delivery.\n2. Factors driving online health consumer preferences: the study framework: Unlike traditional service quality, which can be measured objectively by SERVQUAL dimensions (i.e. tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) (Parasuraman et al., 1988), Web-based service quality requires efficient online communications between customers and companies that may be difficult to measure (Parasuraman et al., 2005). Conversely, the majority of online service quality factors are more relevant to Web designers than Web users. Li et al. (2002) define Web-based service quality as \"the extent to which services based on web technology facilitate effective and efficient online communications, purchases or use and delivery of products/services to target audiences.\" Hence, this study is grounded in pioneering scholarship on the measures of rational choice theory (RCT) (Becker, 1978), TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and TAM (Davis, 1989) that have been developed to explain the adoption and use of new technologies. In RCT, the rational choice action is motivated by the self-interest of the individual, who analyzes the service values and service sacrifices of alternative actions and choose the best alternative. However, this paradigm separates individual decisions from external phenomena in the marketplace. Moving forward, TRA explains the relationship between attitudes and behaviors. Evidence suggests that behavior can be predicted more accurately from attitudes than subjective norms (Sheeran et al., 1999). In TAM, which is an adaptation of TRA in the field of information systems, attitude reflects a user's behavioral intention to use information systems. Hence, the subsequent dimensions contribute to the realm of intersection of the study of information systems and of marketing.\n3. Discriminant analysis model and hypotheses development: To analyze data when the dependent variable is categorical (i.e. one group of participants who frequently access online health services and another group who do not) and the independent variables are interval or metric scale, the appropriate method is two-group discriminant analysis (Malhotra, 2010). The following equation represents the revised model:\n4. Methodology: Secondary research was first conducted to determine whether existing studies are sufficient to cover the objectives of this study. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of published research in this area. Thus, this study is grounded in survey data obtained from online health users in a suburban area: Kotbari, Comilla, Bangladesh. A non-probability judgmental sampling technique was adopted to collect data in the year 2018. The study planned for 250 samples because of resource and time constraints. However, only 215 cases were used as a full sample to analyze the discriminant model. The sample size is adequate based on the sample characteristics and the number of variables used in this study.\n5. Data analysis and results: Table I summarizes the demographic data of the respondents. The number of male respondents (152) was greater than the number of female respondents (63). In age, 66 per cent of the respondents were less than 30 years old. Of the 215 respondents, 55.3 per cent were middle-income earners whose monthly income ranged from BDT30,000 to BDT60,000. Almost all respondents were internet users. The survey found that the majority of the respondents (61.9 per cent) frequently accessed online health-care services.\n6. Discussions and implications: Online health services, once promising, have become a basic human requirement, yet they remain a challenge in many developing countries, including South Africa, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Successful implementation of online health services depends on the conditions and characteristics of end users (Zeithaml et al., 2000; Zeithaml, 2002). Service providers need to understand what influences health consumers as access-activators to increase the access rate for online health services. Businesses should also be aware of access-inhibitors, which deter potential users from accessing online health services. To explain service quality factors, this study correctly classified patients' choices between using existing services and declining to use them. The discriminant function coefficient was estimated correctly. Based on this study, several recommendations can be advanced.\n7. Limitations and directions for future research: The discriminant model developed in this study offers policymakers, managers and health-care providers with an understanding of how perceptions of online health service quality interact in predicting users' preferences for accessing the services. Although previous research in developing contexts has focused on factors influencing the adoption of eHealth (Hoque et al., 2017) and consumer acceptance of eHealth (Hossain et al., 2017), no research to date has directly examined their role in discriminating between frequent online health users and infrequent online health users. This association is one of the significant challenges for identifying and developing the best online health practices around the world. The findings regarding such an association will facilitate decision-makers in implementing high-quality online health services, promoting a significant number of infrequent users to use the services on a more frequent and continued basis.\n8. Conclusions: Governments in emerging economies face numerous challenges and competing priorities as they attempt to meet the growing demand among patients for real-time access to online health information. In this regard, online health services are playing a significant role in shaping health-care systems to reach the root level of rural and suburban areas and to have a noticeable effect on the development of the health-care sector. In addition to the explicit primary health-care benefits they offer in rural Bangladesh (Uddin et al., 2017), online health services in developing countries are creating social value by reducing infant mortality (Venkatesh et al., 2016), minimizing rural-urban health disparities (Goh et al., 2016) and catalyzing the unmet research agenda in the TSR domain (Anderson et al., 2013). This study uses RCT to capture value from market conditions. It reveals that responsiveness stimulates online health-care solutions and acts as an access-activator, whereas lack of useful health information reduces access and works as an access-inhibitor. This work expands the scope of existing knowledge, providing valuable references for stakeholders as well as for researchers interested in online health services as well as TSR. Government, policymakers and mobile phone companies can also use the conclusions drawn here to maximize acceptance of online health services.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain predictors that discriminate users' preferences for online health services, focusing on a downtown area in a developing country.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on rational choice theory (RCT), the authors test a model that links the frequency of online health service usage to access-activators and access-inhibitors. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and the discriminant analysis model were used to analyze data from a sample of 215 internet users.\nFindings: Results confirm the significance of responsiveness, user's attitude, accessibility and perceived ease of use, indicating their discriminating role in the usage of online health services.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study demonstrates the relevance of RCT in measuring perceived online health service quality in an emerging context. Future research should consider the influence of electronic health (eHealth) literacy, norms and trustworthiness to increase the generalizability of the findings.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study can help enhance the eHealth service quality by encouraging service providers to improve the interactivity and ease of use of their platforms, thus delivering value to both consumers and firms and improving the well-being of the society at large.\nOriginality/value: Few existing studies draw attention to access-activators and access-inhibitors to predict users' preferences for online health services. This study shows the applicability of RCT in preparing the instrumental dimensions of online health service quality.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Understanding and influencing eco-luxury consumers
|
[
"Management",
"Sustainability",
"Well-being",
"Social goods",
"Environmental economics",
"Common good"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The concerns addressed by this paper fall within the broad domain of sustainability-economics, which aims at justice within \"human-nature relationships\" including intergenerational justice (Baumgartner and Quaas, 2010). Consumers of luxury products can have a negative or positive impact on future generations, depending upon their decisions to reject or embrace environmentally friendly motor vehicles. According to Baumgartner and Quaas (2010, p. 448), a central question for sustainability economics is \"How do the concepts of individual freedom, pursuance of happiness and a good life relate to individual or collective responsibilities towards future generations and nature?\" Our research reveals the motivational dynamics which decrease or increase the likelihood that consumers of luxury products will factor the needs of future generations and nature into their pursuit of happiness and a good life.\nMethodology: We conducted semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face interviews (Patton, 2002) as the major data collection instrument. The authors then used a modified form of content analysis to organise and interpret the data in relation to categories derived from self-determination theory.\nData analysis and findings: Applying self-determination theory to the chess board of motivations\nImplications: Our findings show that marketers of luxury automotive brands should aim to ensure that consumers come to identify with the environmental qualities of a particular car, and so are internally motivated to make that car part of their lifestyle. Self-determination theory provides marketers with a useful way of conceptualising consumers' needs and motivations, and therefore influencing their behaviour.\nConclusion: Self-determination theory provides a powerful array of new concepts for analysing the eco-luxury consumer group, helping to clarify our understanding of motivational differences and the influence these might have on consumption in this market. Our findings should enable marketers to develop more individualised strategies, addressing consumers in a way that targets their varying modes and levels of motivation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain how the role of marketing for luxury brands can be re-thought in order to ensure that such brands establish a strong connection between their luxury image and positive social and environmental values.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The findings are based upon qualitative empirical research which informed a new categorisation of consumer motivations, through the application of self-determination theory which shows how concerns for environmental and social sustainability can be integrated with individual psychological needs.\nFindings: The findings provide a deep understanding of consumers of luxury-eco products which could be used by marketing practitioners to shape socially responsible purchasing decisions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research was designed for theory building, not theory-testing, so future research would be needed to study the efficacy of the recommended strategies for encouraging eco-luxury behaviour.\nPractical implications: To increase the likelihood of practical applications, the authors follow the presentation of their findings with suggestions and examples for marketing to each of the consumer types identified by their research.\nSocial implications: The findings of this research have implications of a global, environmental and social kind. The societal adoption of eco-luxury consumption is about educating consumer desire, shifting it from its current focus on personal satisfaction, to a higher level of personal and social flourishing.\nOriginality/value: The findings effectively support the claims of self-determination theory by demonstrating how and why consumer motivations differ and how an improved sense of well-being can be achieved through internalised levels of self-determination.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A diagnostic approach to Weibull-Weibull stress-strength model and its generalization
|
[
"Stress (materials)",
"Strength of materials",
"Stochastic modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: While developing a new product, engineers are given the goal for the system's characteristics and must then develop a design that will achieve the desired reliability of the system. Designers aim to produce system or piece of equipment that can meet challenges, and manufacturers try their best to produce an almost perfect system or piece of equipment within the limitations of the specification, to match the expectation as stipulated for enhanced reliability. It is believed that reliability can be increased by proper periodical maintenance. So, the significance of maintenance cannot be over-emphasised. Its implications and relevance for different lifetime distributions have to be explored so that strength reliability is maximised.It is an accepted fact that no piece of equipment or system is perfect in the sense that it will continue to function (without failure) forever, however carefully it might have been designed and manufactured. However, it is assumed that the reliability of a piece of equipment or a system can be increased by proper maintenance at regular intervals. Such maintenance is known as preventive maintenance; it is done periodically before the failure of the system, and hence it is different from corrective or repair maintenance, which is carried out only after the failure of the item or the system. Barlow et al. (1965) and Ebling (1996) were of the view that preventive maintenance must not be confused with corrective maintenance, which is required to be done after the system or equipment has actually failed. A simple RMSQ model is depicted in Figure 1.The efficient working of a system or piece of equipment depends on reliability, maintainability, supportability and quality (RMSQ). These are the major issues in industrial engineering and the present paper focuses on the reliability issue.Agarwal and Kalla (1996) and Bell (1988) discussed models based on a generalized gamma distribution. Alam and Roohi (2002) discussed the problem of the strength-reliability of equipment, defined as the probability that the strength of the equipment exceeds the stress to which it is likely to be subjected. Alternatives for augmenting the exponential strength-reliability have been suggested against exponential stress.Several authors have considered different probability distributions for stress and strength. In particular, Nandi and Aich (1994) considered the following cases:* both stress and strength follow exponential distributions with different parameters; and* strength follows an exponential distribution and stress follows a Rayleigh distribution.In the present paper, we propose to study the reliability of a Weibull-Weibull stress-strength model with a different approach. In the past several decades, the maintenance and replacement problems of deteriorating systems have been studied extensively, and literature is available in abundance. Thousands of maintenance and replacement models have been formulated and analysed. However, all these models fall into one or more categories of the following maintenance policies:* age replacement policy;* random age replacement policy;* block replacement policy;* periodic preventive maintenance policy;* failure limit policy;* sequential preventive maintenance policy;* repair cost limit policy;* repair time limit policy;* repair number counting policy;* reference time policy;* mixed age policy;* preparedness maintenance policy;* group maintenance policy; and* opportunistic maintenance policy.Each kind of policy has different characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.The contents of this paper are organised as follows. Section 2 discusses general Weibull stress-strength models and various cases of the same. Section 3 provides a discussion on the models presented in Section 2. Section 4 deals with extending and generalizing the model and Section 5 is devoted to a conclusion.\n2. General Weibull stress-strength models: The use of Weibull distribution in reliability and quality control work has been advocated by Kao (1959). The distribution is often suitable where the conditions of \"strict randomness\" of the exponential distribution are not satisfied. It has also been suggested to be used as a tolerance distribution in the analysis of quantal response data. Examples of application of this distribution can be found in Plait (1962), Johnson (1966) and Jaech (1968). Different stress-strength models and their related inferences have been discussed by Kotz et al. (2003). The inference procedure of stress-strength parameter of the Weibull-Weibull model has also been proposed by Kundu and Gupta (2006) for the particular case when two parameters are equal. A simple schematic representation of the strength-stress model is presented in Figure 2.We consider the problem of finding the strength reliability of a functioning system until first failure, when both strength (X) and stress (Y) follow a Weibull distribution with the following form of PDF: Equation 1 Equation 2 Using the results of Nandi and Aich (1994), and substituting equations (1) and (2), we have: Equation 3 i.e.: Equation 4 The integral involved in equation (4) cannot be solved explicitly, in general. However, by writing the expansion of exp(-lyc) and then considering term-by-term integration, we get: Equation 5 Even this infinite sum is not of much use, in general. Hence, we consider some specific values of the shape parameters k and c, i.e.:* equal shape parameters (k=c);* the shape parameter of strength is twice that of stress (c=2k); and* the shape parameter of stress is twice that of strength (k=2c).2.1 Reliability estimation when both the shape parameters are equal\n3. Discussion: If both stress and strength follow Weibull distributions with the same shape parameter (k=c) but different scale parameters th and l, respectively, then the reliability of the strength is given by equation (5).Obviously, for th=l, P(X>Y)=0.5, which is as it should be, as it implies that events (X>Y) and (X<Y) are equally likely in the event of both stress and strength following identical Weibull distribution. For the situation th[?]l, it appears that P(X>Y) depends on the values of th and l.However we can re-write this as follows: Equation 18 i.e P(X>Y) depends on the ratio of the parameters. It is easy to see that the higher the value of th/l, the greater the value of P(X>Y). Also, any desired level of strength reliability can be achieved by having a suitable relation between th and l. For example, for P(X>Y)=0.99 we must have th=99l.It appears that fixing the parameters th and l for a desired level of reliability is independent of the shape parameter, as long as k=c. However, practically, it is not so. Suppose we know that both stress and strength follow a Weibull distribution with same shape parameter c. Obviously, the mean strength has to be greater than the mean stress in order to have a higher reliability. We know that: Equation 19 Equation 20 by the result given by Johnson et al. (1995).If we propose to have a mean strength of m times mean stress, where m>=1, we must have E(X)=mE(Y), which implies that th/l=mc, so that: Equation 21 which is a function of m and c, we get the values of P(X>Y)as given in Table I.A perusal of Table I shows that if both stress and strength follow an exponential distribution, then in order to have a reliability of 0.95 the mean strength must be 20 times the mean stress. With an increase in the value of c, a higher reliability is attained for smaller values of m, so much so that for c=3 and m=3, the strength reliability is 0.964286.For the case c=2k, the expression for the reliability of the strength is given by equation (7). Using this equation one can find, at least theoretically, the value of the parameters th and l for a given reliability level. Proceeding in the same way as for the case c=k, suppose we fix the parameters such that mean strength is m times the mean stress. Then, we must have: Equation 22 for all k and fixed m. This in turn implies that: Equation 23 For selected values of m and k, we have obtained strength reliabilities as shown in Table II. Note that the values of G[1+(x/2)] for x=0.00(0.01)2 can be obtained from Mardia and Zemrock (1978) and the values of Ph(.) from Pearson and Hartley (1958).From Table II, we note the following:* For m=1, i.e. E(X)=E(Y), the strength reliability decreases with increasing of value of k. This is because of the nature of the curve of the PDF of the Weibull distribution (the curve becomes narrower as k increases). Hence the inability of the strength to meet a stress of equal mean value. For a discussion on the shape of Weibull curve, see Johnson et al. (1995).* An increase in the value of m increases the strength reliability. It also increases when both k and m are increased simultaneously to, say, k=3 (consequently c=6) and even for m=2 the strength reliability is 0.98098.For the case k=2c (c=1, 2, ...), the expression for strength reliability is given by equation (10). Once again, it appears that the reliability of the strength is independent of c. Proceeding as before, if we let the mean strength be m times the mean stress, then we have: Equation 24 which, in turn, implies that: Equation 25 For selected values of m and c, the strength reliability is given in Table III.From Table III one can easily make the following observations:* For c=1.2, P(X>Y)<0.5 for m=1 implying that in these cases the strength is less reliable in meeting an equal average stress.* The reliability increases for an increase in c and an increase in m, i.e. having a higher mean strength always makes it more reliable. The higher the value of c, the steeper the ascent of the strength reliability. Hence we conclude that increasing the mean strength always results in improved reliability.\n4. Model extension and generalization: As yet, we have not considered repairing the unit. Now, we shall incorporate repair by assuming a repair facility. Let the repair time be random and arbitrarily distributed with a density function, say h(t).4.1 Notation\n5. Conclusion: In this paper, different cases of a Weibull-Weibull stress-strength model for reliability analysis have been considered. In the first case, both parameters of stress-strength have the same value and are independent of the distribution. In the second case, the shape parameter of the strength is assumed to be twice that of the stress, and in this case the probability will have normal distribution with different parameter values. In the third case, the shape parameter of the stress is assumed to be twice that of the strength, and the probability distribution is a parabolic cylindrical function.The model has been extended to include a repair facility so that a failed component can be repaired. The repair time is assumed to be arbitrarily distributed. The assumptions on stress, strength are also relaxed and assumed to be arbitrarily distributed. Such a generalized mode in fact provides a framework for a family of models.To summarise, there are two ways to control the strength reliability for a given Weibull stress-strength model: either choose a better Weibull model for strength or increase the mean strength with the Weibull distribution keeping the same shape parameter. Our study shows how to proceed in both cases. It is clear that the study is limited to a few special cases of Weibull-Weibull stress-strength models. It would be more challenging to continue to study the behaviour of general Weibull strength against exponential stress in particular and to identify the shape parameter c that maximises the strength reliability. Finally, the generalized model can provide solutions to a family of models for each assumption on stress-strength-repair distribution results in a specific model.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The objective of the paper is to consider the problem of the strength of a manufactured item against stress, when the component follows Weibull failure law. Different cases of stress and strength with varying parameters are discussed for the Weibull-Weibull stress-strength model considered in this paper. The application of the proposed technique will help in understanding the design methodology of the system and addressing the risks involved in perceived quality and reliability levels by eliminating or at least reducing the risk impact at the design phase.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Generalised Weibull-Weibull stress-strength models have been analysed for different cases of shape parameters for stress and strength to estimate the reliability of the system. The model is generalized using semi-regenerative stochastic processes with the help of a state space approach to include a repair facility.\nFindings: - Different cases of stress and strength with varying parameters have been discussed for the Weibull-Weibull stress-strength models considered in this paper. The results show how the stress-strength reliability model is affected by changes in the parameters of stress and strength. The application of the proposed technique will help in understanding the design methodology of the system, and also lead to the problem of addressing the risks involved in perceived quality and reliability levels by eliminating or at least reducing the risk impact in the design phase.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The present study is limited to a few special cases of Weibull-Weibull stress-strength models. The authors propose to continue to study the behaviour of general Weibull strength against exponential stress in particular and to identify the shape parameter that maximises the strength reliability.\nPractical implications: - The application of the proposed technique will help in understanding the design methodology of the system, and also lead to the problem of addressing the risks involved in perceived quality and reliability levels by eliminating or at least reducing the risk impact at the design phase. The model has been extended and generalized to include a repair facility under the assumption that all the random variables involved in the analysis are arbitrarily distributed (i.e. general).\nOriginality/value: - In the Weibull-Weibull stress-strength model of reliability, different cases have been considered. In the first case, both parameters of stress-strength have the same values and are independent of the distribution. In the second case, if the shape parameter of the strength is twice that of the stress, the probability will have a normal distribution with different parameter values. In the third case, if the shape parameter of the stress is twice that of the strength, then probability distribution is a parabolic cylindrical function. The study shows how to proceed in all cases. The model is generalized to include a repair facility, with all the random variables involved in the analysis being arbitrarily distributed using semi-regenerative stochastic processes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Need to nurture middle management: Threats to healthcare succession planning
|
[
"Succession planning",
"Morale",
"Healthcare middle management",
"Hypereffective manager",
"Middle manager development",
"Turnover costs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: No one wants their contribution at work to be taken for granted. No one wants to feel unappreciated or undervalued, ignored, rejected, shunned, or sidelined. Such neglect is even more difficult to bear - and difficult to understand - when you are part of a workforce which is so essential to the organization's success that your efforts should be celebrated, and you and your colleagues should be at the forefront of succession planning.\nFrustration leads to sliding out to isolated out-of-reach positions: The Affordable Care Act has prompted a large number of mergers within the US healthcare industry, and, to meet new challenges, hospitals have reintroduced reforms and structural changes including team-based design, inter-professional collaboration, and shared leadership that worked well in the past. Healthcare units and teams operate in environments that are largely influenced by broader institutional goals where middle managers are most needed for guiding and directing front-line teams to carry out the mission. Yet detractors have continued to call for the elimination of middle management through delayering.\nInsufficient development risks burnout and extra turnover costs: Rather than providing them with assurances, hospital administrators react harshly by typecasting middle managers as abdicators or low performers, who must be further avoided or by-passed. The constant pressure on middle managers to focus on daily routines away from strategic circles places them in sink-or-swim predicaments, creating the impression that middle management is an occupation whose autonomy is largely constrained.\nImportant for managers to communicate their indispensability: The feelings of being undervalued or unappreciated can be carried over and lead to anxiety and depression or even to becoming \"hypereffective\" - working excessively hard in an attempt to prove themselves. Hypereffectivity may sound good, as it tends to transform middle managers into conservative and overworked managers who are pushed to the limits by the expectations of those above them who demand nothing short of better results. However, the pattern of change in the tasks and responsibilities underlying the roles performed by hypereffective managers suggests a severe loss of discretionary time and an increase in the sense of powerlessness.\nComment: This review is based on \"Value in the middle: cultivating middle managers in healthcare organizations\" by Belasen and Belasen (2016). They discuss the significant role of middle managers in US healthcare organizations operating in environments of change, the importance of recognizing the conditions leading to low morale, and the rising costs of turnover and leadership discontinuity in healthcare organizations. They also address the need for building a strong talent pipeline through middle manager development.\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 combination of a greater executive span with less hierarchical depth creates a dual effect of devaluing middle management, and a decrease in middle managers' autonomy. Healthcare middle managers who stay away or lay low further trigger perceptions of low expectations leading to low morale and high levels of stress. Others become hypereffective or develop exit strategies. Major problems are rising turnover costs; and insufficient attention to succession planning, internal promotion, and leadership development.\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"
}
] |
Addressing the needs of the Millennial workforce through equine assisted learning
|
[
"Management learning",
"Management Training",
"Management education",
"Management development",
"Learning methods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nErratum: It has been brought to Emerald's attention that the following article \"Addressing the needs of the Millennial workforce through equine assisted learning\" published in the Journal of Management Development, Vol. 35 No. 3, pp. 294-303 was missing in-text citations and a reference within the bibliography. These errors were introduced in the production process.\nIntroduction to EAL: Horses throughout history have been symbols of power and leadership. They have been the deciding factor in the rise and fall of empires for thousands of years. Horses can still be influential today in the business world through EAL programs. EAL programs are cost-effective, time-efficient, and have long-term benefits for employees and businesses (Rector, 2005; Selby and Smith-Osbourne, 2013; Stock and Smith, 2013; Strozzi, 2004). Many organizations are currently using EAL to develop leadership skills and team-building skills in their managers and employees (Gehrke, 2009).\nHow Millennials are changing the workplace: The Millennials are generally referred to as those born around 1982, the same year the internet was introduced (Robinson and Stubberud, 2012). By 2025, an estimated 75 percent of the workforce will be comprised of Millennials as Generation X managers retire. Some vocational characteristics generally associated with the Millennial population are a need for flexibility and individualism at work, a high adaptability to change, and a stronger need for instant gratification and communication with managers and peers than previous generations (Robinson and Stubberud, 2012; Thompson, 2012). This presents a challenge in forming productive relationships with older coworkers and managers.\nLimitations to EAL training: Although EAL programs are growing in popularity, there are certain geographic areas where the costs of sending employees to these trainings would be too high. A resistance to experiential and novel training venues could also be a barrier for some cultures or individuals. Also, some people have aversions or allergies to animals. Some EAL programs will be able to offer indoor or covered areas to allow some programs flexibility with the weather, but other programs will be subject to weather conditions for scheduling. EAL is also a newer intervention with a small but growing amount of evidence-based practice behind it. Some employers may choose to consider experiential trainings that have a longer history of evidence-based research to support them. There is also a liability risk involved that is usually covered by the EAL provider but may cause companies to choose other learning and development activities.\nSummary: The influx of the Millennial generation into the workplace has created challenges for organizations. The common on-the-job training programs do not satisfy the new demands of this population. Millennial employees seek constant communication in the workplace, as well as coaching, mentoring, and personalized feedback from managers (Robinson and Stubberud, 2012; Thompson, 2012). These are all integral pieces to the EAL process (Dyk et al., 2013; Gehrke, 2009; Rector, 2005; Stock and Smith, 2013; Strozzi, 2004).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Organizations are striving to stay abreast of the transitions occurring from the influx of Millennials into the workforce. Managers are having trouble building relationships with Millennial employees and understanding what motivates them to be effective workers. Trainings focussed on helping managers work with Millennials can increase retention rates for organizations, saving money as well as building loyalty and buy-in to organizational goals and values. Equine assisted learning (EAL) programs are an effective training tool that many organizations are currently using to bridge this gap between older managers and Millennial employees. These programs would all fulfill the requirements Millennials seek in on-the-job soft skills training. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A literature review was conducted on ongoing research and use of EAL in the field of management training and development.\nFindings: Current research shows that EAL promotes competency development in leadership, communication, body language awareness, relationship building, and teamwork building.\nOriginality/value: EAL is an up-and-coming management training trend that is available on a wider basis than ever before. There is a greater evidence-based research base that is continuing to grow as well in this field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Exploring the role of repertoire in library cataloging
|
[
"Library cataloging",
"Repertoire",
"Design",
"Cataloger’s judgement",
"Think-aloud",
"Observation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the relationship of design to librarianship. For many years, discussions of design in librarianship focused on architecture and space planning (e.g. Morehart, 2015; Bradburn, 2013; Bradigan and Rodman, 2008). In addition to this emphasis on architecture, discussions and discourse of design in library and information science literature often reflect technology (such as \"web design\") and printed material formats (such as the design of book jackets) (Clarke, 2015). But design in librarianship is much more than physical spaces and webpages. Increasingly, design approaches are being used to better understand a range of work in librarianship, from teen services (Subramaniam et al., 2013a, b) to library storytimes (Mills et al., 2016). Yet these investigations still focus on more public-facing programs and services. What about the technical aspects of librarianship?\nRelated literature: Cataloging as design\nMethods: To examine catalogers' use of repertoire, this study employed a juxtaposition of field observations of catalogers' work processes with elements of \"think-aloud\" protocols. In employing observations, this study took inspiration from the growing use of ethnographic observations in library research (Khoo et al., 2012), though due to its initial, exploratory nature, the present work is more limited in scope than traditional ethnography work. Nevertheless, observations allow researchers to see first-hand how participants work, and collect rich, detailed data to understand participants' natural behaviors in the context of their everyday environment (Courage and Baxter, 2005). While field observations place actions and behaviors in context, observations alone cannot offer reasons or motivations for catalogers' behaviors. Therefore, observations were supplemented with a \"think-aloud\" protocol to elicit information from participants about decision-making processes and sources of knowledge. This entails having participants speak what they are thinking as they complete a task, and is known for its use in gathering data on more covert, decision-making processes (Nielsen et al., 2002). Combined, the two methods represent a useful means of providing an initial, exploratory look at repertoire in cataloging.\nFindings: Types of design tasks\nDiscussion: This study observed, identified and attempted to categorize repertory knowledge used by library catalogers in their work. Although this work identified three overarching types of repertory knowledge, each of these major types was constituted of multiple sub-types of knowledge, diverse strategies, and myriad sources - far more diverse than one might expect for a highly specialized occupational role. Generic design tasks observed including original cataloging, copy cataloging and record modification. However, even within the ostensibly narrow confines of this cataloging work and the types of data it encompasses, all of the participants in this study completed a wide range of cataloging-related activities. The catalogers observed performed descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging and classification, all of which utilize different standards (e.g. RDA, LCSH, DDC, LCC, etc.) and may benefit from subject-specific knowledge. Additionally, these catalogers performed name authority work, which not only necessitates knowledge of cataloging standards but also benefits from knowledge about the people being described and other related contextual information. Catalogers worked with multiple technologies, including local integrated library systems (sometimes multiple systems within a single library setting), vendor products (e.g. OCLC tools), and non-library-specific technologies (e.g. Discogs, Google, Amazon and Wikipedia). Many were involved in multiple projects (such as retrospective conversion, inventory maintenance and new collections), sometimes concurrently.\nConclusion: It is clear that repertory knowledge is a significant factor brought to bear in library cataloging work in a variety of ways. Within the general activities of original and copy cataloging, catalogers drew on their repertoire during all aspects of their work processes, which included descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging, classification and name authority work. During these tasks, they relied on previously created records, personal documentation, local institutional knowledge and their own memories in assigning various elements of metadata, particularly subject and classification information. To capture the range of this repertoire, this study presented a framework of three major types of repertory knowledge observed, arranged by location relative to the cataloger: internalized knowledge, externalized knowledge and sought out knowledge. This study also found that catalogers develop their repertoire through new cataloging tasks as well as routine, ongoing work. Specific repertory knowledges may also move \"inward\" through the framework over time, transitioning from sought out, to externalized, to internalized. There are a number of mechanisms through which this movement may take place, though repetition plays a key part.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Library work is increasingly being explored from the perspective of design. Still, little work has actively explored specific aspects of design as they relate to library cataloging. The purpose of this paper is to dive deeper into the relationship between library cataloging and design by exploring a specific aspect of design - the concept of repertoire, or the use of previous experiences and bodies of knowledge during current work.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To examine catalogers' use of repertoire, this paper employed a juxtaposition of field observations of professional library catalogers' work processes with elements of \"think-aloud\" protocols.\nFindings: The researchers identified three major types of repertory knowledge that were demonstrated by catalogers: internally embedded repertory knowledge; externally embedded repertory knowledge; and seeking out new knowledge using other sources. Additionally, certain trends were noted concerning which repertory knowledge was utilized for which particular task. Determining subject and genre headings were noted for relying quite extensively on internal repertoire such as personal knowledge and institutional knowledge, along with external sources, such as personal notes and local examples.\nOriginality/value: This paper adds to a growing body of work calling for design approaches in libraries and related information settings, and breaks ground by applying the previously unexplored concept of repertoire to librarianship, specifically library cataloging, which offers a new perspective on cataloger's judgement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The trouble with diverse books, part I: on the limits of conceptual analysis for political negotiation in Library & Information Science
|
[
"Diverse books",
"Social justice",
"Conceptual analysis",
"Research methods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: To celebrate Black History Month 2020, Penguin Random House and Barnes & Noble announced a marketing initiative aimed at promoting \"diverse editions\" of canonic works of literature. This involved designing new covers for old books written by white authors, depicting the novels' protagonists as (buoyantly cartoonish) people of color. A press release for the Diverse Editions campaign reported that its creators had \"harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to scour close to 100 classic titles, revealing in classics such as Alice in Wonderland, Romeo and Juliet, The Three Musketeers and The Wizard of Oz the protagonist's race or ethnicity had not been specified\" (Jamieson, 2020). In other words, the campaign selected for inclusion only those books for which the racial identity of the main characters could be read as something other than white without unequivocal refutation discoverable in the text. We might then imagine, perhaps too charitably, that part of the campaign's intention was to disrupt \"default whiteness\" (Nakamura, 2002) as a kind of normative and aesthetic lens.Writers and readers of color were swift in issuing compelling criticism of the project. Fantasy author L.L. McKinney, for instance, characterized the Diverse Editions as \"literary blackface\" (McKinney, 2020). Further critique targeted the notion that the absence of the word \"white\" as a racial descriptor meant that a book's protagonists could be reinterpreted as people of color in context. For instance, historical fiction author Hanna Alkaf noted of one of the titles, The Secret Garden, that the story \"hinges on the premise that [the protagonist] Mary Lennox is a peevish white girl born and raised in India by colonialist British parents\" and so cannot simply be \"recast\" as, in this case, Asian (Alkaf, 2020). It is as if the campaign's creators simply failed to see that normative whiteness would count against the explicitly racialized marking of white characters in classic texts by white authors.Ultimately, many of the campaign's detractors stressed that a legitimate diversity initiative would have aimed to promote classic works by black and brown authors themselves rather than merely rebranding and reproducing the (cultural hegemony of) the white western canon. It is perhaps no surprise then that, in a statement announcing the campaign's immediate suspension, Barnes & Noble noted that \"the covers [featured in the project] are not a substitute for black voices or writers of color, whose work and voices deserve to be heard\" (Wheeler, 2020).We might be inclined to chalk the whole Diverse Editions debacle up to the all-too-expected industry appropriation of political language to sell consumables. But I think there is also an emergent philosophical problem made visible by the campaign itself and the dispute it incited: namely that some as-yet unspecified and contestable boundaries exist around the concept of diverse books. Indeed, it will likely strike those of us more actively involved in social justice circles as obviously inaccurate to call, e.g. The Secret Garden or Moby Dick \"diverse\" in virtue of their shiny new covers. The fact that Barnes & Noble and Penguin's Diverse Editions seem to get the nature of diverse books so deeply wrong tells us that there is in fact some underlying account that would rule them out for inclusion in the category.The identification and articulation of that account is the primary objective of my two-part project. Part I demonstrates why the conceptual toolkit currently on offer is insufficient in this case and therefore provides the motivation for Part II, where I present a new method of analysis tailored to treat political concepts in Library & Information Science (LIS). In the present paper, I endeavor to conduct a traditional conceptual analysis that specifies the criteria a book must satisfy to belong to the relevant category - or, put another way, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a particular book would count as a diverse book. Following an explanation of the scope of the argument and some initial objections, I begin by laying out the details of conceptual analysis as a research method, with reference to historical precedents in the LIS literature. I go on to apply that method to diverse books, drawing inspiration from an exercise I run with students in a course on popular romance fiction. However, the candidate definitions generated by this process land us in a kind of conceptual gridlock - a state of play that arises, I take it, from the fact that we are embroiled in a thus far unacknowledged political negotiation about what a diverse book ought to be rather than an object-level disagreement about what a diverse book in fact is.Part I therefore serves to illustrate that the intuitive form of conceptual analysis standardly deployed in analytic philosophical circles is inadequate to the task of defining diverse books (and other fundamentally political concepts in the discipline). We need, instead, a method that will move us from a descriptive project to an explicitly normative one, wherein we consider what we properly work to achieve with and through our concepts. In Part II, I thus propose an alternative mode of conceptual analysis with aims grounded in the cultivation of a just information society: what I term informational pragmatic analysis. Deploying this method in the case of diverse books allows us to effectively define the concept such that it continues to serve our legitimate political ends.\n2. The scope of argumentation and responses to some early objections: 2.1 Why bother?\n3. Methodology: Conceptual analysis is a method of philosophical inquiry through which one systematically produces intensional definitions of concepts - that is, it is a process by which we \"[identify] and [specify] the conditions under which any entity or phenomenon is (or could be) classified under the concept in question\" (Furner, 2006, p. 233). In deploying this method, one aims to establish concrete rules for the use of a term, rather than, e.g. enumerating a list of entities or phenomena that belong to the class of things to which the term refers (and thus generating, in contrast, an extensional definition). The fruits of conceptual analysis enable us to deploy concepts in consistent, coherent and readily comprehensible ways that map to some aspect of reality, as well as to identify the entailments of the propositions we encounter that use or otherwise appeal to these concepts. It also facilitates the development of deeper, more sophisticated understandings of our own discursive practices, though this is not generally its primary aim.There exist a number of precedents for employing this particular methodology in LIS. Furner (2006), for instance, has explicitly demonstrated the utility of conceptual analysis for archival science in his treatment of evidence. As he points out, questions regarding the nature of information, documents, and the activities of cultural agencies have long spawned such analyses in the LIS literature (see, e.g. Asheim, 1953; Bates, 2006; Briet, 1951; Buckland, 1991, 1997; Egan and Shera, 1952; Fallis, 2015; Feinberg, 2010; Mathiesen, 2015). Some scholars in the discipline have also proposed alternative approaches to conceptual analysis, such as Fleming-May's (2014) concept analysis method, imported into LIS from nursing scholarship. Still others have performed systematic reviews of concept use in the LIS literature that are methodologically distinct from conceptual analysis but superficially similar in that they aim to articulate accounts of critical concepts in the field (see, e.g. Hussey, 2010; Savolainen, 2014, 2015, 2017). Conceptual analysis (as understood here) is not so resolutely empirical: it is a method for identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions something must meet in order to count as an instance of the concept-in-question, rather than a method for cataloging the socioculturally and historically contingent ways that folks use a term. In short, conceptual analysis asks the question: \"What is X really?\"As a method, conceptual analysis typically follows five central (and iterative) steps: (1) the identification of some terminological ambiguity indicative of a need for concept-level clarification/disambiguation; (2) the process of accessing our pre-theoretic intuitions concerning the definition of the concept; (3) giving reasons for our intuitions that transform them into an embryonic account of the concept; (4) testing and evaluating the adequacy of the account we have developed; and (5) refining our account in response to objections. The delineations between these steps are somewhat artificial, for the argumentative moves in conceptual analysis - particularly in the final three steps - happen fast and frequently; moreover, in practice, these moves are not always made explicit. Speakers tend to cycle rapidly between presenting intuitions, giving reasons, mounting objections, and refining their own and others' accounts. However, for the purposes of illustrating the mechanics of the methodology clearly, I have done my best in the following section to work through each of the five steps individually, supplying additional details regarding their form and function as I go. Even so, the lines occasionally blur. This is an artifact of the robustly dialectical nature of conceptual analysis as a method, which moves in the manner of a dialogue between meticulous interlocutors [4].\n4. What are diverse books?: The research method outlined above can be applied to most any \"What is X?\"-style question, with varying degrees of success. Here, of course, I aim to deploy it as a technique for developing a precise definition of diverse books that is responsive to our intuitions regarding the meaning of that concept.To that end, in this section I proceed through the five steps of conceptual analysis in an effort to specify necessary and sufficient conditions. Note that although the \"accessing intuitions\" stage is often performed through introspection alone, here I draw inspiration from (and roughly replicate the structure of) a classroom exercise I run that is designed to elicit library students' pre-theoretic intuitions regarding appropriate applications of the term diverse books. Essentially, that exercise involves displaying covers of various novels and prompting students to articulate their gut-level responses - that is, to tell me whether the novel-in-question counts as a diverse book - and to offer justifications for those responses; counterexamples are then presented in the form of related novels for which these justifications may or may not prove adequate [5].I should note that my experience in the classroom has helped to populate my own conceptual imagination, to see the ways in which a range of differing accounts of diverse books emerge in tandem with individuals' folk heuristics for classification. In what follows I thus aim to be more ecumenical than I might otherwise be inclined to be on the first pass. I take there to be value in this process of laying out the full range of potential(ly plausible) definitions before endeavoring to jettison any of them. 4.1 Identifying terminological ambiguity: The trouble with sheikh romances\n5. Conclusion: In this paper, I have both motivated a conceptual analysis of diverse books and demonstrated that the trouble with the concept - or, perhaps more accurately, with a descriptive project that seeks to define it - is that it is resistant to just such an analysis. The tools we standardly deploy to specify necessary and sufficient conditions do not seem to help us do anything beyond sketch out proliferating accounts between which we have no grounds for adjudication. This, as I will further argue in Part II, is because the concept of diverse books is robustly political: we use it to achieve particular aims in practice, specifically as a resource for work geared towards advancing informational equity and social justice. To say that the concept is political is to say that its purpose is to do politically beneficial work. So one cannot simply describe diverse books as a distinctive class of literary texts with particular object-level features, for a satisfactory account must identify what this politically beneficial work is. In this way, it will explicate and arbitrate the normative clash between, for example, the creators of the Diverse Editions campaign and its most vocal opponents from author communities of color.Because traditional or intuitive conceptual analysis cannot successfully engage in such arbitration, I hold that we need a different method that can, one that speaks directly to (and in some sense embodies) the particular political concerns and objectives of diverse books advocates in the LIS discipline. In Part II, I will propose just such a method, building out its normative foundations using feminist pragmatic analysis and Mathiesen's (2015) informational justice framework. Applying that new method to diverse books will generate a promising account that accords with our legitimate political aims as members of a professional (and moral) community.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The term diverse books is increasingly popular yet persistently nebulous. The purpose of this paper - Part I of II - is to illuminate both that the concept is in need of a unified account and that conceptual analysis, though at first seemingly quite promising, fails as a method for identifying one.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes traditional (or intuitive) conceptual analysis to specify the respective clusters of necessary and sufficient conditions that constitute four broad candidate accounts of diverse books.\nFindings: Though diverse books is a concept in need of a definition, conceptual analysis is not an appropriate method for adjudicating between the definitions we have on offer. This is because the concept is fundamentally political, serving as a resource for re-shaping collective social arrangements and ways of life. The conceptual problem outlined here requires for its resolution a method that will move us from a descriptive project to an explicitly normative one, wherein we consider what we properly work to achieve with and through the concept in question.\nOriginality/value: This paper initiates a systematic analytical project aimed at defining diverse books. In illustrating a moment of methodological failure, it paves the way for a critical alternative - namely, Part II's proposal of an analytical intervention in which political concepts are defined partially in terms of their benefits vis-a-vis informational justice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Whose customers are they?
|
[
"Outsourcing",
"Production management",
"Distribution",
"Customer service management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Things used to be simpler for product companies. You manufactured products in your own factories. You had customers who wanted those products. You either had your own captive distribution system, or - more likely - you had a network of distributors who made the vital link between you and your end customers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Many product organizations recognize the benefits of outsourcing manufacturing of key components or even entire product lines to China and other low labor cost countries. But while the cost savings are obvious, many product companies fail to grasp the parallel risk of their own distributors or retailers by-passing them to source products directly from offshore suppliers. The author discusses case examples of companies that do a good job of anticipating and addressing this threat through a range of approaches to building strong connections to end customers. The author proposes six key strategies for companies in this situation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this article, Jackson cites a number of case examples of businesses that have built strong connections to end customers even though they typically reach these through distributors or retailers. Examples industries included in the article are durable consumer goods and medical products. The author then draws lessons that can be applied broadly by any company concerned about the risks of distributors or retailers sourcing private label product directly from off-shore suppliers.\nFindings: - The author proposes six priorities for defending against disintermediation by distributors and offshore suppliers: acknowledge the urgency of the threat; reinforce brands; find new ways to link to customers; look for mass-customization opportunities; enter into creative partnerships; be serious about services.\nOriginality/value: - This article sheds light on the risk of disintermediation for product companies using offshore suppliers, and strategies that can be used to mitigate this.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Electronic journals: are they really used?
|
[
"Electronic journals",
"Document delivery"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Everyone readily accepts that the migration of journals to a digital environment has led to a vast increase in the population of journals that an individual scholar can access, usually as a result of Big Deals negotiated by library consortia. The figures are indeed phenomenal; thus, every user of OhioLINK, the very first Big Deal, has access to the full text of nearly 6,000 journals, some with archives that stretch 20 years back (Nicholas et al., 2006a). However, not everyone accepts that all of this material is actually used. Some sceptics believe that in the Big Deals (and the like) there is a good deal of wastage and that the availability of such huge digital resources to the user inevitably means that a good deal of these titles, and many of their articles, go unused, or are little used. They believe the model is more push than pull, with authors (and publishers) involved in publishing for publishing sake on a grand scale, with readers being overawed or showing little interest in much of the product. Of course, there is nothing new in this and the situation existed in the previous print-only world, but evidence was less easy to obtain then and clearly we now have a difference of scale.Fortunately, CIBER have been accruing a vast data bank of evidence over the last five years to enable us to examine these assertions. The evidence comes from the logs (the digital fingerprints) that readers leave behind when they search a digital library or publisher's platform and in many respects (but not all) its unimpeachable (a bit like DNA evidence) because it represents the real and not imaginary actions of users.So, to put it crudely, does the CIBER work support the (widespread?) contention that most articles are only read by the author and their mother? Or is material being more widely read - to such an extent that document supply as a rational alternative to the purchase of a subscription to low use journals is becoming a service of the past? Clearly this is important to librarians for informing decisions on whether to subscribe or to rely on document supply.Let us now look at the evidence and we are largely going to refer to data we have obtained from our studies of Blackwell Synergy, ScienceDirect, emeraldinsight, OUP and OhioLINK. We shall concentrate most on OhioLINK as the users there have the ultimate form of access, they can download the full text of everything they find. We have a level playing field. As the oldest Big Deal, more than ten years old, it has also had time to bed in with users.\nThe evidence: The trouble is that determining the truth is not straightforward; firstly, there is not a level playing field as users are provided with differing levels of access. Thus, not everyone is as fortunate as the OhioLINK user, whose full text activities are not circumscribed. Many users have much more limited full text access and, sometimes, virtually none at all. This undoubtedly limits the opportunity to view or read and in any calculations of what is or not read this should be taken into account. This is best illustrated by our emeraldinsight data, where two-thirds of visitors were shown to be non-subscribers, with no full text rights, except for what was being freely offered and being accessed by credit card payment (Nicholas et al., 2003). There is undoubtedly a pent-up need for scholarly publications that cannot always be met by traditional publishing models. Clearly Open Access (OA) and search engines are helping to meet that demand and that is demonstrated most clearly in work we are doing for OUP, where a combination of these two factors has driven downloads of articles from Nucleic Acids Research up by 213 per cent in the space of a single year (Nicholas and Huntington, 2006a). Therefore, in answering the question whether everything is read or used, we really need to distinguish between services that offer the full menu and those that offer a limited one.Secondly, a good number of scholars only use abstracts, partly because of a shortage of time, partly as a result of being offered so much material to choose from (it's a good method of skipping through the material) and partly because that is all some users can access. Does this constitute \"reading\"? For students this does appear to be the case (Nicholas et al., 2005a). At first this might all seem somewhat academic, if not irrelevant, to the inter-lending fraternity because their commodity is full text, but it is not if you believe that abstracts are being used as article surrogates; in which case abstracts are taking market share away in a very similar way to the Big Deals. An illustration of how popular abstracts have become is that, when the Nucleic Acids Research site was opened up, abstract views increased far more quickly than full text ones. This led to one of the OUP staff suggesting that we might have found a new journal pricing model - charge for the abstracts and give the text away for free; which, on reflection, is not so silly.\nHigh levels of use: All our data show phenomenal levels of use and users, and that the level of use is increasing by leaps and bounds. Thus, take the case of Synergy. In 2004, half a million people used the site during a single month and viewed nearly 5 million journal items - and these were deep log figures not the inflated headline hits figures that tend to do the rounds (Nicholas et al., 2005a). But, of course, these are aggregated data and what of individual journal titles and articles? To answer that we shall turn to the Ohio data (Nicholas et al., 2006a, b). From a population of 5,872 journals available in the month surveyed (October 2004) 5,868 journals were viewed, if content lists, abstracts and articles are included; 5,509 journals were viewed if abstracts and articles are only included and 5,193 journals are viewed if only articles are included. So, it would appear that virtually everything on offer was used (99 per cent in fact). This has to be a very powerful statistic - after all only a month's worth of data was involved, and a testament to the consumer attractiveness of such enormous digital libraries and Big Deals.Ohio journals were well used and use was well distributed across journal titles (Nicholas and Huntington, 2006b). Thus only about 4 per cent of journals were used once, 9 per cent of journals were used 2 to 4 times, 13 per cent of journals were used 5 to 10 times, 15 per cent 11 to 20 times and 59 per cent 21 or more times.Nevertheless there was the inevitable concentration in use (Nicholas et al., 2006a,b). Thus, five percent of journals accounted for well over a third (38 per cent) of usage, 10 per cent accounted for approximately half of usage (53 per cent), and half of all journals accounted for about 93 per cent of use. We can conclude from this that all journals are used, but that half of all journals accounted for only 7 per cent of use. Unpicking this a little more: nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of articles were viewed once, 25 per cent were viewed between 2 to 4 times, about one and half percent were viewed between 5 to 10 times and just half a percent of articles were viewed 11 or more times.We can look at this another way by examining the number of journals viewed during a search session. This is a very pertinent metric because massive databases, like OhioLINK, are all about massive choice and it is very interesting to see what transpires as a result of being offered this. Of the sessions making a journal item view, half just viewed item(s) from one journal, 30 per cent viewed 2 to 3 journals, 14 per cent viewed 4 to 9 journals and 7 per cent of sessions viewed 10 or more journals. With more than one in five sessions viewing more than four journals a good proportion of users do appear to be taking full advantage of the choice offered.Downloads are said to offer the ultimate evidence of users satisfaction and here we find that approximately half of all the Ohio sessions saw a full text article viewed or downloaded and the average number of articles viewed in a session was just over 2. This constitutes a relatively high hit rate given the nature of much searching (a few terms tossed into a search engine).The number of downloads for top individual journals is very impressive indeed, as Table I discloses (Nicholas et al., 2005b).An article level analysis of Ohio journals is particularly illuminating (Nicholas and Huntington, 2006b). Thus during October 2004 it was estimated that 319,049 full text articles were viewed and of these 247,612 of these were separate articles. The study found no evidence that use was dominated by a small number of articles - a common misconception. The top 25 articles viewed accounted for just over half (0.64) a percent of article views. The most popular paper accounted for 0.14 per cent of article views. Most articles were just viewed once. Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of articles were viewed once, 25 per cent were viewed between 2 to 4 times, about one and half percent were viewed between 5 to 10 times and just half a percent of articles were viewed 11 or more times.So far so good for the Big Deals, but on the debit side our data do show that, possibly, not all the customers are satisfied with what they are getting. Thus a characteristic of all our studies is that users tend not to penetrate a site very deeply; two thirds typically content to examine 1-3 journal items (e.g. an abstract, contents page, full-text document). This could be represented as a lack of interest in what is on offer, a case of search engine searching throwing up a lot of irrelevant leads, or, on the other hand, a form of direct and assertive searching by which users quickly identify (or have previously identified) what they want and then move on to another promising website. The data are inconclusive and are currently being investigated further through user surveys.\nUse in a digital environment: Thus the evidence generally shows impressive, albeit uneven, use. However, before we run to any firm conclusions, we need to reflect on use and users in a digital environment, because all is not quite what it seems. First of all, many so-called \"users\" are nothing more than robots, spiders and agents, hunting out information for search engines etc. Thus in the case of OUP's Nucleic Acids Research, 42 per cent of usage in 2004 was accounted for by these digital entities (Nicholas and Huntington, 2006a). However, we cannot strike them out of the reckoning as clearly they direct users to the site and thus increase human usage as a result of their visits.Second, people might view or download large number of articles but how do we know they actually read or consumed them? In fact, a lot of squirreling away does go on in cyberspace, where people are simply gathering articles that they hope to have time to read later or might need some time in the future, but probably never do. To a certain extent we can determine this. Thus during one of our studies Emerald users were offered free access to two journals each week and use rocketed during those two weeks and rose to ten times the pre-offer figure (Nicholas et al., 2003). Soundings of the amount of time they spent online, while they were viewing the text, suggested that they were viewing the article much more quickly than was typical in pre-offer weeks (suggesting they were laying them aside for another time). What we were in fact witnessing was a kind of sales frenzy.We learned more about the reading behaviour of users of digital journals from our work with ScienceDirect (Nicholas and Huntington, 2006b). We discovered that the shorter the article the more likely people were to read it online and the longer the article the more likely it was to be read in abstract form only. In other words if you actually wanted people to read something online, then and there, make it short.\nConclusion: The aggregate, top-line, use and user figures for digital journal libraries are indeed very impressive; there is absolutely no doubt about that, and if you are a scholarly journal publisher like Elsevier or Blackwell you would be very happy indeed, if it wasn't for OA. By contrast if you were a document delivery supplier (or library, maybe) you would have plenty to think about. However, as is always the case in the digital environment, it is not quite as black and white as that. Thus there is very strong evidence that:1. Many, many more people are accessing scholarly journals, and many of these people are novice, occasional users and do not have full text downloading rights (we call them the disenfranchised). The market for scholarly journals has been massively expanded as a result of their digital migration. Clearly the OA publishing model is attempting to cater for their needs and there must also be opportunities for the document delivery community here.2. As a direct result of the massive choice on offer and fast and easy ways of making choices, people are seeking information horizontally and they need a lot of titles to feed off as part of this process; they cross check information, so a certain amount of so-called redundancy or noise is probably a necessary component. Therefore users are ranging far more widely.3. Abstracts are becoming increasing popular and this is partly to do with the form of behaviour identified in \"2\" above. This would appear to have huge significance for both publishers and the document delivery community but further research is needed to determine exactly how.To return to the question posed at the very beginning of this paper, do users take full advantage of the huge digital choice that is offered to them, and the answer has to be a qualified yes. And it's more than just the author and his/her mother. There is, however, some possibly disturbing evidence that people are not \"reading\" quite in the ways they used to and whether this constitutes a \"dumbing down\" should be established. The really important message for the document delivery community is that they might well be advised to look at the users' digital fingerprints for there is certainly something there for them. They could start with the fact that it is reported that libraries are beginning to cancel journal subscriptions on the basis of the usage reports they get from publishers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To quantify the usage of electronic journals as an aid to making judgements on the use of document supply.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A detailed analysis was made of the use of OHIOLink as well as the Blackwell Synergy, ScienceDirect, emeraldinsight, and OUP databases by CIBER at University College London.\nFindings: - Many more people are accessing electronic journals than was previously the case in a print environment. Users are searching more widely as linking becomes easier and abstracts are becoming increasingly popular.\nResearch limitations/implications: - More research could be done on the use of abstracts together with further evaluation of usage at article level by title.\nPractical implications: - Massive usage of the databases analysed is significantly affecting the use of information by researchers.\nOriginality/value: - This article presents an example of \"deep log\" analysis that sheds valuable light on the actual as distinct from perceived use of electronic full text databases\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The mediating role of affective commitment in the rewards-knowledge transfer relation
|
[
"Affective commitment",
"Knowledge transfer",
"Extrinsic rewards",
"Intrinsic rewards",
"Social firm"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Fixed graphic\n1. Introduction: As knowledge is considered to be the most strategically important resource for organizations (Conner and Prahalad, 1996; Grant, 1996; Kogut and Zander, 1996; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998), the literature is increasingly recognizing the importance of knowledge transfer to organizations (Bhatt, 2002; Carter and Scarbrough, 2001; Chauvel and Despres, 2002; Chowdhury, 2005; Nonaka, 1991, 1994; Van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004) and to their competitiveness (Anantatmula and Kanungo, 2006; Carneiro, 2000; Carter and Scarbrough, 2001; Darroch, 2005; Marques and Simon, 2006; Ofek and Sarvary, 2001). However, knowledge transfer is not a spontaneous process; it depends on people's willingness to transfer their knowledge and whether the knowledge held by individuals can move from the individual to the group and organizational levels (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2005; Ipe, 2003). In this sense, a key problem is that people are not always willing to transfer their knowledge (Gagne, 2009; Huber, 2001). Therefore, determining which factors promote individuals' knowledge transfer (Van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004) and what the organizations can do to increase their employees' willingness to transfer their knowledge constitute an important area of research.\n2. Hypotheses: 2.1 Rewards and affective commitment\n3. Methodology: This research was performed through a single case study of a social firm that employs people with disabilities (deafness, blindness, physical and intellectual disabilities). The approach can be described broadly, in Lee's (1999; Lee et al., 1999) term, as theory elaboration because field data are used to draw connections to existing theory in novel ways. This paper attempts to \"simplify, reconnect, and redirect theory\" (Lee et al., 1999, p. 166) on rewards, commitment and knowledge transfer to elucidate the influence of rewards on commitment and both variables on employees knowledge transfer. In so doing, the authors first provide an overview of the research setting to present data sources and describe the data collection process. Next, variables measurement is explained. Finally, the method employed for analysing the data and testing the research questions is described.\n4. Results: The authors test the research hypotheses using information obtained by means of a questionnaire that was distributed to a sample of 227 employees with some kind of disability. These employees work for a social firm that is owned by a non-profit organization that provides services of cleaning, gardening, catering and direct advertising.\n5. Conclusions, implications, limitations and future extensions: In the age of a knowledge-intensive economy, where organizations compete in a continuously changing environment, knowledge is considered a critical resource for organizational effectiveness. Owing to the relevance of knowledge transfer for several important outcomes, organizations should try to create the conditions that encourage employees to share their knowledge because the knowledge transfer process does not take place smoothly, as many employees lack the desire to transfer their knowledge to other members of the organization. More research to identify the factors that foster employees' knowledge transfer is needed to fill this gap.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative importance of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards as determinants of affective commitment and the influence of employees' affective commitment on knowledge transfer in the context of a Spanish social firm.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using data from a sample of 227 employees working for a Spanish social firm, this study employs the partial least squares approach to test the research hypotheses.\nFindings: The research findings show that contrary to the findings of prior empirical studies, reward systems do not influence knowledge transfer in a direct way. Rather, reward systems act indirectly through the development of affective commitment, which is required to increase employees' loyalty, reduce their turnover levels and improve their willingness to transfer their knowledge.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research focuses on a Spanish social firm, and recommendations to other organizations should, therefore, be made with caution. However, this study provides interesting empirical insights, linking rewards systems and knowledge transfer by means of affective commitment in the context of a social firm.\nPractical implications: Besides the importance of promoting knowledge transfer through the creation of a suitable climate in the organization, the authors recommend that managers cultivate employees' affective commitment by means of reward systems, especially intrinsic rewards. Employees with increased affective commitment are more prone to transfer the knowledge that they possess, and consequently, the potential loss of tacit knowledge for the organization is reduced if these employees leave the organization. Also, the authors suggest that managers make an effort to create a balanced reward system, so that extrinsic and intrinsic rewards can act as complementary processes to develop a high level of affective commitment among employees.\nOriginality/value: Few empirical studies have analyzed the influence of affective commitment on knowledge transfer, especially in the context of a social firm, even though this type of firms play and increasingly important economic and social role in society.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of packaging within marketing and value creation
|
[
"Marketing",
"Marketing mix",
"Packaging"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The modern consumer requires a wide range of products to meet the needs of a multifaceted lifestyle and food items is one of them. A study by INCPEN (2011) shows that an average household in UK buys more than 4,000 items of food and other related products every year and a typical supermarket can carry more than 50,000 product lines. Since many of these items need to be packed in sales packaging (primary) to protect and contain them, the demand for effective packaging has increased. A secondary packaging (cardboard boxes; plastic wrapping; trays) is also used to group and protect goods during distribution in a supply chain. Customer requirements have emerged from a fact of increased damages and that products ought to be packaged that its content is not damaged before it arrives to a final destination. An increasing value of packaging and packaging design has also been recognized for marketing purposes in generating sales at the point of purchase (Schoormans and Robben, 1997; Orth and Malkewitz, 2008). This requires different types of packaging materials and solutions depending on the product and physical conditions during transport and distribution in a local market (e.g. for export of food items). However, packaging and packaging design's strategic role in marketing has only been recognized in the academic literature in recent years. Azzi et al. (2012) has in a study presented a framework of packaging design based on a literature review with the purpose to improve supply chain efficiency. The outcome from that study resulted in a conceptual framework and drivers behind integrated packaging design. The researchers concluded that packaging design needs to \"comprise between all major packaging functions\" and considering the role of packaging in a more systematic approach. More research is therefore needed to improve our knowledge about the dimensions of packaging and its role in creating positive customer perceptions. We therefore address a research gap about the influence of packaging in relation to the marketing concept. The main purpose with this paper is to explore the importance of innovative packaging for marketing purposes in a food supply chain. The intent is also to understand the function of packaging as a marketing tool. The outcome of the study is expected to contribute to a link between packaging and marketing literature. Packaging and distribution of different products has also been simplified and more efficient by packaging innovations (e.g. Tetra Pak) in the supply chain. Active packaging solutions have also been developed in order to meet customer demands for storage and food safety (Singh et al., 2011). Clever designs of packaging and using computer design (software) can provide supplier's solutions to maximize the number of packaged products per pallet and container load in relation to the final destination. New solutions with shrink-wrapping have served both to protect goods against damage, as well as to diminish the risk of theft. Another important issue for packaging is for differentiation purposes in marketing working as a communicator in the sales outlet. Even though packaging has previously been treated as a part of the product concept it has nowadays become an important variable in marketing strategy. From a consumer perspective packaging has become even more important since it is often the first thing a customer will see before it makes its first selection in a supermarket (Ampuero and Vila, 2006). The role of packaging has also increased as competition of shelf space has become more important in attracting attention of a product and causing a purchase in a supermarket. This paper will therefore discuss the importance of packaging and its role within marketing and value creation. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section the theoretical points of departure are discussed followed by the research method. In the next section the findings are discussed and the last section contains the discussion and conclusions from the study.\nLiterature review: In marketing literature, marketing strategy has been researched by many scholars (e.g. Greenley, 1993; Slater and Olson, 2001; Hult and Ferrell, 2012; Varadarajan, 2011). Day (1994) argues that a sound understanding of a market allow firms to develop strategies and capabilities that \"respond to market requirements and anticipate changing conditions\" (p. 37). This knowledge is received from a thorough assessment of market needs about the use of products and services provided which enables firms to develop a competitive advantage and profitability in the long run. A marketing tool contributing to achieve firms' marketing objectives and customer satisfaction in the food sector is packaging:\nPackaging in a food supply chain: Attractive and functional packaging has become an important competitive advantage in any food supply chain. Packaging (tertiary and primary) provides protection, tampering resistance and diverse physical and biological needs during distribution in a supply chain. It is also providing information to consumers about product content (e.g. labels) and other kind of information (e.g. printed instructions about product use or disposal of a product). The multi-function of different packaging solutions is also dependent on the particular supply chain which has undergone tremendous changes.\nResearch method: When the phenomenon of interest is new and complex, extant theories may not be available to explain the situation or, identify relevant variables influencing the situation. The increasing importance of packaging and packaging design in marketing is such phenomenon. In this situation Golic and Davis (2012) argues that a qualitative approach is suitable since it can be a starting point \"in order to build an understanding grounded in a detailed description of the phenomenon by collecting field data. The qualitative approach provides researchers with deeper levels of understanding of new or complex phenomena by yielding a high level of detail\" (p. 732). The empirical findings in this paper are based on the case study research method in accordance with Yin (2009) and Eisenhardt (1991). The case study method was chosen in order to assess and investigate how packaging can be used in marketing. The study focuses on narrating the use of packaging for different customer applications.\nFindings: History of the case company\nDiscussion and conclusion: There are many options in which a company can seek to achieve a competitive advantage and a strategic position in a market. One of them is to practise differentiation and increase the value of a product and thereby create a competitive offering to a customer. An essential mode to create a superior advantage is to develop a unique product concept to a customer. Hooley et al. (2012) argue that \"uniqueness may stem from employing superior technology, utilizing superior raw materials, or from differentiating the tangible and augmented elements of the product\" (p. 277). Another mode to create a unique and differentiated product is by using packaging as a competitive tool in marketing and marketing strategy. This has also been found to be successful in the case company where the supplier is working in close co-operation with design studios and converters to create challenging solutions to customers in the supply chain. The present study implies that packaging has become an important tool in marketing of food products either this is for customers, or consumers in a supply chain. The findings provide several insights into the linkage between packaging and marketing of food items (Table III).\nConclusion: When competition is increasing firms are searching for more efficient ways to compete and packaging and packaging design has obviously become an essential tool for differentiation purposes as more products are introduced, e.g. in food retail markets. At the same time new packaging solutions require an insightful marketing capability to become effective in the marketplace. Since supply chain members can value packaging attributes differently, marketing capability ultimately also require an understanding of value creation processes among its members. This is also in line what Niemela-Nyrhinen and Uusitalo (2013) found in their study of potential sources of value in a packaging value chain. The end customer has also specific requirements of a packages possibility to communicate, besides protecting the content during transport and warehouse handling. The package should also create convenience in order to support handling and storing of products that is convenient within a supply chain and among end-consumers. Creative packaging solutions for food products are also supplying different kinds of information such as nutritional information and how to use the content. The results from the study support also the propositions suggested in the areas of value creation and an increasing importance of packaging for the marketing strategy. The study shows the significance of linking packaging to the marketing strategy. This has become more essential as more products are introduced on a market (P1). An important ingredient for that is the use of packaging design for differentiation purposes (P2). However, this requires marketing capability and further education of staff within a food supply chain which is partially supported by the results in this study (P3). The results of this study also support that packaging has become an essential factor for a secure and efficient distribution in a food supply chain (P4). At the same time has packaging and packaging design contributed to value creation for different actors in a food supply chain (P5).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of innovative packaging for marketing purposes in a food supply chain. The intent is also to understand the function of packaging as a marketing tool. The outcome of the study is expected to contribute to the link between packaging and marketing literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study method was chosen in order to assess and investigate how packaging can be used in marketing. The study focuses on narrating the use of packaging for different customer applications and the unit of analyses was the packaging product. In order to analyse the five sub-cases or \"corporate stories\" a cross-case analysis was used and the analysis of data was carried out in different stages. This approach treats each sub-case as a separate entity and the analysis reveal both similarities and differences among the sub-cases.\nFindings: The present study demonstrates that packaging has become an important tool in marketing of different products either this is for end-consumers, or customers in a supply chain. This has become more essential as more products are introduced on a market. The study shows the significance of linking packaging to marketing strategy. An important ingredient for that is the use of packaging design for differentiation purposes. The results support also that packaging has become an essential factor for a secure and efficient distribution in a food supply chain. In addition, packaging and packaging design is contributing to value creation for different actors in a food supply chain.\nPractical implications: The managerial implication from the case study shows that packaging can be used together with the product concept to create a competitive offering in a market. This gives managers the possibility to differentiate their products from competitive offerings by using packaging and packaging design in a creative manner.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfils an identified need for contributions to more research on packaging and marketing strategy. The study shows the influence of packaging on marketing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Teens as impulsive buyers: what is the role of price?
|
[
"Price perception",
"Adolescent",
"Sale proneness",
"Impulse buying",
"Prestige sensitivity",
"Retail shopping"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Around 75 per cent of purchases are not planned (Merzer, 2014), so retailers view impulse buying as an important component of their business. An impulse purchase is \"when a consumer experiences a sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately. The impulse to buy is hedonically complex and may stimulate emotional conflict. Also, impulse buying is prone to occur with diminished regard for its consequences\" (Rook, 1987). Impulse buying is related to positive (hedonism, reward, etc.) and negative (bad mood, stress) emotions (Youn and Faber, 2000). Impulse buying is also linked to a deficit of self-control (Vohs and Faber, 2007), low self-esteem, can contradict long-term goals (e.g. saving money) and engender satisfaction but also regrets or guilty (Rook, 1987).\n2. Review of the literature: Adolescence can be seen as a passage between childhood and adulthood and is defined as a period of changes or upheavals. The limits of adolescence remain relatively unclear.\n3. Hypotheses: 3.1 The negative role of price[1]\n4. Method: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Results: The test of the hypotheses has been achieved using MANOVA. Previously, respondents were split in two groups (impulsive vs non-impulsive buyers). According to the five-point Likert's measurement scale (six items), the scores of 18 (which are linked with the neutrality) have not been taken into consideration, 19 observations have been deleted. In order to split the sample in two groups, we have taken the scores down and equal to 17 (the non-impulsive buyers group) and the scores equal to 19 and above (the impulsive buyers group). Impulsive buyers group represents 34 per cent of the respondents and the non-impulsive buyers group represents 66 per cent of the respondents.\n6. Discussion, limitations and implications: The aim of this research is to better understand the relationships between teenager's impulsive buying and their price perception (Lichtenstein et al., 1993). The findings show clear differences between teens' impulsive buyings and teens' non-impulsive buyings: they do not perceive price in the same way. Each hypothesis has been validated excepted H3.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Considering that retailers view impulse buying as an important component of their business (around 75 per cent of the purchases are unplanned) and considering also that teens often do some shopping in autonomy and represent an important financial power, the purpose of this paper is to fill the lack of studies concerning adolescent consumers impulse shopping behaviours. This paper investigates the relationships between the positive (prestige sensitivity, price quality schema) and the negative (price consciousness, value consciousness, price mavenism, sales proneness) role of price in teens' impulse buyings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The test of the hypotheses has been achieved on a sample of 325 French teens (age between 14 and 18) using MANOVA. Previously, respondents were split in two groups which are impulsive buyers and non-impulsive buyers.\nFindings: Findings show clearly differences between teens' impulsive buyings and teens' non-impulsive buyings. Teens' as impulsive buyers possess more prestige sensitivity, price-quality schema, price mavenism, sale proneness and less price consciousness and value consciousness than non-impulsive buyers. Moreover, females adolescents are more inclined to be impulsive buyers than males adolescents.\nOriginality/value: Not only it is one of the rare studies that investigates on teens' impulsive buying but above all, it is the only study that takes into consideration the role of price perception, while a price has to be paid in order to buy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Physical properties and organoleptic evaluation of gluten-free bread from proso millet
|
[
"Celiac disease",
"Gluten intolerance",
"Gluten-free bread",
"Proso millet",
"Starches"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Consumption of gluten free (GF) food products is on the increase globally. GF diets are most commonly associated with celiac disease (CD), however the reason for this shift in diet extends to the recognition of non-celiac gluten sensitivities (NCGS), wheat allergies, and also beliefs that gluten poses long-term health risks. The symptoms of CD and NCGS are similar, including diarrhea, bloating, weight loss, anemia, chronic fatigue, bone pain and muscle cramps (Pasha et al., 2016) and can be split into intestinal symptoms (abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, etc.) and extra-intestinal symptoms (anemia, arthralgia, fatigue, etc.) (Rewers, 2005). CD is estimated to affect 1 percent of the US population, while research has also shown NCGS to be even more prevalent, affecting an estimated 6 percent of adults in the USA (Igbinedion et al., 2017; Rostami et al., 2017). Despite research efforts to understand the underlying cause of gluten insensitivity, there is no cure for the disease, and it is managed by adhering to a strict GF diet. Gluten protein is found in various forms of wheat, rye and barley, and some oat varieties (Pasha et al., 2016), which accounts for a major fraction of the carbohydrates consumed by many people all of over the world.\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Ingredients\n3. Results and discussion: 3.1 Physical characteristics of the millet gluten-free bread\n4. Conclusion: This study presents scientific result of physical property characterization and sensory study to assess the response of randomly selected subjects for the assessment of three GF breads made from proso millet. Irrespective of type, starch addition decreased loaf hardness and increased light coloration. Sensory results showed that the older age group (>51 years) consumed GF products more often than younger age groups, perhaps because of delay in diagnosis of celiac and other related gluten sensitivities. As one would expect because of greater awareness among consumers' today, gluten intolerant individuals reported consuming GF products more often than those who are not gluten intolerant. The 100 percent millet-based formulation had impact on consumers' preference when considering crust color and crumb aroma, while gender had an effect on crumb aroma, crumb off flavor, and overall acceptability. Dark brown crust (M) was preferred by panelists, while the lightest crust (MC) was the least preferred by panelists. Male respondents reported higher scores for crumb aroma and lower scores for off flavor, which could be why males reported higher scores for overall acceptability. Scores for overall acceptability (5.70) and purchase intent (5.18) indicate there is some potential for millet based GF breads in the market.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Gluten-free (GF) foods have gained momentum among consumers due to an increase in incidence and awareness of gluten sensitivity and intolerance. Millet is a GF grain with nutritive qualities comparable to other cereals. However, it was not clear how millet-based GF products would be accepted, leading to the goal of this research. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of formulation on physical properties and consumer preference of millet-based GF bread.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Three bread formulations were used: proso millet flour (100 percent), proso millet flour-corn starch (1:1), and proso millet flour-potato starch (1:1). Physical and sensory properties were statistically evaluated.\nFindings: Starch addition to the bread formulation had a significant influence on bread volume, color and firmness. A consumer's age, gluten intolerance and familiarity with millet products did influence the frequency of consumption of GF products. Gluten-intolerant panelists consumed GF products more often than others who are not. Older panelists reported consuming more GF products than younger panelists. Gender also had a significant effect on consumers' preference for overall acceptability and crumb aroma. The formulation had a significant effect on consumers' preference of crust color and crumb aroma.\nPractical implications: The paper presents an understanding of how starch addition modulates bread properties for the GF market.\nOriginality/value: In this paper, the authors explored a novel approach to use different starches and proso millet for making GF bread and determined sensory responses based on demographics like age, celiac diagnosis and familiarity with GF foods. This vital information will help processors to determine the portion of the market to target and the formulation to explore further.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Commuters on bikes arrive at work much less stressed than drivers: Study has policy implications for business owners
|
[
"Commuting",
"Cycling",
"Driving",
"Mood",
"Stress"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nPrecis: A recent study of workers in the city of Montreal showed that the mode of transport chosen by commuters has a major influence on their well-being at work, with cycling having far more positive outcomes than driving. Several previous studies had found that stress levels increase with every additional minute of commuting time, but there was little research into the benefits of commuting by bike despite its increasing popularity among commuters worldwide. In the USA, for example, census data showed a 60 per cent rise in bike commutes from 488,000 to 786,000 between 2000 and 2012. In the UK, the number of London cyclists traveling to work rose from 77,000 in 2001 to 155,000 in 2011.\nCyclists less stressed: The Montreal study, which was published in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management, tested the stress and mood levels of 123 employees at an international software company within the first hour of arriving at work. The study found the stress levels of cyclists were the lowest, an average of 2.18 out of a maximum of 5, with public transport users next on 2.25 and car drivers the most stressed at 2.54. Contrary to other researchers, the authors found the difference between cyclists and public transport users was too small to be considered significant, whereas car drivers were far more stressed than cyclists. Somewhat surprisingly, the authors also found no difference in the mood levels of the three separate groups.\nStudy method: There were 147 participants in the study, which was around a quarter of the workforce invited to take part. There were 61 women and 62 men with an average age of 41.56. Most of the 147 employees commuted by car (43.9 per cent), with public transport (34.1 per cent) the next most common means and cycling the least (20.3 per cent). The researchers designed a 31-item questionnaire to measure commuting stress and early morning mood. They assessed stress using eight items on a scale, including such statements as \"commuting to work takes effort\" and \"overall commuting is stressful for me\". Meanwhile, mood at the start of the day was assessed using a scale of six adjectives - happy, joyful, pleased, stressed, overwhelmed, and confused. Participants marked the time of their arrival at work, and software automatically recorded the moment they filled in the online questionnaire. This allowed the research team to know who had completed the survey within 45 min of arrival.\nConclusions: The conclusion that cycling to work caused much lower levels of stress confirmed previous research. Besides the favorable effects on physical health, studies have shown cycling has a positive effect on mental states. Compared to drivers, cyclists tend to see their journeys as more relaxing, enjoyable, and exciting. They are more content and better able to cope with stress. The Montreal researchers, however, also pointed out that cycling has drawbacks - for example, it may not be possible when parents need to drop off children at school, or run errands.\nBuilding infrastructure: The finding that commuting by bike is less stressful than driving has important implications for transport policy, they said. Despite Montreal's status as a bike-friendly city, Canada has fallen behind many European nations, such as Germany, The Netherlands, and Denmark, in the numbers of people commuting by bike. To encourage more commuters to cycle, both businesses and policy-makers should consider investing in bicycle facilities, such as parking spaces, changing rooms, showers, lockers, and areas for basic bike repairs. Meanwhile, workshops could raise employees' awareness of the benefits of cycling.\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: A recent study of workers in the city of Montreal showed that the mode of transport chosen by commuters has a major influence on their well-being at work, with cycling having far more positive outcomes than driving.\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"
}
] |
Leader honesty/humility and subordinate organizational citizenship behavior: a case of too-much-of-a-good-thing?
|
[
"Ethics",
"Leadership",
"Positive psychology",
"Social identity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Given occurrences of ethical scandals in organizations and the increasing importance of ethics and morality in leadership processes aimed at helping self and others to flourish (Brown and Trevino, 2006), a growing body of literature has demonstrated the influence of leader character strengths on leader and subordinate outcomes such as life satisfaction and engagement (Brdar and Kashdan, 2010), job performance (Palanski and Yammarino, 2011), executive and middle manager performance (Sosik et al., 2012), voice behavior (Liborius, 2014) and organizational citizenship behavior (Sosik et al., 2019). Although this stream of research on leader character strengths has enhanced our understanding of various outcomes for both leaders and subordinates, little is known about the motivational mechanisms that explain how and when subordinates become influenced to do good for others by following their leader's example of good character.Communicating and exhibiting good character to others has long been an important focus for both philosophers and researchers because character is not formed on its own but requires observations of moral/social norms and modeling of virtuous conduct from others (Aristotle, 1999; Crossan et al., 2013). Park and Peterson (2006) proposed that the most important consequence of good character may be its effects on other people. Wright and Goodstein (2007) argued that leaders communicate and demonstrate their character through interpersonal relationships and social interactions with their subordinates. Research on moral identity recognizes that self-conceptions organized around a set of moral traits (e.g. honesty, humility) can motivate prosocial behavior of self and others (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Despite these conceptual advances, few empirical studies test ways in which leader character influences subordinates' motivation to emulate their leader by doing good for others.Moreover, previous work regarding the influence of leader character strengths on self and others assumes that \"the more developed any strength is, the better people are\" (Schwartz and Sharpe, 2006, p. 380). However, scholars have recently questioned this \"more is better\" assumption and recognized that not only can a deficiency of character strengths have negative effects, but an excess also can be potentially harmful (Crossan et al., 2013; Grant and Schwartz, 2011). The notion that too much good character can have negative effects on self and others is based on Aristotle's (1999) \"virtuous mean\" concept, which represents an ideal point of balance between two extremes, neither too high nor too low, but rather character strengths exercised in moderation. This point of virtue reflects practical wisdom and insight to one's ability to find the balance between two extremes or to minimize harm and maximize good (Aristotle, 1999).This Aristotelian viewpoint may be explained by the \"too-much-of-a-good-thing\" (TMGT) meta-theoretical principle manifested in nonmonotonic inverted-U-shaped effects, whereby positive effects gradually reach inflection points at which their effects turn negative (Pierce and Aguinis, 2013). In a similar vein, Crossan et al. (2013) suggested that individuals have the capacity to build character strengths around the virtuous mean if they avoid vices of both deficiency and excess. While empirical research examining the TMGT effect of character strengths has been sparse, some character strengths (e.g. honesty and humility) have attracted the attention of scholars. For example, Palanski and Yammarino (2011) discussed the possibility of negative outcomes of excessive leader integrity, such as investment of too much time and energy by leaders, and Grant and Schwartz (2011) identified integrity (i.e. honesty) as a plausible candidate for the TMGT effect. Yet, no study empirically tested it even though it is imperative to examine when and how the deficiency or excess of such character strengths possibly transforms what is customarily considered to be a virtue into a vice.The purpose of this study is twofold. First, drawing upon theories of social cognition and moral identity (Aquino and Reed, 2002), this study aims to provide a complete understanding of the dynamics of character-based leader-subordinate interactions by testing the role of leader honesty/humility in increasing the centrality of morality to subordinates' self-concept. Second, this study aims to extend the literature on character and leadership by applying the TMGT principle to test the nature of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality. Examining the nonlinear indirect effect enhances the understanding of the boundary conditions for this leader character strength, regarding when and why it prompts subordinates to engage in prosocial behavior. To our knowledge, the extant literature on character and leadership has remained relatively silent on these topics. Thus, we aim to answer repeated calls by scholars (Crossan et al., 2013; Sosik and Cameron, 2010) in this realm to support the theoretical foundation of the character and leadership literature. By doing so, we also answer the call for a focus on subordinates' moral identity to advance our understanding of leadership processes and outcomes by moving beyond traditional leader-centric views (Zhu et al., 2016).In sum, our study investigates the nonmonotonic inverted-U-shaped relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality, defining a boundary condition of when leader honesty/humility promotes OCBI in subordinates. Further, our study explicates the role of subordinate moral identity centrality as a mechanism of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate OCBI, explaining why the proposed relationship occurs.\nTheory and hypotheses: The present study is grounded in social cognitive theory of moral thought and action (Bandura, 1991), which proposes that individuals learn about moral obligations, duties and prosocial values from the observed or attributed traits and behaviors of influential others. If such learnings are deemed important by individuals, the observed or attributed traits become internalized into aspects of their moral self-concept, which defines important facets of who they are as a person. Self-concepts are comprised of values, goals and identities that highlight what is most important to groups or societies and provide individuals with meaning and motivation (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Because individuals strive to maintain consistency between their espoused self-conceptions and enacted behaviors as a display of their \"true identity\" or \"real self\" (Shamir, 1991, p. 413), they are motivated to demonstrate those aspects of the self that are central to their identity in order to be authentic. Consistent with social cognitive theory, prosocial behavior allows for the discharge of one's moral obligations through such forms of self-expression.Leader honesty/humility is among the attractive traits deemed important by subordinates for the modeling of morals and ethics (Brown and Trevino, 2006). Honesty/humility is defined as \"the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might exploit them without suffering retaliation\" (Ashton and Lee, 2007, p. 156). Although the literature has considered these terms interchangeably with varying meanings and conceptualizations, recent research has identified the combination of honesty and humility as a single personality trait that measures aspects of these character strengths (i.e. sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance and modesty) with the HEXACO personality inventory (Ashton et al., 2014). Previous studies have consistently found it to have substantive value in predicting ethical behaviors (Sosik et al., 2019), prosocial behaviors (Cohen et al., 2014) and in preventing counterproductive work behaviors (Lee et al., 2005). Therefore, we adopt the honesty/humility construct in our study for the theoretical discussion and hypotheses to contribute to the existing literature.Serving as the ethical motivation mechanism in our model, moral identity is defined as \"a self-conception organized around a set of moral traits\" (Aquino and Reed, 2002, p. 1424). The cognitive aspect of moral identity reflects the internalization of moral traits that are central or important to the self-concept, which is called moral identity centrality (Aquino et al., 2009). The greater the moral identity centrality, the higher its activation potential and the stronger its ability to affect information processing and ultimately prompt moral behavior, such as OCBI (Aquino et al., 2009). OCBI reflects extra-role behaviors that one performs to assist colleagues at work (Williams and Anderson, 1991) and demonstrates for colleagues the kinds of prosocial behaviors that express their moral identity centrality by following the potential role models' (e.g. leader) exemplification of moral traits (Aquino and Reed, 2002).Honesty/humility and moral identity centrality\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Preliminary analyses\nDiscussion: On the basis of the TMGT meta-theoretical principle (Pierce and Aguinis, 2013) and theory of the virtuous mean in character development (Crossan et al., 2013), we found an indirect effect that occurred through a curvilinear (inverted-U-shape) relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality and a positive linear relationship between subordinate moral identity centrality and OCBI. Given the curvilinear relationship, the indirect effect is conditional and instantaneous at different levels of leader honesty/humility.Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: On the basis of theories of social cognition and moral identity and the meta-theoretical principle of \"too-much-of-a-good-thing,\" the purpose of this study is to develop and test a model that explains when and why leader honesty/humility promotes subordinate organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this field study, with online surveys, multisource data were collected from 218 United States Air Force officers and their subordinates. Data were analyzed with MEDCURVE SPSS macro tools.\nFindings: A nonlinear indirect effect of leader honesty/humility on subordinate OCBI through subordinate moral identity centrality was found. This conditional indirect effect occurred through a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality and a positive linear relationship between subordinate moral identity centrality and OCBI.\nResearch limitations/implications: Cross-sectional data were collected. Future research might replicate findings using experimental and longitudinal designs.\nPractical implications: Recruiting and selecting leaders who possess a moderate level of honesty/humility may serve as the first step in producing prosocial behavior during social interactions with subordinates.\nOriginality/value: This study extends the literature on character and leadership by applying the too-much-of-a-good-thing principle to empirically test the complex nature of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate OCBI as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An extended process model of knowledge discovery in database
|
[
"Databases",
"Process planning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Knowledge discovery in database (KDD) is the process of discovering previously unknown and potentially interesting patterns in large databases. It is currently a fast growing field both from an application and from a research point of view. The reason is that companies see a high chance for deriving valuable information from huge amount of available data that can then be used for improving their business. Many successful applications have been reported from varied sectors such as marketing, finance, banking, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Different from other fields, such as statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, knowledge discovery focuses on the overall process of knowledge discovery from large volumes of data, including the storage and accessing of such data, scaling of algorithms to massive data sets, interpretation and visualization of results, and the modeling and support of the overall human machine interaction (Fayyad et al., 1996).Data mining is a step in the KDD process consisting of an enumeration of patterns over the data, subject to some acceptable computational-efficiency limitations. Since the patterns enumerable over any finite dataset are potentially infinite and the enumeration of patterns involves some form of search in a large space, computational constraints place severe limits on the subspace that can be explored by a data mining algorithm (Fayyad et al., 1996). Therefore, presently in the literature much attention was paid to the data mining, while little was to the whole process. However, it is critical to recognize that KDD firstly is a process. If we only emphasize data mining in practice, we may not see the difficulty of data selection, organization and presentation in the KDD process. Anecdotal evidence (and our own experience within the KDD Project) suggests that the other steps account for up to 95 per cent of the effort--it is important then to understand the whole KDD process.Presently, although several process models are available, they cannot satisfy the real need of applications to be illustrated in Section 4. In this paper, we characterize our experiences of the knowledge discovery process and formalize a new model, an extension of the model in Fayyad et al. (1996). A case study in Section 4 will illustrate why the process model is proposed and in what situation it can be used in practice. A demonstration of the application of process model is given by using a reduct method from rough set theory (Pawlak, 1982).\nRelated work: Knowledge discovery in database is aimed at the development of methods, techniques, and tools that support human analysts in the overall process of discovering using information and knowledge in databases. Many real-world knowledge discovery tasks are both too complex to be accessing by simply applying a single learning or data mining algorithm and too knowledge-intensive to be performed with repeated participation of the domain expert. Therefore, knowledge discovery is considered an interactive and iterative between the user and a database that may strongly involve background knowledge of the analyzing domain expert. This process-centered view of KDD is accepted by many researchers. Fayyad et al. (1996), for instance, identified the nine steps in the KDD process shown in Figure 1, which is the most authoritative description of the data mining process.Brachman and Anand (1996) gave a practical view of the KDD process emphasizing the interactive nature of the process. Following their model (see Figure 2), it is clear to emphasize the process orientation of KDD tasks and argue in favor of a more human-centered approach for a successful development of knowledge discovery support tools.John (1997) addressed another process model (see Figure 3), which emphasized the cooperation of the data mining analyst and the domain expert in the whole KDD process. Usually a problem to be solved is well understood by an expert, and the KDD process begins with the expert attempting to explain the problem to the analyst and the analyst explaining the KDD process to the expert. Once they have jointly defined the problem to be solved, the remaining steps are as follows: the analyst must collect relevant data if it does not already exist, clean the data, engineer the data to be maximally useful with the problem at hand, engineer a mining algorithm, run the mining algorithm, and explain the results to the experts.Cross Industry Standard Process Model for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) (they regard data mining as KDD) was developed as an open standard by leading KDD appliers and a tool supplier (Chapman et al. 2000). The current CRISP-DM Process Model for KDD provides an overview of the life cycle of a KDD project (see Figure 4). It contains the corresponding phases of a project, their respective tasks, and relationships between these tasks.Moreover, there are many other process models successfully applied in real world problems that do not include in this paper, please refer to Williams and Huang (1996), Zhu et al. (1998), Witten and Frank (2000) and Gao (2000).\nA new KDD process model: The above models all reflect that the native of the KDD process, consisting of a number of interacting, iterative steps involving various data manipulation and transformation operations. Information flows from one step onto the next, as well as backwards to previous steps. However, they all do not pay attention to the data collection, which is very important to apply the KDD techniques in some real applications such as information security and medical treatment, illustrated in the next section. Therefore, this new KDD process model incorporates the data collection as one part in the KDD process, which is depicted in Figure 5 and consists of an iterative sequence of the following steps:* Data collection: using techniques to collect data from real applications according to current discovery task and previous mining results. This step avoids non-relevant features (attributes) to be collected in data set as soon as possible, reduces the time required to execute a discovery and help to enhance the efficiency of knowledge discovery.* Data selection: the formulation of a data set that is appropriate for the current discovery task. This step may require joining together multiple data sources in order to obtain an appropriate set of examples.* Preprocessing: eliminating or modifying examples from the selected data set that are either noisy, inconsistent or contain missing values, e.g. blood pressure=240. This step improves the overall quality of the discovered information.* Transformation: data are transformed or consolidated into forms appropriate for the mining step.* Data mining: the selection of a data mining type (clustering, classification, association, sequence analysis, etc.) as well as a specific method to extract data pattern.* Interpretation/evaluation: visualizing and interpreting the discovered knowledge to the user and evaluation of the discovered information with respect to validity, novelty, usefulness and simplicity.This process is iterative in the sense that each step can inspire rectifications to preceding steps. It is interactive in the sense that a user must be able to limit the amount of work done by the system to what he is really interested in (Fayyad et al. 1996). Moreover, the key point of this proposed model is that one can use the mining results to direct how to collect data, which data should be collected and which not. We believe that will reflect the native of KDD really in some cases even though it may not be suitable to be used in all situations like the discovery task of sequence databases in bioinformatics. For example, this model is suitable to the areas that the huge cost of collecting data, the case that correct or satisfied decision information could not be obtained by data collected and so forth.\nCase study: Along with the development of computer network technology, an intrusion detection used to capture malicious activities occurring in computer network systems is becoming more and more important. Intrusion detection techniques fall into two general categories: misuse detection and anomaly detection, which complement each other. Misuse detection is based on knowledge of system vulnerabilities and known attack patterns, while anomaly detection assumes that an intrusion will always reflect some deviation from normal patterns (Sundaram, 1996). Our case study focuses on anomaly detection techniques for intrusion detection. Presently, data mining methods have been used to build automatic anomaly detection systems, performing well in the latest DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) evaluations, that profile the normal system activities so that abnormal activities can be detected by comparing the current activities with the profile (Kemmerer and Vigna, 2002). However, today's anomaly detection systems have achieved to detect the known intrusion methods well, they do not perform well for those new intrusion techniques. From some literatures and our experience, the main reason is that the audit techniques are ineffective, in other words, the techniques of collecting data should be improved. Therefore, if we can use the mining results to direct us how to collect data, which data should be collected and which not, the ability of intrusion detection system will be improved because we can make the intrusion detection system adjust their audit methods as soon as possible, collect network activity data and analyze the information to determine whether there is an attack occurring.The other reason to address the current model is that many research areas are strongly related to various kinds of investigations. It is high costly to make different kinds of investigations such as nuclear safeguards information management (Ruan et al., 2003). As we know that what kinds of information should be collected in the process of investigations is due to the domain experts. However, it can be improved if we use the KDD techniques and mining results to assist the domain experts to make decision, namely how to perform data collection.\nExample: An information system (see Table I) from a medical domain is devised to demonstrate how to apply this model in real applications, which has four conditional attributes (symptoms) a1, a2, a3, a4, one decision condition (disease) d1 and six objects (cases) x1, ... , x6 (Pawlak, 1982). Namely, the information of four condition attributes and one decision attribute of all objects are collected during the phase of collecting data. From this information system, clearly, the attribute set {tired, fever, sneeze} is a reduct of condition attribute set C (Li and Xu, 2000). Therefore, we may not collect the information of attribute \"headache\" in the following process of collecting data since it does not affect our decision making whether it exists or not in this system.Moreover, according to Li et al. (2004b), two incompatible decision rules can be obtained as follows from the reducted information system (see Table II):1. tired=\"Yes,\" fever=\"Very high,\" sneeze=\"Yes\" = flu=\"Yes\".2. tired=\"Yes,\" fever=\"Very high,\" sneeze=\"Yes\" = flu=\"No\".At this time, the information collected previously is not suitable for our exact decision making. We need to update the content of data collection, just like collecting the symptom information of angina of the new coming objects shown in Table III, which is called as an incomplete information system (Li et al., 2004b). In this table, the above two incompatible decision rules do not exist because we can make sure that whether flu or not by using the condition attribute \"angina.\" Now the decision rules that can be obtained by using the method proposed in Li et al. (2004a) are as follows:1. tired=\"Yes,\" fever=\"Very high,\" sneeze=\"Yes,\" angina=\"Yes\" = flu=\"Yes\".2. tired=\"Yes,\" fever=\"Very high,\" sneeze=\"Yes,\" angina=\"No\" = flu=\"No\".\nConclusions: Data collection directly affects the mining results. Generally, the cost of data collection is huge. If we can use the KDD techniques and mining results to improve data collection, not only we can save the cost including savings, preprocessing, etc, but also directly affect the ability of knowledge discovery. Our model incorporates data collection in the KDD process to supply a framework to support KDD applications better while the previous models do not emphasize enough on this point or pay no attention to this step. Yet, building models is only one step towards knowledge discovery. Our future work will realize this model into some real-world applications.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Much research on knowledge discovery in database (KDD) merely pays attention to data mining, one of many interacting steps in the process of discovering previously unknown and potentially interesting patterns in large databases, but little to the whole process. However, such approaches cannot satisfy the need of real applications of KDD. The purpose of this work is to extend a process model of KDD in practice at large.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A new model based on research experiences of the knowledge discovery process is formalized as an extension of the model by Fayyad et al. A case study by a reduct method from rough set theory is to illustrate why the process model is proposed and in what situation it can be used in practice.\nFindings: - This model incorporates data collection in the KDD process to supply a sound framework to better support KDD applications.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This model reflects the native of KDD in some tested cases. It may need further research to be used in all other situations.\nPractical implications: - It can be used in the area of information security, medical treatment and other information management.\nOriginality/value: - Using this model, one can directly collect data that are essential and useful for the mining results. It also offers practical help to those KDD researchers both from industry and academia.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The impact of reference effects on online purchase intention of agricultural products: The moderating role of consumers' food safety consciousness
|
[
"Agricultural products",
"Perceived risk",
"Perceived value",
"Online purchase intention",
"Reference effects",
"Food safety consciousness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: For nearly two decades, with the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce, online purchase has gradually become a very important vehicle for consumers to buy agricultural products. According to the 2014-2015 China agricultural products e-commerce development report (China Electronic Commerce Research Center, 2015), sales of agricultural products on Alibaba e-commerce platform increased from Y=3.7 billion in 2010 to more than Y=80 billion in 2014, reaching an average annual growth rate of 115.64 percent in the past five years and fully demonstrating the strong momentum of online purchase of agricultural products.\n2. Literature review: Through a close examination of the past studies on OPI, we discovered that they mainly focused on the following two aspects.\n3. Research model and hypotheses: In this study, we define reference effects as the degree to which a consumer is influenced by RGs and online comments in the process of forming his/her online purchase decision. There are two main reasons for taking reference effects as research point in our study.\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Measurement development\n5. Data analysis and results: 5.1 Reliability and validity analysis\n6. Discussion and implications: 6.1 Key findings\n7. Limitations and future research: Although our findings yield valuable insights into online purchase of agricultural products, certain limitations of this study should be acknowledged.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of reference effects on online purchase intention (OPI) of agricultural products in B2C context and to examine how consumers' food safety consciousness (FSC) moderates that impact.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An empirical survey was used to test the hypotheses. Data were collected from a total of 297 online consumers in China. A structural equation modeling is utilized to assess the relationships proposed in the research model.\nFindings: The findings of this study show that reference effects have a significant impact on OPI of agricultural products. Both perceived value (PV) and perceived risk (PR) play a mediating role in the relations between reference effects and OPI, but the mediating effect of the PV is found to be significantly greater than that of the PR. Consumers' FSC significantly and positively moderates the impact of reference effects on OPI, meaning that the more attention consumers pay to food safety, the greater the impact of reference effects on OPI will become.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, this study mainly analyzes the positive impact of reference effects on OPI. Future research could discuss the negative impact of reference effects and compare the differences between them. Second, this study only takes the PV and PR as mediators into the research model. Future research could consider adding trust, attitude, and other variables and further explore and clarify the influencing mechanism between reference effects and OPI. Third, this study examines the moderating role of consumers' FSC but does not fully discuss the moderating role of product categories. Further research could compare the influence of reference effects among multiple product categories.\nPractical implications: This study provides valuable insights for agricultural enterprises and online vendors that reference effects are one of the most important factors to influence OPI. It suggests to agricultural enterprises and online vendors that reference effects can be used as a new instrument to influence consumers' online purchase decisions.\nOriginality/value: This study for the first time defines reference effects in an online setting and introduces the perspective of reference effects to establish a theoretical model to explain consumers' OPI of agricultural products. The study reveals the influencing mechanism of reference effects on OPI and thus enriches the theory of online purchase behavior.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Efficiency of inpatient orthopedic surgery in Japan: a medical claims database analysis
|
[
"Japan",
"Efficiency",
"Data envelopment analysis",
"Orthopedic surgery"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Efficiency is an important concern in most healthcare facilities as well as in health policy in the developed countries today (Eappen et al., 2004). Unlike neurosurgery or cardiovascular surgery, inpatient orthopedic surgical procedures have been performed in a variety of healthcare settings. Some procedures which require special surgical devices and diagnostic facilities are done in tertiary care hospitals with intensive care units, and others which require only a few simple surgical instruments are done in small hospitals. They are very different in resource utilization, and comparing these heterogeneous orthopedic procedures is difficult in the simple cost analysis. There has previously been a study focused on several common surgical procedures (Hayashida and Imanaka, 2005). However, there have been no studies evaluating the efficiency of all types of orthopedic surgery in Japan. The type of healthcare settings that can provide efficient orthopedic surgical procedures is unknown.\nMethods: The Teikyo University Institutional Review Board has approved our study (TU14-080). The research team has strictly maintained the anonymity of the data by de-identification.\nResults: After excluding the data as mentioned above, we analyzed 1,963 inpatient orthopedic surgical cases performed at 262 healthcare facilities.\nDiscussion: We demonstrated from a large-scale medical claims database that healthcare facilities with DPC reimbursement were less efficient in inpatient orthopedic surgery than those without DPC, and that the clinics with beds were the most efficient in inpatient orthopedic surgery among all other types of management bodies of healthcare facilities. This is the first research that used a medical claims database to measure the efficiency of orthopedic surgery in Japan.\nConclusions: In conclusion, we demonstrated by DEA using a large-scale medical claims database that the healthcare facilities with DPC reimbursement were less efficient in inpatient orthopedic surgery than those without DPC, and that the clinics with beds were the most efficient in inpatient orthopedic surgery among all other types of healthcare facilities. This is the first research that used a medical claims database to measure the efficiency of orthopedic surgery in Japan. Further research is necessary to find which patients are appropriate for various kinds of healthcare facilities.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the characteristics of healthcare facilities that produce the most efficient inpatient orthopedic surgery using a large-scale medical claims database in Japan.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Reimbursement claims data were obtained from April 1 through September 30, 2014. Input-oriented Banker-Charnes-Cooper model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) was employed. The decision-making unit was defined as a healthcare facility where orthopedic surgery was performed. Inputs were defined as the length of stay, the number of beds, and the total costs of expensive surgical devices. Output was defined as total surgical fees for each surgery. Efficiency scores of healthcare facilities were compared among different categories of healthcare facilities.\nFindings: The efficiency scores of healthcare facilities with a diagnosis-procedure combination (DPC) reimbursement were significantly lower than those without DPC (p=0.0000). All the efficiency scores of clinics with beds were 1. Their efficiency scores were significantly higher than those of university hospitals, public hospitals, and other hospitals (p=0.0000).\nOriginality/value: This is the first research that applied DEA for orthopedic surgery in Japan. The healthcare facilities with DPC reimbursement were less efficient than those without DPC. The clinics with beds were the most efficient among all types of management bodies of healthcare facilities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Using public-private partnerships for the building and management of school assets and services
|
[
"Australia",
"New Zealand",
"Case studies",
"Public-private partnerships",
"School assets and services"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Elementary and secondary education is an essential policy regime for governments. The primary objective of education system is to equip citizens with knowledge and skills to succeed in the modern world. The delivery of educational services relies on the development of school assets. Building and managing schools plays an important role in achieving educational objectives. The provision of school infrastructure and services usually includes a large operation component, involves diverse groups of stakeholders and features relatively simple design and technical requirements (Hurst and Reeves, 2004). These special characteristics have raised the prospects for using alternative procurement methodologies to deliver school projects.\nSpecial characteristics for building and management of school facilities and services: The building of schools usually requires comparably small capital investment. The long-term operating and maintenance expenses of school projects take relatively high proportion in life-cycle costing, as opposed to other capital-intense infrastructure sectors, such as land transport (Gibson and Davies, 2008). A whole-of-life approach is preferred for school development and emphasis should be placed on the long-term service delivery (National Infrastructure Unit, 2010).\nPPPs in school: practice and theory: PPPs refer to long-term contracts for the delivery of a service, where the provision of the service requires the construction of a facility or asset, or the enhancement of an existing facility. The private sector partner finances and builds the facility, operates it to provide the service and usually transfers the control of it to the public sector at the end of the contract (National Infrastructure Unit, 2009).\nResearch methodology: This research aims to evaluate PPP experiences in the school sector, identify the key challenges for using PPPs in building, management and operation of school projects, extract lessons and propose strategies to address the challenges and increase the likelihood of achieving success in school PPPs. Internationally, key aspects about PPPs have been well researched, including issues such as risk allocation, the government's responsibilities and payment mechanisms (Ke et al., 2009; Kwak et al., 2009). However, little is known about the critical dimensions affecting PPP implementation, with particular relevance to school development. Comparative case studies were therefore adopted in this research as they offer a useful means to identify themes and patterns emerging from the cases, which can be applicable elsewhere by adjusting to individual contextual situation (Eisenhardt, 2007). Also, a case study approach is preferred as it enables data collection from multiple sources, such as interviews/surveys, document analysis and direct observation (Yin, 2009). The implementation of PPPs is largely influenced by the country's social, economic and policy conditions (Zhang, 2005). A qualitative approach was used for this research as it not only captures experts' in-depth insights on key issues affecting the success/failure of using PPPs for school development, but also enables following discussions on how the key issues relate to the country's particular environments (Mcneill and Chapman, 2005).\nDescription of case study projects: PViS\nResearch results: An investigation of PPP processes and organisation of the PViS and HS project in Australia and New Zealand, respectively, identifies the key dimensions influencing PPP implementation in the school sector, which are presented below.\nDiscussion: This paper evaluates the PPP experiences in the school sector by examining two cases based in Australia and New Zealand from a comparative perspective. It attempts to add to the on-going debate on the suitability of PPPs for school development, focusing on the key issues emerging from PPP planning and execution and extracting strategies on addressing the issues.\nConclusions: This study investigates the application of PPPs in the school sector and draws on critical strategies specific to school PPPs. By examining two school PPP projects from a comparative perspective, the research finds that the key dimensions affecting venue PPP application have deviations with general PPP practices as a result of the special characteristics of building and management of schools. Five categories of strategies are extracted through capturing several key trends, similarities and differences from the practices of the two cases.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The provision of school assets and associated services is essential for achieving a country's educational outcomes. Building and managing schools usually features large component of operation, multiple groups of stakeholders, relatively simple design and technical requirements and tight timeframes to be completed to meet the open date. Internationally, public-private partnerships (PPPs) were introduced as innovative delivery models to bring forward school projects. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the PPP experiences in the school sector focusing on the critical dimensions impacting on the viability of using PPPs for school development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Comparative case studies of two school PPP projects based in Australia and New Zealand were adopted as the main research method. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders were used as primary data collection method.\nFindings: By examining the procedural and organisational arrangements from a comparative perspective, the research finds that, for a successful school PPP, the followings are critical: sound business case development; size-adjusted and streamlined tendering process; localised private sector partner and streamlined finance; extensive stakeholder engagement; and effective governance and organisational structure and enhanced partnership.\nOriginality/value: The findings provide practical implications for policy makers and public procuring authorities initiating school projects and private entities seeking investment opportunities. By implementing the strategies derived from this research and adjusting to their own social and economic environment, governments and industry would be at a better position to develop and manage schools using PPPs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of value in services: a study in a retail environment
|
[
"Shopping",
"Retail trade",
"Customer satisfaction"
] |
[
{
"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: Several trends tend to characterise modern retailing: stores and shopping malls are all similar (Wakefield and Baker, 1998); product offer and prices are comparable and, as such, can no longer represent a competitive advantage (Groeppel and Bloch, 1990); individual consumers' store patronage has decreased and shopping time has been reduced (Reynolds et al., 2002). It had therefore become necessary to identify what observable and unobservable attributes of a store could serve as a basis for an accurate, truly differentiating strategy[1].Understanding the way the consumer constructs her/his relationship with a retailer's offer, how she/he evaluates it and assessing her/his subsequent satisfaction have become major concerns for all the participants in the retailing business. Some findings have for example interrelated an outlet's characteristics, the individual consumer's emotional response to that outlet and her/his level of satisfaction (Oliver, 1997). Other research work analysed another key element of the evaluation process: the value concept. Although these researchers (Holbrook, 1996, 1999; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) attempted to make that concept clearer and showed its importance in the assessment of a retail outlet, the position this notion actually holds in the evaluation process proper is not so obvious. This article attempts to provide that lacking element: based on an empirical study, it shows that value does have an influence on customer satisfaction and determines what the main antecedent variables are.If none of the variables handled by the outlet has any impact on the store's perceived value, the value concept will no longer have any strategic effect on the firm. This article therefore sets a fundamental question: is the value concept a major challenge for retailing firms?The value concept offers managerial interest: The results of the study will enable retailers to identify the characteristics they should work on in order to give more value to the outlet, and as a consequence increase customer satisfaction.Moreover, a theoretical aspect had to be emphasized: this research work analyses the effect of value on satisfaction, a connection which, so far, had not been given much attention. Furthermore, the value concept is part of the evaluation process of the store. The major theoretical aspect, however, lies in the determination of the different value's antecedents, a relation that previous studies had not tackled yet.The first part describes the value concept on which our research is based while the second part uses an empirical study to analyse the connection between value and consumer satisfaction and determines the antecedent variables. The article concludes on the limitations of the study, and suggests lines of action for future research.\nThe value of shopping: a theoretical background: This part deals with the way the value concept can be applied to the retail outlet. It analyses the motivations for store patronage, defines the notion of value in that context and examines its three key components.Motivations for store patronage\nEmpirical study: effect and determinants of the shopping value: For the retailer, it is important to know whether the value of shopping has an impact on consumer satisfaction. If such is the case, the study of the determinants of value will allow us to determine what variables should be worked on to modify that value and thus give the consumer greater satisfaction.Procedure\nDiscussion and conclusion: This research work was about the relationship, of an indirect type, between the outlet's characteristics and consumer satisfaction. The effect and determinants of the shopping value have been emphasized.Implications\nLimitations and recommendations for further research: In the first place, we used the scale set by Babin et al. (1994) to measure value, because it seemed to be best adapted to our study. However, it presents some limitations we mentioned in the first part. In particular, it would be interesting in the future to take other dimensions of value into account and therefore use another scale.Second, the effect of atmosphere elements on value and satisfaction is linked to the experience a customer goes through when she/he patronizes an outlet. And yet, we did not consider the individual characteristics that can have an impact on the customer's perception.Moreover, the methodology we used does not allow us to describe that customer's hedonic experience in a really satisfactory way. A qualitative methodology could be adopted later on to that aim.Another limitation concerns the choice of hypermarkets. It would be interesting to carry out the same study by using another investigation field like that of a speciality store: the value it is associated with is likely to be completely different. The retailer might therefore have to handle other characteristics of her/his outlet.It is also important to wonder whether the order in which we set the relations between the outlet's characteristics, the value and the satisfaction concepts is really as we defined it. Additional methods will have to be used to check that point. Within such an analysis framework, future research studies could be placed on a relational, rather than transactional level, as has been the case in the present study.Finally, our future work might tackle the recent research orientations that view shopping as an element able to help create identity and meaning (Sherry, 1998). That would shed a new light on our results. All these possibilities show the interest there is in continuing research studies in that field: research prospects about the notion of value in retailing are promising.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to underline the effects of shopping value on customer satisfaction and to determine its antecedent variables.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A qualitative survey through interviews with hypermarket customers was first carried out. It was followed by a quantitative study, carried out in two stages: 199 patrons were first interrogated in order to clarify the outlet characteristics scale. A second set of data was then collected (436 respondents). Factorial analysis, confirmatory factorial analysis and analysis of regression were conducted.\nFindings: - The last study results show that both utilitarian and hedonic values have an influence on satisfaction; they tend to indicate that the utilitarian value is related to product availability, while the hedonic value is influenced by such elements as atmosphere, relations with store employees, as well as crowding and other peripheral services.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The influence of the five outlet characteristics studied (atmosphere, peripheral services, store employees, product availability, crowding) on value have never been demonstrated empirically until now. The link between value and satisfaction was not so clear in the literature.\nPractical implications: - The results show what variables are to be promoted if a retailer wishes to give the outlet its utilitarian and/or hedonic value, and then influence patron satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides important and new insights both into value that may be attributed to a point of sale and into the effect on customer satisfaction of outlet characteristics.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How engaging leaders foster employees' work engagement
|
[
"Engaging leadership",
"Job resources",
"Basic psychological need satisfaction",
"Work engagement",
"Longitudinal study"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Various leadership styles - such as transformational leadership, servant leadership, authentic leadership and ethical leadership - were found to have a positive relationship to work engagement (DeCuypere and Schaufeli, 2020). However, none of these leadership styles were conceived explicitly to increase employees' work engagement (WE). Is there any specific type of leadership that fosters employees' WE? In the current study, we answer this question by introducing a novel alternative leadership style, developed specifically to stimulate employees' WE.Moreover, mainstream leadership studies have focused on increasing employees' performance or ensuring that employees exert their maximum effort on works, whereby overperformance may cause poor well-being (Nielsen and Taris, 2019). These authors suggested that though efforts have been taken to develop leadership concepts that also focus on employees' health and well-being, some questions remain unanswered about which specific leadership characteristics promote employee health and well-being. Therefore, the current study proposes a particular type of leadership that focuses primarily on employee well-being, that is WE.WE--a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74)--is a popular, prominent and widely recognized as a positive job-related psychological state in both business and academia. WE has been promoted as a valuable competitive advantage in organizations across multiple levels (Christian et al., 2011).The increased amount of research and practices on WE has also boosted the search for its antecedents. Most studies use the job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004) to investigate WE (Bailey et al., 2017), suggesting that the interaction between employees' job demands and resources fosters WE. Moreover, in addition to the JD-R model, previous studies emphasized the role of leadership as a crucial antecedent for employees' WE, such as transformational leadership and leader-member exchange (Tims et al., 2011; Vincent-Hoper et al., 2012; Breevaart et al., 2015; Hawkes et al., 2017).The JD-R model has been criticized for being a descriptive framework rather than an explanatory framework, meaning that the JD-R model requires other psychological theories to explain and understand the underlying processes involved (Schaufeli and Taris, 2014). Similarly, previously established broad leadership concepts did not provide a detailed theoretical description of the underlying processes. A study of self-efficacy as a mediator of transformational leadership and engagement found that while the direct effect of transformational leadership on engagement is strong, yet self-efficacy demonstrates only a small part of the relationship (Prochazka et al., 2017). Thus, although transformational leadership could be the most applicable leadership framework for understanding WE (Shuck and Herd, 2012), the theoretical framework of transformational leadership has been questioned (Van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013). This means that leadership concept cannot sufficiently explain how each of their dimensions, for example, is specifically related to WE. Regardless of having a specific purpose to foster engagement, the established leadership concepts, such as transformational, transactional and servant leadership, also relate to other, broader outcomes like job performance, job satisfaction and so on. Thus, a specific, theory based and more narrowly defined leadership style, dubbed engaging leadership (EL), was introduced (Schaufeli, 2015).This current study aims to empirically test how EL impacts employees' WE over time. The JD-R model is used as an overall conceptual framework (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; 2017) in which EL, rooted in the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (SDT; Deci and Ryan, 2000), is integrated. The added value of the current study is that it highlights the validity of the EL concept as the new, specific and alternative leadership style by showing that it impacts WE over time through increased JRs (as predicted by the JD-R model) and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (as predicted by SDT).\nConceptual framework: Work engagement, JD-R and leadership\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Preliminary analysis: change scores\nDiscussion: The current study aimed to illuminate the process by which perceived EL results in increased engagement among followers. Based on SDT, it was hypothesized that JRs mediate the relationship between EL and the satisfaction of four basic needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness and meaningfulness (Hypothesis 1). Moreover, JRs mediate the relationship between EL and basic need satisfaction (Hypothesis 2). Based on the JD-R model, it was hypothesized that basic need satisfaction mediates the relationship between JRs and WE (Hypothesis 3). Most importantly, a sequential mediation was predicted: EL increases WE via JRs and basic need satisfaction (Hypothesis 4).Our results, which are based on a two-wave longitudinal study design, confirm Hypotheses 2 and 3 and partly confirm Hypothesis 4. Taken together, these results suggest that EL predicts an increase in WE across a one-year period, both directly and indirectly, through JRs and subsequent basic need satisfaction. These results are in line with previous cross-sectional findings showing that EL is positively associated with JRs (Schaufeli, 2015; Nikolova et al., 2019), that JRs are positively associated with BNS (Van Wingerden et al., 2018) and that BNS is positively associated with WE (Van den Broeck et al., 2008; Rahmadani et al., 2019).However, the direct effect of EL on WE is unexpected. A possible explanation of this direct effect is emotional contagion, where leaders directly influence employees' WE through emotional contagion mechanism. A study from Bakker et al. (2006) found emotional contagion as a crucial crossover mechanism that leads to the emergence of a shared psychological state in teams (also related to leadership). In our case, it might be that the engaged leaders influence their followers' engagement through the social interaction with the followers, then from the interaction the state of engagement of the leaders is shared. Decuypere and Schaufeli (2020) called the direct influence of leaders to followers' engagement through emotional contagion as an affective interpersonal pathway.The results are not in line with previous findings that indicate that BNS mediates the relationship between EL and WE (Hypothesis 1). The reason is that in the previous study (Rahmadani et al., 2019), JR were not included. In fact, the results of the current study qualify the findings of Rahmadani et al. (2019), in the sense that the current study also finds a positive relationship between EL and BNS, albeit that it is mediated by JR. Also, a similar mediated relationship was found between EL and WE, but the mediation was more complex and involved BNS as well as JR. Thus, the current study emphasizes the crucial role of JR also in relation to BNS.For the first time, the associations involving BNS have been confirmed using a longitudinal sample. It seems that engaging leaders increase their followers' levels of JRs, which leads to BNS. This, in turn, is associated with an increase in WE. Tellingly, the grouping of JRs in three domains - organizational, work and social - as previously observed by Schaufeli (2017) was replicated in the current study, which adds to its validity.Implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The current study investigates the mediating role of job resources (JRs) (i.e. person--ob fit, value congruence, alignment, job control, use of skills, participation in decision-making, coworker support and performance feedback) and basic psychological need satisfaction at work (i.e. autonomy, relatedness, competence and meaningfulness) in the relationship between engaging leadership (EL) (i.e. inspiring, strengthening, empowering and connecting) and work engagement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Structural equation analysis was used to test the mediation hypotheses, using a two-wave longitudinal design and an Indonesian sample of 412 employees from an agribusiness state-owned company.\nFindings: The results show that EL at baseline 2017 (T1) predicts T1-T2 increase in work engagement (WE) directly, as well as indirectly through T1 JRs, and T1-T2 increase in basic psychological need satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: This research extends the job demands-resources (JD-R) model by showing the important role of ELfor fostering WE through increasing JRs and satisfying basic psychological needs at work.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Second hand smoke: ambient racial harassment at work
|
[
"Racial harassment",
"Race discrimination",
"Diversity",
"Ambient harassment",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Racial harassment continues to be a concern within many workplaces in the USA. Incidents of racial harassment at work have increased by nearly 30 percent in the past decade (EEOC, 2010) and the number of harassment charges filed has more than doubled since the early 1990s (EEOC, 2000). The overwhelming majority (over 80 percent) of racial discrimination and harassment charges are filed by Blacks (EEOC, 2005). Racial harassment is defined as threatening verbal conduct or exclusionary behavior that is directed towards an individual because of his or her race or ethnicity (Chrobot-Mason and Hepworth, 2005; McLean, 2000; Goldman et al., 2006; Schneider et al., 2000). Like sexual harassment, racial harassment can create a hostile or intimidating work environment, and may include a wide array of verbal and non-verbal behaviors that ultimately may have an adverse effect on job performance or other workplace outcomes (Schneider et al., 2000). Examples of racial harassment range from hostile looks and the display of nooses, to racial slurs and physical threats (EEOC, 2010) as well as lack of access to critical job resources (Harrick and Sullivan, 1995).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Race and awareness of ambient racial harassment\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Means, standard deviations, correlations and coefficient as are shown in Table II. as, listed on the diagonal, were all acceptable. Because the three indices of ambient racial harassment were inter-correlated (r's ranging from 0.45 to 0.69) we used MANCOVA for analyses predicting these dependent variables. Regression models used for the other analyses included all control and predictor variables. The continuous variable, organizational tolerance was centered prior to entering the interaction term in the regression and MANCOVA analyses (Aiken and West, 1991).H1 predicted that White employees would be less likely than Black employees to report ambient racial harassment at work. This hypothesis received full support. MANCOVA analyses revealed that even after controlling for organizational tenure, age, gender, source of data and team demography, White respondents were less likely than Black respondents to report ambient racial harassment in their workplace (Wilks' l=0.884, F=7.11 (3,162), p<0.00, e2=0.12). Follow-up univariate analyses revealed that these race differences held for all three types of harassment: biased behaviors (F (1,164)=19.68, p<0.000, e2=0.11), Comments (F (1,164)=12.09, p<0.01, e2=0.07) and threats/assaults (F (1,164)=4.06, p<0.05, e2=0.02). The adjusted means by race are shown in Table III.H2-H5 predicted that awareness of racial harassment would be associated with negative work attitudes (H2) and greater psychological strain (H3), and that such relationships would be stronger for Blacks than Whites (H4 and H5). H2-H5 were tested with OLS regression models in which all the dependent variables were regressed on the control and predictor variables. Results of these analyses are shown in Table IV.These analyses revealed that two of the three forms of ambient racial harassment - \"Biased Behaviors\" and \"Comments\" - were significant predictors of all five outcomes. Employees who were aware of these forms of ambient harassment had less job satisfaction and identify freedom, and higher turnover intentions, somatic health complaints, and work-related depression than those who did not report this type of ambient racial harassment. However, awareness of threats/assaults was unrelated to the dependent variables. H2 and H3 therefore received partial support. H4 and H5 were tested by including the interaction term between race and the different types of ambient racial harassment. None of these terms were significant. Thus, the prediction that these relationships will be stronger for Blacks than Whites was not supported and the non-significant results were omitted from Table IV.In support of H6, MANCOVA analyses revealed that even after controlling for organizational tenure, age, gender, source of data and team demography, organizational tolerance (Wilks' l=0.737, F=19.26 (3,162), p<0.00, e2=0.21) was positively related to ambient racial harassment. Follow-up univariate analyses revealed a significant positive relationship with all three types of harassment: Biased Behaviors (F (1,164)=55.63, p<0.000, e2=0.25), Comments (F (1,164)=22.56, p<0.0, e2=0.12) and threats/assaults (F (1,164)=13.16, p<0.00, e2=0.08).When examining our research question, we found significant interactions between organizational tolerance for harassment and offensive comments for job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and work-related depression. We also found a significant interaction between organizational tolerance and biased behavior for job satisfaction, but none of the other interactions were significant. The significant interactions for offensive comments are listed in Table V and shown in Figures 1-3. Respondents who perceived their organization as having a high tolerance for racial harassment reported lower job satisfaction, higher turnover intentions, and more work-related depression than respondents who perceived their organization as having low tolerance for racial harassment. As shown in figures, under conditions of low ambient harassment (i.e. less frequent offensive comments), we see lower levels of job satisfaction, and stronger turnover intentions and work-related depression for those who perceive their organization to have high tolerance for harassment as compared to respondents who perceive their organization to have low tolerance for harassment. However, these differences significantly decrease under conditions of high ambient harassment (i.e. more frequent offensive comments). Implications of these findings are described in the discussion section.Post hoc analyses\nDiscussion: Our study examined the work and health-related consequences associated with ambient racial harassment, defined as the direct or indirect exposure to racial harassment aimed at others in the workplace. Although we are not able to draw any conclusions on causality, our results indicate that, like second-hand smoke, exposure to racial harassment at work may have potent and pernicious repercussions for the psychological health and well being of employees. Two key findings emerged that have significant implications for both theory and future research.The second hand smoke effect\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Like \"second hand smoke,\" the harmful repercussions of racial harassment may extend well beyond the target to impact others at work. This study seeks to examine the \"second hand smoke effect\", or ambient racial harassment, which involves exposure to racial harassment aimed at others. The paper examines race differences in awareness of racial harassment and explored work and health-related outcomes associated with exposure to racial harassment. It also examines organizational tolerance for harassment as a moderator of these relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A diverse sample of 245 employees from three data sources were surveyed. One data source involved White and Black employees in the same organization; the others worked in a variety of organizations across the USA.\nFindings: - Whites were less likely than Blacks to be aware of racial harassment, even when employed in the same workplace. However, awareness of racial harassment predicted negative job attitudes and psychological strain for both Whites and Blacks. These relationships were amplified by perceptions of organizational tolerance for racial harassment.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study documents ramifications of ambient racial harassment and illuminates a racial divide in awareness of harassment at work that may exacerbate racial conflict and prevent needed organizational change.\nOriginality/value: - The paper extends the construct of ambient racial harassment by measuring a range of overt and subtle forms that vary in type and intensity, and by examining the role of organizational tolerance for racial harassment as a moderator of the relationship between ambient racial harassment and work and health-related outcomes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The influence of personal- and business centre characteristics on knowledge sharing types in business centres
|
[
"Personality",
"Facilities",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Services",
"Business centre",
"Seemingly unrelated regression analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizations, especially freelancers and subject matter expertise (SMEs), are increasingly looking for accommodation in a business centre because of the decreasing need of workspace, the increasing need for flexibility and the increasing need for a higher service level (Gibson, 2003; Barber et al., 2005). A business centre can be defined as a building with a number of spaces and possibly some common facilities and/or services, which are offered to multiple organizations (Calder and Courtney, 1992; Weijs-Perree et al., 2016).\nKnowledge sharing: Knowledge is one of the most important resources of an organization (Ipe, 2003; Van den Hooff and Hendrix, 2004), especially in today's \"knowledge economy\" (Yao and Fan, 2015). Knowledge sharing has therefore increasingly been receiving attention of organizational leaders. It is important that organizations not only acquire knowledge within the organization but also acquire knowledge from other organizations. Organizations could benefit and learn from each other's knowledge, which eventually could lead to creating new knowledge (Marouf, 2007).\nBusiness centre characteristics: Business centres could vary depending on the level of shared services and facilities/spaces that are offered. Several services can be described based on existing literature (Weijs-Perree et al., 2016; Laterveer, 2011; Calder and Courtney, 1992; Ketting, 2014; Troukens, 2001), namely, business services, secretarial services, cleaning and maintenance, security, managed technology, consultancy services, networking events, catering, use of coffee and tea services and furniture. The use of these services could influence the way and what type of knowledge people share within organizations and with people from other organizations in the business centre. For example, the use of networking events probably increases sharing public non-codified knowledge, as people mostly attend these events to meet new interesting people to share common and new knowledge. Consultancy services can help and provide organizations with new knowledge to improve their performance. Business centres also provide concentration rooms, office space with fixed workstations, office space with shared workstations, a combination of fixed and shared workstations, atelier space, laboratory space, conference room, informal/social space, project/creative space, reception, kitchen, coffee corner, storage room, showroom or a business unit (Weijs-Perree et al., 2016).\nMethodology: Data were collected in January and February 2016 by means of a questionnaire. The aim of the data collection was to collect data of users of 139 business centres that participated in a previous study. Owners and managers of these business centres were asked to distribute the questionnaire among all their tenants, who were subsequently asked to distribute the questionnaire among their employees. In addition, some business centre users were personally approached to increase the response rate. This resulted in a total of 299 questionnaires (177 online and 122 paper-and-pencil questionnaires). Only 268 questionnaires were used in the final analysis because 32 questionnaires had several missing values.\nSample: Table I shows the sample characteristics. The sample consists of 68 per cent men and 32 per cent women. The average age of the respondents is 40 years, with an SD of 12. A high percentage of the respondents (80 per cent) have a high educational level (undergraduate or postgraduate). Most respondents work as freelancers (30 per cent) or work as an SME (39 per cent). Only a small percentage of the respondents (15 per cent) work at a start-up enterprise or at a large enterprise (8 per cent). Many respondents (40 per cent) work on a full-time basis. Most respondents are extraverted, open to new experiences, sympathetic, self-disciplined and emotionally stable. With regard to knowledge sharing, respondents share weekly knowledge within organizations and less than once a month with people from other organizations. Public codified knowledge is the least shared by respondents, and private knowledge is shared the most in the business centres.\nModel results: The normal probability plot of the residuals of the regression analyses shows that most of the residuals are normally distributed. Some of the residuals are slightly skewed, and therefore, the results should be interpreted carefully. The results of the SUR (Tables III and IV) indicate that sharing the four types of knowledge is indeed influenced by personal characteristics, frequency of using offered facilities/services and workspace characteristics. The regression sum of squares measures how much of the total variation is explained by the regression. In addition, the mean square error (MSE) measures the fit to the data. The smaller the MSE, the better the model, explains the data (Li, 2010).\nConclusion and discussion: Business centres (especially co-working spaces and incubators) are mostly branded as innovative work environments and valued by tenants because of knowledge sharing opportunities with other organizations. However, it was still not clear which type of knowledge users mostly share within their organization and with other organizations and how this behaviour is influenced by the physical work environment of business centres (controlling for personal characteristics). The aim of this study was therefore to analyse all hypothesized effects, based on the literature review, on sharing different types of knowledge within a business centre. It provided new insights in particularly which types of knowledge shared are influenced in which way by the physical work environment of the business centres. Another contribution to previous studies is that this study looks at knowledge sharing within and between organizations. This study was thus able to test existing theory on knowledge sharing within organizations in a different (shared) office context and simultaneously create new theory on how to support knowledge sharing between organizations in such offices.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Knowledge sharing is a process where individuals mutually exchange knowledge to create new knowledge. Understanding the knowledge-sharing process, during which organizations share spaces, facilities and services, is highly important for owners/managers who seek to optimize their business centres and to attract more innovative tenants. For users of business centres, it is interesting to know how, where and what type of knowledge is shared. However, there is hardly any research into sharing different types of knowledge in business centres. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of personal and organizational characteristics on sharing different types of knowledge within and between organizations in business centres.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected using a questionnaire that was completed by 268 users of 53 business centres in The Netherlands. A seemingly unrelated regression analysis was used to simultaneously analyse the influence of personal and organizational characteristics on knowledge sharing in business centres.\nFindings: The results show that public and private non-codified knowledge is more frequently shared with people from other organizations by those who more frequently use an event space, lounge space, canteen or consultancy services. Knowledge sharing with colleagues within organizations was influenced by the use of individual closed workspaces, meeting spaces and restaurant/canteen and gender.\nOriginality/value: The study suggests that owners and managers of business centres can optimize their business centres by offering specific facilities, services and workspaces to attract a specific group of tenants. In addition, organizations that want to enhance knowledge sharing with other organizations need to stimulate their employees to use shared facilities and services.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Customer-dominant logic: foundations and implications
|
[
"Presence",
"Customer ecosystem",
"Customer logic",
"Customer-dominant logic",
"Value formation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Customer-dominant logic (CDL) is a perspective on business and marketing based on the primacy of the customer. Adopting this view means shifting the focus from how (systems of) providers involve customers in their processes to how customers in their ecosystems engage different types of providers. In other words, emphasizing how customers embed service in their processes rather than how firms provide service to customers. Acknowledging CDL highlights the parallels and differences of marketing perspectives in existing research and practice. Perspectives are important in academic research and business practice. A business is driven by a prevailing perspective, a dominant logic, which is:\nApproach: Inspired by the axiomatic discussion of SDL (Lusch and Vargo, 2014) and the comparison of SDL with other central perspectives, such as SL or consumer culture theory (CCT) (Gronroos and Gummerus, 2014; Akaka et al., 2015), in this paper, we present the central tenets of the CDL of service. In contrast to previous conceptual discussions of CDL (Heinonen et al., 2010, 2013), this paper goes beyond the discussion of the differences with provider-dominant logic (PDL) and more specifically contrasts CDL with the two main service perspectives (SDL and SL). It also focuses on managerial issues to connect the essential CDL characteristics to business and research implications. The internal logic of CDL is based on positioning customer insight in the foreground in place of the type of offering (product or service) or the system of providers (service [eco]systems). The key issue is categorizing the perspectives according to their degree of provider-customer dominance. Recently, Anker et al. (2014) attempted to extend the discussion of customer-dominant value creation but redirected the focus through using the term \"consumer\" instead of customer. Their paper, however, changes the main idea behind CDL, as it places the focus on consumption, not business. We maintain the primacy of the customer concept, which we will further elaborate on. The term customer is by no means restricted to a dyadic relationship with one specific provider, but rather, from the customer's point of view, living their life/conducting their business using a constellation of providers. Furthermore, the term customer is not self-evident in terms of unit, time frame, roles, and activities. These aspects are important issues when applying CDL in research and practice.\nDominant logic in research and practice: Dominant logic is relevant in theory and practice. The term \"dominant logic\" has been discussed in a strategic context (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986; Bettis and Prahalad, 1995; Prahalad, 2004) as an information filter that directs what managers (and researchers) focus on - be it service (Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Gronroos, 2006), networks (Ford and Hakansson, 2006; Hakansson, 1982; Ford, 1980), solutions (Nordin and Kowalkowski, 2010), consumer cultures (Arnould and Thompson, 2005) or something else. Some perspectives presented in the academic literature are seen as \"pure\" ideal types of how to approach marketing issues and business (Brown, 2007). In practice, the perspectives used by managers are not ideal types but may be mixtures of many types (Strandvik et al., 2014).\nDifferent service perspectives: The emphasis in service business logic reveals differences between the existing service perspectives and shows how they guide what is seen. To accurately understand the differences between service perspectives, we can examine the emergence of service research. When service perspectives emerged in the 1970s, the discussion circled around the contrast between products and services (Fisk et al., 1993). In the next phase, when SDL emerged some 30 years later, this traditional service management perspective was seen as a goods-dominant logic (GDL), and services were contrasted with service (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). The focus of service research thus shifted to service as a process that involves customers in interactions (Gronroos and Gummerus, 2014) and co-creation processes (Lusch and Vargo, 2014). Currently, the focus of SDL is shifting away from individual providers and customer-provider encounters to how value is created within systems of service exchange (Akaka et al., 2015). Still, the basis of exchange within the SDL perspective from a multiple stakeholder perspective of market interactions is service (Lusch and Vargo, 2014). CDL emerged as an alternative view of service that moved the focus from the provider perspective to the customer perspective by arguing that both GDL and SDL represent a provider-dominant logic (PDL) (Heinonen et al., 2010). The essential difference is that CDL does not emphasize the interaction between the customer and the provider/market. The focus is on the key stakeholder in businesses - the customer - and how customers embed service in their processes. This is in contrast to how (multiple) providers (and other institutional stakeholders) in service (eco)systems provide service to the customer, which is the basis of SDL (Akaka et al., 2015). CDL stresses the activities and experiences of customers beyond customers' perceptions of offerings and market interactions (Heinonen et al., 2010). Further, CDL does not contrast products to service but considers both products and services as the basis for value.\nCustomer-dominant logic: CDL (Heinonen et al., 2010; 2013) was introduced as a managerial perspective on marketing and business. It is grounded in understanding customer logic and how firms' offerings become embedded in customers' lives/business. The positioning of CDL as a marketing and business logic recognizes marketing as the foundation for business (Strandvik et al., 2014) and not, as commonly considered, a mere function within a firm. CDL guides managers in understanding markets and customers.\nThe essentials of CDL: The following five essential features of CDL build on and extend previous studies (essentially Heinonen et al., 2010, 2013): business perspective, customer logic, offering, value formation and context. In the following, these features are described and the resulting managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.\nHow CDL makes a difference for marketing practice: What are the implications of adopting customer-dominant business logic? What should firms do differently if they adopt such an approach? First, providers must be aware of their secondary role in customers' lives (or businesses) and strive to be invited into customers' lives/businesses, ecosystems, activities, experiences and practices. Second, provider activities are driven by an understanding of customer logic. In other words, customer orientation, which guides firm strategies toward the creation of superior quality and customer satisfaction (Narver and Slater, 1990), should be substituted with customer dominance and a mindset of listening to customers in their own context (Strandvik et al., 2012). Customer-dominant business logic means that customer issues drive managerial thinking at all levels, from the boardroom to everyday interactions with customers, production, supply functions and organizational issues. Additionally, instead of focusing on collective customer behaviors and cultures (Arnould and Thompson, 2005), CDL promotes an understanding of idiosyncratic logics.\nDiscussion: This paper has described the essentials of CDL of service. The conceptual analysis has shown an alternative way of thinking and acting to ensure future business success. For researchers, the CDL perspective also requires fresh thinking and a critical eye toward recognizing prevalent assumptions and shifting from provider-dominant perspectives to a customer-dominant perspective. The paper contributes to the existing service research by describing the lexicon of customer-dominant business logic and outlining the shift in focus that must occur when adopting such a logic, which provides a fresh outlook on service research and practice. The paper challenges the existing understanding of interaction and co-creation. The paper also contributes to the existing research on service systems, service constellations and service ecosystems (e.g. van Riel et al., 2013; Akaka et al., 2013) by describing the customer ecosystem as a distinct network with the customer at the core. This ecosystem can be viewed at different levels of abstraction. Most importantly, the paper accentuates the central role of understanding customer logic, as it is the basis of value-in-use, offerings and, in essence, business success.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and practical implications of adopting customer-dominant logic (CDL) of service, focusing on how firms can become involved in the customers' context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Inspired by the conceptual discussion of service logic and service-dominant logic, this paper focuses on the conceptual underpinnings of CDL. CDL is contrasted with other service perspectives in marketing; CDL is a marketing and business perspective dominated by customer-related aspects instead of products, service, systems, costs or growth. It is grounded in understanding customer logic and how firms' offerings can become embedded in customers' lives/businesses.\nFindings: The conceptual analysis challenges the prevailing assumptions of key phenomena in service research, including interaction, co-creation, service value and service. The paper presents five essential foundations of CDL: marketing as a business perspective, customer logic as the central concept, offering seen through the customer lens, value as formed and not created and the prevalence of customer ecosystems.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper differentiates CDL from other marketing perspectives. Further empirical research is needed in different empirical settings to provide guidelines for adopting the perspective on a strategic and operational business level.\nPractical implications: As a firm's holistic and strategic foundation, marketing is based on understanding how providers participate, at a profit, in customers' value formation. The paper suggests how firms can successfully conduct business in dynamic markets with empowered customers.\nOriginality/value: This paper expands marketing and business logic based on customer dominance. It accentuates the importance of understanding customer logic and stresses the presence of providers in the customer ecosystem.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A clinical decisions unit improves emergency general surgery care delivery
|
[
"Surgical assessment unit",
"Emergency surgery",
"Senior review",
"Clinical decisions unit",
"Rapid assessment",
"General surgery admissions"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Unscheduled care has historically been delivered by junior doctors with variable senior input influenced by scheduled care commitments. A progressive approach including early access to senior decision makers and investigations has improved outcomes for many conditions including stroke, myocardial infarction, sepsis and trauma (White et al., 2010; The Royal College of Surgeons of England Emergency Surgery London RCS, 2011).\nMethods: Data on referral numbers, investigations, diagnoses and final outcome were recorded prospectively.\nResults: A total of 7,192 emergency general surgical patient episodes occurring over a 36-month interval were analysed. The study period was divided into two groups (12 month pre-CDU and 24 months post-CDU introduction) (Figure 1).\nDiscussion: This study demonstrates that the introduction of an assessment unit for emergency general surgical patients referred from primary care has been both safe and effective at improving the management of these cases. Patients benefit from timely consultations with senior members of the surgical team resulting in clinically improved outcomes and high levels of self-reported patient satisfaction. An additional benefit was the contribution of the CDU also providing urgent primary care advice and if necessary access to same-day surgical opinion.\nConclusions: This study, which describes the experience gained from the commissioning of Darlington Memorial Hospital's CDU, strongly supports both the safety and clinical effectiveness of such facility for general surgical emergencies. As a result of this initial success the surgical CDU model has now been adopted in UHND and will be extended to include patients referred by the ED to General Surgery. The benefits are decreased emergency admissions, a more responsive, streamlined process, leading to reduced overall stay and high patient satisfaction. We recommend that other surgical units consider the implementation of such care models in the management of acute surgical referrals (Tierney et al., 2014).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Early access to senior decision makers and investigations has improved outcomes for many conditions. A surgical clinical decisions unit (CDU) was created to allow rapid assessment and investigation by on-call senior surgical team members to facilitate decision making and, if appropriate, discharge within a set time frame (less than four hours). The purpose of this paper is to compare outcomes for unscheduled general surgery admissions to the hospital before and after commissioning this unit.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Prospectively collected hospital episode statistics data were compared for all general surgical admissions for one year prior to (July 2010-June 2011) and two years after (July 2011-June 2013) the introduction of the CDU. Statistical analysis using the Mann Whitney U-test was performed.\nFindings: More patients were discharged within 24 hours (12 per cent vs 20 per cent, p\nOriginality/value: The introduction of a CDU in has increased early discharge rates and facilitated safe early discharge, reducing overall hospital stay for unscheduled general surgical admissions. This has decreased fixed bed costs and improved patient flow by decreasing surgical care episodes routed through the emergency department (ED). In all, 30-day readmission rates have not been influenced by shorter hospital stay. Service redesign involving early senior decision making and patient investigation increases efficiency and patient satisfaction within unscheduled general surgical care. Not original but significant in that the model has not been widely implemented and this is a useful addition to the literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Communication skills training for doctors increases patient satisfaction
|
[
"Communication skills",
"Doctors",
"Training",
"Patients"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is a well recognised link between medical practitioners' communication skills and their patients' degree of satisfaction with the medical services the doctors provide (Ong et al., 1995; Little et al., 2001). Patients may express their dissatisfaction with the doctor's communication skills by complaining about the doctor or even by initiating litigation (Levinson et al., 1997; White et al., 2005). Levinson et al. identified specific communication behaviours evident in \"claims\" but not in \"no-claims\" primary care physicians (Levinson et al., 1997). Beckman found 70 per cent of litigation related to poor communication (Beckman et al., 1994).There is a strong association between patient dissatisfaction, unsolicited complaints and malpractice risk (Hickson et al., 2002). These patient responses may occur independently of any recognised adverse event (White et al., 2005; Hickson et al., 2002) and are not always related to deficits in the doctor's clinical competence (Leape et al., 1991).Conversely, positive communication skills have been shown to be related to patients' perceptions of physician competence (Kim et al., 2004; Moore et al., 2000) and to decreased claim intentions (Moore et al., 2000). Specifically, patients' experience of physician empathy, an important communication skill has been shown to correlate strongly with patient satisfaction (Kim et al., 2004).The link between doctor-patient communication and patient complaint, litigation and adverse outcomes has been particularly well recognised by practitioner registration boards and medical indemnity providers, many of which are encouraging members to reduce their risk by undertaking educational activities designed to enhance their communication skills. In some instances, doctors with significant deficits in communication skill (as evidenced by frequent complaints, litigation or adverse events) are being required to participate in such activities before being provided with further indemnity cover or medical registration. Given the reliance being placed on such risk-reducing activities and the considerable expenditure of resources in providing them, it is incumbent upon education providers to demonstrate their efficacy.A 2004 review of 35 trials of interventions designed to alter the doctor-patient interaction found that although there were few rigorous trials, there is certainly evidence that interventions can and do effect positive change in the doctor-patient interaction and that this can translate to improvement in health outcomes (Griffin et al., 2004). Betz Brown et al., however, commented in 1999 that \"We believe ... that it is difficult for a single, brief CME course - no matter how interactive, learner-centred, and well designed - to improve general patient satisfaction in the contemporary health care environment\" (Betz Brown et al., 1999). This study challenges that notion.The current study evaluates the effectiveness of \"Mastering Your Risk\", a brief educational intervention designed to reduce participants' medicolegal risk by improving patient satisfaction. It is a three hour workshop attended by general practitioners (GPs) and obstetrician/gynaecologists (O&Gs) that aims to inform participants about the link between poor communication and litigation, and to train them in the verbal and non-verbal communication skills and strategies that have been shown to be associated with greater patient satisfaction (effective listening (Zachariae et al., 2003), empathy (Kim et al., 2004; Zachariae et al., 2003), matching patients' body language (DiMatteo et al., 1986) and vocabulary (Williams and Ogden, 2004). The educational effectiveness of this workshop is enhanced by an audit that participants may undertake before and after the workshop. This audit requires 30 consecutive patients to score their doctor's communication skills, allowing the doctor to assess their own performance and to detect any changes that arise following the workshop. Examination of the cumulated results of these audits allows some conclusions to be drawn as to the effectiveness of this educational intervention in changing patient satisfaction.The format of the workshop consists of short lectures, reflective exercises and small group discussions based on video-taped case vignettes as well as providing an opportunity to rehearse skills.The lectures present international research which links communications skills to patient satisfaction, patient perception of physician competence and subsequent risk of litigation.The specific skills emphasised are techniques to establish and manage patient expectations and those which facilitate the patients' experience of empathy (making a human connection, active listening, short summaries, mirroring body language and vocabulary).In groups of three, participants are then invited to practice these skills, rotating roles as doctor, patient and observer providing feedback.The workshop concludes with a short discussion about documentation and the relationship between litigation and unintended comments by colleagues.\nMethods: This study utilises a simple frequency analysis of responses to patient questionnaires distributed before and after the educational intervention. GPs and O&Gs who enrolled for the education program were given the option of having 30 consecutive patients complete a brief questionnaire at least one week before the workshop, and a different 30 complete the same questionnaire at least three months after the workshop.The 174 doctors who chose this audit option (99 GPs and 75 O&Gs) were entitled to record extra professional development points with their respective college towards their continuing medical education requirements.The questionnaire was modelled on the American \"Art of Medicine survey\" which has been shown to be reliable and valid for measuring patient satisfaction with clinical communication (Webster, 1989). It elicited patient responses to ten questions relating to the doctor's communication skills. The anonymous questionnaires were filled out by patients immediately after they left the consulting room. Patients were unaware that their doctor was undertaking education to improve their communication skills. The questions are listed below, along with the code by which they are presented in the results section of this paper:1. How well did the doctor listen to your concerns and questions? [\"listen\"]2. How respectful was the doctor? [\"respect\"]3. How well did the doctor understand your problem? [\"understand\"]4. How accepting was the doctor of you and your problem? [\"understand\"]5. How well did the doctor explain to you what he or she was doing? [\"explain\"]6. How well did the doctor use words that are easy to understand? [\"easy understand\"]7. How well did the doctor cover what you expected of them? [\"expectations\"]8. Did the doctor spend enough time with you? [\"time\"]9. How much confidence do you have in the doctor's ability? [\"confidence\"]10. Overall, how satisfied are you with the service you received from your doctor? [\"overall\"]Patients responded to each question using an ordinal 1-5 scale with the options of \"not at all\", \"a little\", \"moderately\", \"mostly\" or \"completely\". Completed, sealed questionnaires were collected by the doctor's staff and returned directly to Cognitive Institute for analysis. Doctors were sent individualised educational feedback based on their patients' cumulated responses.The results have been subjected to statistical analysis using Stata (StataCorp, College Station, TX USA, 1997) and StatView (SAS Institute, Cary, NC USA, 1998). Changes in the percentages of patients satisfied per doctor across the entire sample and within GP and O&G subgroups were analysed using paired t tests. Based on the observed results for item 10 (\"overall satisfaction\"), the study had 99 per cent power to detect the observed change of +5.4 per cent, SD 16.3 per cent, assuming a conventional level of alpha at 0.05. A relatively strict level of alpha of 0.01 was considered statistically significant for this study, and 95 per cent levels of confidence were used for confidence intervals. In addition, group differences (between GP and O&G groups) were analysed using repeated measures ANOVA.\nResults: The outcome variable reported here is the overall percentage of patients who responded that they were completely satisfied with their doctor's performance. This measure was chosen due to the unlikelihood that patients who were completely satisfied would complain or litigate against the doctor.Patients were generally well satisfied with their doctor's communication skills before the educational intervention, as shown in Table I.Following the doctors' participation in the medicolegal risk reduction workshop, however, there was a shift towards complete satisfaction in all items after the educational intervention. Figure 1 shows the percentage of patients who became completely satisfied with their doctor's performance after the workshop.Patients showed significantly increased satisfaction with each individual aspect of the consultation, with the greatest increase being in satisfaction with the doctor meeting the patient's expectations (change=+6.3 per cent [95 per cent CI 3.8-8.8 per cent, P<0.0001]). The patients' overall satisfaction with the service provided by their doctor (question 10) also increased significantly (change=+5.4 per cent [95 per cent CI 2.9-7.8 per cent, P<0.0001]).The smallest incremental change occurred in response to the question \"How respectful was the doctor?\" (change=+3.2 per cent [95 per cent CI 0.7-5.7 per cent, P=0.01]). Nevertheless, this was the item with the highest pre-intervention score, suggesting that there was not a lot of room for improvement.The subgroups (GPs and O&Gs) were also analysed individually. Table II shows the results:In both subgroups, significantly more patients were completely satisfied with the doctor's explanations and the meeting of their expectations. They were also more satisfied with the overall service provided by their doctor. In the O&G subgroup, satisfaction with all elements was significantly increased (P<=0.01) except for item 6: \"How well did the doctor use words that are easy to understand?\" (P=0.02).When repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the changes across time and between groups, there were significant increases across all 10 items (P<0.01 for each item). There were significant group differences for 4 of the 10 variables: 2. Respect (P=0.02), 3. Understand (P=0.03), 5. Explain (P<0.01) and 9. Confidence (P<0.01). As Table II indicates, general practitioners generally had a lower or similar mean percentage of patients completely satisfied per doctor than O&G specialists. There was significant interaction for only 1 of the 10 items (Item 8. Time, P=0.04); otherwise, the changes in scores were generally parallel in both groups.Differences in patient population, reasons for attending the doctor, and time structure of the consultation make it inappropriate to draw conclusions in this paper from these observed differences between the two subgroups of medical practitioner. Both groups' patients were more satisfied after the workshop.\nDiscussion: Outcomes-focussed evaluation of educational activities must go beyond the simple demonstration of participants' enjoyment of the teaching, and their acquisition of knowledge and competencies. Truly effective medical education alters physician behaviour resulting in improved patient satisfaction and better health outcomes. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a brief communication skills training intervention to improve patient satisfaction.The workshop aims to reduce the incidence of complaints and litigation by providing doctors with information on the causes of these patient behaviours. It provides training in verbal and non-verbal communication skills, and describes standards for adequate clinical documentation. The workshop combines short lectures, reflective exercises using videotaped simulations, facilitated discussions, group activities and opportunities for participants to rehearse their skills.The audit cycle undertaken by participants in this workshop is intended to enhance the workshop's effectiveness by providing feedback to the participants from their patients. The audit questionnaires are designed to measure patient satisfaction across a broad range of components of the consultation, including those that have been most closely linked with both patient complaint and adverse clinical outcome.Both general practitioners' and obstetrician/gynaecologists' patients showed improved satisfaction with all measured aspects of their doctor's communication skills at least three months after the doctor had participated in the workshop, with the majority of those changes being small but significant. The greatest increase occurred in the patients' satisfaction with their doctor meeting their expectations, suggesting that doctors had developed skills in the important area of becoming better attuned to the needs of their patients. This item had the lowest initial score before the educational intervention.The percentage of patients who declared themselves completely satisfied with their doctor's overall service increased significantly following the intervention (all doctors change=+5.4 per cent (CI 2.9-7.8 per cent) P<0.0001).Although the actual percentage increases in complete patient satisfaction are relatively small, the uniformly positive direction of change indicates that the workshop is achieving its aims across the full breadth of patient perceptions. Reducing the number of patients who feel less than completely satisfied after a consultation is an important strategy in reducing medicolegal risk and infers that even small increases have practical significance, especially at the high end of the satisfaction scale when increases are harder to earn.The ultimate measure of effectiveness of the intervention would be to measure pre and post workshop rates of complaints or litigation. This however is not feasible. The lack of a control group is an acknowledged weakness of this study as well as the possibility that the audit process itself is exerting an influence on the doctors, independent of their participation in the educational activity. As a combination, however, the workshop and the audit are effective.\nConclusion: The link between doctor-patient communication, patient satisfaction and litigation is well-established. As demonstrated above, the \"Mastering Your Risk\" workshop and audit achieves the elusive outcome that Betz and Brown et al. believed so difficult.A brief educational intervention that results in improved performance across the full spectrum of doctors' communication (as evidenced by improved patient satisfaction with the service they receive) is potentially a valuable asset in improving the quality of medical care. The British Audit Commission's statement in 1993 that \"communication is not an 'add on', it is at the heart of patient care\" (Audit Commission (UK), 1993) is no less relevant thirteen years later.It is not feasible to demonstrate a direct link between workshop participation and a subsequent reduction in patient litigation, due to the extremely low incidence of such an outcome. Completely satisfied patients, however, do not complain.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in patients' satisfaction after their doctor has participated in a brief educational intervention on medicolegal risk management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Questionnaire completed by ambulatory patients, measuring satisfaction with their doctor's communication skills before and three months after the doctor participated in a three hour workshop on medicolegal risk management. 75 obstetrician/gynaecologists (O&Gs) and 99 general practitioners (GPs) were each rated by 60 of their patients following a consultation in their clinical rooms.\nFindings: - Patient satisfaction as evidenced by change to \"complete satisfaction\" with doctor's communication skills and overall satisfaction with the clinical encounter.\nPractical implications: - Participants had high initial patient satisfaction ratings and these were found to have improved across all parameters three months after the educational intervention.\nOriginality/value: - The educational intervention was successful in improving doctors' communication skills as evidenced by enhanced patient satisfaction in all key areas, including those most frequently associated with patient complaint, litigation and adverse outcome.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Citation analysis of dissertations for collection development
|
[
"Bradford’s law",
"Citation analysis",
"Dissertations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: University libraries focus their collection development activities on literature that support the curricula. When undergraduates undertake research activities, they expect to satisfy their information needs mainly through the library collection. The library should adequately respond to such research demands. How can the librarian assess this? It can be answered by analyzing bibliographic citations in theses. Bibliometrics' is derived from two Greek words \"biblio\" and \"metriko's\" meaning book and measurement (Zafrunnisha, 2012). \"Citation analysis is a branch of bibliometrics that examines the citations found in publications such as journal articles and books to look for patterns of use\" (Hoffmann and Doucette, 2012).\nLiterature review: Lo (2007) has examined 13 dissertations submitted to life science-related departments in 2005 and 2006 and journal articles were the most cited material type, although books, laboratory manuals and theses were seen in references. Library and Information Science (LIS) dissertations analyzed by Chikate and Patil (2008) identified that nearly half of the citations were from journals (42.2 per cent). Books, Web, reference books, proceedings, reports, theses, newspapers, interviews, pamphlets and manuscripts were also cited. Similar results were obtained by Trigar et al. (2013) in their study of graduate dental theses of medical science. Journals were the most popular format. Abut and Babatope (2011) has conducted a similar study with 50 copies of undergraduate projects submitted to departments of LIS and physics. But physics students cited more books, while LIS students cited more journals. Wilson (2012) examined 88 undergraduate honors theses from 2002 to 2009. Books and journals accounted for most of the citations in all disciplines except social sciences, where newspapers and magazines accounted for 32 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. Web sources, magazines, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations and other sources were also cited. Gadd et al. (2010) examined final-year projects from MEng Civil Engineering (civil) and BSc Construction Engineering Management (CEM). Journals were frequently cited by MEng students, while CEM students frequently cited books. Brazzeal and Fowler (2005), Kumar and Reddy (2012), Gao et al. (2009), Fasae (2012) and Zafrunnisha (2012) have analyzed Masters and/or PhD theses for different disciplines and journal articles were most often cited.\nMethodology: This study examined 204 undergraduate dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2012. They belong to eight major disciplines: soil science, agricultural engineering, agricultural extension, animal science, agricultural biology, crop science, agricultural economics and food science. The reference lists of each work were analyzed individually and citations were categorized into journals, books, proceedings, Web, theses, reports (annual reports, field documents and technical reports) and miscellaneous (government documents, circular, patents, standards, laboratory manual, course materials, power point presentations and posters).\nResults and discussion: This study revealed 8,224 citations from the 204 undergraduate dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Agriculture in 2012. Major findings are summarized in Figures 1 and 2.\nConclusion: It is clear from the study that journals are the type of literature widely used by undergraduates for their research activities followed by books as the next cited format.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to make recommendations for library collection development because undergraduates expect to satisfy their information need for research activities through library collection. Therefore librarian should assess whether the library is adequately responding their research demands. This can be answered by analyzing citations in the dissertations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study analyzed 8,224 citations from 204 undergraduate dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2012. The most cited format was determined. Bradford's law was applied to prepare a ranked list of journals. Accessibility of each core journals was observed and recommendations were made for collection development.\nFindings: Journals were the most cited format. Data sets were fit with either the verbal formula or mathematical formula of the Bradford's law. Core journals were determined. Core journals were accessible via number of ways. Some journals are subscribed by the Agriculture or via databases through UGC consortia (through University of Peradeniya's library network) or open access journals. There are several journals in which the free access is available through Sri Lanka Journals OnLine. Based on the results, recommendations were made for collection development.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides useful insight for collection development for research demand, Agriculture Library, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The informal road to markets: Neoliberal reforms, private entrepreneurship and the informal economy in Turkey
|
[
"Entrepreneurship",
"Turkey",
"Neoliberalism",
"Informal economy",
"Local economies",
"Institutions and institutional analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: At the end of the 1980s, the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto popularized the view that informalization resulted from government regulations imposing rigid constraints and costs on economic actors, and so would be restrained by decreasing or eliminating them (De Soto, 1989). The economic developments of the past few decades challenge this view, however. As Heintz and Pollin (2003, p. 6) note, the size of the informal economy has expanded in developing nations at a period when regulatory rigidities have declined, and private sector has grown[1]. According to internationally comparable estimates, more than one-third of the developing world's GDP and half of its labor force now remain outside the purview of the state. Using data from a cross-national study conducted by the World Bank, Palmade and Anayiotos (2005) estimate that between 1990 and 2003 the average aggregate value of economic activities as a percent of GDP has increased by one-third in developing countries. Informalization, according to a recent report from the OECD Development Center (Jutting et al., 2008) has not only increased in developing nations but also in advanced nations, as seen in Table I. A brief look at employment statistics provides a similar picture. Employment in the informal sector seems to have increased substantially during the 1980s and 1990s (see Table II).\nInformalization in the world economy: a theoretical overview: Although its original application in the 1970s was to the subsistence activities of the urban poor excluded from formal employment in labor surplus economies, the term \"informal\" has since been used to describe economic activities as diverse as street vending, tax evasion, unregistered employment, counterfeit production, and shuttle trade. The thread that unites all these diverse activities is that they all take place outside the official gaze of the state. Informalization can thus be defined as a process characterized by an increase in the size of profit and income-generating activities taking place outside the purview of the state (Castells and Portes, 1989; Hart, 2005).\nEconomic informalization: the role of neoliberal reforms: As noted before, although there is a vast literature on neoliberal reforms, the empirical link between their ascendency and the expansion of the informal economy in developing nations has been systematically analyzed in only a few studies (Itzigsohn, 2000; Olmedo and Murray, 2002; Perez Sainz, 2005; Jonakin, 2006; Portes and Centeno, 2006). Focussing on informalization in the labor market in particular, Perez Sainz (2005) emphasized three major channels through which neoliberal reforms contributed to informalization - namely, the decline of public sector employment, deregulatory changes in social security laws, and debilitation of unions. Itzigsohn (2000) showed how the deregulation of the labor market blurred the distinction between formal and informal work. Similarly, Olmedo and Murray (2002), focussing on Argentina, showed that the 1991 National Employment Law, one of the major legislative elements of Argentina's neoliberal turn, essentially institutionalized and legitimized what had hitherto been seen as defining features of informal labor markets - such as precariousness, lack of social protection, and limited rights to wage bargaining. More recently, Jonakin (2006) argued that the growth of informal activities in the 1980s and 1990s constituted a structural pre-requisite of neoliberal export promotion strategies.\nNeoliberal reforms, regulatory change and informalization in Turkey: In the years of economic deterioration following the oil crisis of 1974, Turkey was forced to rethink its state-led, centrally administered development strategy of domestic industrialization. In company with many other nations, Turkey turned decisively away from import-substitution to a more dynamic export-driven economic model in a bid to counter sharp inflation, high unemployment and foreign exchange shortages, instituting neoliberal reforms aimed at radically transforming the country's economy both quantitatively and qualitatively. The government of Turgut Ozal[3] led Turkey in a reform program designed to change the relationship between the state and enterprise through a regulatory about-face. Through the years that followed, various waves of policy implementation methodically removed barriers to market entry, international trade, labor flexibility, and access to financing. Deregulation was complemented by lowering taxes, in a shift toward an export-oriented and enterprise-led private sector. Turkey had, however, never had a strong ability to enact the supervision of its regulatory mechanisms and this, as we will see, coupled with a loosened economic environment, had the effect of compromising effective state \"policing\" of the economic sphere (Bugra, 1994).\nGrowth and informality as two faces of Turkey's neoliberal transformation: The scope of the re-landscaping addressed - and indeed accomplished - by Turkey's neoliberal reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s can perhaps best be comprehended through before and after snapshots of Turkish industry and employment. The state, in the pre-crisis model, was the country's main employer and kept a tight rein on a geographically centralized import-substituting industrial base favoring a small number of large private conglomerates. Such SMEs as existed faced barriers to market entry, trade restrictions, and limited access to finance. Barkey (1990, p. 63) reckoned the state's contribution to value-added manufacturing at 30 percent of the national total at the end of the 1970s, the final decade of the state-led model. At that time 40 percent of the country's labor force was on the state payroll. The five hundred industrial firms that generated over half of manufacturing sales nationwide tended to be concentrated in and around Istanbul.\nConclusion: Economic activities that take place outside the state's \"bureaucratic gaze\" comprise a substantial economic value, which, in some countries, remains as big as the official GNP.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The informal economy has expanded across developing countries during the last decades. Focussing on the Turkish case, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of neoliberal reforms in this development. The author argues that neoliberal reforms produced a double-edged transformation in the regulatory environment of Turkey. On the one hand, the legal rules that constrain the operation of market forces decreased giving way to more entrepreneurial activity; while on the other hand, the state's effectiveness in \"policing\" the market declined. As the regulatory barriers to private entrepreneurship decreased, the regulatory barriers to informality also decreased. Private sector growth and informalization emerged as the concomitant outcomes of neoliberal reforms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper examines how the state's changing regulatory relationship to the private sector under neoliberal reforms fostered informal economic activities through a close study of the Turkish case.\nFindings: At the end of the 1980s, the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto popularized the view that informalization resulted from government regulations imposing rigid constraints and costs on economic actors, and so would be restrained by decreasing or eliminating them. The economic developments of the past few decades challenge this view, however. The size of the informal economy has expanded in developing nations at a period when government regulations have been declining. How can we explain the increasing volume of informal economic activity in developing nations over the past few decades? And more, how can we explain that this has happened during a period when the private sector has grown, and regulatory rigidities have declined? This paper argues that the state's changing regulatory relationship to the private sector under neoliberal reforms was an important factor in the expansion of informal economic activities.\nOriginality/value: The implications of neoliberal reforms for economic processes have been widely studied in the social scientific literature. Only a handful of studies have explored their implications for the informal economy, however. These studies singled out factors such as the decline in public employment, weakening of labor unions, or capital's enhanced ability to exploit labor in contributing to informalization of developing country economies in the neoliberal era. By discussing how the changing regulatory contours of the state-economy relationship played a role in the growth of informally operating private enterprises, this paper adds to the existing knowledge of this relationship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
CDS and bank ownership structures: does the credit side show who advocates more risk?
|
[
"Regulation",
"Ownership",
"Credit default swap",
"Bank risk"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The financial crisis and subsequent bailouts have proved the systemic importance of an intact banking system for the stability and development of an economy (Huang et al., 2009). To limit systemic risk, the legal systems of most developed economies build on general mechanisms beyond the specific regulation of the financial institution. Many observers attribute the origin of the financial crisis to failures in corporate governance mechanisms, which could not prevent excessive risk-taking (Kirkpatrick, 2009). The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision emphasizes that corporate governance for banking organizations is of great importance to the international financial system (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 1999, 2006).\n2. Related literature: Several studies discuss and examine the link between corporate governance and risk measures from different perspectives. Related literature focuses on the following aspects: impact of ownership concentration on credit risk, impact of ownership concentration on bank risk in terms of equity risk and accounting-based risk measures and the accuracy as well as the adequacy of CDS spreads as a risk measure.\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1 Sample and data\n4. Results: 4.1 Summary statistics\n5. Robustness checks: To test the validity of the results achieved so far, we apply multiple robustness checks. The results suggest that ownership concentration has an impact on a bank's risk-taking. Shehzad et al. (2010) and Laeven and Levine (2009) find significant results using ownership variables defined by the share of the largest shareholder. In line with Shehzad et al. (2010) and Laeven and Levine (2009), we therefore control our results using a 10 per cent threshold for the largest shareholder. The variable CR1 Threshold 10 is defined as 1 if the largest shareholder owns a share of at least 10 per cent. In analogy to the prior literature, we use the 20 per cent threshold as a robustness check for the impact of the largest owner defining the variable CR1 Threshold 20.\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, we conduct empirical assessment of theoretical considerations with regard to banks' credit risk, their ownership structure and the national regulative environment examining the effect of bank ownership structures on risk-taking for the timeframe 2005-2008. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel comprising 86 global privately and publicly held banks, leading to a maximum of 344 observations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate whether ownership compositions effect credit risk profiles of banks prior to and during the financial crisis. In detail, this study examines whether more powerful owners of a bank impact the credit risk profile.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The effects of the ownership structure on credit risk are estimated using credit default swap (CDS) spreads. Therefore, 86 global privately held and publicly listed banks from 23 countries are considered in a panel analysis for the period 2005-2008.\nFindings: The results indicate that banks with a more concentrated ownership structure tend to be riskier, as they have larger CDS spreads. Furthermore, we observe that bank regulation has a negative impact on banks' credit risk. Larger banks exhibit significantly lower risk than smaller banks.\nOriginality/value: These findings are of high relevance for the respective national regulative environment and for the respective financial institutions themselves. Regulatory bodies have to be aware of whether certain ownership compositions lead to a significant risk factor and which risk indicators exhibit the risk more precisely and in timely fashion.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
In search of the good life: Reconstructing the meaning of consumption rituals among international lifestyle migrants
|
[
"Acculturation",
"Christmas consumption",
"Identity management",
"Lifestyle migration",
"Lifestyle mobility",
"Ritual consumption"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Reflective of global migrant patterns, some 532,000 people migrated to the UK in the year ending September 2013, primarily from less developed nations such as India, Pakistan and China (UK Office for National Statistics, 2014). The main motivational factor is economic, driven by wage differentials and the aspiration to maximise earnings potential (Hatton and Williamson, 2005). Such migrant groups are frequently from nations with distinctive cultures that contrast significantly with those of their new domicile residence. As a result, much of the acculturation literature has focused on the tensions individuals manage when defining their identity within unfamiliar, usually culturally dominant, contexts. Resultant conceptualisations are invariably embedded within contrasting political, racial and religious contexts. However, some 320,000 people migrated from the UK in the year ending September 2013 (UK Office for National Statistics, 2014), to destinations such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This raises a number of interesting conundrums. Why would people wish to leave a country where economic indicators are relatively high in global terms (e.g. wage levels, PPP, GDP per capita)? Second, given the relative extent of the economic and cultural capital of such individuals, what socio-cultural attributes might attract such potential migrants to a new domicile state? Third, how might this be reflected in consumptive attitudes and behaviours within their new domicile state? Heeding the invitation of this SI to enhance conceptual understandings of multicultural marketplaces, we seek to extend current knowledge of consumer migration by exploring the answer to these questions in this increasingly important area of contemporary international marketing given global competition for human capital.\nLiterature review: Sensitivity to consumptive processes is heightened during life transitions such as migration (Benson and O'Reilly, 2009). Consequentially, possessions and consumptive practices act as \"anchors\" that assist the stabilisation of identity within new socio-cultural (Belk, 1992; Joy and Dholakia, 1991; Mehta and Belk, 1991). However, a concern within the acculturation literature is that research which \"anchors\" acculturation between two distinct cultures overemphasises the tensions individuals manage when defining their identity within unfamiliar, usually culturally dominant contexts. Hence, resultant conceptualisations are invariably embedded within contrasting geo-political spheres, racial differences, religious differences and potentially historicised social systems (Luedicke, 2011). For example, Penaloza (1994) explores influences from two outwardly distinct cultural environments, the culture of origin and the culture of immigration with each of the consumer acculturation outcomes posited as a combination of affirmative and rejectionist attitudes towards the original and new cultural contexts (e.g. Luedicke, 2011; see also Oswald, 1999).\nMethodology: The research comprised of two key stages. The first stage investigated participant motivations for migrating to New Zealand and the second stage specifically focused on UK migrants' celebration of Christmas in New Zealand. As the focus of this study is a social phenomenon with sociological consequences that potentially manifest in attitudinal and behavioural changes over a period of time (Barry, 2006), a phenomenological approach was deemed appropriate for both stages.\nFindings: Findings are presented in two key areas. Initially there is an examination of the key influences on deciding to migrate from the UK to New Zealand. Subsequently, we present findings related to migrants' celebration of Christmas in the UK.\nThe celebration of Christmas: Lifestyle attributes were also reflected in the participants' celebration of Christmas in New Zealand.\nDiscussion and conclusion: Much of the extant acculturation literature assumes migrant flows are primarily driven by a desire to improve economic status and, as such, fail to fully understand potential socio-cultural drivers. Nevertheless, there is growing recognition of the increasing numbers of individuals who are prepared to accept a lower level of income and consumption in exchange for time and freedom to pursue other life goals (Alexander, 2011). However, in contrast to the ideologically driven and evangelical orientation of \"adversaries of consumption\" identified by Kozinets and Handelman (2004) and their associated \"overtones of supremacy [...] deep convictions [...] conversions and epiphanies\" (p. 696), some individuals appear to fall somewhere between the dichotomy of \"contented consumer and questioning activist\" (Kozinets and Handelman, 2004). Reacting to a \"creeping disenchantment\" (Schor, 1998), such individuals act out of personal consideration (Grigsby, 2004) culminating in an individual response to the \"work-and-spend\" cycle (Schor, 1998). Such a response does not necessarily entail self-denial of material pleasure (Princen, 2006), but reflects a desire for a \"a slower pace of life with more time for family and community relationships\" (Kennedy et al., 2013, p. 769). Whilst these may manifest for some in voluntary simplicity (Zamwel et al., 2014) and downshifting (Kennedy et al., 2013), these findings suggest that there are individuals increasingly prepared to migrate overseas in an attempt to achieve such a lifestyle.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Implicit within much of the migrant literature is an assumption that migrant flows are primarily motivated by economic differences. However, such an assumption raises three interesting questions. First, why would people wish to leave a country where income levels are relatively high, public services are extensive and the standard of living is well above global averages? Second, what are the socio-cultural attributes that might attract such potential migrant to a new domicile state? Third, how might this be reflected in consumptive attitudes and behaviours within their new domicile state? The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In order to investigate the answer to these questions, a two-stage qualitative research methodology incorporating photographic self-records and in-depth interviews is used to examine UK migrants' decisions to migrate to New Zealand. Subsequently, the authors examine the celebration of Christmas in New Zealand by UK migrants to better understand meaning creation and re-creation of consumption activities within a new socio-cultural context informed by their decisions to migrate.\nFindings: Findings suggest that with some lifestyle migrant groups, individualistic values and belief systems appear to play a significant role in determining consumptive attitudes and behaviours in their domicile states.\nOriginality/value: This research identifies how some migrant groups may adopt a more reflexive approach by undertaking a complex and sophisticated process of self and social identity construction reflective of their individualistic values and belief systems rather than the acceptance or rejection of their domicile culture.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Socially responsible sourcing: reviewing the literature and its use of theory
|
[
"Literature review",
"Social sustainability",
"Socially responsible sourcing",
"Sustainable sourcing",
"Sustainable supply chain management",
"Theory application"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Socially responsible sourcing (SRS), which focuses on the upstream management of the supply chain, is an important aspect of the broader sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) agenda. The latter has been defined by authors like Carter and Rogers (2008) to incorporate three components: social, environmental and economic performance. Thus they build on the triple bottom line (TBL) concept of people, planet and profit (Elkington, 1998) that suggests it is not enough for a company simply to be profitable. To flourish, it must also be responsible for the social wellbeing of employees, the wider community, and the natural environment. Carter and Easton (2011) argued for the need to study all three dimensions of sustainability simultaneously. Although this is important, it is also necessary to gain a deeper understanding of some particular aspects of the sustainability agenda, particularly as this pertains to social issues in the context of SRS. Previous research has tended to focus on the environmental side, and while this remains an ongoing research field, the social side of sustainability is a growing topic area within the sourcing literature. Ergo, this paper seeks to review the literature that has included SRS to, primarily, identify the key research themes, thereby providing a timely summary for researchers and managers alike, and the research gaps that need to be addressed in the future. It also seeks to discuss whether effective use of theories is made in the existing literature, and whether, for example, authors are selecting theories appropriately from the plethora of theories available.\n2. Method: The systematic literature review methodology, as described by authors such as Tranfield et al. (2003) and Denyer and Tranfield (2009) has been used to construct a database of articles, which were evaluated in order to provide insight into our research questions. This systematic process of reviewing literature increases rigour by promoting replicability and reliability and by decreasing bias (Tranfield et al., 2003); but more importantly it makes the process transparent (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). In the following section we discuss the different stages that were followed while conducting the systematic literature review, as summarised in Figure 1 below.\n3. Overview of the literature: 3.1. Defining SRS\n4. SRS research topics and research gaps: A classification of the reviewed literature according to the 8 categories listed in Section 2.2 is summarised in Table V, with further details given in the Appendix. As shown in the table, most contributions fall into the areas of \"Strategy\" and \"Transparency\", while less populated areas include \"Impact on Performance\" and \"Organisational Culture\". \"Risk Management\" is the least populated area, with only eight contributions. Each of the areas analysed will be discussed in turn in the following subsections. In each subsection, we do not attempt to comprehensively discuss all of the papers included in the Appendix, but instead we focus on describing some of the key literature contributions and conclude by identifying gaps and suggesting potential future research areas.\n5. Use of theoretical lenses in the reviewed articles: There is an increasing tendency within the operations management (OM) community to include references to theories within research papers, often borrowed from other academic disciplines. However, the value of theory within OM research has been questioned by Schmenner et al. (2009), who argued that theory is sometimes used inappropriately and does not necessarily add to our understanding of the phenomenon being studied. Their controversial paper stands out given that the majority of authors call for more use of theory, without raising any such concerns. For example, Barratt et al. (2011), in the context of a review of qualitative case studies in OM, argued that the use of theory can lead to stronger conclusions in the form of a framework or set of propositions. Without a theory, they argued that papers are more likely to conclude with less valuable descriptive insights. Thus, it is implied that papers that make use of a formal theoretical lens are always better papers than those that do not. Given then that there are varying viewpoints on this topic between Schmenner et al. (2009) and authors such as Barratt et al. (2011), it is important to question the extent to which the use of one or more theoretical lenses adds to the strength of a paper's findings. This section seeks to discuss the second research question outlined in Section 1 regarding the effective use of theoretical lenses in the context of the SRS literature.\n6. Conclusion: This review identified 157 articles that address SRS, either as the main focus of the research or as part of an investigation into the broader TBL concept. It has identified the many different definitions used in the area in Table II and summarised the key components of socially responsible practice, from child labour through to respect for local democracies, through to animal welfare. In terms of definitions, a hierarchy of three terms have been proposed, with the key term used here, SRS, referring to the upstream supply chain and social issues only; while \"sustainable sourcing\" incorporates environmental issues; and \"sustainable SCM\" also adds the downstream supply chain.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the state-of-the-art in socially responsible sourcing (SRS) research, leading to an agenda for further work; and to evaluate the use of theory in this context. SRS is defined as the upstream social issues within the sustainability literature, where social issues include human rights, community development and ethical issues but exclude environmental concerns.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review of 157 papers that include SRS published in ABS listed journals. The papers have been analysed according to their research content, with a particular focus on the use of pre-existing theories.\nFindings: Key findings for researchers and managers alike include an analytical discussion of strategies developed to date to embed SRS in an organisation; and key research gaps include a particular need to consider the supplier perspective in developing countries. In terms of the use of theory, a typology is proposed, which (in ascending order of effectiveness) is as follows: theory dressing, theory matching, theory suggesting/explaining and theory expansion.\nResearch limitations/implications: The review is limited to papers published in the ABS list; and the analysis of the use of theory is limited to the SRS literature. The findings suggest that insightful papers can be written without any use of theory but that as a field develops, a greater depth of application of theory is needed to aid understanding.\nOriginality/value: This is the only review that focuses exclusively on social issues SRS, excluding environmental issues, thus allowing for a greater depth of discussion on social issues; and is unique in its detailed critical analysis of the use of theory.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
IBM's "tangible culture" approach can smooth the way to successful transformation: A practical approach for culture change
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Organizational culture",
"Innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: As a leader on a major change initiative, you may be worried about whether your organization's culture will help or hinder your efforts. Or you may be sure it will hinder but not be sure what to do about it. How do you create a culture that sustains innovation? How can your organization effectively team and collaborate globally, and with external partners? You need practical approaches - not \"feel-good\" exercises.\nThe \"tangible culture\" approach explained: I am the lead author of a new book, Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? Insights from IBM's Tangible Culture Approach, in which these concepts are explained:Business practices - the unseen hand (or autopilot) that propels organizational action.Business practices are the informal rules that tell people how to execute their work. Business practices exist for every area of the organization, including processes, policies, leadership, measures, technology, strategy, rewards, and recognition. Business practices are a sufficient surrogate for the complex topic of culture in business settings. They are easier to see and describe than other culture definitions, and can be acted on directly, if necessary, to meet the organization's requirements.Right vs right - the good thing that can cause big trouble.In most situations where previously separate internal or external groups must work together - such as a merger, acquisition, alliance, or major reorganization - there is a clash of right vs. right: options that are correct for achieving the objective yet in conflict with each other. Right vs. right facilitates candid discussions of areas hampering current results, or that are likely to hamper future results. Right vs. right is a constructive way to look at these common issues. The approach helps to overcome culture clash and helps companies to achieve targeted results more quickly.Outcome narratives - how to get to the right place the right way.Outcome narratives are a new format, based on structured storytelling, which clarify complex situations. The key to outcome narratives is their structuring. A likely problem is identified, along with the desired outcome, the roles needed to achieve that outcome and how people are expected to fulfil their roles. They are an effective communication tool, and spotlight the subtle changes that need to be made. And they provide an objective foundation to evaluate progress - a difficult challenge that has hampered culture work - and help to pinpoint additional actions needed to overcome remaining barriers.These three concepts are separate, but interrelated. We like to think of them as three bags of \"Lego\" or building blocks. You can select one or more of the bags and use the contents to configure many different solutions to culture needs. This is helpful because no situation involving culture is completely like another one. The concepts may also be combined with other traditional approaches.\nTangible culture in operation: To demonstrate how tangible culture and its three concepts can be used in various situations, let's consider an outsourcing arrangement. The company wants to reduce costs while providing the same or better service for its internal customers. The outsourcer will hire the company's employees, and operate the company's existing processes while bringing in additional changes and enhancements.Both companies bring assumed business practices to the alliance. For instance, the company may give employees latitude to bypass some process steps, and prefers to drive broad-based consensus decisions. It believes this provides flexibility, commitment and speed of execution. The outsourcer may prefer standardized process execution, and looks to subject-matter experts to determine the best decisions. The outsourcer believes that this reduces cost and risk, and allows for better problem detection and job flexibility. Both have \"right\" answers - and good reasons for them.Described this way, the right vs. right business practices are easy to recognize, but in our experience, they are often assumed at the outset. They often surface when the groups wrestle with a difficult problem, or when something goes awry. For instance, the outsourcer may approach the company with an expert-recommended decision - yet the company wants to delay implementation to validate it with a broad group of people. The outsourcer is concerned about wasting precious time, but the company fears resistance to the recommendation if not validated. Another situation may involve a project that has fallen behind schedule because a project manager assumed the ability to bypass certain process steps. The project manager is frustrated because he or she believes the steps are unnecessary, but the outsourcer believes they are necessary to avoid unintended negative impacts.Now the frustration begins - frustration that was predictable and even avoidable had the organizations openly discussed their preferences in decision making, process execution, employee latitude, etc.Using tangible culture, and beginning even before the contract was signed, the companies would have investigated and reconciled their business practices using right vs. right. In addition, through the outcome narratives, they would have decided together how best to handle likely problems. Clarity like this can help companies to reduce their risks and achieve full operations more quickly, while avoiding the delays, strife, additional costs and lost revenues that can erode a business case.Although not a silver bullet - and still \"proving\" itself - tangible culture is bringing benefits to IBM and our clients. It is specifically targeted at the culture issues associated with mergers and acquisitions, alliances (e.g. outsourcing), major restructuring (e.g. shared services) and transformation.\nNote: This article is based in part on content from a new book, Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? Insights from IBM's Tangible Culture Approach, whose lead author is Sara Moulton Reger. Copyright 2006 by International Business Machines Corporation. ISBN 0-13-173294-3, published April, 2006 by IBM Press. Excerpted content is from Chapter 1, pages 13-15, by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.Sara J. Moulton Reger is a leader in IBM Services Research, joining in 2003 as a subject matter expert to help to initiate services sciences management and engineering. She has been a management consultant since 1988, specializing in organizational change, culture transformation, governance and leadership, at IBM and other leading consulting firms. She is a certified management accountant and held financial-leadership positions early in her career. Within services research, her efforts have resulted in an innovative, patent-pending method for making corporate culture tangible and workable, as documented in the book Can Two Rights Make a Wrong? Insights from IBM's Tangible Culture Approach (see www.tangibleculture.com). She is also pioneering research into combating needless complexity within organizations. She can be reached at moulton@us.ibm.com\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Describes the \"tangible culture\" approach in promoting culture change, and smoothing the way to successful integration, which consultants and researchers devised to resolve some of the issues IBM faced over the $3.5 billion acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2002.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Details the three concepts - \"business practices\", \"right vs. right\", and \"outcome narratives\" - which lie at the heart of the tangible-culture approach, and some of their practical applications.\nFindings: - Demonstrates that tangible culture specifically targets the culture issues associated with mergers and acquisitions, alliances (e.g. outsourcing), major restructuring (e.g. shared services) and transformation. It can provide the clarity to help companies to reduce their risks and achieve full operations more quickly, while avoiding the delays, strife, additional costs and lost revenues that can erode a business case.\nPractical implications: - Shows that organizations can now do something about culture clash and no longer need simply to hope for the best.\nOriginality/value: - Accepts that tangible culture is not a silver bullet, and is still proving itself, but advances the view that it is bringing benefits to IBM and to the author's clients.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Making sense of text: artificial intelligence-enabled content analysis
|
[
"Marketing",
"Research methods",
"Leadership",
"Content analysis",
"Qualitative research",
"Artificial intelligence",
"Topic modeling",
"IBM Watson"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Content analysis is a widely used research method for systematically and objectively analyzing content, while carefully considering the reliability, validity and efficiency of this analysis and the development of insights and related theory (Neuendorf, 2017; Krippendorff, 2018). The content data can include the written text, speeches, images, audio, videos and hypertext that are found in any form of communication. Marketing researchers use content analysis to examine content central to their field, including brand-controlled content such as advertising (Gross and Sheth, 1989; Gilly, 1988) and websites (Govers and Go, 2004; Jose and Lee, 2007); marketing content disseminated by media such as press coverage (Harris et al., 2001); and user-generated content such as complaints (Harrison-Walker, 2001), travel blogs (Pan et al., 2007) and employer reviews (Dabirian et al., 2017; Dabirian et al., 2019). Furthermore, marketing researchers use content analysis to analyze interview and survey data (Bitner et al., 1990; Dong et al., 2015) and marketing literature (Helgeson et al., 1984; Leonidou and Leonidou, 2011).\nContent analysis in marketing research: Content analysis has long been used in the social sciences and is an increasingly important method, rising from 4,765 published studies in 2002 to 33,223 published studies in 2017 (Hannigan et al., 2019). It was introduced as a method for consumer research by Ferber and Wales (1958) and since then marketing research went on to use content analysis to examine most, if not all forms of marketing communications, including brand-controlled content, content disseminated by media and user-generated content. Table I presents a selection of marketing studies that use content analysis. The studies were chosen to highlight how this method is used to examine different marketing phenomena from different sources, types of content and with different content analysis approaches (i.e. manual or computer-aided approaches, with no marketing studies as of yet using AI).\nWhy use artificial intelligence-enabled content analysis?: While AI can process content in the form of text, images, audio and video, this paper focuses on text because AI is compared to traditional computer-aided content analysis that is limited to text. Natural language processing (NLP) is a method for analyzing naturally occurring human language and processing phrases and dialogs using computers (Demirkan and Delen, 2013). NLP has long been used in linguistics to semantically interpret text (Manning and Schutze, 1999). Some computer-aided content analysis programs can conduct Shallow NLP (High, 2012). This type of NLP provides an understanding of the language and sentence structure, but lacks an understanding of the context and sentiments which is an imperative feature of the human cognitive system. For example, with Shallow NLP, \"My nose is running.\" can be interpreted as a nose that is going on a run, which is nonsensical. On the other hand, Deep NLP, which comes with AI systems such as IBM Watson, Amazon AWS Lex and Salesforce Einstein, uses both sentence structure and context of the text to provide a deeper understanding of the language. This allows such AI systems to correctly interpret \"My nose is running.\" as a symptom of an illness.\nApplication and comparison of artificial intelligence -enabled content analysis: Context\nResults: This section summarizes the results from comparing manual, computer-aided and AI-enabled approaches to content analysis. It highlights how the interpretation of the coding scheme requires considerably different work, which ultimately contributes to the efficacy, especially the efficiency, of each approach. Then, the three measures of reliability, validity and efficiency are compared for each of the three approaches.\nDiscussion: While AI is increasingly being developed and used to mimic the cognitive functions that humans use for learning and problem-solving, its employment for content analysis studies has not yet taken off. This paper aims to introduce what AI is and to explain and demonstrate how it can be used to conduct content analysis in marketing and other social science fields. Consequently, the first contribution is a review of what content analysis is and its continued importance to marketing research, particularly with the explosive growth of natural language-based, user-generated content. Table I and the related discussion identifies the breadth of communication content that have been analyzed in marketing studies and the continued use of manual content analysis, even with the availability of computer-aided content analysis tools. While both manual and computer-aided content analyses have been used in marketing research, this review also reveals the absence of AI-enabled content analysis studies.\nConclusion: This paper opens by highlighting the importance of content analysis for theory development in marketing research and the promise of AI to help with this task. The paper then sets out to introduce, apply and compare AI-enabled content analysis so researchers will know when and how to use the approach. This is achieved via three contributions. First is the review of studies in marketing that have used content analysis to highlight the marketing phenomena examined, the type of content analyzed, and the content analysis approach used (Table I). The second is a roadmap of steps for AI-enabled content analysis using NLP for generating keywords that can be mapped to content categories (Table III). The third is the application of AI-enabled, manual and computer-aided approaches, illustrated through the content of leadership speeches, to assess and compare the reliability, validity and efficiency of each approach. It is hoped that these contributions demonstrate the utility and boundaries of AI-enabled content analysis and motivate fellow researchers to use AI-enabled content analysis for studying marketing and other social science phenomena.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce, apply and compare how artificial intelligence (AI), and specifically the IBM Watson system, can be used for content analysis in marketing research relative to manual and computer-aided (non-AI) approaches to content analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To illustrate the use of AI-enabled content analysis, this paper examines the text of leadership speeches, content related to organizational brand. The process and results of using AI are compared to manual and computer-aided approaches by using three performance factors for content analysis: reliability, validity and efficiency.\nFindings: Relative to manual and computer-aided approaches, AI-enabled content analysis provides clear advantages with high reliability, high validity and moderate efficiency.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper offers three contributions. First, it highlights the continued importance of the content analysis research method, particularly with the explosive growth of natural language-based user-generated content. Second, it provides a road map of how to use AI-enabled content analysis. Third, it applies and compares AI-enabled content analysis to manual and computer-aided, using leadership speeches.\nPractical implications: For each of the three approaches, nine steps are outlined and described to allow for replicability of this study. The advantages and disadvantages of using AI for content analysis are discussed. Together these are intended to motivate and guide researchers to apply and develop AI-enabled content analysis for research in marketing and other disciplines.\nOriginality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is among the first to introduce, apply and compare how AI can be used for content analysis.\n",
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] |
Eco-labelling brand strategy: Independent certification versus self-declaration
|
[
"Conjoint analysis",
"Independent certification",
"Nespresso brand",
"Responsible labelling",
"Self-declaration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Today's consumers are increasingly aware of environmental and social issues and are looking for responsible products (Chen and Chang, 2013) that are more durable, fairer and produced from recycled materials (Lozano et al., 2010). We often talk about \"socially and environmentally responsible consumption\", defined as a consumption pattern which takes into account the needs of current generations without compromising those of future generations (Heiskanen and Pantzar, 1997). It encourages consumers to consider social and environmental criteria when purchasing, using and then disposing off used products (Belz and Peattie, 2009). The \"responsible\" attribute helps consumers in decision-making (Thogersen et al., 2012). When deciding between equivalent brands, for instance, consumers take the environmental or social performance of the products into account to guide their choice (Peattie, 1999). Companies, therefore, seek to take advantage of this trend by offering more responsible products and services (Chen and Chang, 2013). This provides an opportunity for differentiation and a new means to valorise and promote the offer (Albino et al., 2012; Gordon et al., 2011).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Eco-labelling: a voluntary instrument of environmental regulation\nMethodology: To determine if an independent certification influences consumer preference differently to a self-declaration, we focused on the case of responsible coffee, and we used the conjoint analysis method as a means of measuring the perceived value of product attributes (Curry, 1996). This methodological approach is designed to show how the different attributes of products or services can predict consumer preferences (Sudman and Blair, 1998).\nResults: First, we investigated the importance consumers attach to the environmental and social commitment of the brand when making their choice. The results show that while the majority of respondents claimed that they are sensitive to sustainable development issues, the environmental and social commitment of the brand does not constitute a decisive selection criterion when purchasing products in general (Table II).\nDiscussion and implications: Several studies have suggested that consumers consider self-declarations as lacking in credibility and often associate them with the greenwashing phenomenon. In this study, we explored their efficiency in the case of a well-known brand.\nConclusion: Nowadays, the responsible products market is confronted with a serious challenge associated with the responsible labelling process. The proliferation of programmes in the past few years has contributed to myriad eco-information. While some labels have been regulated (e.g. independent certifications), others (e.g. self-declarations) have been freely organised by the companies themselves. Consequently, an effort has been made to limit the opportunistic behaviour of companies, notably via the implementation of norms to be respected (ISO 14020 and 14021 standards), but deviances still persist.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' preference for responsible labels in the specific case of well-known brands. The research examines the propensity of consumers to consider self-declarations carried out by the company itself in comparison with independent certifications organised by an external third party.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An empirical study involving 134 French consumers by means of a conjoint analysis method was conducted, and the case of Nespresso coffee was tested.\nFindings: The results show that self-declaration (Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality) positively influences consumer preference. Moreover, this positive effect is equivalent to that of independent certification (Fair Trade Max Havelaar).\nResearch limitations/implications: This study's contribution gives a better insight into the consumers' response to eco-labelling. It suggests the existence of an interaction effect between the brand and the responsible label. But, a future research needs to be conducted to gain better understanding of this interaction effect.\nPractical implications: The results suggest that a strategy of promoting a well-known branded product based on self-declaration would be effective. They offer additional insights to managers on the eco-labels' efficiency.\nOriginality/value: Contrary to the literature which suggests the superiority of the effect of certifications organised by a third party, this research shows that this finding is not valuable in the case of a well-known brand. Self-declaration may be preferred by consumers in the same way as independent certification. This research is one of the rare research to stress the need to consider brand when exploring eco-labelling issue.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Flavor halos andconsumer perceptions offood healthfulness
|
[
"Health perceptions",
"Diet",
"Dieter",
"Food flavors"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Although there is considerable research on factors that influence consumers' taste perceptions of foods and beverages (Spence, 2015; Piqueras-Fiszman and Spence, 2015 for recent reviews), there is surprisingly little research on how flavors impact consumers' perceptions about the healthfulness of the foods and beverages they consume. As consumers become more health conscious, food and beverage companies seem to be increasingly using flavors to position their products as healthy. Fruit and vegetable flavors have received increasing prominence in beverages. According to Mintel Global New Products Database (Storelli, 2014), there were 114 new beverages launched in the USA featuring fruit and vegetable flavors in 2013-2014. By anchoring their flavor profiles with a fruit or vegetable name, companies hope to make their products attractive to health-conscious consumers (Storelli, 2014). The tobacco industry provides another relevant example of using flavors to influence health perceptions. Studies show that flavored cigarettes are more attractive to young smokers, with 17-year-olds twice as likely to use flavored cigarettes compared to young adults aged 20-26 (Klein et al., 2008). According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), marketing campaigns for fruit-flavored cigarettes can mislead young adults into thinking these products are less harmful and less addictive. In 2009, the FDA announced a ban on cigarettes with fruit and candy flavors (Harris, 2009). However, menthol and mint flavors continue to permeate tobacco products, despite FDA research that concluded menthol flavoring increases the attractiveness of smoking as well as initiation and progression to become a regular smoker among young consumers (FDA, 2013).\nConceptual framework: Heuristics in food decision-making\nOverview of studies: We use a series of six experiments to test our conceptual framework regarding:\nGeneral discussion: This research is motivated by perceptions of flavor healthfulness (i.e. flavor halos) on consumers' perceptions of the healthfulness of the foods and beverages they consume. Across six experiments, we find converging evidence that flavor halos are possessed by or developed among nearly all consumers (H1). However, only dieters are motivated transfer the healthfulness perceptions they associate with flavors (i.e. flavor halos) to vice foods containing those flavors (H2 and H4).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine how repeated exposure to health-related products that contain flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cough syrup) create \"flavor halos\" that can bias perceptions about the healthfulness of foods that contain the same flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cheesecake).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Six experiments, using both between- and within-subjects designs, explore the effects of flavor halos in hypothetical and actual consumption settings. They test the underlying mechanism, rule out competing explanations and identify an opportunity to correct the cognitive biases created by flavor halos.\nFindings: Flavor halos can be created via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products in the marketplace. These flavor halos bias dieters' judgments about the healthfulness of vice foods containing such flavors. Dieters are motivated toward a directional conclusion about food healthfulness to mediate the guilt associated with consuming indulgent products. Providing dieters with corrective information mitigates these effects.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors examine one way flavor halos are created -via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products. Future research should explore other ways flavor halos are created and other ways to mitigate their effects.\nPractical implications: Considering the prevalence of obesity, organizations striving to help consumers pursue health goals (e.g. weight watchers) can use flavors to improve dietary compliance. Health-care organizations can help consumers understand and correct the cognitive biases associated with flavor halos.\nOriginality/value: By identifying flavor halos, this work adds to the literature investigating how flavors influence consumers' judgments about healthfulness. The results suggest dieters apply flavor halos as they engage in motivated reasoning to license their indulgent desires.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Wooing the new Chinese businesses: five short-term policies to attract direct investment
|
[
"China",
"Economic relationship",
"International business strategies",
"Location decisions",
"Outward FDI",
"Political relationship"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An obvious consequence of the economic crisis that started in late 2007 has been the effect on global foreign direct investment (FDI) trends. In 2014, global FDI outflows continued their downward trend, decreasing by 16 per cent from the previous year. The size of FDI in 2014 had still not recovered to pre-2008 levels and the sources of capital have also changed. At present, only about 60 per cent of FDI outflows come from developed countries like the USA, the UK and Canada. In 2014, the share of investments by multinational companies (MNCs) from developing economies reached a record 35 per cent of global total outflows (UNCTAD, 2015). Among developing countries, China is the most important source of capital today, accounting for eight per cent of global FDI outflow.\nChina's outward foreign direct investment: trends and destinations: Studies evaluating the trends, motivations and distinctness of China's outward foreign investments are numerous. Rather than repeat these accounts, we focus our attention on the trends in recent years and highlight salient points.\nResearch methods: Previous studies that have evaluated the determinants of China's outward FDI are based mainly on secondary data as the dependent variable. Common sources include the total amount of foreign exchange approved by China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Buckley et al., 2007); outward FDI approved by the Chinese authorities (Cheung and Qian, 2009); and UNCTAD data (Kolstad and Wiig, 2011). Company level secondary data used in previous studies include the number of overseas investment projects reported by listed Chinese companies in their annual reports (Ramasamy et al., 2011) and new cross-border greenfield investments reported in the Financial Times' FDI database (Amighini et al., 2011). The novelty of our study is in the primary data collection method used. We went to the source of the decision-making process, i.e. the managers.\nResults of analysis: The results of our analysis are reported in Table IV. The mean value shows the relative importance of each of the considered country attributes, in order of importance.\nImplications for policy makers: What can a host country government do to attract a portion of the more than USD 100 billion capital that leaves the shores of China annually? This has been the motivating question of this study. In particular, we are interested in short- to medium-term policies that host governments can implement to make their countries attractive enough to register on the radar of Chinese companies seeking to internationalize. No doubt, having a large and growing market with high purchasing power attracts market seeking Chinese firms, while countries with advanced technology would attract companies with a strategic interest. But these factors can hardly be translated into short or medium term policies. Economic growth and innovation are the outcome of long-term efforts. In addition to these factors, or despite not having them, our study offers five key policies that host country governments should consider, as these are plausible in the short to medium term. Our study shows that these five policies, when taken together, make up about 35 per cent of the locational choice factors among Chinese managers:\nConclusion: Governments, both from the developed and the developing world, are actively pursuing Chinese businesses to invest in their countries. As investors from China may be different in their motivations and objectives, identifying those location factors that Chinese managers consider to be important is essential for host governments. Although market-related factors figure in location choice decisions, Chinese managers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to have a business environment that follows the rule of law with strong institutions. A less corrupt environment appears as a significant factor in choice decisions among Chinese managers. This may surprise many observers, as the business environment in China is often regarded as corrupted, but Chinese businesses may prefer a business environment that is more transparent. Simpler visa procedures are not considered to be much of a plus among Chinese managers, and a local Chinese population is not a draw. Conversely, economic and political relationships between China and host governments are important considerations. Our study points to the critical need for cultivating strong government-to-government relationships to attract more Chinese FDI.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify location factors that Chinese managers look for when making internationalization decisions and how the factors stack up in perceived importance. Over the past ten years, Chinese enterprises have become more multi-national in nature. China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) has been growing at a phenomenal rate. In 2012, China became the third largest investor, after the USA and Japan; and the largest investor among developing countries. How can host governments attract more of this Chinese capital? What are some short- to medium-term policies that host governments can initiate to make their respective nations attractive to Chinese companies?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors consider these questions by using a best-worst choice exercise among 114 senior corporate decision makers of Chinese companies who have or are planning to globalize. We rank 16 most common determinants that influence FDI location choice and evaluate their degree of importance.\nFindings: The authors propose five \"low hanging fruits\" that policy makers should consider that could ensure their countries come within the radar of Chinese multi-nationals. These include promoting a clean and efficient business environment and strengthening/establishing political and economic relationships with China.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this study lies in the methodology of the study that forces respondents to make a trade-off in their decisions, which in a way is closer to reality. The respondents are also actual decision makers in their companies with regards to international investment decisions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Reducing service sabotage and improving employee commitment to service quality
|
[
"Service quality",
"Customer service",
"Service delivery",
"Hospitality",
"Service climate",
"Frontline service employees",
"Ethics training",
"Psychological ethical climate",
"Service sabotage",
"Employee commitment to service quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: High-performance quality is driven service organizations to know that the key to success depends on focusing on the customer and creating a customer-oriented culture where the customer takes center stage (King and Cichy, 2006). Simultaneously, successful service organizations realize and appreciate the crucial role their customer-contact employees play in providing a quality service experience (Ford et al., 2012). Research findings suggest that employees who are committed to service quality increase customer satisfaction (Loveman, 1998). It is incumbent on managers, therefore, to identify factors that drive employees to possess this commitment.\nTheoretical background and research hypotheses: Management plays a key role in selecting, developing and controlling customer-contact employees (Ford et al., 2012). Control theory (Jaworski, 1988) defines two types of control, namely, formal and informal. Formal controls, in our case ET, are management-initiated mechanisms that can influence individual or group behavior. Ethical climate serves as a form of informal control, an employee-initiated mechanism that can influence individual or group behavior (Schwepker and Hartline, 2005). We chose to examine ethical climate because of its ability to motivate goal-directed behavior, including ethical behavior (Brown et al., 2011) and influence job attitudes (Martin and Cullen, 2006). By simultaneously attending to both formal and informal controls, positive work outcomes can be achieved (Jaworski et al., 1993) and negative outcomes can be reduced. As illustrated in Figure 1, we propose that by combining both formal and informal controls, management can diminish SS behavior and achieve positive work outcomes. In other words, we suggest that by using both control mechanisms, service firms can reduce the incidence of SS and increase customer-contact ECSQ. In doing so, the customer experience will be enriched.\nPsychological ethical climate and ethics training: Defined as \"the prevailing perceptions of typical organizational practices and procedures that have ethical content\" (Victor and Cullen, 1988, p. 101), ethical climate echoes the organization's ethical character and indicates the \"right\" way for employees to behave (Cullen et al., 2003; Martin and Cullen, 2006). It has been conceptualized as a form of psychological climate (Stewart et al., 2011), whereby employees understand their work environment based on how it influences them (Brown et al., 2011). Therefore, EC is \"an employee's perception of the ethical rules, policies, values and behaviors in his or her work environment\" (Schwepker, 2013a, p. 391).\nPsychological ethical climate and service sabotage: Despite 85 per cent of customer-contact employees admitting to SS, and 100 per cent of them claiming to have witnessed it (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002), research on SS is limited (Harris and Ogbonna, 2006, 2012; Zhou et al., 2018). SS refers to \"organizational member behaviors that are intentionally designed negatively to affect service\" (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002, p. 166). There are four types of SS. Sabotage behavior that has become engrained in the firm's culture such that it is considered a behavioral norm is referred to as customary-private SS. Customary-public SS refers to ritualized behaviors (that tend to affect service speed) usually displayed to coworkers in public. Employees who commit intermittent covert behaviors are practicing sporadic-private SS. Finally, sporadic-public SS entails explicit, overt deviant behaviors that involve careful planning and execution (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002).\nPsychological ethical climate and employee commitment to service quality: ECSQ is a form of attitudinal commitment that refers to the extent to which a service provider is dedicated to delivering quality service to an organization's customers (Ahmed and Parasuraman, 1994). Unlike organizational commitment (Mowday et al., 1979), which refers to an employee's commitment to the organization, ECSQ involves a personal, affective commitment to improve the organization's service quality (Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). Research finds positive relationships between ECSQ and coaching and rewarding, formal training, job satisfaction, job performance, commitment to the organization and organizational citizenship behaviors (Sun, et al., 2012).\nMethodology: Sample and data collection\nAnalysis and results: To determine if multicollinearity is a problem, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was computed for each measurement construct. Given that EC has the largest VIF at 2.5 (R2 = 0.59), and that VIFs of 10.0 or less (the closer to 1.0 the better) are satisfactory, multicollinearity does not appear to be an issue (Hair et al., 2006).\nTheoretical and managerial implications: SS is more pervasive than many would like to believe, and therefore, should not be ignored by scholars and practitioners. Previous studies have explored various antecedents and consequences of SS (Harris and Ogbonna, 2006). In some instances, this type of deviant behavior is a type of response to an act of perceived injustice of mistreatment (Aquino et al., 2001). Much to the chagrin of employers, many customer-contact employees find their jobs repetitive, mind-numbing or boring. For some customer-contact employees, the routine or repetitive acts that fill their days make it difficult for them to remain engaged or feel challenged (Harris and Ogbonna, 2009). In addition, customer-contact employees are often the primary target and recipient of frustration or anger from disgruntled customers. These, along with myriad other challenges employees face, often lead to behaviors that are disruptive to the service organization. Not only may customer-contact employees engage in various forms of SS (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002), their commitment to the organization also may wane. Minimizing the former and increasing the latter are two efforts that service managers consistently undertake. According to Jaszay and Dunk (2006), an important role of managers is to \"ensure that employees are doing what they are supposed to be doing this will only happen if we hire people who are willing and capable of doing what we require of them\".\nLimitations and directions for future research: Like most research studies, this study has limitations. First, this study only examined one type of customer-contact service employee, that being hotel/motel employees. While these service providers are instrumental in providing a quality experience for customers, it is possible that the results may differ with a different sample of customer-contact employees. Second, when conducting research that examines ethical issues (i.e. SS), there may be concerns regarding the honesty of respondents. The SS questionnaire items were preceded by the phrase \"considering the standards of service where you work, please comment on your actions at work,\" which referred to people in general, rather than acts of the individual. This provides a nonthreatening approach that improves response rates while soliciting responses like those found when asking respondents directly about their SS behaviors (Harris and Ogbonna, 2006). Moreover, by offering anonymity, respondents are less likely to distort their feelings (Randall and Fernandes, 1991). Third, survey respondents were provided a small monetary compensation for their participation. It is possible that this attracted a certain type of respondent that differs from one who is not compensated. It should be noted, however, that survey respondents today are often compensated. Fourth, the cross-sectional sample used in this study may not capture the same results as a longitudinal study. Finally, the results may differ if supervisors and customers were queried. Nevertheless, given that employees' perceptions drive their attitudes and behaviors, the results are instructive. Lastly, the current study focused on US hotel/motel customer-contact employees and did not include their managers' opinions and ideas. On one hand, this approach is critical as it reflects and places emphasis on the employees' actual feelings and thoughts. On the other hand, it runs the risk of being one-sided or somehow incomplete as it excludes the management's perspective. Perhaps, additional helpful points would have come up if management's point of view and standpoint had been embraced.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of formal [ethics training (ET)] and informal [psychological ethical climate (EC)] controls in reducing service sabotage (SS) and increasing employee commitment to service quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were electronically collected from a national survey of hotel/motel customer contact employees leading to a usable sample of 316 employees. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: The findings indicate that ET can be used to positively influence the EC of customer contact service employees, which, in turn, reduces their SS behavior and increases their commitment to service quality.\nPractical implications: Management should incorporate both formal (ET) and informal (EC) controls to bring about less SS and greater commitment to service quality among customer contact employees in service settings.\nOriginality/value: This research furthers the understanding of SS by finding an important variable, EC that may be used to reduce its incidence in service settings. Further, it shows that EC is an important contributor to improving ECSQ. As such, this research gives important direction for companies wishing to improve the customer service experience.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Blended learning and learning communities: opportunities and challenges
|
[
"United Kingdom",
"Distance learning",
"Learning methods",
"Teaching methods",
"Business studies",
"Open University",
"Blended learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years interest has increased in \"blended learning\", in which traditional face-to-face teaching is combined in varying mixes with other elements, notably on-line supported activity.The role of technology has been crucial in enabling these developments. There is often considerable excited anticipation that some new innovation - video on demand; the web; virtual presence or most recently social media - will usher in a major breakthrough in educational provision. This, it is sometimes suggested, might even amount to a \"disruptive innovation[1]\", which will render obsolete the traditional ways of doing things and enable new organisations to dominate the educational arena. At the very least it is expected that existing conventional providers will have to adopt the new methods in order to survive[2].In this paper, I examine the development of blended learning and the emerging focus on the notion of learning communities, with particular consideration of management and business education. I will explore some of the issues involved and conclude with an outline of what I believe to be the challenges and opportunities afforded by these developments[3].To this end, I first briefly introduce the nature of blended learning and of learning communities. In order to ground the discussion, several different models are described in greater detail to surface the pertinent issues. These models draw primarily on experience with the UK's Open University (OU), arguably the most successful exponent of blended learning and widely emulated around the world. The key issues are then addressed before a conclusion, which summarises the challenges and opportunities.\n2. Blended learning and learning communities: The term \"blended learning\" usually refers to a mix of conventional face-to-face elements combined with on-line elements. However, this is at too general a level for in depth analysis, while the term \"blend\" perhaps suggests too homogeneous a mix: in practice the mix is more \"lumpy\", more a chunky fruit salad than a blended smoothie. At one extreme it is becoming routine for campus-based virtual learning environments (VLEs) to be used to provide additional notes and materials supporting conventional lectures. At another extreme, on-line processes may be supplemented by episodic face-to-face, often residential, events. Another relevant dimension is the synchronous vs asynchronous character of the on-line provision and distinct advantages can be identified for each approach. Yet another pertinent aspect is that of so-called \"content\" vs delivery processes. With the advent of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement and the availability of vast amounts of information over the web, content or \"knowledge assets\" are becoming commoditised, if not free. As a consequence, the emphasis is shifting to consideration of how to help students navigate through the huge stores of information available, and how salient information might be delivered in a timely and compact way.With the advent of \"Web 2.0\" and the varieties of social media now emerging, the social dimension of on-line interactions is attracting considerable attention and indeed increasing concern. These approaches intrinsically involve communities, or at least social groupings of various forms, such as \"followers\" on Twitter or \"friends\" on Facebook. The potential power of these groupings both for emancipatory democratic expression as well as for criminal physical destruction has been amply illustrated by their use in the organisation of rebellions in the Arab spring of 2011 and riots in London over the summer of 2011. However, the potential of such groupings to promote educational goals is still at an early stage, certainly as far as their systematic incorporation into teaching and learning processes is concerned.\n3. Different models of blended learning: In this section a series of four models are outlined. As well as illustrating the range of possibilities, the series incorporates a developmental dynamic, through which it is suggested many providers will eventually pass. The models are drawn from experience with the UK's Open University Business School, which has exhibited this developmental pattern.The OU was set up in 1969. It had an explicit social mission to provide educational access to those who were otherwise denied the opportunity for learning. There is no doubt that it has succeeded beyond expectations. Indeed, the Prime Minister responsible, Harold Wilson, reckoned it as the greatest contribution of his premiership, his \"proudest legacy\". Its success continues today. Despite having about 250,000 students, it regularly features among the top three universities in the government National Student Survey of satisfaction, alongside such illustrious institutions as Oxford and Cambridge Universities[4]. The OU has been widely emulated around the world, with some 50 or so organisations set up along broadly similar lines, albeit with widely varying reputations for quality. These include IGNOU, the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India with two and a half million students, the world's largest university, and the Arab Open University, which provides education for disadvantaged students across seven Arab nations in the Middle East.3.1 Correspondence and broadcast models\n4. Key issues: These four different blended learning models cover a range of possibilities. But success and failure is determined at a fine level of operational detail. There is no silver bullet that guarantees universal success. The very dependency on communities necessarily means that the configurations of elements in any particular blend need to be sensitively adapted to the context and expectations of the learning participants involved for success to be attained. Nevertheless, some general observations can be made.4.1 The role of technology\n5. Conclusions: challenges and opportunities: There is no doubt that blended learning will become more prevalent. Even conventional face-to-face campus-based teaching operations will use on-line activities as important supporting elements, and information and resources available over the web will take over from printed library resources. However, serious barriers do face more radical and disruptive blends. The challenges can be summarised under the following headings: costs; intellectual property rights; custom and practice; and preconceptions and perceptions.5.1 Costs\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to address the nature and development of blended learning and the emerging notion of learning communities, with particular reference to management and business education.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In total, four specific models are explored to highlight some of the issues involved and the challenges and opportunities arising. These models draw primarily on experience with the UK's Open University, arguably the most successful exponent of blended learning and widely emulated around the world. In particular, the simplistic idea of \"content\" versus delivery is critiqued, the primacy of technology rather than pedagogy is challenged and the importance of fine operational details in achieving an appropriate fit for the required purposes is stressed.\nFindings: - There is no doubt that blended learning will become more prevalent. Even conventional face-to-face campus-based teaching operations will use on-line activities as important supporting elements, and information and resources available over the web will take over from printed library resources.\nOriginality/value: - The challenges and opportunities of blended learning are summarized in this paper.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The effects of materialism on consumer evaluation of sustainable synthetic (lab-grown) products
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Materialism",
"Lab grown products"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Trends in the market have evolved to reflect consumers' desire for socially responsible products--those that are ethically sourced and environmentally friendly. To meet this demand, an influx of new synthetic products has emerged in the market, designed to be equally as good as, if not better than, their traditional counterparts. In contrast to their conventional equivalents, these products are produced for either sustainability (earth-friendly) or ethicality (fair treatment of animals or workers) reasons or sometimes both. One example is lab-grown meat. Grown outside an actual animal in a lab, the texture and consistency arguably rival natural meat (Ferdman, 2015). In the luxury space, lab-grown leather, affectionately dubbed \"victimless leather\" (Hepburn, 2015), has recently gained traction. Furthermore, several retailers have already begun to test the potential of the lab-grown diamond market (e.g. Bloomingdales and Reed Jewelers; DeMarco, 2019). Due to their novelty, marketers have limited guidance as to how to effectively position these types of luxury products to consumers. Exhibiting both eco-friendly and luxury qualities, these products comprise various benefits that may appeal to consumers as different segments value different benefits of the product. Therefore, which appeal would work best for particular segments?\nTheoretical framework: Product adoption\nStudy 1: consumer perceptions of lab-grown versus traditional diamonds: The purpose of Study 1 was to assess consumers' perceptions about lab-grown versus traditional mined diamonds. Since a diamond is associated with luxury and status, we felt that it would be a suitable stimulus to test variables of consumer evaluation such as prestige and ethicality. We expected that, in comparison to traditional, mined diamonds, lab-grown diamonds would generally be viewed as less prestigious and less valuable, but as ethically superior (i.e. more socially responsible and earth-friendly). Thus, we test H1a and H1b in this study.\nStudy 2: positioning lab-grown diamonds on the basis of ethicality: Design, participants, and procedure\nStudy 3: lab-grown leather positioned ethically and mediation: Study 3 was designed to test mediators for the effect ethical positioning has on consumer perception of synthetic products. That is, we are interested in why consumers scoring lower in materialism are more influenced by an ethical positioning strategy and therefore may respond more positively to lab-grown products. Among low materialists, the impact on consumers' social status after purchasing a lab-grown product was expected to drive the effect of ethical positioning on enhancing consumer response, in accord with H3.\nDiscussion: Our three studies suggest that although lab-grown products are generally perceived by consumers to be inferior, positioning the lab-grown diamonds ethically enhances their perception, especially among low materialism consumers, which can be explained by the impact it has on the perception of their social status. Therefore, the contribution of our work is how ethical appeals may be more or less effective in socially responsible luxury product positioning and how the individual value of materialism influences the perception of the product. By showing how certain benefits of the product, when made salient and are aligned with consumers' values, can make the product more attractive, we contribute to research on product adoption of socially responsible luxury products. Aligning consumers' values with the product's values results in a more favorable evaluation and acceptance of these products.\nConclusions and future directions: We contribute to the literature by focusing on positioning strategies for really new synthetic products such as lab-grown diamonds and leather. Our research is also one of the first to take into consideration various consumer motivations, based on the importance material possessions play in a consumer's life, on the desirability of sustainable synthetic products. A marketer that promotes lab-grown products and positions them by their ethical and sustainable attributes may appeal to low materialistic consumers, but deter their high materialistic consumers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The increasing desire of consumers for socially responsible luxury products combined with fluctuating supplies in consumer markets are leading various industries to seek alternative sources to be able to meet the needs of its customers. One possible solution that may meet the demands of the future is lab-grown products. Because these products confer multiple benefits, this study aims to investigate the most effective ways to appeal to consumers by aligning the benefits of the products with their values as marketers seek to find effective promotion for these items.\nDesign/methodology/approach: We examine the effectiveness of an ethical positioning strategy for two types of luxury lab-grown (synthetic) products among high versus low materialism consumers in three experiments.\nFindings: Findings suggest that a positioning strategy stressing product ethicality is more effective for low materialism consumers, whereas the strategy is less effective, and may even backfire, for high materialism consumers. The impact on social status consumers perceive from a lab-grown product explains why this effect occurs among low materialism consumers. Therefore, marketers should take caution and use specific appeals for different segments based on values such as consumers' materialism levels.\nOriginality/value: If lab-grown products represent the wave of the future, it is important to understand how consumers will respond to this emerging technology and how promotion strategies may enhance their evaluation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Remarks on disability rights legislation
|
[
"Human rights",
"Inclusion",
"Legislation",
"Disabilities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The long and difficult pathway to opportunity that people with impairments[1] have traveled through history can be seen in the humiliating situations that they have often faced. This history is characterized by four main steps: social exclusion and neglect, separation, integration and, finally, full socio-political inclusion. The period of social exclusion and neglect lasted until the beginning of the last century. It was eventually replaced by the practice of socially recognizing people with impairments, such as by offering them (separate) education in special schools (see Gordon, 2013). The idea that people with impairments are human beings, with the same human dignity as all other non-impaired human beings, gained momentum from the middle of the last century in the aftermath of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This process, supported by important international conventions[2] and the rise of the disability rights movement, promoted the view that one should integrate people with impairments into their larger environment socially, politically, culturally and economically, giving them a better possibility of living a more fulfilling and proper life than they had during the long ages of predominant exclusion and neglect. It ultimately resulted, in 2006, in an international commitment to giving people with impairments full human rights protection--the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)--that requires full socio-political inclusion of people with impairments among the member states of the United Nations.\n1. Preliminary remarks: Models of disability\n2. Rights: It is commonly assumed that, in general, rights correspond to duties. For example, if someone has a right to a certain particular good, then someone else--either the state or other people--has a corresponding duty to fulfill the rights claim insofar as it is legitimate. If the state or other people do not fulfill the corresponding duty, the rights holder can go to court to ensure that his or her claim is met. This basic structure applies to all legal rights and duties. Some moral rights can be backed up by legal rights. For example, murder and slander are severe violations of moral rights--i.e. the moral right to physical integrity and the moral right not to be a victim of insults--and also violations of legal rights that are punishable by law. The institution responsible for ensuring the protection of moral rights, however, is not the court of law but the moral community itself. For example, in instances of murder the moral community will most certainly socially exclude[8] the person who committed the crime in addition to imposing legal punishment. The moral community does not follow formal rules in this regard, since there exists no institutionalized body responsible for social punishments, but it will generally punish anyone who commits such immoral actions as murder, personal slander, spreading falsehoods, theft, taking advantage of the community and its public goods, or disorderly conduct, should such actions become publicly known.\n3. Human rights for persons with impairments--a brief overview of disability rights legislation: The following summary of 12 prominent international documents on disability legislation--including non-legally binding statements of high importance--is intended to deepen our understanding of the background of current debates on disability[10]. Here, the general premise is that knowledge of the history and the widespread social ideas of a given time period can offer us a better understanding of the current situation; it may even help us to learn from our mistakes and make things better for both impaired and non-impaired people alike in future.\n4. Future challenges: inclusive education and bioethical issues: The Chief of the Secretariat for the CRPD, Akiko Ito (2014a), rightly claims that \"the CRPD is a new and ground-breaking human rights tool that is designed to change society\" (p. 101). But now what? How will the future development and implementation of human rights for persons with impairments take place? Perhaps the NGOs, the UN and the governments (top-down) will continue to take the lead in the transformation process, or perhaps the people (bottom-up) will take on a greater role. Most probably, we will see a combination of both approaches to promote the cause of people with impairments in a more sufficient and just way. To reach the goal of a globally inclusive society, there must be a change in attitudes toward the special needs of people with impairments and a better understanding of their particular situation. It will take many more generations until this laudable goal of a fully inclusive society is accomplished, because this goal presupposes the willingness of most members of society to support its realization. On many occasions, change has begun at the government level through appropriate legislation, but true change always depends on the heart and soul of the state's citizens in order to guarantee what the ancients called concordia[18]. The CRPD has attained a major improvement by emphasizing the engagement of organizations for and of people with impairments as well as individuals with impairments in the process (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006, Article 4 General Obligations, (i) 3). The common slogan \"Nothing about us without us!\" is now officially on the UN disability agenda. This new movement is calling for a no-gap policy, i.e., as the Note on the Mainstreaming Disability in the Development Agenda (2008) demands, \"an interconnected network\" of the UN system, governments and NGOs to enable full inclusion of persons with impairments. Furthermore, since the Optional Protocol of the CRPD now has 92 signatories and 87 ratifications, the CRPD's implementation is to some extent monitored by a UN committee that formulates recommendations on the basis of the governments' status reports. In this way, a good basis for implementing the Commission's objectives has been created. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether full implementation can be successfully accomplished. The various challenges inherent in the CRPD's implementation concern the ethical, financial and socio-political realms. In what follows, we would like to highlight two important contemporary challenges, in the fields of education and health care.\n5. Conclusions: The history of disability rights legislation reviewed in this paper can be seen as a paradigmatic case in the granting of basic human rights to a formerly oppressed group--in this instance, people with impairments. According to Talbott (2007), one can identify four main steps in the socio-political dynamics toward recognizing a group's basic human rights:First, there is a privileged group and an oppressed group. Second, in the culture, established internal and external norms deny opportunities to members of the oppressed group. Typically, the members of the oppressed group are limited to subservient roles. Third, the privileged group justifies its dominance with an ideology that purports to explain why the members of the oppressed group are not fit to have the same opportunities as those in the privileged group. Usually, the members of the oppressed group are regarded as morally or intellectually defective. Fourth, the members of the privileged group regard themselves as better judges of what is good for members of the oppressed group than the oppressed themselves. This makes it possible for the privileged to justify their oppression paternalistically, as being good for the oppressed. Basic human rights emerge when members of the oppressed group are able to develop and exercise their own judgment, to speak in their own voices, and to articulate their own aspirations.(Talbott, 2007, p. 88)\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine and comment on disability rights legislation by focusing on international documents on people with impairments of the last decades, in order to provide more information on the dynamics of the disability rights movement and their moral plea for full inclusion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By analyzing the international legislation and most important guidelines with respect to people with impairments, it is possible to portray a socio-political change by unfolding the agenda of the historical dimension of the decisive events.\nFindings: The long and difficult struggle of people with impairments to beneficiaries of full human rights protection is a fundamental socio-political change that is documented by adhering to important international legislation and guidelines.\nOriginality/value: The examination of recent international legislation with respect to people with impairments provides historical context for current developments in the context of disability and full inclusion by conceding human rights as their moral and legal foundation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The association between subcultures and resistance to change - in a Swedish hospital clinic
|
[
"Change",
"Organizational structure",
"Organizational culture",
"Health care"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The healthcare industry in Sweden, as well as in other western countries, is facing the challenge of increasing patient turnover and decreasing the number of hospital beds. The method chosen to accomplish this, so far, has been to develop standard operating procedures, rather than to implement client-oriented care models, which seems to be the easiest way to meet an increasing demand (Ahgren, 1999; Street and Blackford, 2001; Scott et al., 2003a; Carlstrom, 2012). Diagnosis, routines, protocols and traditional organisational models are the starting point for standardising treatment, performance and length of stay. One way to meet this challenge is to introduce new promising care models as alternatives to traditional clinical practices and organisations. The purpose of such care models would be to achieve an ambition of better accommodating illness management as a central goal of care and treatment (Palmqvist and Lindell, 2000; Olofsson et al., 2009). However, new working models have been hindered by subcultures within the hospital organisation that resist the change processes (Stewart et al., 2000; Coyle and Williams, 2001; Little et al., 2001; Stewart, 2001).\nTheories: The CVF\nHypotheses: We have studied the association between organisational subcultures and RTC within production units, i.e. working groups, prior to the implementation of a new working process. The study was expected to contribute to an understanding of the different subcultures' resistance to a change process. This is based on the assumption that the identification of subcultures is an essential starting point prior to any implementation process (Wilson et al., 2005). The research question was:\nMethod: The method was chosen in order to compare data between different units, i.e. working groups such as hospital wards. Surveys were sent out during the autumn of 2010 to all staff in three wards and to all orthopaedic surgeons. In total, 179 staff, i.e. nurses, auxiliary nurses and physicians, received the survey in the orthopaedic clinic sited in a county in western Sweden. One reminder was sent to those who did not answer on the first occasion.\nResults: Participants\nDiscussion: The results showed a dominance of a HR culture, i.e. flexibility, cohesion, trust and belongingness, in most working groups in the orthopaedic clinic. This is in contrast to some other findings showing a dominance of RG/IPs and power cultures in hospital wards at public hospitals (Seren and Baykal, 2007; Saame et al., 2011). There was also a difference in the statistical correlation between the two opposite dimensions of culture; HR/OSs vs RG/IPs. In contrast to the study of five hospital wards in the medical clinic by Carlstrom and Ekman (2012), the present study showed a correlation between the RG/IPs dimensions and RTC. The RG/IPs cultures, corresponding to planning, routines, goal setting and maintaining control, contributed to conformity and change-resistant behaviour.\nConclusion: The study has shown a cultural difference between working groups within a hospital organisation with a variety of organisational subcultures. Some of these cultures were associated with RTC. The results indicate that a clinic characterised by an open culture, for instance a HR culture or OSs culture, might show a negative covariance with a culture that seeks stability and is reluctant to adopt something new. Closed cultures dominated by control appeared to increase SF, rigidity and an unwillingness to give up old habits. By predicting potential obstacles in a certain context prior to a change process, resources can be used in a more optimal way. An instrument that pinpoints the culture of a particular healthcare setting may be a useful tool in order to anticipate the possible outcome of change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the different subcultures and the employees' preparedness for change at an orthopaedic clinic in a university hospital in Sweden.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Surveys were sent out to 179 nurses and physicians. The survey included the two instruments Organisational Values Questionnaire and resistance to change (RTC) Scale.\nFindings: The results suggest a dominance of a human relations culture, i.e. flexibility, cohesion and trust, in the orthopaedic clinic. These characteristics seemed to decrease RTC. Opposite to this, planning, routines and goal setting appeared to increase change-resistant behaviour.\nPractical implications: By predicting potential obstacles in a certain context prior to a change process, resources can be used in a more optimal way. An instrument that pinpoints the culture of a particular healthcare setting may be a useful tool in order to anticipate the possible outcome of change.\nOriginality/value: The rational goal/internal processes dimension exerted a stronger association with RTC than in earlier studies. Deeply rooted standards and routinised care models, governed by work schedules, could be an obstacle to introducing a care model based on the individual needs of the patient. There was, however, a surprisingly low RTC. The results are contrary to the accepted understanding of public organisations known to be slow to change.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An accurate formula for bond-portfolio stress testing
|
[
"Risk management",
"Bonds",
"Interest rates",
"Mathematics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The sensitivity of a bond price[1] to small changes in its yield to maturity has been widely approximated by modified duration and convexity (Fabozzi et al., 2005). But the traditional way these two analytics are used is inappropriate to approximate the bond price after a large change in the bond yield to maturity. Livingston and Zhou (2005) (henceforth LZ) improve the accuracy of the traditional duration by analytically deriving a simple formula, based on the change in the natural logarithm of the bond price. They name this new estimate exponential duration. Within this analysis they prove that in terms of absolute value of errors, the exponential duration approximation is more accurate than the traditional duration approximation. But like the traditional duration-convexity approximation, the exponential duration approximation remains inappropriate for large changes in the yield to maturity.As a result of the decline in credit quality of an issuer or an expectation of a major change in business conditions (such as an interest rate change by the central bank), the yield to maturity of a bond can increase consistently from one day to the next. The following examples from Bloomberg(tm) data illustrate big daily yield changes for both corporate and government bonds:* The price of the General Motors 6.375 per cent coupon bullet bond maturing on 1 May 2008 declined to $74.500 on 30 November 2005 from its previous day price of $81.346. This implied an increase of the yield to maturity by 429 basis points (from 15.982 to 20.276 per cent).* On 10 September 1998 the yield of the US$ denominated Brazilian sovereign 8.875 per cent coupon bond maturing on 5 November 2001 went up by 507 basis points from its previous day level of 18 per cent[2].Both the traditional duration-convexity formula and the exponential duration formula cannot accurately approximate changes in these bond prices due to such big jumps of their yields to maturity.The present paper addresses the above mentioned limitation by deriving an easy-to-implement approximation formula, from duration and convexity, which generalizes the exponential duration approximation formula and is more accurate than the traditional duration-convexity approximation formula. This new approximation formula shows negligible pricing errors, even for large changes in the bond yield to maturity, and thus it will be a useful tool that risk managers can use to perform stress-testing on bond portfolios. The result of this paper is consistent with LZ's result, since the new formula adds an extra component to the exponential duration formula. However, the approach here differs from the one of LZ by the fact that the new formula is derived by raising the bond price to and infinitesimal power whereas LZ derive the exponential duration formula by taking the natural log of the bond price.The remaining of this paper is structured as follows. Both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximation formulas are briefly reviewed in the next section. Then the new approximation formula is derived. Numerical examples, on option-free bonds, follow to illustrate the grater accuracy of this new formula relatively to the two preceding ones. Then this formula is applied to option-embedded bonds it the context of Black et al. (1990) interest rate model (henceforth BDT model). The main results are summarized in a final section. The Appendices provide a mathematical proof that the new formula is more accurate, in terms of approximation errors, than both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration formulas.\nA brief review of duration-convexity approximation: The traditional modified duration-convexity approximation formula\nThe new approximation formula: The model\nApplication to option-free bonds: In this section, numerical examples are used to illustrate the grater accuracy of the new formula over both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximation formulas. We use each of these three formulas to access the price changes in a portfolio of three different types of bond - a 30-year discount bond, a 30-year 5 per cent annual coupon bond, and a perpetual 5 per cent annual coupon bond. In each case, we assume an initial yield to maturity of 5 per cent. For each bond, Table I shows the initial price, the duration and the convexity[3]. The discount bond has an initial price of $23.1377, a modified duration of 28.5714 and a modified convexity of 843.5374. The 30-year coupon bond has $100, 15.3725, and 350.4667, respectively, and the perpetual bond has $100, 20, and 800, respectively.Columns 2 and 1 of Table II show, the actual yield to maturity and its change relatively to its initial value, respectively. Columns 3-6 are related to the discount bond: the first one shows the actual new price as the yield to maturity change; the second, the third, and the fourth ones list the bond price approximations by the traditional duration-convexity formula, by the exponential duration formula, and by the new formula, respectively. Likewise, columns 7-10 are related to the coupon bond, and columns 11-14 to the perpetual bond.For each type of bond, when the yield to maturity changes, it appears that the price approximated from the new formula is closer to the true price that the results from both the traditional duration-convexity and exponential duration approximations. For example, let us consider the coupon bond. If its yield to maturity increase by 300 basis points from its initial value (i.e. from 5 to 8 per cent), the approximation with the new formula gives a new price of $66.38, very close to the true new price of $66.23. Meanwhile, the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximations will give new prices of $69.65 and $63.38, respectively.Table III shows the approximation error as a percentage of the true price. For each type of bond and for each level of the yield to maturity, the approximation by the new formula generates a smaller error that both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximations. In particular, the new formula performs relatively very well for the discount and the coupon bond. For example, when the yield to maturity jumps up by 400 basis points from its initial value (i.e. from 5 to 9 per cent), the approximation by the new formula gives a relative error 0.05 per cent for the discount bond, and 0.57 per cent for the coupon bond. Meanwhile, these relative errors are 63.31 and 12.97 per cent, respectively, for the traditional duration-convexity approximation formula, and -2.10 and -8.21 per cent for the exponential duration approximation formula. Although the new formula performs poorly on the perpetual bond, it still outperforms both the traditional duration-convexity and exponential duration formulas. A formal proof of the better accuracy of the new formula over both the exponential duration and the traditional duration-convexity approximations is provided in the Appendices.\nExtension to option-embedded bonds: Using two option-embedded bonds as examples - a 3-year 5 per cent annual coupon note, callable at par at the first coupon date[4]; and a 5-year range note, paying 5 per cent annual coupon if the 1-year rate is between 3 and 7 per cent at the payment date, or 0 per cent otherwise[5] - as numerical examples, we show that the new formula may be more accurate than both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximations for certain bonds that have embedded options. For these bonds, the cash flow stream may change when the yield curve move. Thus, modified duration and modified convexity do not correctly approximate the price move for a change in yield. The price changes should be analyzed by the effective duration and the effective convexity. The effective duration, Deff, is the opposite of the discrete central difference approximation of the first derivative of the bond price, with respect to the yield, divided by the bond price. The effective convexity, Ceff, is the discrete central difference approximation of the second derivative of the bond price, with respect to the yield, divided by the bond price, i.e.: Equation 13 and: Equation 14 where P+Dy and P-Dy are the new bond prices obtained when the yield curve is shifted up by Dy and down by Dy, respectively. In opposite to the case of option-free bonds, we need a interest rate model to compute the option-embedded bond price under different yield move scenario. We use BDT interest rate model to compute the effective duration and the effective convexity.Although any arbitrage-free interest rate model can be considered for illustration, we choose this model for its simplicity and popularity among practitioners. BDT model assumes that at time t, the instantaneous spot rate, r(t), evolves according to the following stochastic differential equation: Equation 15 where W(t) is a Wiener process under the risk-neutral measure, r0 is a positive constant, Th(t) and s(t) are deterministic functions of time that can be chosen so as to exactly fit the initial term structure of interest rates and some market volatility curves. In order to simplify our illustration, we use the BDT model to construct a one-year time step interest rate tree assuming the initial yield curve and the initial term structure of volatilities are both flat at 5 and 15 per cent, respectively. Figure 1 shows the interest rate tree constructed with these assumptions. For each note, Table IV shows the model initial prices, the effective durations and the effective convexities[6]. The callable note has an initial price of $99.3407, an effective duration of 1.8291 and a effective convexity of -39.6375. The range note has $100, 4.0747, and -396.0458, respectively.Columns 2 and 1 of Table V show, the initial flat yield level and its parallel changes. Columns 3-6 are related to the callable note: the first one shows the price obtained from the DBT model tree as the initial yield curve moves in a parallel way; the second, the third, and the fourth ones list the note price approximations by the traditional duration-convexity formula, by the exponential duration formula, and by the new formula, respectively. Likewise, columns 7-10 are related to the range note.Table VI shows the approximation error as a percentage of the BDT model price. Regarding the callable note, for any level of initial yield curve, the approximation by the new formula generates a smaller error that both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximations. Regarding the range note, the new formula has a better performance than the exponential duration for any level of initial yield curve, but performs better than the traditional duration-convexity when the initial yield curve moves for more than a hundred basis points.\nSummary: We derived a new formula for bond price approximation. This new formula has several important features in the risk management point of view:* it is simple to implement and it uses the well-known duration and convexity as inputs;* it is more accurate than both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximations; and* since it generates negligible pricing errors even when the changes in the yield to maturity are large, it can be used by risk managers to perform stress-testing on bond portfolios.Although, for option-free bonds, it has been mathematically proved that this new formula is more accurate than the existing ones, further research should be conducted for the case of option embedded bonds.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to derive an easy-to-implement and highly accurate formula to approximate the change in the bond price resulting from a change in interest rates.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The bond price is raised to an infinitesimal power and the Taylor series expansion is applied. Then, using the well-known modified duration and convexity, the new formula is obtained as a limiting case.\nFindings: - It is proved mathematically and illustrated by numerical examples that the new formula generates better results than both the traditional duration-convexity and the exponential duration approximation formulas.\nOriginality/value: - The new formula derived in this paper will be used by risk managers to perform stress-testing on bond portfolios.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Determinants of multiple channel choice in financial services: an environmental uncertainty model
|
[
"Supply chain management",
"Distribution channels and markets",
"Uncertainty management",
"Financial services",
"United Kingdom"
] |
[
{
"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.Single channel strategies are becoming less popular, while multiple channels are pervading the distribution of almost every product (Dutta et al., 1995; Easingwood and Storey, 1996; Frazier, 1999; Moriarty and Moran, 1990). Given the growing popularity of multiple channel strategies, building a coherent distribution structure and avoiding the implementation of a \"tangle of channels\" have become major concerns for companies (Moriarty and Moran, 1990). Despite the popularity and implications of multiple channel strategies, the design of these distribution systems has been virtually unexplored in the existing literature. This void in the literature remains despite it being repeatedly commented on (Bradach and Eccles, 1989; Dutta et al., 1995; Frazier, 1999; Frazier et al., 1990; Rangan et al., 1993, 1992; Stern, 1988). Consequently, clarifying the determinants of multiple channel strategies constitutes an urgent research avenue. The purpose of this work is to contribute to channel theory development and to management practice by researching the determinants of multiple channel strategies from an environmental uncertainty perspective.\nResearch hypotheses: Environmental volatility\nMethodology: Data collection\nResults and discussion: Preliminary analysis and interpretations suggested that intermediary heterogeneity and volatility could be mediating the impact of consumer and competitor heterogeneity and volatility on the choice of number of channels, as discussed below, and for this reason two models were developed, one excluding (Model I) and the other including (Model II) the following interactions: customer heterogeneity*intermediary heterogeneity, competitor heterogeneity*intermediary heterogeneity, customer volatility*intermediary volatility, and competitor volatility*intermediary volatility.Interactions tend to be highly correlated with the variables that they comprise. Whereas those problems of multicollinearity caused by actual relationships among variables have been referred to as essential ill-conditioning, those emerging from uncentred variables have been referred to as non-essential ill-conditioning (Aiken and West, 1991, p. 36), because they can be eliminated or reduced by centring variables. So, following the recommendations of existing literature (see, for example, Aiken and West, 1991; Smith and Sasaki, 1979; Tate, 1984), all independent variables were centred by subtracting the mean from each value of the original variables, a process which led to a set of new variables, all with zero mean. The parsimony principle states that higher order terms should only be introduced in equations if they improve the explanation beyond that explained by its lower order terms (Aiken and West, 1991; Kleinbaum, 1994; Tate, 1984). Consequently, only the interactions that were found to be statistically significant were introduced in Model II.Results of the estimations for Model I and II are reported in Table IV. The Model I developed under the 0 per cent cut-off classification has a -2LL statistic of 59.60, which corresponds to an improvement of kh2=16.82 over a constant only model. For seven degrees of freedom, the probability associated with this statistic is 0.02. The correct classification rate is 74.2 per cent, which compares well with the 57.5 per cent that can be expected with the proportional chance criterion (an improvement of 29 per cent). In the model developed under the 10 per cent cut-off point, there is an improvement of kh2=18.13 over a constant only model, which for seven degrees of freedom is significant at the 0.01 level. The overall percentage of cases correctly classified is 74.2 per cent, which is an improvement of 47 per cent over the cases that can be expected to be correct by chance alone. Consequently, the variables in the two models have a significant discriminatory power over the multiple-/single-channel choice.The estimations performed under Model II comprise interactions that have improved quite significantly the overall fit of the models developed for the 0 per cent and 10 per cent cut-offs.Before analysing the support obtained for the hypotheses, it is important to discuss the origins of the differential and complementary results obtained in the two estimations/classifications. The 10 per cent cut-off point classification of channel strategies classified as multi-channel only those cases where two or more channels of distribution were being used in a substantive manner. In contrast the 0 per cent cut-point classification classified as multi-channel, those cases where two or more channels were being used, regardless of the extent of their utilisation. Using the 0 per cent cut-off rule, many companies are classified as multi-channel even when only marginally using a second channel.The results associated with testing the hypotheses are now described. A hypothesis is supported if the coefficient has the predicted sign and is statistically significant.H1. A positive relationship between environmental volatility and multiple channels\nLimitations: This study has a number of limitations that it may be possible to address in future research. One limitation lies in the extent to which the results can be generalised. Although efforts were undertaken in order to develop a sample that is representative of the population, there is apparently no statistically exact way in which this can be done.The sample size is not large, although this has not prevented significant results emerging, and financial services may possess characteristics that are not necessarily shared with other sectors. Therefore, it is not possible at this point to claim that the study's findings will apply in other settings.The results obtained may also have been affected by measurement problems. The Cronbach alpha for environmental conflict is not particularly high. In addition, it should be noted that the literature itself reveals inconsistency in the conceptualisation and measurement of environmental uncertainty (Buchko, 1994; Downey et al., 1975; Duncan, 1972; Milliken, 1987). Therefore, improvements at this level will have an important research pay-off.This investigation considered a typology comprising three types of channels. Although the validity of this perspective was discussed and supported, it is still the case that other typologies might have yielded different results. Clearly, there is a great need to develop typologies and measurements of the diversity of channels in use (Frazier, 1999), but it is probably the case that the choice of typology may be dependent on the purpose of the research. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the authors conducted preliminary regressions on a simplified typology comprising just two channels, direct and indirect, which is a fundamental distinction. No relevant differences emerged for the estimations under the 0 per cent cut-off. Regarding the estimations involving the 10 per cent cut-off, it was observed that environmental conflict and the interaction between competitor and intermediary volatility failed to attain statistical significance under the two-channel typology. However, these results should be viewed with caution, as the two-channel typology obscures the distinction between traditional and direct marketing channels. New entrants into the UK financial services industry, lacking the traditional means of getting into the market, have used direct marketing channels and they have been so successful that they have led traditional organisations to adopt such modern channels in a committed way, and the two-channel typology does not capture this important development.\nImplications for managers: Bowman (1963) noted that managers acquire knowledge of the relevant variables through experience, ending up forming reasonable implicit models. However, he also noted that in particular decision situations, managers only consider some pieces of information. The virtual absence of guidelines regarding the design of multiple-channel strategies is particularly problematic, given the implications of such strategies and the long-term nature of distribution channels. Consequently, it is likely that the development and management of multiple channels has been hampered by the lack of knowledge regarding the design of these strategies. The interviews conducted with managers in the financial services organisations have supported this evidence. A common theme that emerged was that channel decision processes were \"embarrassingly unscientific\". In this context, the insights developed in this work have the potential to facilitate the development of more market driven distribution systems.This study has several implications for managers. In general, one of the most important findings is that the degree of environmental uncertainty is an important issue affecting multi-channel choice, and should therefore be scrutinised at the channel design stage. More specifically, this study has found how certain environmental conditions are driving companies to develop multiple-channel strategies. In volatile consumer environments there is more uncertainty about the channels that will survive in the medium to the long term. The results suggest that, in these circumstances, companies should start accommodating the uncertain future in their current strategies by creating options, that is, in particular, by making small investments in new channels. Acting in this way, the company not only avoids large investments in channels that might become misaligned to the environment, but also builds learning devices about consumers and channels, which enable it to make further investments. If a company fails to build such learning devices, it may find it difficult in the future to catch up with the new consumer's needs. In more stable consumer environments there is a lower need to build such learning devices, because predictions are more reliable, allowing a more infallible channel screening. The investments in the internet channel, which companies have been making, exemplify such a position. However, when companies face change in intermediaries' structure and strategies, the results suggest that the pressure to use multiple channels decreases, the reason being that intermediaries may act as a substitute, at least in part, for the need for a company to develop options of its own.Broadly speaking, companies serving heterogeneous consumer targets should use more distribution channels. Diverse consumers have different price sensitivities and require different products and levels of advice, which only a multiplicity of channels can deliver. The utilisation of multiple channels allows companies to develop more specialised decision making and to keep track of the diversity of consumers' needs more appropriately. If consumers are more homogeneous, conversely, there is less need to develop multiple channels. In fact, different channels can only exist as long as each manages to continue to satisfy its customer base. However, in addition it seems that companies should consider the effect of intermediaries on the channel decision. They should recognise that there is a reduced need to utilise multiple channels in the presence of diverse intermediaries. These tend to have different product assortments, provide different levels of advice and service, and present different charges, therefore catering for heterogeneous consumers. In this context, heterogeneous intermediaries fulfil one of the roles of multiple channels.Finally companies should consider the use of multiple channels in more competitive environments. A company going for the multi-channel route in such environments can devise more specific target offerings and delivery methods, in order to acquire and maintain customers effectively in this more competitive environment. In addition, multiple channels increase the chances of a company recuperating through one-channel sales it has lost from another, since the level of consumer switching tends to be higher in more competitive markets. Last, but not least, competitive pressures to reduce prices also motivate companies to cut costs and, in particular, distribution costs, which a clever orchestration of multiple channels can achieve specifically, by enabling the utilisation of channels in the performance of specialised tasks. Higher cost channels can be freed, for example, to perform more value-added transactions. Hence by acting in such a way, a company is able to reduce uncertainty about resource flows.\nConclusion: Single-channel strategies are becoming less popular options nowadays, while multiple channels are increasingly under consideration. However, little is known in a rigorous, systematic way about the choice of such channel structures, and this is a significant omission, given their popularity. The present study is one of the first to develop a model regarding the determinants of multiple-channel strategies, therefore representing one of the first blocks in the larger process of building a comprehensive framework of the choice of multiple-channel strategies. It is probably the first to adopt an environmental uncertainty perspective, which was shown to have a significant impact on the development of multiple-channel strategies. This is to be expected, since \"organisations are inescapably bound up with the conditions of their environment\" (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978, p. 1).The results obtained do reflect the \"complexity and richness of organisation-environment relations\" (Starbuck, 1976, p. 1099). In general, it can be concluded that financial services organisations have been adapting their channel strategies to environmental developments. In particular, and importantly, it seems that they have been discriminating between different types of uncertainty. In addition, and equally importantly, the results suggest that managers seem to be adapting their organisational responses to particular sources of uncertainty. Target customer volatility, for example, appears to drive companies towards the multi-channel route, whereas intermediary volatility provides an impetus for single-channel strategies. This result is of extreme importance, because most studies have only considered aggregate measures of heterogeneity and volatility, whereas it seems that companies are reacting differently to different sources of uncertainty. Consequently, the results warrant a closer look at the effects of environmental uncertainty on multi-channel choice and on other organisational choices.Finally, the model that was developed has a broad applicability, which makes it a useful platform for adaptation to other sectors. In addition, the ideas developed in this study together with the empirical findings, provide a clearer understanding of the determinants of multiple channels, and an additional basis from which further work can be conducted. Consequently, it might help others to further this research topic, specifically by applying other relevant theories, and by replicating the study in other settings.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The use of multiple channels is increasingly an option for many products. Yet, despite their popularity, little is known in a systematic way about such channel structures. In particular, there is a lack of research in respect of the reasons why multiple channels of distribution emerge. This work proposes to attempt to deal with this problem by developing and testing a model comprising a set of hypotheses regarding the circumstances under which companies go multi-channel.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The work draws on the organisational environment literature and, in particular, the sources of environmental uncertainty. Data were collected from firms in the UK financial services industry through personally administered questionnaires. Research hypotheses were tested using logistic regression.\nFindings: - The results suggest that customer heterogeneity, customer volatility and environmental conflict positively influence the choice of multiple channels, whereas intermediary heterogeneity and volatility may reduce the need to use such channel strategies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The extent to which results can be generalised is limited by the relatively small sample size and by the focus on financial services. Additionally, it is also possible that channel typologies other than that considered in this study might have yielded different results.\nPractical implications: - The degree of environmental uncertainty is an important issue affecting multiple channel choices, and should be considered at the channel design stage.\nOriginality/value: - This study has helped understand the drivers of multiple channel strategies, a poorly understood topic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Smartphone chronic gaming consumption and positive coping practice
|
[
"Mobile communications",
"Social capital theory",
"E-marketing",
"Computer games",
"Collective intelligence",
"Digital intervention"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This research explores how smartphone chronic gaming consumption produces positive coping practice. There is an increasing body of conceptual and empirical work that considers how information technology shapes consumption (Alexander and Sackett, 2013; Ashton, 2011; Chulmo et al., 2015; Watts and Wyner, 2011). This work has drawn attention to the temporal, relating most closely to notions of clock time (Lin et al., 2015), for example, in the enhancement of waiting times for services. It has also highlighted the role of the temporary, as a bounded occurrence with a start and end point (Aggarwal and Vaidyanathan, 2003), for example, Cyber Monday or Black Friday. However, these time-based consumption activities have been impacted by transformation of digital technologies and, as a consequence, the speeding up of social life. Digital transformation is defined as \"the realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touch point in the customer experience lifecycle\" (Forbe, 2014).\nTheoretical background: The digital transformation of society and coping processes\nMethodology: In this paper, we aimed to explore the links between smartphone gaming as a form of chronic consumption and positive coping practice. An abductive approach was adopted (Dubois and Gadde, 2002), which borrows from the systematic combining efforts of the researcher as a constant move \"between asking questions, generating hypothesis and making comparisons\" (Dubois and Gadde, 2002). In line with abductive reasoning, the study combined several types of data including: different aspects of smartphone gaming consumption (e.g. practices, anecdotes, meanings). segmentation along smartphone experiences and a contextualizing review of the mainstream UK press for secondary topical material.\nFindings: The underlying dynamic uncovered from this study was that gamers and non-gamers developed individual reactions to the ongoing flow of expressed vs latent digital transformation demands of smartphone gaming. This constituted positive coping with associated uncertainties amplified within an accelerated culture. Relationship to smartphone gaming enabled the individual to \"secure\" in his/her mind, novel forms of understanding and actions regarding the marketplace and about embeddedness as a consumer within the marketplace, but also as an individual within broader culture and collectives.\nDiscussion: In this paper we have sought to explore how smartphone gaming as a form of chronic consumption mitigated digital transformation uncertainty in an accelerated culture. We extend in doing so previous research by demonstrating that positive coping is evident in the respondents' consumption narratives. Even though existing knowledge indicates that technologies serve continuous learning, knowledge development and often positive outcomes that serve individuals' sense of self (Addis, 2005; Kozinets, 2015), it does not focus on how coping operates in the realm of (convergent) chronic consumption of mobile technologies (Petruzzellis, 2010). By focusing on how smartphone game consumption' narratives produce novel positive coping processes, this study builds and provides new insights regarding digital transformation together with emerging positive coping forms. Leveraging the three frames (market-generated, social being and citizen frames), the study findings identify congruent chronic consumption behaviors related to digital transformation and digital services including gaming by both smartphone gamers and non-gamers. This consumption multiplicity is found to facilitate continuous learning and knowledge development, not only increasing the artefact's complexity over time, but also allowing emerging coping forms operationalized via three main frames. Furthermore, the majority of respondents were expecting the \"others\" (smartphone gamers or non-gamers depending on starting point) to engage in the ongoing learning process. Describing their playing activities (for gamers) or merely referring to game-like activities on smartphones was enabling and empowering, refining the meaning of technology transformation.\nConclusion: Coping mechanisms are built-in narratives that articulate the three frames and that allow individuals to develop capacities to face hegemony, culture and alterity-moral concerns. A given frame enables to engage in the questioning of the inherent paradoxes or contradictions that arise from the reliance on other frames. Each frame draws the attention of individuals on questions of representation and signification (market-generated frame), directionality and prescription (social being frame) and/or explanation and individualization (citizen frame) activating positive coping mechanisms.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. The purpose of this paper is to explore how chronic consumption of smartphone gaming produces positive coping practice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Underpinned by cognitive framing theory, empirical insights from 11 focus groups (n=62) reveal how smartphone gaming enhances positive coping amongst gamers and non-gamers.\nFindings: The findings reveal how the chronic consumption of games allows technology to act with privileged agency that resolves tensions between individuals and collectives. Consumption narratives of smartphone games, even when play is limited, lead to the identification of three cognitive frames through which positive coping processes operate: the market-generated, social being and citizen frames.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper adds to previous research by providing an understanding of positive coping practice in the smartphone chronic gaming consumption.\nOriginality/value: In smartphone chronic gaming consumption, cognitive frames enable positive coping by fostering appraisal capacities in which individuals confront hegemony, culture and alterity-morality concerns.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Management conversations in Danish companies: Communicating corporate values and strategies
|
[
"Conversation",
"Management techniques",
"Corporate communications",
"Corporate strategy",
"Denmark"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Management conversations play an important role in modern organisations, where good stakeholder relations are crucial for corporate image and reputation (van Riel, 1992, p. 9; Cornelissen, 2008, p. 197ff). Management conversations are used as an efficient value communication tool in today's organisations, which are increasingly run on the basis of values rather than rules, and where formal structures are often replaced by more project-oriented structures.There have been a number of excellent studies of the role of management conversations from a business communication perspective (Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris, 1997; Clifton, 2006; James et al., 2006). However, there is still a substantial lack of empirical studies investigating from a corporate communication perspective the way in which these conversations can be used strategically to benefit relations with stakeholders and the image or reputation of the company concerned.The purpose of this paper is to present the results of one study, which is part of an ongoing project on management conversations. The aim of this study is to investigate the way in which various management conversations are actually used in companies. The conversations in focus are: recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, round-table sickness leave conversations[1] and dismissal conversations.\n2 Theoretical framework and research questions: Research on management communication has traditionally focused on management functions like planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling, and on the manager's role in continuously persuading individual subordinates that the goals of the organisation are desirable (van Riel, 1992, p. 9). Recently, however, research has highlighted the manager's role in communicating corporate values and strategies (Larkin and Larkin, 1994; Elving, 2005) and the importance of management communication for the organisational and corporate identity of organisations (Bick et al., 2003). Organisational identity is defined as \"the shared values and sense-making of people within an organisation\" (Cornelissen, 2004, p. 192). Organisational identity has also been described as the traits of an organisation in all its values, strategies and practices that give the company its specificity, stability and coherence (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Cornelissen, 2004). These traits contribute to the projection of a unique and authentic corporate identity, here defined as:[...] the profile and values communicated by an organization or the character a company seeks to establish for itself in the mind of its stakeholders, reinforced by consistent use of logos, colours, typefaces, and so on (Cornelissen, 2004, p. 185).In this light, it is important that a sense of organisational identity becomes internalised by members of the organisation, so that they can live and enact the company's values in their day-to-day work (Cornelissen, 2004, p. 76).Thus, it is no longer enough for modern organisations operating in a globalised market place to regard management communication as an instrument of control and information management. Management communication is vital in modern organisations not only to transmit authority and information, but also to achieve cooperation and alignment with corporate strategy and values (van Riel, 1992; Balmer and Gray, 2003; Balmer and Greyser, 2006). Cornelissen argues that senior managers can facilitate this understanding \"by articulating and actively communicating the company's values to all staff within the organization through policy documents and internal communications\" (van Riel, 1992; Balmer and Gray, 2003; Balmer and Greyser, 2006). In this process, organisations need to link the corporate identity - the picture of the organisation that is presented to external stakeholders - to their organisational identity - the values that members of the organisation themselves associate with the organisation and ascribe to it. They also need to make sure that managers articulate and actively communicate their company's values to all the staff within the organisation through internal communication and various types of management conversation.However, formulated values and the communication of values to members of an organisation by managers do not always lead to the enactment of corporate strategies and identities (Larkin and Larkin, 1994). For corporate values to be more than just words, the values portrayed must be integrated in various symbols and in the daily procedures of the organisation concerned. Management conversations are an example of such daily procedures in line with speeches, uniforms, reward systems, rituals, ceremonies, advertisements, etc. (Cheney et al., 2004; Lievens et al., 2007). By integrating values and strategies in their daily procedures, and by coordinating them across different departments, functions and activities, organisations hope to speak with one voice in order to create a unified impression of what they are and what they stand for. The fact that the integration of corporate values and strategies is often a challenge to organisations has been addressed frequently in the rapidly growing research field known as \"Strategy as Practice\" (Johnson et al., 2007). Here, strategy is defined as:[...] a flow of organizational activity that incorporates content and process, intent and emergence, thinking and acting, and so on, as reciprocal, intertwined and frequently indistinguishable parts of a whole [...] (Jazarbkowski, 2005).In this sense, management conversations can be seen as organisational activities in which strategy is an ongoing, embedded and emerging practice involving both managers and ordinary employees. The focus of our study is to investigate in greater detail the extent to which Danish companies are aware of the importance of alignment between management conversations on the one hand and the overall company strategy on the other hand.Figure 1 shows the role of management conversations in implementing a company's values and strategies and ensuring the interrelatedness between internal and external communication or between organisational and corporate identity.From a corporate communication perspective, management conversations such as recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, sickness leave conversations and dismissal conversations constitute important links in aligning corporate and organisational identity. Each management conversation contributes both individually and as a whole to these links. As a result, an alignment between these types of conversation is crucial as far as the enactment of corporate values and strategy is concerned.Based on our theoretical framework, we have formulated the following research questions:RQ1. What is the importance and the purpose of management conversations?RQ2. Which issues are important, and how are corporate values and strategies addressed?RQ3. What are the main challenges in a corporate communication perspective?These research questions are investigated in an online survey study as explained below.\n3 Methodology: To address the research questions outlined above, the authors decided to focus on four main types of management conversation: recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, sickness leave conversations and dismissal conversations. These conversations were selected due to the fact that they are highly formalised in a Danish context, and because they represent different stages in an employee's life cycle starting with recruitment, followed by regular performance development, and (potentially) ending in sickness leave and dismissal conversations.To investigate these management conversations the authors conducted an online questionnaire-based survey in December 2007, involving 167 of the largest Danish companies. Out of 167 questionnaires, 70 were returned, i.e. a response rate of 42 per cent. Most of the questionnaires were returned by human resource (HR) directors (77 per cent). Of the companies that answered the survey, more than 40 per cent had less than 1,000 employees, about 30 per cent had between 1,000 and 2,500 employees, and about 20 per cent had more than 2,500 employees.A total of 30 questions were divided into two main parts:1. a short part containing general questions on strategic management conversations; and2. four main blocks of questions on the specific form of conversation in question.The four main blocks consisted of questions related to:1. the participants;2. the purpose;3. the content; and4. the challenges of the conversation.All these are factors which we regard as crucial aspects of a management conversation. The questions were formulated similarly for all four kinds of conversation - with a few exceptions related to the specific character of each conversation. The questions asked in the questionnaire included predominantly closed-ended questions. This was done to ensure that the answers of all the companies could be compared. Only when asking about the challenges that the companies perceived in connection with the different management conversations did we pose an open-ended question to avoid the risk of limiting the companies to a predefined set of answers.On the basis of the theoretical framework, research questions and methodology outlined above, we will now present and discuss the results of our study.\n4 Survey results: With regard to the kind of conversations conducted, 89 per cent of the companies in question have job appraisal interviews, 85 per cent have recruitment conversations, 37 per cent have dismissal conversations and 29 per cent have round-table sickness leave conversations. This means that recruitment conversations and job appraisal interviews are by far the most common kind of the four management conversations, whereas dismissal and round-table sickness leave conversations are used far less frequently.In the following section, we will start by presenting the results for each type of management conversation and commenting briefly on them. We will then discuss how each management conversation helps to align organisational and corporate identity, how the conversations are intertwined in this objective, and what the strategic and managerial implications of our findings are.4.1 Recruitment conversations\n5 Discussion and conclusions: The main results indicate that the field of management conversations is an area of major interest for the companies studied here, and that the four types of management conversation selected for the survey are used for various purposes. But despite the fact that there are a number of similarities between the management conversations investigated in this study, there are also clear indications that companies pay different degrees of attention to the various types of conversation. This can be seen both in terms of how much use the companies make of the different management conversations, and in terms of the purposes they assign to them.Whereas recruitment conversations and job appraisal interviews seem to serve a variety of purposes ranging from employee evaluation and performance measurement to value and expectation alignment, sickness leave and dismissal conversations seem to be more clearly focused on matching employee expectations with company strategy.The different mono- or multipurpose focus is also reflected in the number of issues dealt with in the various management conversations. Recruitment conversations and job appraisal interviews frequently deal with a great number of different issues, whereas sickness leave and dismissal conversations focus more on one main aspect, namely the role of the employee.With regard to the challenges perceived by companies, a high degree of similarity can be found across the four different management conversations. The companies express awareness that the conversations potentially can be used as a means to communicate corporate strategies and values, thereby ensuring a strong organisational identity. However, the companies also agree that one of the main challenges is how to create and ensure a strong link between company strategy and values and the conversation itself. This dilemma becomes apparent when they highlight the influence of the conversation upon the image and reputation of the company on the one hand, but indicate that the conversations are merely used as a practical tool to attract and retain job candidates and to ensure job satisfaction on the other.Let us now discuss some of the implications of these findings in more detail.The role of values in management conversations\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - Good stakeholder relations are crucial for the corporate image and reputation of modern organisations. One important management tool for use in successfully establishing good stakeholder relations involves management conversations. Until now these conversations have not been investigated extensively either in general or specifically within the field of corporate communication. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this developing field of research by presenting the results of a study of management conversations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper investigates the ways in which various management conversations are used strategically in companies to benefit relations with stakeholders and the image or reputation of the company concerned. The conversations studied are recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, round-table sickness leave conversations and dismissal conversations.\nFindings: - The paper shows that the companies involved are aware that such conversations should be used as tools for implementing their company strategy and values. However, the strategic potential of these conversations is not fully exploited, and specific crucial aspects like values communication are more prevalent in some conversations than in others.\nOriginality/value: - The paper highlights the need to gain deeper insight into the correlation between various management conversations on the one hand, and management conversations and strategy on the other.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Making it sticky: How to facilitate the transfer of executive education experiences back to the workplace
|
[
"Education",
"Senior management",
"Knowledge transfer"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Companies invest millions of dollars (Craven, 2004) in their managers' classroom learning and they do so because \"they do not believe their people have the skills needed to compete effectively\" (Cheese, 2004, p. 12) and they expect their people's learning to be a \"source of competitive advantage\" for the company (Watling, et al., 2003, p. 225). Yet, a recurring challenge of executive education (EE) programs is that many participants enjoy their EE program experience and return to work and promptly forget, or set aside, what they have learned. Program binders sit on shelves collecting dust while the concepts get pushed aside amidst the pressures and pace of daily work. Indeed, \"the transfer of learning of knowledge and practices from the classroom to the workplace can be very limited\" (Longenecker, 2004, p. 4).\nFoundation for reflections: At the outset, it is important to note that people learn at different levels and through different channels. That is, if we consider human behavior as occurring at three levels (Clawson, 2002) where level 1 is visible behavior (what people say and do that we can capture on film), level 2 is conscious thought, and level 3 is semi-conscious or sub-conscious core values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs), we ask: What does it mean that a person has \"learned\" something? If a person can repeat certain information at level 1 from their level 2 memories, but they do not use that information in their daily lives, have they really learned it? If a person can do a task or execute a certain protocol, but cannot explain it, have they learned it? Further, if we want to teach a person something, should we begin by controlling their behavior (a la Skinner, 1971), or by having them memorize things, or by seeking to engage their apparently inchoate priorities? Would we be wise to help them learn via things they see, hear, share, speak, do, or some combination of these portals? Ultimately the question is, how can instructors make participant learnings become a resident part of who they are - indeed, how do we make program learnings \"sticky\"?Our use of the word \"sticky\" is intentional. We use it to explicitly connect to Evans' (1992, pp. 85 and 101) assertion that:... one of the major tasks of management development is providing organization 'glue' [and one of the] business imperatives that may require the use of glue [mechanisms] is the transfer of learning, know-how, and experience.Without some sort of sticky means to facilitate the adhering of EE program learnings, it is not as likely to be transferred back to the work place as readily, easily, effectively, or substantively as when it is attached to some sort of sticky mechanism. More precisely and from the vantage point of EE program designers and instructors, when we refer to \"making it sticky,\" we mean that our instructional designs help EE participants to learn, grow, and change at all three learning levels - i.e. some important aspect of their EE program experience is internalized so that they are more likely to do things differently, know different things, and value different things.Over the years, EE program team leaders at our institution have responded to this transfer-of-learnings challenge by developing a variety of approaches for helping participants transfer their EE classroom insights back to their work environment. These approaches target the transfer of not only intellectual learning but also enthusiasm, new relationships, increased energy, novel ideas, renewed commitment, and action agendas that participants may develop during an EE program (note, we refer to this broadened bundle of experiences as comprising the program \"learnings\"). While there are no guaranteed means to insure an EE program participant transfers such learnings back to their work, there are a number of mechanisms that can help.The validity of the insights offered herein is predicated on the \"reflections-on-practice\" (Schon, 1983) of experienced, seasoned EE program design and delivery practitioners. Specifically, on one recent afternoon, 11 EE program instructional team leaders from our institution met to share and compare experiences in making their EE program participants' learnings \"sticky.\" Together, this group brought to bear over 150 years of EE program involvement. Moreover, these 11 team leaders were collectively involved in EE programs involving another 30-40 of our instructional colleagues from whom a wider array of insights was tapped. Through such leadership roles and affiliations, insights from many of our institution's 110 EE program offerings a year, touching about 3,500 executives, were brought to bear in that meeting. Collectively, these EE programs have consistently been ranked worldwide in the single digits as reported in various business-press polls. What follows is a synthesis of those \"sticky\" mechanisms highlighted as:* doable in the context of an EE program as short as two days;* well-received by the involved client personnel;* congruent with the tenets of basic learning theory; and* tried and honed on more than one occasion.\nAn organizing framework: The specific ways we and our colleagues strive to make EE classroom experiences sticky, can be thought of as in Figure 1's framework. Quite simply, there are three points in time when a sticky mechanism can be initiated - before, during, and after an EE program. We believe that, in general, the stickiness created by any mechanism increases as the timing of it moves from the pre-program phase to the post-program phase (thus, the stair-like ascent of Figure 1). The second dimension of the framework focuses on the sticky mechanism protagonist. In this regard, we believe there is: a minimum level of buy-in on the part of senior executives; a basic level of instructor competency; and a fundamental conscientiousness on the part of the program attendees that all together forms the minimal foundation for a professional, modestly interesting and successful program, for all three parties. We are interested in the sticky mechanisms that are in addition to these baselines. In general, we would rank order the parties' relative potential contribution to a program's learnings being more or less sticky as shown in Figure 1.All of the mechanisms we describe, employed singly or in combination, are intended to help EE buyers reap a return on the program investment they make in the participants they send. Indeed, we want our programs to pay off for the participants and their organizations in ways that are immediate, enduring, tangible, multi-dimensional, and perhaps even unanticipated. We present these mechanisms using the chronology of the \"timing\" axis - pre-program, during, and post-program. We also note that there are at least two broad types of EE programs: open enrollment (OE) and single-organization custom programs. The former tend to have people from lots of different organizations who do not know each other before the program, and the latter tends to have managers from the same or connected organizations.\nPre-program sticky mechanisms: There are many things that EE participants, organizational senior executives, and instructors can do in partnership before an EE program even starts to lever the effects of the program. Some of these may seem obvious, others may not. In our experience, none of them is obvious to everyone and the sticky effects of each may be undervalued.Initial program design efforts\nDuring-program sticky mechanisms: Once participants arrive at the EE program site, there are a number of things that instructors can do to make program learnings sticky.Strategic-challenges and leadership-implications opening session\nPost-program sticky mechanisms: While all of the mechanisms above represent initiatives that can be taken to increase the adhesion of EE program learnings, the facilitative mechanisms that occur after a program concludes are of particular interest to EE program instructors, participants and their sponsoring organizations. The simple reason for this is that there can be, at a subsequent date, an explicit post-program event that holds participants accountable for, or turbo-charges, and/or reminds them of their program learnings and commitments.Participants become teachers\nInstructor qualities to make it work: All of these sticky mechanisms require careful design and dedicated instructor involvement. For instructors, it is not a matter of following a script, although thinking through and planning how to best execute any one of these undertakings is crucial. Our experience suggests that not every instructor is able to execute these tasks in an equally effective manner. What are the instructor qualities that are most conducive to success on these \"making it sticky\" fronts? First, as noted earlier, instructors must have an interest in being knowledgeable of participants' companies, industries, and functional positions at a level that establishes them with credibility to be in front of the group. This is most true in single-organization custom programs and still, but to a lesser extent, in open-enrollment programs. Second, and in a related vein, instructors must be up-to-date with the business press and the practices in their field. Third, instructors must be integrative in their own approach to their subject matter and to business in general. For example, it is important for an accounting instructor to be able to connect to participants without a financial background. Fourth, instructors must listen to classroom discussions well and be able to balance real-time instructional opportunities with pre-planned agendas and talking points. Next, instructors must be able to challenge executives to \"dig deeper\" in a way that is inviting, not confrontational, and yet preempts glib responses. Last, instructors must be facilitators of discussion, debate, and discovery that is exploratory yet purposeful, passionate yet productive, conceptual yet operational.\nDo these ideas work?: It is very difficult to provide a definitive answer to this question for several reasons. First, more than one of these ideas is usually used in a single EE program and thus interaction effects are prevalent. Second, we always bring our best EE program designs to bear on each and every client so there is no way to conduct any sort of experimental design that would have anything approximating a control versus experimental group. Third, there are a variety of confounding effects that are not easily controlled or accounted for, not the least of which include the: instructor/participant relationship; participant/employer relationship; time pressures back at work for a participant; the level of mastery and confidence in the position held by a participant back at work; the degree of support a participant receives from a supervisor; and the immediate applicability of program content with a participant's most pressing job responsibilities and learning needs. Fourth, to design and undertake a post-program study on the effectiveness of any of these \"sticky\" mechanisms is a non-trivial task, to date, not pursued by our institution on a broad or systematic spectrum. To that end, however, we refer interested readers to one such study several of our colleagues undertook 4-40 months after the final program offering in a long-running, well-received custom EE program that they designed and delivered (Liedtka et al., 1999, p. 413). Some of the ideas presented here were a part of the program reported on in that study and collectively, the bottom line for the program was that the \"deterioration in impact [upon re-entry to work and over time was] not large\".For us, the anecdotal \"proof\" that these \"sticky\" mechanisms work, is client based. In particular, of the program participants attending our OE programs this past year, 15 per cent were returning participants. Likewise, our top six EE custom program clients have each sent over 1,000 participants to our programs during on-going relationships spanning nearly 10 years each. And, the final piece of anecdotal evidence that we can offer is that in the most recent Financial Times (Bradshaw and Chauhan, 2005) poll of open OE EE programs, our institution was ranked second overall and number one in course design. Similarly, the recent Business Week (Gloeckler, 2005) poll on single-company custom EE programs depicts our institution as fourth. At some level, we believe such client-based evidence supports the constructs that we build into our EE program designs and deliveries.\nAt the end of the week: In an excellent article appearing in this journal, Belling et al. (2004) reported on an empirical investigation of a wide array of barriers executives perceive as interfering with the transfer of their EE program learning back to the work place. Of particular note is the fact that six of the seven barriers agreed on by 50 percent or more of those surveyed, pertained to some notion of lack of time or short-term focus. Let's state the obvious - there are only 168 hours in a week. There is no sticky mechanism that EE program designers and instructors can create to change that number. Moreover, we believe, and many executives we work with acknowledge, that what executives do with those hours is a choice. We use the sticky mechanisms above to encourage and facilitate executives' choice to allocate some of those 168 hours to do things better or differently, to do new things or do not do some old things, and/or to make a difference, all connected to their EE program experience.We have presented a number of ways that we and our colleagues use to combat the tendency for the learning, ideas, and energy from our EE programs to fade with time or, in all-too-many instances, never make it off the plane with the executive returning home. Perhaps, you have used others. If so, we would like to hear from you. If not, perhaps these mechanisms will be of help. If you find it difficult to get support from your institution and colleagues to implement any of these, we suggest, \"be a zoysia plug.\"\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To provide and describe an inventory or practices executive education (EE) instructors can use to facilitate the transfer of program participants' learning back to their workplace.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A number of experienced EE instructor team leaders, from one highly-ranked business school EE provider, met to share and discuss the mechanisms they use in their EE programs to facilitate the transfer of program participants' learning back to their workplace. This paper presents an overview of each of those mechanisms.\nFindings: - About 30 mechanisms for facilitating the transfer of EE program participants' learning back to their workplace are discussed along with an organizing framework intended to focus EE program instructors' attention on the key protagonists and the timing of the facilitating mechanisms.\nPractical implications: - This paper provides a number of very specific, readily implementable things EE program instructors can do to facilitate the transfer of program participants' learning back to their workplace.\nOriginality/value: - Prior literature has documented: the challenge of EE program participants transferring their program learning back to the workplace, identified barriers to the transfer, and even reported on executives' views regarding generalized ways that might be helpful for this transfer to occur. This paper complements this literature by exploring what one top-ranked EE institution's program instructors actually do in this regard, all in the context of pertinent adult-learning concepts.\n",
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] |
The value of online surveys
|
[
"Internet",
"Surveys",
"Research",
"Research methods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: During the twentieth century, there were great advances in the techniques and technologies utilized in survey research, from systematic sampling methods to enhanced questionnaire design and computerized data analysis. The field of survey research became much more scientific, and several leading associations emerged to further enhance industry practices. These include ESOMAR (World Association of Opinion and Marketing Research Professionals, www.esomar.org), AIMRI (Alliance of International Market Research Institutes, www.aimri.org), CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations, www.casro.org), and AAPOR (American Association for Public Opinion Research, www.aapor.org).Over the last 25 years in particular, technology has revolutionized the way in which surveys are administered - with the advent of the first e-mail surveys in the 1980s and the initial web-based surveys in the 1990s (Schonlau et al., 2001). As Grossnickle and Raskin (2001, p. 9) have noted:While initial forays were fraught with technical difficulties and methodological hurdles, recent developments have begun to expose the medium's immense potential. The earliest online tools offered little more than the ability to deploy paper-based questionnaires to internet users. Today, tools and services are available with a wide range of feature sets at a wide range of price points. One or more of them are almost certain to meet the needs of any marketing research professional.In 2002, nearly $500 million was spent on online surveys in the USA (Hogg, 2003); and according to Inside Research, this figure was expected to reach about $960 million in 2004 (Aster, 2004). Already, leading firms such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble conduct - or contract out - a huge number of online surveys. More than half of Procter & Gamble's US consumer surveys are done online (Heun, 2001).According to a 2003 study on respondent cooperation by the Council for Marketing & Opinion Research (CMOR, www.cmor.org), preference for online surveys rose to 18 percent among respondents, up from 10 percent in 1999. Laurence N. Gold, of Inside Research, projects that by 2006 online surveys will account for one-third of all surveys conducted (Jackson, 2003). Further into the future, some experts expect that the majority of all survey research will be done online (Schonlau et al., 2001).Despite the advances in survey research overall, major threats still remain. These include declining response rates, incomplete or limited online data bases, mistrust about survey uses (true research versus selling), survey length, privacy and security issues, caller ID and call blocking, internet surveys perceived as spam, and excessive interviewing (see, for example, Gilbert 2001; McDaniel et al., 1985; Schleifer, 1986; Jarvis, 2002). According to CASRO's annual surveys, in some cases, refusal rates exceed 50 percent (www.casro.com).The purpose of this article is to synthesize the vast literature related to online surveys and offer a number of recommendations. Our work contributes to the literature in the following manner: We present the strengths and weaknesses of online surveys in a comprehensive, detailed, and systematic manner. We compare online surveys with mail, personal, and mail surveys - including a look at the distinctive strengths of online surveys versus mail surveys with regard to respondent methodology. We offer a number of solutions for dealing with the major weaknesses of online surveys. Through worldwide examples, we discuss the range of online survey services that are available for organizations interested in doing online surveys.The article is divided into several sections:1. An analysis of the strengths and potential weaknesses of online surveys.2. A comparison of online surveys with other survey formats.3. A discussion on the best uses for online surveys and how their potential weaknesses may be moderated.4. An overview of the online survey services being offered by the world's largest research firms.\nMajor strengths and potential weaknesses of online surveys: Online surveys have numerous strengths and potential weaknesses, as highlighted in Figure 1 and covered below. Yet, although the attributes of online surveys have been widely described in the literature (see, for example, Fricker and Schonlau, 2002; Furrer and Sudharshan, 2001; Ilieva et al., 2002; Malhotra, 2004; McDaniel and Gates, 2005; Tingling et al., 2003; Wilson and Laskey, 2003), no single source covers the strengths and weaknesses of online surveys in the same depth as our discussion.Major strengths\nContrasting online surveys with other survey formats: Over the years, there has been a lot written about the characteristics of the three other dominant survey methods: the mail survey, the personal survey, and the telephone survey (see, for example, Alreck and Settle 2004; Dillman, 2000; Malhotra and Peterson, 2001; Schonlau et al., 2001; Spaeth, 1977). Less has been written about how each of these survey formats compares with online surveying.In discussing the three traditional survey modes in the second edition of their book, Alreck and Settle (1995) note that personal interviewing offers the best opportunity for close contact and two-way interaction between interviewers and respondents. Mail surveys present the most remote contact; and telephone surveys fall in between. Costs vary a lot among personal, mail, and telephone surveys, as do time requirements, questionnaire design expertise, physical facilities, and the speed of conducting the surveys. Even the control over data collection varies.In this section, we contrast online survey attributes with those of the three other main survey methods.Mail surveys\nThe best uses for online surveys and how their potential weaknesses may be moderated: In this section, we discuss the best uses of online survey research and offer solutions to moderate the potential weaknesses of online surveys.Best uses\nAn overview of the online survey services being offered by the world's largest research firms: A huge number of third-party research firms now provide online survey services. Some of them specialize in a particular function, such as survey design, while others perform all the steps in the survey process. The research firms all offer an expertise and technological infrastructure that make them a viable alternative to company-implemented research projects.We recently looked at the Web sites of the largest US-based and global market research firms (as listed annually by Jack Honomichl in Marketing News) to determine their involvement with online surveys. On the basis of this effort, we generated Table I which indicates the company name and Web address, the online survey services they offer, whether they have online panels, their geographic coverage for online surveys, and whether they engage in B-to-B online surveys. (Please note: the information is current as of late 2004; and the listings and services in Table I are drawn directly from the firms' web sites.)To further illustrate the availability of online survey services from research firms, we offer the following:* Common Knowledge's Surveyguardian enables interviewers to monitor and assist with online surveys in real time (www.commonknowledge.com/surveyguardian.html).* Global Market Insight has a worldwide panel with nearly 500,000 households, including at least 500 panelists in each of more than 50 countries (www.gmi-mr.com/pages/coverage.html).* Harris Interactive has a variety of online demonstrations that show its methodologies (www.harrisinteractive.com/ advantages/surveydemos.asp).* InsightExpress has both B-to-B samples (www.insightexpress.com/audiences/b2b.asp) and B-to-C samples (www.insightexpress.com/audiences/b2c.asp). Demographic profiles can be specified in advance of survey administration.* Nielsen//NetRatings (part of VNU) has launched WebIntercept with a panel database of three million internet users (www.nielsen-netratings.com/downloads/WebIntercept.pdf).* Walker Information offers clients the ability to develop their own online surveys or have them designed by Walker (www.walkerinfo.com/what/traditional).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To provide a thorough analysis of the role of the internet in survey research and to discuss the implications of online surveys becoming such a major force in research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is divided into four major sections: an analysis of the strengths and potential weaknesses of online surveys; a comparison of online surveys with other survey formats; a discussion on the best uses for online surveys and how their potential weaknesses may be moderated; and an overview of the online survey services being offered by the world's largest research firms.\nFindings: - If conducted properly, online surveys have significant advantages over other formats. However, it is imperative that the potential weaknesses of online surveys be mitigated and that online surveys only be used when appropriate. Outsourcing of online survey functions is growing in popularity.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides a very useful source of information and impartial advice for any professional who is considering the use of online surveys.\nOriginality/value: - The paper synthesizes the vast literature related to online surveys, presents original material related to survey methodology, and offers a number of recommendations.\n",
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] |
The role of innovation in building competitive advantages: an empirical investigation
|
[
"Greece",
"Innovation",
"Empirical study",
"Competitive advantage",
"Structural equation modelling (SEM)",
"Innovation antecedents"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Innovation is a widely recognised concept that has attracted the interest of both the academic and business world, as well as the interest of the governments of all developed and developing countries (Santos et al., 2014; Bowen et al., 2010). Nowadays, innovation has become the main challenge for all types of organisations (Andreeva and Kianto, 2011), since it seems to be a key driver of long-term business success (Baker and Sinkula, 2002; Balkin et al., 2000; Enzing et al., 2011). Additionally, on a macro-level, innovation-based competition has been argued to constitute the basis for sustained development in the post-industrial knowledge economy (Bessant and Tidd, 2007; Labitzke et al., 2014; Romer, 2004).\n2. Conceptual framework: As mentioned above, the present study aims to expand the findings of the existing body of literature, investigating the impact of innovation on the propensity of a company to create competitive advantages. In addition to the investigation of the above relationship, the impact of various antecedents (factors) on innovation is, moreover, being examined. The proposed conceptual framework includes six factors (categorised into three dimensions): innovation antecedents (KM, IC, organisational capabilities, organisational culture), innovation and competitive advantage (see Figure 1). According to the best of the researchers' knowledge, such a conceptual framework has never been examined before in the relevant literature. The following paragraphs present the hypotheses of the study.\n3. Research methodology: The present study is empirical (it is based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire).\n4. Empirical results: The examination of the proposed conceptual framework (test of research hypotheses) was conducted using the SEM technique (the maximum likelihood estimation method was employed). The covariance matrix was used as the table of entry and the extraction of the Standardized Completely Solution was requested (Hair et al., 1995; Kelloway, 1998).\n5. Conclusions: The present study developed an original conceptual framework that investigated the impact of innovation on competitive advantage. Moreover, the impact of KM, IC, organisational capabilities and organisational culture (innovation antecedents) on innovation has also been examined. A newly developed questionnaire was distributed to Greek manufacturers and 189 usable questionnaires were finally returned. The validity and reliability of the measurement was thoroughly examined, while the empirical data were analysed using the SEM technique.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Nowadays, innovation appears as one of the main driving forces of organisational success. Despite the above fact, its impact on the propensity of an organisation to develop and sustain a competitive advantage has not yet received sufficient empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the existing empirical literature by focusing on the antecedents of innovation and its impact on competitive advantage. It proposes a newly developed conceptual framework that adopts a three-step approach, highlighting areas that have rarely been simultaneously examined before.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was performed with the use of a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a group of Greek manufacturing companies. The questionnaire has been successfully completed by chief executive officers (CEOs) from 189 different companies. CEOs were used as key respondents due to their knowledge and experience. The reliability and the validity of the questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique. The study is empirical (based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire).\nFindings: Results indicate that knowledge management, intellectual capital, organisational capabilities and organisational culture have significant direct and indirect effects on innovation, underlining the importance of their simultaneous enhancement. Finally, the positive effect of innovation on the creation of competitive advantages is empirically validated, bridging the gap in the relevant literature and offering avenues for additional future research.\nOriginality/value: The causal relationship between innovation and competitive advantage, despite its significant theoretical support, has not been empirically validated. The present paper aspires to bridge this gap, investigating the impact of innovation on the development of competitive advantages. Moreover, the present study adopts a multidimensional approach that has never been explored in the existing innovation literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework an interesting research topic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants and patrons' propensity to return
|
[
"Restaurants",
"PLS-SEM",
"Revisit intentions",
"Protection motivation theory",
"Theory of planned behaviour",
"Foodborne illness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Food safety and the importance of protecting the public by serving food free from harmful pathogens are paramount in the restaurant industry. Safety and protection are a priority not only at the operator level but also at the federal level, as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) devote considerable resources, expertise and continuing research to the effort to provide safe food to consumers (Resnik, 2015).\nLiterature review: Restaurants and businesses that offer food as a service to customers patronizing an event and/or travel excursion are encouraged to follow food safety guidelines proposed by their local regulatory agency. Angulo (2006) suggests that agencies adopt the FDA food code; however, not all agencies follow this code specifically, opting to design their own inspection system, evaluation forms and monitoring guidelines. Based on food safety regulations often guided by the FDA, many foodservice establishments make an effort to implement safe food handling procedures, maintain safe and sanitary production and service areas and purchase food from safe sources [Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 2015].\nMethods: Survey instrument\nFindings and analysis: The theoretical framework and hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS)-based SEM. SmartPLS 3.0 was used as the statistical software. This particular software has been used to analyze structural research models in recent studies in the field of hospitality. Reasons to use PLS-SEM include its ability to test complex models under conditions of non-normality and smaller sample sizes (Hair et al., 2013). The measurement model was assessed for convergent validity by using item loadings, composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE). Table I presents the demographics of respondents: 54 per cent were male and 45.7 per cent female; 61.6 per cent of the respondents were Caucasian with the next highest percentage of respondents Asian Pacific Islander (18.2 per cent) and the balance were African American (5.8 per cent), Native American Indian (1,2 per cent), Hispanic (7.3 per cent) and other (5.5 per cent). More than half of the respondents had an income of below $50,000. Most had a high school degree (10.9 per cent), some college or trade school training (25.4 per cent) or a college degree (45.6 per cent), culminating in 81.90 per cent of respondents. Most were not employed in the restaurant industry, and the number of times they eat out with family and friends varied (see Table I for details). The types of restaurants selected ranged from fast-food chains and fast-food independents to full-service chains and full-service independents, all of which had an even representation.\nDiscussion and implications: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate the decision-making process consumers engage in when choosing to return to a restaurant that has experienced a foodborne illness outbreak.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A scenario-based survey was conducted to collect data from 1,025 respondents on their propensity to return to restaurants that have been cited for serving foods that caused a foodborne illness outbreak. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: The findings of this study show perceived vulnerability, perceived severity and attitude are statistically significant, whereas subjective norms and perceived behavioral control are not statistically significant predictors of consumers' intention to patronize a restaurant that has experienced a foodborne illness outbreak.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study examined consumers' intentions to return to a restaurant that has experienced a foodborne illness outbreak. Findings are based on a scenario-based survey, and thus, the results cannot be generalized.\nOriginality/value: By implementing protection motivation theory (PMT) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), findings from this study extend the understanding of patrons' revisit intentions regarding restaurants with foodborne illness outbreak.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Digital health technology enhances resilient behaviour: evidence from the ward
|
[
"Resilience",
"Dynamic capabilities",
"Absorptive capacity",
"Digital health technology",
"Healthcare operations management",
"Operational failure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A thought-provoking study from Makary and Daniel (2016) estimates that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the USA. The same authors predict that medical errors that threaten patient safety are under-recognized in many other western countries. Despite the fact that common sense would suggest focusing mostly on physicians and/or nurses as the causes of adverse events, it is commonly recognized that adverse events are largely \"the tip of the iceberg\" (Reason, 2000) and are caused by a number of operational failures that occur during the care process (Tucker, 2004). Thus, improving patient safety must also be related to the management of such operational failures. Operational failures in healthcare can be classified into: problems that disrupt the normal patient-care workflow because, for instance, employees need something they do not have at the right time (Tucker and Edmondson, 2003) and, consequently, they cannot continue to follow standard tasks; and errors that result from the execution of unnecessary or incorrect tasks (Tucker, 2004).\n2. Theoretical foundation: 2.1 Operational failures in healthcare\n3. Research methodology: We decided to implement the methodology of case research to provide a deep insight into the concept of resilience mechanisms and capabilities in healthcare and, moreover, to understand how DH technologies impact healthcare resilience. In order to increase the knowledge regarding resilience, which is viewed as comprising a number of dynamic capabilities, we focused on an empirical examination of practices implemented by employees in the field. In fact, studying dynamic capabilities, as constituted by various practices, may \"help to develop a deeper understanding\" (Dabhilkar et al., 2016, p. 2). Consequently, a case research approach was chosen because it is a suitable method for attaining as much information as possible from operational activities and tasks for the purpose of theory building (Voss et al., 2002).\n4. Case analysis: Through open, axial and fixed coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) and within-case analyses, five different capabilities emerged as crucial for managing operational failure. Furthermore, in relation to these capabilities, the medical, organizational and patient-related knowledge of the operator involved in the operational failure-solving surfaced as a major enabler. In the first step of the coding process, we summarized in a few words the pieces of text related to counter-measures against operational failures, e.g. \"head physician tells a nurse to execute a task he shouldn't\" or \"asking the head physician for help if you have doubt.\" In axial coding, the aim is to group codes representing similar ideas or concepts, e.g. the two codes noted above were grouped into the collaboration between head physician and nurse code. Finally, using selective coding, we found a more general concept that may be understood as capabilities, e.g. collaboration between head physician and nurse and collaboration between head physician and physician are grouped within the vertical collaboration capability.\n5. Discussion: Operational failures in the healthcare domain are very common and hospitals and wards are used to countering them by employing resilient behavior, which allows them to continue to work and to preserve patient safety (Fairbanks et al., 2014). In this paper, we have tried to understand this behavior in depth by analyzing the findings of our case research through the lens of dynamic capabilities, in line with the approach of Chowdhury and Quaddus (2017). More specifically, by extending the findings of Tucker (2004), who identified two different categories of practices (workarounds and error-handling) for solving operational failures (problems and errors), by encompassing the conceptualization of Alter (2014), who defined workaround practices in detail, and by inheriting/incorporating the work of Kontogiannis (2011), who provided a conceptual model for analyzing error-handling processes, we have classified the different possible capabilities that are required when deploying resilient behavior. These capabilities are similar to those identified by Chowdhury and Quaddus (2017), although a few differences can be highlighted because of the intrinsic differences between a supply chain and healthcare domains.\n6. Conclusion: This paper investigates the concept of resilience behavior in healthcare systems through the analysis of related capabilities and practices. The RE literature examines the concept of resilience in the healthcare domain, in both practical and theoretical terms. We found a dearth of research that explores resilience in the healthcare OM domain, even though there are many practical examples related to it that are observable by just spending one day in a hospital ward. These practices, commonly referred to as workaround or error-handling, are often triggered by operational failures, both problems and errors. For this reason, the starting point of our study consisted in exploring how healthcare organizations respond to occurrences of operational failures, an issue that has already been studied and classified by Tucker et al. (2008).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In the healthcare management domain, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the role of resilience practices in improving patient safety. The purpose of this paper is to understand the capabilities that enable healthcare resilience and how digital technologies can support these capabilities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Within- and cross-case research methodology was used to study resilience mechanisms and capabilities in healthcare and to understand how digital health technologies impact healthcare resilience. The authors analyze data from two Italian hospitals through the lens of the operational failure literature and anchor the findings to the theory of dynamic capabilities.\nFindings: Five different dynamic capabilities emerged as crucial for managing operational failure. Furthermore, in relation to these capabilities, medical, organizational and patient-related knowledge surfaced as major enablers. Finally, the findings allowed the authors to better explain the role of knowledge in healthcare resilience and how digital technologies boost this role.\nPractical implications: When trying to promote a culture of patient safety, the research suggests healthcare managers should focus on promoting and enhancing resilience capabilities. Furthermore, when evaluating the role of digital technologies, healthcare managers should consider their importance in enabling these dynamic capabilities.\nOriginality/value: Although operations management (OM) research points to resilience as a crucial behavior in the supply chain, this is the first research that investigates the concept of resilience in healthcare systems from an OM perspective, with only a few authors having studied similar concepts, such as \"workaround\" practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Feasibility study of automatically performing the concrete delivery dispatching through machine learning techniques
|
[
"Australia",
"Information technology",
"Computer-aided design",
"Automation",
"Knowledge management",
"Modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A construction project consists of a wide range of complex tasks. Due to this complexity, most construction tasks are performed by humans. Therefore, the construction industry is known as a human intensive industry (Ho, 2010). Additionally, it is very difficult to accurately predict performance and unavoidable errors. Consequently, the concept of automation in construction has been emphasised in the last two decades as a solution in alleviating the dependency of the construction sector on human resources (Kangari and Yoshida, 1990; Hastak, 1998; Navon, 2005; Gambao and Balaguer, 2002; Kangari and Miyatake, 1997; Cho et al., 2013).\nThe RMC process: In an RMC batch plant, based on orders, the specifications of the concrete mix are designed and raw materials are mixed together. The fresh concrete is then loaded into a truck. The loaded truck hauls the concrete, pours it at the destination and then returns to the batch plant. In practice, the mixing stage is performed automatically. However, the rest of the process is carried out by human experts. For instance, dispatchers decide to send a truck from a batch plant at a specific time to a project. This job becomes more complicated when a dispatcher needs to make calculated decisions for supplying concrete for a certain project that is located between two or more batch plants. The dispatcher needs to consider many parameters that can be categorized as three types of information which are summarized in Table I. The first is the specifications of the order such as: distance to batch plant(s), total amount of concrete required, the spacing of time between each truck and the properties of the ordered concrete (usually the truck needs to be washed after each unload) and the time of the first unload. The second category is related to the travel of trucks such as: travel time, unloading time, return time, location of project (which is affected by daily fluctuations of traffic) and drivers' break times. The last category concerns each batch plant such as the number of available trucks and their sizes, the number of idle trucks and their sizes, available raw materials, the maximum production capacity and the total amount of assigned concrete. Based on this data, the dispatch manager will need to manage the supply to each customer and each of their projects while trying to keep all customers satisfied. The dispatcher makes decisions about the location(s) of supplier batch plant(s), time(s) of delivery and the size of trucks. By having several active batch plants and a considerable number of projects, the complexity of this process will be increased dramatically. As a result, the role of the dispatch manager becomes more critical, since the entire RMC system works according to the schedule that is developed by the dispatch manager.\nLiterature review: In this section the state of the art of dispatching in RMC is discussed. In the last two decades many scholars indicated the inefficiency of RMC dispatching and its dependency on the expertise of people, (Lin et al., 2010; Matsatsinis, 2004; Feng et al., 2004). In order to deal with this issue many techniques and models have been introduced. Nevertheless, this sector of construction still suffers from a lack of practical solutions (Naso et al., 2007; Feng and Wu, 2006).\nMethod: This paper concentrates on finding an appropriate ML technique to predict the decisions of a dispatcher. The ML approach was selected due to the large number of effective variables and the complexity of the system. As described before, the researchers are looking to decrease the dependency on human resources for dispatching, so it is assumed at this stage that the decisions made by dispatchers are correct. Generally the dispatching process can be modelled mathematically, and for this purpose anything needs to be defined in mathematic language. Here a terminology introduced by Asbach et al. (2009) is used.\nCase study: Confidential concerns mean that RMC companies refrain from providing researchers with access to their databases. Persuading RMC companies to allow such access involves an extremely sensitive legal negotiation process which the researchers have initiated. Nonetheless, in the meantime an abstract simulation model for dispatching was developed based on observations of the behaviour of dispatchers. The main purpose for developing the simulation model was to test the feasibility of the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the RMC dispatching. The simulation model consists of one batch plant and three projects in a day (Figure 1) and was constructed very similarly to the previously introduced simulation models in this area (Smith, 1998; Naso et al., 2007; Lu et al., 2003; Feng et al., 2004; Wang, 2001; Zayed and Halpin, 2001) This simulation model was based on queue theory and discrete-event simulation. The affective parameters on the performance of RMC were extensively discussed in many literatures such as (Feng and Wu, 2006; Feng et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2011; Graham et al., 2006; Matsatsinis, 2004; Tommelein and Li, 1999), and based on the conducted research the following attributes were selected to build the training sets:\nData visualization: In feasibility studies and initial work with new data sets and before running the learning algorithms, a data visualization study is recommended (Brockway, 2006). This assists researchers in discovering the structures, patterns and possible relations in the data set, and will assist them to generate the research hypotheses precisely. In high-dimensional data sets with a huge number of records, an initial guess based on the knowledge of researchers about the inherence of the data set may ease the ML process. Thus, before working with ML techniques it is very important to study the structure of the available data set. In other words, we are looking to find a meaningful correlation between inputs and made decisions throughout the whole system. Subsequently, after running an attribute selection study on the available database, some 2D, 3D and nD graphs were depicted. The implemented algorithm developed by Hall (1998) is preferred in systems that have very low inter-correlation within the classes. It identifies the five most significant attributes of the database. Moreover, as mentioned previously, in the simulation model there are three projects per day that need concrete. In this section a project is selected (e.g.\nResults: The same data set was used in the six selected algorithms, and the tenfolds cross-validation was selected for evaluating the selected algorithms. This means that the data set was divided into tenfolds with around 90 per cent of each fold used for training and the remaining 10 per cent of data being used for testing. In each fold the performance of algorithms was then calculated for 11 performance metrics, which is further explained as follows. Table II shows the average of achieved results from tenfolds for each feature. The performance metrics used for comparing the performance of algorithms are: accuracy (ACC), F-score (FSC), average precision (APR), precision/recall break-even point (BEP), root-mean-squared-error (RMSE), cross-validation mean sensitivity (CVMS), mean specificity (MSP), area under the ROC (AUC), SAR=(ACC+AUC+(1-RMSE))/3, model building time and model testing time.\nConclusion: RMC dispatching is a human-intensive job and because of its inefficiency, it is an obstacle for the development of the RMC industry. In this paper the feasibility of automation in RMC dispatching was studied. Subsequently, AI was selected to predict the behaviour of dispatchers. Six ML techniques were selected, namely the J48, PART, ANN, SMO, NB and IBK. In order to test these, a simulation model was developed, which consisted of one batch plant and three projects per day. The data generated by the simulation was given to an expert dispatcher to make a decision about the priority of each project. Prior to implementing the ML techniques, a data visualization process was performed to understand the structure of the database. Subsequently, the ML techniques were tested according to the available data set. In terms of accuracy, the results show that, with the exception of IBK, there are no significant differences between other techniques. Most selected techniques are able to achieve the expected accuracy of around 80 per cent. However, computation times for NB and J48 are smaller than for other techniques and this may lead them to be a priority in real cases. The main contribution of the paper is an assessment of the feasibility of implementing ML in RMC dispatching problem. This paper proposes a ML process which was tailored to RMC dispatching and examined for a specific case study on observed human decision data. Furthermore, six specific ML algorithms were examined and observed human decision data was employed for a specific case study. The research is significant because it can provide an alternative for handling RMC dispatching tasks automatically which, in practice, the industry has dealt with as a human-centric labour-intensive task. For the examined case study, the results show that ML techniques perform well. This establishes a critical step in the overall research field of enhanced automation in the construction industry. While at an early stage, such automation processes have the potential of removing human decisions or, at least, providing decision support to existing procedures (e.g. recommended actions which can be followed or ignored by the decision maker). Numerous additional research tasks remain including field testing (critical but extremely difficult in the construction industry), broader analysis and optimization. Moreover, many researchers have stated that RMC suffers from a lack of a practical solution. Due to this problem, most RMC dispatching tasks are in practice handled by humans. Therefore, this paper has tried to discover the human decisions in RMC dispatching and matches the expert decisions by ML which could provide an opportunity to automate this process in practice.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the implementation of machine learning (ML) techniques in order to automatically measure the feasibility of performing ready mixed concrete (RMC) dispatching jobs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Six ML techniques were selected and tested on data that was extracted from a developed simulation model and answered by a human expert.\nFindings: The results show that the performance of most of selected algorithms were the same and achieved an accuracy of around 80 per cent in terms of accuracy for the examined cases.\nPractical implications: This approach can be applied in practice to match experts' decisions.\nOriginality/value: In this paper the feasibility of handling complex concrete delivery problems by ML techniques is studied. Currently, most of the concrete mixing process is done by machines. However, RMC dispatching still relies on human resources to complete many tasks. In this paper the authors are addressing to reconstruct experts' decisions as only practical solution.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Measuring coaching: behavioral and skill-based managerial coaching scales
|
[
"Coaching",
"Leadership",
"Empirical study"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Theory development and empirical research has been the focus of literature on managerial coaching (e.g. Gilley et al., 2010). This interest has also extended to trade and other popular literature (Emerson and Loehr, 2008; Whitmore, 2009). In both scholarly and practitioner venues, coaching most frequently has been discussed in the context of leadership (Burdett, 1998; Grant and Cavanaugh, 2004), general management (Hamlin et al., 2006), and goal achievement (Hendrickson et al., 1993). For example, McLean et al. (2005) and Rothwell et al. (1995) posited that coaching was a strategy for improving the relationship between managers and their direct reports.\nLiterature review and research questions: For the purpose of this study, the key literature that establishes the history and development of two coaching scales - the Ellinger Behavioral Scale and the Park Skill-based Scale - will be reviewed in depth. First, however, a brief overview of the scales is described. This review establishes the foundation for the research questions posed at the end of the review.\nMethod: As noted, the purpose of this research was two-fold: to identify the reliability and content validity of two popular managerial coaching scales - the Ellinger Behavioral Scale and the Park Skills-based Scale - to determine the extent to which the construct, coaching, is more accurately measured as a behavioral construct or a skill-based construct from the perspective of the coach, and from that of his or her direct reports. The research sample, instrumentation, data collection, and measurement are described.\nFindings: Overall descriptive results are offered, followed by results of the correlation analysis, results of the Principle Axis CFA for team leaders, first for the Ellinger Behavioral Scale, and then for the Park Skills-based Scale. Results of the Fit Indices are identified in the same order. Then the same order is used to report results for team members.\nDiscussion and implications for theory and practice: This study, and the sample upon which the scales were tested, provide some insight into coaching, the measurement of coaching and the perspectives of team leaders and members. A comparison of the Park and Ellinger scales for team leaders is followed by a comparison of the two scales for team members.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to identify the reliability and content validity of two popular managerial coaching scales - the Ellinger Behavioral Scale and the Park Skills-based Scale - to determine the extent to which the construct, coaching, is more accurately measured as a behavioral construct or a skill-based construct from the perspective of the coach, and from that of his or her direct reports using a single data set.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research utilized survey research which tested the reliability and validity of two existing coaching scales. Analyses included correlation matrices, principle axis factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis.\nFindings: Results of this research indicate that neither scale is perfectly reliable and valid. However, given the results of the analysis, the authors recommend the Park scale for leaders and the Ellinger scale for team members.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research indicates that investment in valid scales for use by direct reports to measure the coaching expertise of their managers is warranted.\nPractical implications: There are several implications that are evident as a result of this research. First, there are implications for the training and development of employees. Too, many organizations look to coaching and coaching skills as a benchmark for selecting future leaders - the understanding of how current scales are able to identify coaching expertise is important to the manager selection process.\nOriginality/value: This research offers one of the first comparative analyses of currently available coaching scales. It contributes to the literature on coaching by providing a clear and thorough review and analysis of scales currently available for testing managerial coaching expertise. Practitioners and scholars can benefit from this research by developing a better understanding of the contexts in which these two coaching scales are most reliable and valid.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Organisational capabilities and relationship quality: Performance implications for palm oil processors in Malaysia
|
[
"Malaysia",
"Competitive manufacturing",
"Edible oils",
"Business performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has been widely used in strategic management over the past two decades (Makadok, 2001; Newbert, 2007, p. 22; Wernerfelt, 1984). This notion has recently been extended to strategic marketing (Attia and Hooley, 2007; Hooley and Greenley, 2007). The term RBV was first coined by Wernerfelt in 1984 and the central question of this theory is \"why do some firms persistently outperform other firms?\" (Barney and Clark, 2007, p. 4). It focuses on internal analysis at firm level about their strengths and weaknesses, whereas Porter's (1980) focus external factors creating opportunities and threats (Barney, 1991; Porter, 1980). In the context of this study, organisational capabilities examined are market orientation, learning orientation, innovativeness, and manufacturing capabilities.The main contribution of RBV is in providing a comprehensive explanation on the theory of competitive advantage. Despite the growing empirical and theoretical research in RBV of the firm, its usefulness and standing as a paradigm is still being debated (Armstrong and Shimizu, 2007; Barney, 2001; Kraaijenbrink et al., 2010; Newbert, 2007; Srivastava et al., 2001). It has been argued that more empirical research is needed to strengthen the support for this important theory. Based on the literature review, significant gaps in the theoretical perspective appeared. For example, several researchers have identified relationship quality as an important resource of the firm, but still there is lack of empirical study to incorporate relationship quality into RBV and performance (Luo et al., 2004; Palmatier et al., 2006, 2007). It might be due to the different specialization of research streams, RBV in strategic management, whereas relationship quality is in relationship marketing. Consequently, additional research should acknowledge this insight; investigate how well the RBV integrates with the relational view to enhance business performance. For that reason, we have identified the aspects of relationship quality such as trust, commitment and cooperation as components of relations quality in this study.In response to this gap, another equally important factor to guide this study is the research context. The role of capabilities and relationship quality on firm performance is studied in the palm oil processing sector. The Malaysian Oil Palm Statistics (MPOB, 2009) reported that the performance of export earning of palm oil constituted RM65.2 billion (US$18.6 billion) in 2008. At the firm level, palm oil processors are concerned about the business performance, and are involved in the seeking important capabilities and relationships to gain business profitability. No prior studies exist in this industry hence the motivation to explore the generalisability of RBV to such a context.\nLiterature review: Organisational capabilities\nMethodology: Sample and data collection\nResults and discussion: The summary of results for the hypothesised relationships is presented in Table II. The first column restates the hypotheses as mentioned in earlier section. The second column indicates the hypothesised direction of relationship. Measure for direct effect is unstandardised regression coefficients. The final column illustrates whether the hypothesis was supported or not.Hypotheses relating to market orientation\nConclusion: In conclusion, the selection of organisational capabilities variables (market orientation, learning orientation, innovativeness, and manufacturing capabilities) and incorporating relationship quality are relevant and critical to the palm oil processing companies in Malaysia. The interpretation of the RBV also provides an explanation for the link between the selected organisational capabilities and business performance.Contribution of the research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to examine the mediating role of relationship quality in the relationship between organisational capabilities and business performance in palm oil processing companies in Malaysia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study used a mail survey and achieved a final sample of 330 palm oil processing companies.\nFindings: - The results show that relationship quality has strong mediating effects on the relationship between market orientation, learning orientation, and innovativeness and business performance, but does not have any significant effect on the relationship between manufacturing capabilities and performance.\nPractical implications: - The study has implications for academics, managers and policy makers.\nOriginality/value: - The major contribution of this paper is to fill the gaps in theoretical and empirical perspectives about the mediating role of relationship quality.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Keep your employees safe on the road
|
[
"Road safety",
"Employees",
"Health and safety"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: It has been estimated that up to a third of all road accidents and 1,000 road deaths a year in the UK involve somebody who is at work at the time. Some of these result from speeding or dangerous driving as employees try to keep to an unreasonable work schedule.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to examine health and safety of employees on the road.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper discusses the safety of employees on the road.\nFindings: - Employees have a duty to drive safely but employers also have clear duties - not only to ensure that they do not put their people under pressure, but also to take all reasonable steps to reduce the chances of an accident occurring.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides useful advice on the safety of employees on the road.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Intellectual capital reports in India: lessons from a case study
|
[
"Case studies",
"India",
"Intangible assets",
"Intellectual capital"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Swedish insurance company Skandia published the first intellectual capital report in 1994. Great attention and expectation was directed towards the world's first intellectual capital report. Clearly this report was a milestone not only in the field of intellectual capital, but also in the financial area as firms realised that just publishing financial statements was not enough to have rich information for the decision-making process.This paper is structured in to four basic sections. The first section briefly reviews the history of intellectual capital from 1994-2004. Major steps taken are analysed and some insights on future trends are presented. The second section is focused on intellectual capital reports in India. It discusses in detail the state of the art of the Indian intellectual capital report, with emphasis on its own idiosyncrasy and differences with European reports. The third section discusses main conclusions of the paper as well as implications for management. Finally, the last section briefly presents some avenues for further research in the field of intellectual capital measuring and reporting.\nThe history of intellectual capital reports in perspective: Introduction\nThe idiosyncrasy of the intellectual capital report in India: a case study: Introduction\nData collection: After some initial difficulties, we collected all intellectual capital reports published by these firms. The aim was to study the idiosyncrasy of the reports built in the Indian subcontinent.Why did these firms decide to build this innovative report? The reason is that the intellectual capital report contributes to the management of intangible resources and also provides the shareholders with a holistic picture of the organisational resources. So let's study here the experiences of these firms to learn from them.Balrampur Chini Mills Limited\nEuropean versus Indian intellectual capital reports: similarities and differences: Introduction\nConclusions and implications for management: The intellectual capital report celebrates a decade of existence. The first ten years in the life of the intellectual capital report constitute a very interesting experience for those firms that are interested in the publishing of intellectual capital reports but so far have not started to do it. A careful examination of the history of intellectual capital clearly indicates there is a long way ahead in this field.On the other hand, just orientation guidelines for measuring and reporting intellectual capital are published, such guidelines developed by the Danish Agency of Trade and Industry (2000 2001), the Meritum Project (2002) and the 3R Model (Ordonez de Pablos, 2004). The 3R Model constitutes a really innovative and practical guideline to measure and report knowledge-based resources. This model suggests that intellectual capital statements must include the intellectual capital report, the intellectual capital flow report and the intellectual capital memo report. These three reports constitute the basis of the 3R Model for Intellectual Capital Statements. The intellectual capital report will reflect the situation of the intellectual capital of the company, showing information of each of its components. Intellectual capital components will be quantified based on indicators that measure diverse categories of each component. This report will also show the situation of the intellectual capital in the previous year. The intellectual capital flow report will cover the increases and decreases of intellectual capital during the year as well as the intellectual capital variation or net flow. This information will be elaborated for each indicator, indicator category and component of intellectual capital. It will also be specified the goals and sub-goals for each indicator, category of indicators and components of the intellectual capital. The intellectual capital memo will complement and explain the information included in the intellectual capital report and in the intellectual capital flow report. Similarly to traditional accounting guidelines, the intellectual capital memo will include information on the activity or activities of the company, assessment norms for the intellectual capital, as well as events taken place with later date to the closing of the reports that do not affect them, but whose information is useful for the users of the intellectual capital statement (Ordonez de Pablos, 2004).So far published guidelines represent good initiatives undertaken by academics based on the experience of pioneer firms that build the intellectual capital report. They provide practical guidelines on how to measure and report intellectual capital. However, firms are not enforced to follow these guidelines and therefore they just offer an orientation.In sum there is a clear need to have accepted guidelines for firms willing to report their knowledge-based resources. The development of a set of homogeneous norms, principles, indicators and structure is a high priority in the intellectual capital report agenda.\nAvenues for further research: In this paper we described the state of the art of the intellectual capital. From here, which way should these reports follow? In the light of the comprehensive information provided by European intellectual capital reports, Indian reports should develop more indicators for each area of intellectual capital. It is not enough to present a definition of intellectual capital, describe intellectual capital components and show a few (if any) indicators in the intellectual capital report. Firms need to incorporate more information about those indicators as well as short and long-term goals for these indicators. The intellectual capital report must also present current and future strategy for intellectual capital development and renewal.The preliminary results of this case study will be extended as our empirical research continues with the analysis of forthcoming intellectual capital reports published by these and other Indian firms. Additionally we also plan to extend and refine the 3R Model for intellectual capital measuring and reporting (Ordonez de Pablos, 2004) and test it with a sample of Indian firms involved measuring and reporting knowledge-based resources.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - In 1994 the Swedish insurance company Skandia published the first intellectual capital report. Following these steps, other European companies decided to report on intangible resources. The Indian company, Reliance Industries Limited, published the first Indian intellectual capital report in 1997. Later other Indian companies also started to build and publish this new type of corporate report. Now the question is: are there any differences between Indian intellectual capital reports and European intellectual capital reports? If so, what ideas can be derived from these differences?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A case study was carried out to analyse how Indian firms build the intellectual capital report. In particular three leading Indian firms were selected: Reliance Industries Limited, Balrampur Chini Mills, and Shree Cement Limited.\nFindings: - The paper offers insights into how leading Indian firms measure and report knowledge-based resources. The Indian intellectual capital report does not focus on the business model, values, mission and vision and/or knowledge management issues as in the case of European intellectual capital reports. It presents a \"narrative\" style. This is a major distinctive feature of Indian reports.\nPractical implications: - The case study may help other companies to build the intellectual capital report. As the paper also provides a comparative view of Indian and European intellectual capital reports, managers can decide which approach better fits their firms.\nOriginality/value: - Most papers on intellectual capital measuring and reporting focus on European firms. However, this pioneer paper offers some insights into the reporting of intellectual capital in Indian companies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Customer perceptions of Korean digital and traditional banks
|
[
"Customer experience",
"Security",
"Convenience",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Digital bank",
"Employee-customer engagement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Digital Banks (DBs) operate through interfaces such as telephones, the internet and mobile devices (Cortinas et al., 2010; Sundarraj and Wu, 2005). TB account opening and loan approval services are generally available only at branch offices. TB internet banking services are primarily auxiliary services, such as account inquiries and fund transfers. Conversely, DB services, such as opening accounts, applying for loans, and domestic and international fund transfers, are available 24 h a day and 365 days per year. Allowing DBs to reduce costs dramatically because they do not have to maintain physical branch offices; they are simultaneously able to offer their customers higher interest rates and lower fund transfer fees than TBs. Therefore, a DB is a fundamentally different concept from the TB's existing internet banking services, which have been used as a complementary means to attract customers (Jung, 2006).\nTheoretical framework: Customer experience and satisfaction\nMethodology: Sampling and survey procedure\nThe results: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion and conclusion: Interpretation of findings\nConclusion: Despite the limitations discussed above, the current findings imply that DBs need to improve ECE, security and convenience to meet customers' expectations and improve their satisfaction. To reinforce weak areas, DBs may consider the following business alternatives. First, real-time customer services via chat robots using artificial intelligence and increasing the number of customer service associates may be necessary to improve DB CS. Second, extra authentication processes beyond fingerprints may be needed to enhance DB customers' sense of security. Third, DBs need to increase the number of ATMs to make cash withdrawals more convenient and attract more customers who are interested in using banks for deposits and cash withdrawals as well as funds transfers. Finally, DB executives in South Korea have discussed creating branch offices to improve face-to-face ECE and convenience. However, such a move is likely to weaken the DB advantages and lead to a return to TB system. DBs may still have growth potential if they overcome these weaknesses.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare customer experience (CE) between digital and traditional South Korean bank users and its relationship with customer satisfaction (CS).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey of bank customers was conducted, and an ANOVA test was performed to compare the means of CS between digital and traditional bank (TB) users as well as four dimensions of CE, such as usefulness, convenience, employee-customer engagement (ECE) and security. The ordinal regression analysis was also performed to test the moderation effect of digital bank (DB) use on the relationship between CE and satisfaction.\nFindings: The means of usefulness were higher among DB users than TB users. By contrast, ECE and security means were lower for digital than TB users. The ordinal regression analysis indicated that DB use had a moderating effect on the relationship between convenience and CS and the relationship between ECE and CS. DB use encouraged increased positive relationships between convenience and CS, and moderated the relationship between ECE and CS in a negative direction.\nPractical implications: ECE and security for DBs is weak. Therefore, bank executives need to improve these areas through real-time customer services and adding authentication procedures.\nOriginality/value: Unlike previous studies, this study proposed a model that reveals differences in CE between traditional and DB users. It explored the effects of CE on CS to contribute to the continued development of South Korean DBs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Forces driving the growth of the restaurant industry in the USA
|
[
"Business development",
"Market share",
"Catering industry",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The restaurant industry will enter its 16th consecutive year of real growth in 2007 and will have a total economic impact that will exceed $1.3 trillion (Steven C. Anderson, President, National Restaurant Association cited in Strong, 2007, p. 96).\nIntroduction: According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), restaurant-industry sales were forecasted to increase 5 percent in 2007, reaching $535 billion and having an overall economic impact of $1.3 trillion affecting the sales of related industries such as agriculture, transportation and manufacturing. Total industry sales are expected to grow well over $577 billion by 2010, with consumers spending 53 cents out of every dollar on food away from home, compared to 45 cents in 1999 (Kim and Gu, 2003; National Restaurant Association Research Department, 2007), making it one of the highest food away from home percentages in the world.On entering its 16th consecutive year of real growth in 2007 (Strong, 2007), the restaurant industry had proven itself a strong and influential positive economic force in the USA. Such a consistent growth over an extended period of time for an industry is a rarity. Few other industries have had such a growth rate in the USA, thus deserving further investigation. This is made more interesting and important considering the fact that only 10 percent of all companies in the USA, even in the best of circumstances, can manage to uphold a profitable growth rate (Zook and Rogers, 2001) for short periods of time. Moreover, while the demand in the foodservice industry is increasing steadily, the supply is expanding faster thus resulting in increased intensity of competition in the industry.As noted by Claver-Cortes et al. (2007), \"One of the issues managers are most concerned about is why differences in performance levels exist between different firms and what possible factors may justify those differences.\" Although previous research has attempted to identify some of the characteristics associated with restaurant growth (Chathoth and Olsen, 2007a, b; Jogaratnam et al., 1999a, b), a systematic investigation of the industry employing a representative secondary data was not pursued. Most managers would like to understand the nature of forces behind this growth phenomenon so that they can strategically nurture those forces and make any necessary adjustments internally. In addition, understanding the driving forces behind the growth of the restaurant firms is of great importance to investors, financial analysts, and management. Typically investors have a choice of industries and firms while making investment decisions. However, to gain a competitive advantage investors would rather focus on forces that mold the growth and development of an industry. Such an understanding would help in analyzing and forecasting the nature of growth in an industry. This subject also has significant public policy implications as obesity is increasing dramatically in the USA; by understanding the forces behind the growth of the restaurant industry, policy makers could refocus resources to achieve the desired objectives in public health. In addition, this topic also has implications to the agriculture and food industries since the restaurant industry is one of the largest consumers of outputs from the agricultural and food industries. Therefore, this paper focuses on investigating the driving forces behind the growth of publicly traded restaurant firms in the USA.\nFactors that explain annual growth: A brief review of literature indicates that factors such as annual changes in firm size, marketshare, leverage, book to market, earnings growth, and market risk premium are factors that can be used to explain restaurants' growth one year ahead, controlling for year effects, franchising, and internationalization. These factors were chosen for their effectiveness as independent variables impacting the growth of the restaurant industry and systematic representation of the industry.Annual growth\nMethods and analysis: Using the currently available information to project the annual growth of the restaurant industry one year forward could be of some significant interest to restaurant executives, managers, financial analysts, mortgage lenders, bankers, commodity dealers, suppliers, scholars, public policy makers, and others. It is logically assumed that restaurant executives would prefer to learn more about the drivers of restaurant revenues as it could assist them with their strategic planning. Understanding of the forces behind the restaurant growth could also be important to the investment community, as they make portfolio management decisions correcting for the market risk. The agricultural and food processing industries may find the results important as the foodservice industry is the largest buyer of their outputs. Finally, this information has significant public policy implications with reference to obesity in the USA. Given that one out of every three meals is consumed away from home, and mostly at restaurants, public policy makers could be interested in learning the forces behind the growth of the restaurant revenues so that they are able to make appropriate policy changes. Research variables identified in the previous section were selected for data collection and a two-year estimation window is then established (see Figure 1).Data description\nResults and discussion: Table I presents summary statistics for the sample. Owing to differing and missing values, the final sample size consisted of 979 firm year observations from 1992 to 2007. On average, annual sales increase by 7.373 percent over the 16-year period. However, the large standard deviation of 34.39 percent indicates some firms have declines in their annual sales. A general increase in size was observed considering the average annual change in size was 15 percent; yet individual contractions exist as the standard deviation 67.35 percent was substantially significant.The market was getting more and more saturated over the years, as indicated by the mean of the annual change in market share of -0.04 percent. Annual earnings growth was decreasing at the rate of 13.82 percent on average. However, this average decrease could be driven by a few firms that suffered substantial losses compared to the industry. The annual change in leverage has increased over the years as suggested by the average of 0.628 percent. The annual change in risk premium has also increased over time as well, although at a modest level of 0.037 percent. The annual change in book to market has increased at the rate of 0.4 percent, indicating possibly greater growth potential. In spite of this, the mean value was usually affected by extreme values (outliers), therefore, cautions should be exercised when interpreting results from Table I.Results from regression (1) analysis were provided in Table II. The coefficient for DSize was significantly positive, indicating as a restaurant firm grows in size, its annual sales are likely to increase the following year though the impact is relatively small at a 0.137 percent level, everything else being the same. Therefore, H1 was rejected. Similarly, less significant impacts were also found for Leverage (DLev) and Franchise at -0.001 percent and 0.03 percent, respectively, implying a positive increase in leverage lead to a subtle negative impact on the annual sales growth the following year while franchising is positively related to the annual sales growth in the preceding year, everything else being the same. H3 was rejected.The most prominent factor is the annual change in marketshare (DPen), which has the highest impact on the preceding year's sales growth as illustrated by a coefficient loading of 5.62 percent, everything else being the same. Therefore, H2 was rejected. In other words, if a one percent increase in market share is observed in the current year, the sales growth next year is expected to be 5.62 percent. The coefficient of Year loaded at -0.0078 percent, indicating the overall sales growth has slowed down very slightly from 1992 to 2007. Annual changes in book to market (DBM), earnings growth (DEarnings), risk premium (DRiskpremium), and international (International) are not significant at all reasonable levels.\nImplications for restaurant executives: Based on results from the current study, it appears that restaurant executives should focus on size, market share, leverage, and franchise to improve the annual sales growth for the following year in addition to market risk premium. Thus, the recommendations include the following questions to gauge the growth strategy:* How can a restaurant firm gain market share? Our findings suggest that market share is the most prominent driving force for sales growth for the following year. Gain in market share indicates the level of market saturation and the competitive position of a restaurant firm. In order to manage to increase market share, restaurant executives have to understand the relative position the firm has in the competitive set and make the judgment what one can do to increase the share in the market place, considering a 1 percent increase in the market share this year will lead to a 5.6 percent increase in sales the following year. It is obvious that the greater the market share for the current year, the larger the growth rate would be for the following year. Building brand awareness and brand equity through market share may be a sound and viable to option to pursue in the mature market of the restaurant industry. In a competitive market, majority of gains in market share often come at the expense of the competition rather from the growth of the industry. Thus, while focusing on market share, it is highly advisable to keep an eye on the competition that may potentially erode any past market share gains.* How can one expand in size? Our findings indicate that increasing firm size will lead to an increase in sales the following year. That means capacity expansions for the current year would propel a company into the next year. This principle was also observed in the reports of financial analysts while considering potential investment. Companies with a steady record of capacity expansions are often recommended as investment choices. Interestingly, in spite of the documented steady growth over the past 16 years, the restaurant industry still is not recognized as the investment choice for Wall Street. This phenomenon deserves further investigation, and this can be understood by the fact that intra-industry variables are easily understood by the investment community as indicated by the large standard deviations. Additionally, proportionally steady but small gains in revenues and profits often noticed in the restaurant industry may not be competitive enough compared to the other industries. Another explanation may include the fact that the restaurant industry, in spite of its steady growth, is very much fragmented and mostly made of independents. Also, reported high failures rates of the industry (Parsa et al. 2005) often discourage investors from considering this industry. In other words, in spite of steady growth, there is high amount volatility in the industry which discourages investors from investing heavily in this industry. Unusually high variable costs and low fixed costs features of the restaurant industry often contribute to the often noted uncertain investment environment and greater volatility. With this in mind, restaurant executives should take prudent actions to expand only if growth in sales is the strategic consideration. The investment community must consider the volatility in the restaurant industry as they analyze their investment portfolios. The restaurant industry has one of the highest environmental volatility compared to the other industries due to its low entry and exit barriers and low fixed costs and high variable costs.* How can one adjust capital structure? Based on the results from the current study, restaurant firms' leverage level is negatively associated with sales growth the following year. This is caused by the need to pay back high interest amounts because of leverage. Additionally, high leverage also triggers concern for potential investors. New investors are always concerned about the high amount debt a company carries. High amount of debt also indicates a firm's inability to raise funds internally, thus there could be a potential long term weakness in restaurant operations or a possibility of market saturation for the brand. Be that as it may, if a firm is already highly leveraged, borrowing more may only slow the growth rate of sales. One has to take a close look at the overall capital structure and identify ways to cut down the interest expenses, realizing that debt can also be lowered by selling part of the equity or raising new investment capital by selling common shares.* How can one take advantage of a franchise? If a restaurant is not franchised, this could be an option that some owners may want to consider. Current findings suggest that franchised restaurant firms outgrow non-franchised restaurant firms in sales the following year significantly. This can be explained by the fact that restaurant firms raise capital by selling franchises and collecting significant amount of capital in the form of franchise fee, and in addition, restaurant firms also receive a steady flow of franchise royalties on sales through the contract period. Thus, franchising offers double benefits to those firms that enter franchise agreements and, for this reason, franchising has become the primary vehicle of growth for most publicly owned restaurant firms in the USA. This strategy has often been adapted around the world by restaurant firms as a growth strategy. According to the International Franchise Association, franchise firms often experience better financial results than non-franchise firms, and restaurant failures are significantly lower in case of franchise restaurants versus independent establishments (Parsa et al., 2005). Thus, franchise restaurant firms may experience better growth rates than independent restaurants.* How can one explore the overall market condition to one's advantage? The overall market conditions provide business opportunities to improve business performance. Lower interest rates and higher market returns together will indicate a better domestic market condition. Based on current findings, restaurant firms are more likely to experience higher growth after a year with a better domestic market condition. Better domestic conditions often allow long term planning and permit a higher level of risk by the restaurant firms.While presenting the above scenarios we urge caution in implementing some of the suggested strategies. It is critical that a firm asks and answers all these five questions together. The Boston Market brand is an infamous example of failing to comprehensively consider the recommendations hereby offered as a whole. The brand naively believed that growth of stores would solely drive up its sales. Unfortunately, size growth comes with increased financial leverage and the overall firm risk of bankruptcy, which later proved to be the case for Boston Market (Chathoth and Olsen, 2007a). Answers to these questions will help in materializing business strategies and determining if sales growth targets are attainable for the following year. However, these results may not be directly generalizable to all restaurant firms at large, considering our sample is drawn from only publicly traded restaurant firms. In addition, there might be certain variables that this study did not directly observe but could influence firms' growth. Exploring a combination of both financial and non-financial variables may shed more light on the growth issue, especially with a more comprehensive data set.Suggestions for future research include identification of other variables that are not considered here, such as operation types and luxury levels, when data become available. The methodology employed herein could be used to explore financial factors that lead restaurant firms out of economic downturns in the past; thus shedding light on restaurant firms' strategy formation in economically stressed times. Large standard deviations in many of the current findings clearly indicate that the restaurant industry lacks internal consistencies and this could cause for some cancellation effects. To overcome this limitation an analysis could be conducted using industry sub-segments.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The primary purpose of this study is to identify the drivers of the annual growth for publicly traded restaurant firms in the USA.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Built on previous research, the study constructs an econometric model to systematically investigate growth drivers of the restaurant industry using data from publicly traded restaurant firms in the USA.\nFindings: - Annual changes in size and market share were found to be positively and significantly related to restaurants' one-year ahead annual growth. In addition, the annual change of leverage is negatively and significantly related to this growth. However, annual changes in book to market, market risk premium, as well as earnings growth fail to exhibit significance, controlling for franchising, internationalization, and year effects.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Results may not be directly generalizable to all restaurant firms at large, considering that the sample is drawn from only publicly traded restaurant firms. In addition, there may be certain variables that the study did not directly observe but which influence firms' growth. Exploring a combination of both financial and nonfinancial variables may shed more light on the growth issue, especially with a more comprehensive data set.\nPractical implications: - The paper recommends that restaurant executives should focus on market share, size, leverage, and franchise to improve the annual sales growth for the following year in addition to market risk premium.\nOriginality/value: - The study attempts to provide, for the first time, systematic financial evidence about growth drivers of the restaurant industry employing representative secondary data from publicly traded restaurant firms. Understanding the driving forces behind the growth of the restaurant firms is of great importance to investors, financial analysts and management.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Cost-effectiveness of Hepatitis A vaccination in a developed and developing country
|
[
"Comparative effectiveness analysis",
"Dynamic transmission model",
"Hepatitis A vaccination strategies",
"Incremental cost-effectiveness ratio"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The purpose of this study was to conduct environmentally-appropriate economic evaluations of existing Hepatitis A vaccination policies in order to identify strategies that minimize Hepatitis A burden given financial constraints. The two specific aims of this study were as follows: first, to evaluate the health and economic impact of continuing universal immunization and taking away universal infant immunization in the USA in order to determine the most cost-effective immunization program for the country at the current time; and second, to evaluate the health and economic impact of continuing no immunization and implementing universal infant vaccination in the state of Rio de Janeiro in order to determine the most cost-effective immunization program for the state at the current time. Rio de Janeiro was chosen as a contrasting setting due to its comparatively poor socioeconomic and sanitary conditions, coupled with its rapidly developing economy and the resulting epidemiological changes that may come along with the changing environment (Jacobsen and Koopman, 2005). Due to the vast population heterogeneity and lack of data for other areas of Brazil, the state of Rio de Janeiro will be the focus of this part of the study. When taken as a standalone entity, this state is still a developing area.\nSignificance of study: The transmissible nature of communicable diseases, such as Hepatitis A, necessitates a model that can take both the population-level and direct effects on vaccinated individuals into account. A dynamic transmission model, as was used working towards the two aims in this study, is able to capture both indirect and direct effects of vaccination programs (Kretzschmar and Wallinga, 2009; Ghildayal, 2018). Unlike Markov models, which are commonly used in decision science, it allows the risk of infection to be a function of the number of infected individuals in the study population, since even those who are not directly vaccinated can still benefit by having a lower risk of being infected by individuals who would have been carrying the disease if not for the vaccination (Fine, 1993). Indirect effects of vaccination can be most clearly seen in the consequences of herd immunity, as shown in the reduction in prevalence of several infectious diseases in areas with high infant vaccination rates (Armstrong et al., 2007). A transmission model approach will also account for the fact that lower transmission rates do not always result in health and economic gains. For example, reduced hepatitis A prevalence can lead to a higher average age of Hepatitis A infection in a population: even though there may be fewer cases in the population overall, adult Hepatitis A cases are generally more severe, resulting in greater healthcare utilization and worse health outcomes (CDC, 2016). Existing studies of Hepatitis A vaccination in the USA often use static models in their analyses and the indirect effects of vaccination are ignored in many existing cost-effective analyses of Hepatitis A vaccination programs.\nMethods: The analysis used two dynamic models to estimate Hepatitis A incidence over a 20-year period in both the USA and Rio de Janeiro. Two strategies were examined for each region: universal vaccination and no vaccination. The dynamic transmission model was chosen due to its ability to reproduce both the direct and indirect effects that come about from infectious diseases. Dynamic models are especially essential when a particular intervention affects disease transmission (Brisson and Edmunds, 2003). As vaccination, the intervention in this study, reduces the size of the group of infectious individuals, the subsequent risk to those individuals that are not infected and susceptible will lower. Individuals that have not been vaccinated for Hepatitis A will then reap the benefit of being at a lower risk for infection due to this herd immunity (Pitman et al., 2012).\nData sources: Tables III and IV summarize the sources of data used in the dynamic models. The probability, utility and compliance data was derived from published studies noted in a literature review (Ghildayal, 2018), published vaccine efficacy data, the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), where disease surveillance is completed by public health practitioners at local, state and national levels through obtaining data from health care providers and which the CDC annually reviews to obtain its Hepatitis A statistics, Government of Brazil dataset, the US Census, Rio de Janeiro Census, the World Health Organization (WHO), Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistic, Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunizations (GAVI) data and assumptions. QALYs, costs, and life years were taken from a societal perspective. Costs were discounted with a three percent annual rate and on a present-value basis. Further details on the derivation of data values used in the dynamic models, as well as the initial conditions that were set, are available with the author.\nAnalysis: The MATLAB programs were used to run the dynamic transmission model to project how many infections would be prevented due to vaccination. QALYs were discounted at an annual rate of three percent. Tables VII and VIII were filled in based on initial runs of various MATLAB programs to summarize the economic outcomes of switching from the policy of no vaccination to the policy of universal vaccination, where 77 percent compliance of children at ages 12 months and 18 months in the USA was assumed (CDC, 2011), and 90 percent compliance in Rio de Janeiro was assumed (Sartori et al., 2012). Plot programs were also run to show the prevalence of individuals moving through various compartments during the 20 years.\nResults: Figures 3 and 4 show the model's projections of Hepatitis A incidence in the USA and Rio de Janeiro over time, with and without vaccination. Figure 3 includes real 2009-2015 USA Hepatitis A incidence, adjusted for under-reporting (CDC, 2016).\nDiscussion: The dynamic model projected benefits in health outcomes through universal vaccination, as compared to no vaccination. Universal vaccination was found to result in lower incidence of Hepatitis A in both the USA and Rio de Janeiro, as shown in Figures 3 and 4 and in Table IX. Over the 20-year time horizon, universal vaccination is projected to prevent 506,945 cases of symptomatic Hepatitis A in the USA and 42,318 cases of Hepatitis A in Rio de Janeiro. Other benefits include a projected increase in cumulative QALYs through the use of universal vaccination.\nCost-effectiveness analysis: A cost-effectiveness analysis is an important tool for evaluating the amount of health gains received from an intervention, such as vaccination. The results of this type of analysis can help determine how to best utilize available healthcare resources. The results from the above dynamic model were used to conduct the following cost-effective analyses for universal and no Hepatitis A vaccination in the USA and Rio de Janeiro.\nUSA: Rio de Janeiro\nConclusions: These cost-effectiveness analyses of the Hepatitis A vaccination in the USA and Rio de Janeiro used dynamic transmission models. Through literature review, all but two studies had used static transmission models in these regions, and these did not include waning effects, consider Hepatitis A shedding or include rates at which Hepatitis A is removed from the environment. The development of dynamic models in this study was important to include the impact of herd immunity, as not taking into consideration herd immunity can greatly reduce the perceived impact of vaccinations (Dhankhar et al., 2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Hepatitis A is a prevalent disease that is largely preventable by vaccine usage. The vaccine for this illness is highly underused in most regions. In an attempt to find the strategies that are most beneficial in regard to quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and cost in current environments, the purpose of this paper is to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses to investigate vaccination strategies in a more economically developed country (MEDC), generally known as a \"developed\" area: the USA, and a less economically developed country (LEDC), generally known as a \"developing\" area: the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used a dynamic transmission model for comparative effectiveness analyses. The model ran two different scenarios. The two regions studied have different policies and strategies for Hepatitis A vaccination currently, and also used different strategies in 2009. In the USA, a universal vaccination policy was modeled, along with a scenario in which it was removed. In Rio de Janeiro, a no vaccination policy was modeled, along with a scenario in which a universal vaccination policy was effected.\nFindings: The comparison of resulting incremental cost-effectiveness ratio values to accepted threshold values showed universal vaccination to be cost-effective in both the USA and Rio de Janeiro as compared to no vaccination. When episode and vaccination costs and vaccination efficacy were varied, this still remained true. Universal vaccination was found to result in lower incidence of Hepatitis A in both the USA and Rio de Janeiro. Over the twenty-year time horizon, universal vaccination is projected to prevent 506,945 cases of symptomatic Hepatitis A in the USA and 42,318 cases of Hepatitis A in Rio de Janeiro. Other benefits include a projected increase in cumulative QALYs through the use of universal vaccination.\nOriginality/value: This analysis showed universal vaccination to be cost-effective as compared to no vaccination, and portions of the study's approach had not previously been applied in tandem to investigate Hepatitis A interventions. The results may help foster higher compliance rates for Hepatitis A vaccination and even greater per-person economic benefits of universal vaccination, particularly in the USA. The purpose of this study is also to encourage elevated levels of surveillance on age of infection in developing regions and consistent reevaluation utilizing dynamic transmission models in both the USA and Brazil, as well as other rapidly developing regions, in order to prevent future epidemics and costs associated with the disease.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Key predictors of creative MBA students' performance: Personality type and learning approaches
|
[
"Master of business administration",
"Personality",
"Learning methods",
"China"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The Master of Business Administration (MBA), which refers to an internationally recognized degree designed to prepare students and further develop their required skills for careers in business and management, has been recognized as one of the most popular professional degrees worldwide since the last few decades (Baruch and Leeming, 2001). In the USA alone, where the MBA has taken root, more than one century ago (Xiaohong, 2002), there are 300,000 MBA students every year (Rosenberg, 2004). In this regard, the People's Republic of China which embarked upon the establishment of its market economy system and its openness to international business competition after 1978 became a privileged destination for MBA programs of American and European top universities (Flew et al., 2006). In order to equip national expertise with modern managerial skills, the country's leaders launched a successful plan supporting elite Chinese universities to develop their local MBA programs (Peng, 2003). Thus, starting from nothing in the 1980s (Liang and Lin, 2008), Chinese MBA programs have reached 127 in 2008, instead of only nine in 1991 (Wang et al., 2008).The increase in MBA programs in China has greatly been facilitated by a rapid development of joint ventures and high technology (Stewart, 1994). Hence, to guarantee high-quality MBA and its fitness to the development of local entrepreneurial behaviors and skills, the adoption of a national MBA entrance examination (MBAEE) has been initiated, nationwide in order to unify national entrance requirements and to select high-quality students, since 1997 (Zhong-Ming, 1999).Although by the end of 2007, the estimated number of MBA students' annual enrollment has been 14,624 (Tsinghua MBA Education Center, 2007), the rapid economic growth of the country will require 75,000 top-level executives with global experience in 2010, based on previous expectations (BusinessWeek, 2006). Thus, to fill the gape between the demand for and the supply of well-trained, business-oriented people with management know-how and skills, Zhejiang University has taken a leadership role among eligible universities offering MBA programs.Having a long history as a highly prestigious university, Zhejiang University continues to play a major role in the education of science and innovation. Ranking third among top Chinese universities (The China University Review, 2009), it attracts thousands of students with different majors in management science field every year. For promoting its business management curriculum, it launched a reliable MBA program since 1994 which gained accreditation in 2006 and realized an enrollment of 900 MBA students in 2007 (Xiaodong, 2007). Moreover, with its perfect location at Hangzhou, capital city of the rich province of Zhejiang, the MBA Center of Zhejiang University allows many employees, from various manufacturing and service industries, to keep working while earning their degrees through part-time MBA studies during evenings and weekends.However, such participants in this type of program, fully employed students are often struggling to cope with their professional, educational and social duties because of the heavy workload pressure and time scarcity. Hence, they are supposed to perform lower than their counterparts in the full-time program due to a low degree of qualification and motivation (Giacalone, 1998).With no aim to compare between the two programs, in this paper, the part-time MBA students' performance can be seen as, particularly, relevant to their individual personality type and approaches to learning. Thus, driven by a strong desire to obtain the MBA degree as a sine qua non for joining managerial ranks from a technical job function, the part-time MBA students are characterized by a relatively considerable age and maturity with high motivation, rich practical experience and a pertinent seriousness (Herbert, 1980).In China, where the Confucianism ideology impacts on the way management education develops, students are stereotyped as a rote learners using knowledge assimilation for the mastery of principles instead of critical analysis (Ituma et al., 2007). Such dubious claims are thought to have originated from reports of Asian students as \"rote learners\" who are passive and complaint, contrary to traditional Confucian belief, which places great value on education both in terms of learning and as a process itself (Kember and Gow, 1991; Watkins and Biggs, 1996; Kember, 2000). However, due to changes underpinned by the globalization event worldwide, particularly in China:[...] in socio-economic and global contexts, learning and instructional paradigms, and the educational reforms which affect school organization, curriculum, and assessment methods - the stereotyped view of Chinese students as passive rote learners can be questioned further (Chan and Rao, 2009).With regard to the importance of study subjects, learning in a second language may lead to a surface approach (SA) and the anecdotal information of rote learning in Chinese learners may be explained by the nature of curriculum and the teaching environment rather than as an inherent characteristic of the student (Bhoomiah, 2009). Consequently, Chinese local MBA students are expected to master their course content and concept through the medium of their first language, in relevance to their own educational and cultural context.The justifications broadly cited above provide a strong impetus for an examination of personality traits and learning approaches as predictors of creative MBA students' performance on a professional accreditation business program in careers, namely the part-time MBA program, provided by Zhejiang University. The perfection of this program, widely recognized across China, and its relevancy to, the above-mentioned, reputable university, make it a good model for this paper. So a valuable data have been gathered, from this source, based on 208 reliable survey questionnaires about MBA students' individual perceptions of the subject matter.From this perspective, the objective of this study is to determine the degree of performance of such MBA students, with particular personality traits and cultural background, on the above-mentioned program. Therefore, the study focus is on part-time MBA students' Big Five personality factors and approaches to learning as independent variables likely and significantly influencing the dependant one, which is the students' performance, represented by their major course score (MCS) and their reported grades on the national MBAEE.Although many studies, have, previously, shown how personality type and learning approaches influence students' academic performance (Heinstrom, 2000; Duff et al., 2004; O'Connor and Paunonen, 2007), the research into individual personality type interaction with approaches to learning and their influence on MBA students' performance, particularly in China, is still very limited. The current research is conducted with purpose of contributing to fill this gap and furthering the available scholastic literature on this topic.The paper proceeds as follows. Initially, from the relevant literature review, the background to the research is discussed and testable hypotheses from the above-stated general research objective are formulated. The research approach is then described, followed by the results of the study. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study's findings, its limitations and suggestions for future research.\n2 Literature review and hypotheses formulation: 2.1 Personality traits\n3 Research design and proposed model: Considering the previous literature review, the personality type, from the Big Five perspective, and the deep and SAs to learning are supposed to be key predictors that, directly or indirectly, have a great influence on MBA students' performance, herein, represented by their grades in the National Admission Examination System (NAES) and their major course grade (MCG) achieved during the first term of their academic year. Therefore, the present study seeks to establish the relationship between MBA students' personality traits that include extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience and their approaches to learning, specifically, DA that incorporates deep motive (DM) and deep strategy as well as SA which includes surface motive and surface strategy (SS).This study is predictive and seeks to test its hypothesized model. Thus, the structural modeling techniques will be utilized for establishing the model that adequately reflects the nature of associations between the construct variables that are predicted to impact on MBA students' performance. As a consequence, the study is going to employ research methods which are characterized by deduction methods, hypothesis testing and the utilization of inferential statistical analysis (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004). Hence, the following conceptual model is suggested for depicting the relationship between the research variables (Figure 1).\n4 Method: 4.1 Descriptive statistics of the data\n5 Results: 5.1 Internal reliability of the study construct\n6 Discussion and conclusion: 6.1 Summary and implication\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to establish the key predictors of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students' performance, considering the interaction between personality type, learning approaches and educational achievement. A structural equation model is formulated to check out the relationship perfection between the construct variables.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study subjects were 208 MBA students at Zhejiang University. A questionnaire encompassing three sections was presented to the respondents. The first section is the revised two-factor version of the study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) developed by Biggs et al. The second section consists of 20 items developed based on a review of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Five-Factor Personality Inventory (Buchanan, 2001). The third section is about the respondents' background and personal information such as age, gender and their performance represented by their scores in the National Admission Examination System and their major course grade achieved during the first term of their academic year. A structural equation model was designed to examine the relationship between the study variables. Then covariance structural analyses of collected data were conducted for testing the model.\nFindings: - The main findings are significant correlations between the three personality traits, namely, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience with the deep approach (DA) to learning predicting high MBA students' performance.\nPractical implications: - Personality type and students' approaches to learning constitute determinant factors impacting upon the education of management graduate students. Thus, institutions providing MBA programs must allocate more interest to examine their students' characteristics, in correlation with their performance rating. In this regard, the present study is designed to provide business education stakeholders with a modest model to depict the key predictors of MBA students' performance, particularly, part-time MBA program whose participants are, in most cases, fully employed students, struggling to cope with their professional, educational and social duties.\nOriginality/value: - This study empirically investigates the relationship between personality type and students' approaches to learning to find out their influence on MBA students' performance. The model results evidently demonstrate, on the one hand a significant correlation between these factors, and on the other hand their influence on the participants' performance reflecting high rating in pertinence with personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience and the DA to learning.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Training an age-diverse workforce
|
[
"Training",
"Equal opportunities",
"Age discrimination",
"Older workers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Age diversity has become an important factor for companies in the attraction and recruitment of staff. Few can have failed, for instance, to hear about how the big retailers have sought to recruit older workers, and see benefits in their maturity for handling customers and work situations. The CIPD (2003) notes that \"failure to address age diversity can add to the problems of the war for talent ... that many employers experience\". They also stress the importance of age diversity in facilitating knowledge management. Employing an age diverse workforce is beginning to become a business imperative.\nMore about the age and training trend: The relationship between age and being offered or undertaking work-related training and development is highlighted in Figure 1, based on analysis of the Labour Force Survey, Spring 2004. From this it can be seen that there are three factors that help explain why training participation declines with age:1. older workers are less likely to be offered work-related training opportunities;2. older workers are less likely to take up the training activities that are offered; and3. for the youngest and oldest workers, there is a greater likelihood of training being offered by employers but then not delivered.There are other trends too, for example the reduction in training participation by age is stronger among men than women, and part-time workers receive less training with age than their full-time counterparts. This particularly is likely to affect anyone who seeks flexibility at work eg young people who work around full-time study, parents, and older workers who may have eldercare responsibilities or who wish to phase their transition from work into retirement by gradually reducing hours.Also notable is that people possessing higher levels of qualifications are more likely to have undertaken some training than those with low or no qualifications, as are employees in more senior or skilled occupations. Does this suggest greater training motivation amongst higher qualified (and possibly) more senior staff, or is it more the case, that employers are failing to develop their lower skilled workers?Why does this age and training trend matter?\nWhat practical steps can employers take to ensure age diversity in training?: In view of these findings, and to enhance the skills of all employees in their workforce, employers may want to take steps to address the age trend in training immediately. Based on some discussions with companies that exhibit age diverse training practices we explore some positive and practical solutions to the issue.Implement a training policy to facilitate access\nFurther information: For more information, Training a Mixed Age Workforce: Practical Tips and Guidance is available for download from the Department for Work and Pensions web site: www.agepositive.gov.uk/ agepartnershipgroup/pages/faqs_training.htmAlso available from the Age Partnership web site is a range of reports on employment issues associated with the introduction of age discrimination legislation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Aims to address the myths and age-related barriers that currently deter employers from training workers of different ages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study is the culmination of four strands of research activity: qualitative interviews with a range of national experts to inform the context for the research and the key issues to be explored. The interviews also helped to identify the training channels available to employers and their workers. Review of the current policy and academic literatures. Secondary data analysis of the Labour Force Survey, 2004 and National Adult Learning Survey, 2002. Also includes LSC data from the Employer Training Pilots and Modern Apprenticeships. Case studies of five organisations which demonstrate good practice in training a mixed-age workforce. Throughout the study, references to \"older workers\" mean people aged over 50.\nFindings: - There is a clear association between age and the amount of training offered to and received by workers. Employees aged over 55 were less likely than other workers to participate in training, or to have been offered it. Older employees were also less likely than younger or mid-life workers to take up any opportunities for training that were made available. Furthermore, older workers were more likely only to have received on-the-job training.\nOriginality/value: - Provides the evidence and practical guidance on the variety of training support channels and on age-diverse training practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Encouraging fun in the workplace: Different forms and differing effects
|
[
"Paradox",
"Fun",
"Workplace",
"Employees"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIt matters to make work fun: Too much work and not enough play produces dull individuals. At least that is what one proverb famously asserts. Perhaps implicit in such remarks is the notion that work can benefit from an injection of fun. Endeavor need not be bereft of enjoyment. There is room for smiles amid the slog.\nFun in its different forms: Three types of workplace fun have been identified. This reveals it to be a multifaceted construct and increases the complexities inherent in the phenomenon.\nWhy caution is important?: Effective people management is a top priority with most of the current organizations. Western norms dictate that fun has a significant role to play. But, managers should be wary of adopting a one-cap-fits-all approach. Fun for everyone in the firm is simply not feasible. How could it be when differences in demographics, context and mood are part of the equation? Timing of fun events is often crucial too.\nComment: The review is based on \"The fun paradox\" by Plester et al. (2015). This interesting piece contends that workplace fun is a complex entity. Different types of fun are proposed and the authors point out that tension will often arise because fun means different things to different people. They suggest that a cautious approach is required to successfully address the inherent paradoxes and ensure that fun can have a positive impact on the workforce.\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: Making the workplace a fun environment can benefit a firm in many ways. However, people's perception of what constitutes fun can vary considerably and give rise to tensions. Different types of fun are evident and employees differ in the way that they engage or not with them. For fun to have a positive impact in the workplace, managers need to address the paradoxes that emerge. Caution is needed when arranging formal fun events to avoid negative responses from employees who feel that fun is being imposed upon them.\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"
}
] |
From external information to marketing innovation: the mediating role of product and organizational innovation
|
[
"Marketing innovation",
"Product innovation",
"Mediating effect",
"Organizational innovation",
"External information"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The literature highlights external information from relationships with customers, competitors and suppliers as a key antecedent of innovation (Kim and Lui, 2015; Charterina et al., 2017). Innovation researchers have focused mainly on technological innovations, while marketing researchers have studied marketing innovation from a very limited perspective (Camison and Villar-Lopez, 2011). However, several authors have highlighted the current relevance of marketing innovation with regard to competition in the global and dynamic environment (Medrano and Olarte-Pascual, 2016), as it provides a way of differentiating firms from their competitors and adapting to markets to gain a competitive advantage. To confront this lack of global understanding of marketing innovation, new studies concerning the key antecedents and the processes that lead to marketing innovation are needed (Geldes and Felzensztein, 2013). Several authors suggest that external information affects marketing innovation (Sidhu et al., 2007) because information regarding new opportunities, use of products, consumer preferences and production processes is based mainly on tacit knowledge. However, managerial practice indicates that, in many cases, this external information is neither novel nor relevant to marketing innovation, as it is biased towards other types of innovation. There is a research gap regarding the ambiguity of the relationship between external information and marketing innovation, because of the interaction of advantages and disadvantages derived from network paradoxes (Hakansson and Ford, 2002). Thus, the question to be answered is: How does external information affect marketing innovation? Moreover, several authors suggest that different types of innovation are connected (Gunday et al., 2011) and that this interconnection can affect the relationship (Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001). Therefore, we raise a more specific question: What role do other types of innovation have in explaining the relationship between external information and marketing innovation?\nTheory and hypotheses: Marketing innovation\nData and methodology: This study builds on the Spanish database Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC), which is a statistical instrument developed and maintained by the National Statistics Institute (INE) measuring the innovation activities of Spanish companies since 2003. This database is the Spanish version of the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey (CIS), a questionnaire that includes the Yale survey and the SPRU innovation database, and follows the guidelines of the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005). Additionally, the Spanish version of the CIS includes more detailed questions on certain aspects of process innovation activities based on the guidelines of the Frascati Manual (OECD, 2002). PITEC classifies two types of innovation: technological innovation (product innovation and process innovation) and non-technological innovation (organizational innovation and marketing innovation). PITEC is published on the FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) website and is available to researchers. The database contains information from more than 12,000 companies and provides data from 2003 onwards. Some variables of the cohort have been anonymized to protect the identity of the companies.\nVariables: Dependent variable\nAnalysis and method: The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). According to Haenlein and Kaplan (2004), it is more appropriate than traditional multivariate techniques for works like the present one, and has several advantages. First, it is possible to analyse the firm's data and simultaneously confirm that the model has sufficient reliability and validity in all the constructs. Second, because of the fact that PLS requires no assumptions with respect to multivariate normality, it simplifies the analysis more effectively than performing structural equation models based on covariance. Third, PLS allows a large number of variables to be handled and, furthermore, the analysis of complex constructs (Tenenhaus, 2008). Fourth, SEM techniques are highly useful for analysing the mediation hypothesis (James et al., 2006). Several studies can be found supporting the use of PLS in Fang et al. (2014).\nResults: Assessment of the measurement model\nDiscussion and conclusions: This empirical research aimed to highlight the way in which companies obtain marketing innovation from external information by means of product innovation and organizational innovation as mediator effects, in a large sample of manufacturing firms. The results highlight that the development of product and organizational innovations are significant drivers for companies to use external information as a key factor to successfully achieve marketing innovation and, by extension, to obtain a sustainable, competitive advantage (Ren et al., 2010). These findings show that companies guiding external information through product and organizational innovations could be more likely to innovate in marketing.\nImplications for management: Our research has several managerial implications. Marketing innovation provides firms with a way of differentiating themselves from their competitors and reaching competitive advantages. As highlighted by Medrano and Olarte-Pascual (2016), taking advantage of the early stage of marketing innovation as a managerial practice, companies should leverage this situation to be more competitive. Therefore, it is important that managers have information about the practices that drive this type of innovation. To do this, managers must bolster their training in marketing innovation and strengthen their skills in marketing practices, identifying and including marketing goals in the firm's strategy and making them known to all the company.\nLimitations and future research: Though all possible precautions were taken, this research work still has some limitations. First, the study proposes a cross-sectional approach, although the variables concerning the innovative activities of the companies cover the information over a three-year period (2010 to 2012 in our study). Moreover, this study was subject to certain limitations because of the use of a pre-prepared database (PITEC). In this sense, we were unable to work with all the variables we would have liked or to measure the different types of innovation in what we consider the ideal way. We had to adapt our work to how the different variables included in the study are measured in this database. In any event, we believe that the information obtained from PITEC suffices for the proposed aims, having already been put to good use in other studies on marketing innovation, such as in Medrano and Olarte-Pascual (2016).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to further understand how firms transform external information into marketing innovation. The specific aim is to analyse the mediating role of product innovation and organizational innovation in the relationship between external information and marketing innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study builds on the 2012 database Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) with a sample of 994 manufacturing firms. The data are analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).\nFindings: The results show how external information obtained about relationships with suppliers, customers and competitors leads to marketing innovation. The study demonstrates the mediating effects of product innovation and organizational innovation on the relationship between external information and marketing innovation.\nPractical implications: Firms should utilize external information flows to innovate in both their products and organization as a prerequisite to marketing innovation.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides linkages between perspectives of networks, innovation and marketing to better understand the background of the least studied dimension of innovation - marketing innovation. The main contribution is to explain how firms use external information to achieve marketing innovation through product and organizational innovation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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