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Are performance differences between family and non-family SMEs uniform across all firm sizes?	[ "Profit", "Business development", "Resource efficiency", "Liquidity", "Family firms", "Small to medium‐sized enterprises" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Researchers from several countries have noted that the majority of small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are family owned (Chua et al., 2004; Gersick et al., 1997; Daily and Dollinger, 1993; Donckels and Frohlich, 1991; Cromie et al., 1995) and that family firms tend to be older but have fewer employees than non-family firms (Chua et al., 2004; Donckels and Frohlich, 1991; Cromie et al., 1995). For the financial year ending June 1996, Australian family firms comprised 62.5 per cent of firms employing one to four workers and 61 per cent of firms with five to nine employees. However, these percentages decreased to 32.5 per cent for firms with 50-99 employees and 26 per cent of firms employing 100-199 workers (Department of Employment, Work Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB), 1998).The declining number of larger family firms is often attributed to the family proprietor's desire to restrict firm growth in order to maintain control and ownership within the family (Daily and Dollinger, 1993). Consistent with this desire, it is argued that family proprietors tend to be risk averse, preferring an informal and conservative management style and efficiency-oriented strategies (Donckels and Frohlich, 1991; McConaughy et al., 2001). In contrast, non-family firms desire growth and short-term profits in order to attract outside resources and to meet the investment goals of outside owners. Management systems tend to be more formal in non-family firms to enable accountability to outside owners (following the agency relationship that evolves) (Daily and Dollinger, 1993; Kotey, 2005).Some researchers have argued that the family atmosphere and its informal systems provide unique competitive advantage for family firms (Sirmon and Hitt, 2003). Others attribute the low number of larger family firms to the inappropriateness of informal systems for effective management of growth (Ward, 1997; Loan-Clarke et al., 1999; Harris et al., 2004). These differing opinions reflect the lack of consensus in the literature on performance differences between family and non-family firms. The different findings may be associated with variations in sizes of firms examined. Westhead and Cowling (1997) drew attention to the disparities in size of firms investigated in the family business literature and argued that this might account for the differing findings. Performance of family and non-family firms may vary with firm size such that performance differences between the two types of firms may not be uniform for all firm sizes. Performance differences are likely to be minimal for small firms where family and non-family firms share similar characteristics but may increase as differences in goals, ownership structure and management between the two types of firms widen with growth.This paper aims to investigate the impact of size on performance of family and non-family SMEs. This investigation should enhance understanding of the two types of firms and enable assistance programmes and advice to be tailored to the unique situation of each firm.\nDefinitions: Family firms\nLiterature review and hypotheses development: Profitability and growth\nMethodology: Data\nResults of analyses: Comparisons of income, costs, assets and capital between family and non-family SMEs\nDiscussions: Performance differences between family and non-family firms with less than 20 employees were minimal but widened for firms with 20-99 employees. Family firms in the latter group enjoyed higher gross margins than their non-family counterparts. However, a relatively higher wages to sales ratio for family firms eroded the gross margin advantage bringing their net profit margins and returns on assets and equity in consonance with non-family firms in the same group. Family firms with 20-49 employees demonstrated greater efficiency in their use of assets whilst inventory was turned over faster for family firms with 50-99 workers compared with similar non-family firms. Performance differences between the two types of the firms narrowed for firms with 100-199 employees as the advantages of higher gross margin and efficient use of assets became lost to family firms whilst the disadvantages of higher wages to sales persisted.Profitability\nSummary and conclusions: Although small family and non-family firms shared several similar performance characteristics differences were still evident. Employee wages and activity levels were lower in small family than non-family firms, reflecting the family firm's greater emphasis on job provision and well being of family members and employees over short-term profit. Debt levels were also lower for small family firms portraying the risk aversion of family proprietors. Small family firms made less efficient use of their assets than similar non-family firms, due perhaps to their lower activity levels.Disparities in resources, capital, income, costs and performance between the two types of ownership became prominent at the critical growth stage - 20 or more employees, reaching a peak at 50-99 employees and declining thereafter. These disparities conform to the different goals of the two types of firms - rapid growth and short-term profits for non-family firms; and long-term profit- and value maximisation, and family and employee well being for family firms. Family firms grew slowly and cautiously, using the advantages of their smallness (i.e. close relationship with suppliers and customers and unique products/services) to compete effectively and earn similar returns as non-family firms.Differences in resources and performance between medium-sized family and non-family firms could also be attributed to differences in capital sources, ownership and management structures and strategies. To maintain ownership within the family, family proprietors resort to the relatively scarce internal sources to fund growth placing a limit on growth rate. In contrast, access to capital from external sources allows non-family firms to acquire more resources and to grow faster. The relatively short-tenured non-owner managers of non-family firms are interested in performance measures that make them look good to the external owners (short-term profit and high growth rates) so they can maximise their personal gains (high compensation and increased tenure). There is a learning curve associated with managing a firm unfamiliar to the incumbent. Thus, non-owner managers accumulate resources to provide adequate buffer and mask mistakes made during the learning process. Familiarity with business operations from an early age or from the onset of the firm enables owner-managers of family firms avoid the learning mistakes of non-owner managers, operate efficiently with fewer assets and achieve similar returns to the greater resourced non-family firms.Mass production and market penetration strategies associated with rapid growth mean non-family firms lose the advantages of smallness from an early growth stage. However, the loss in gross margin is made up by lower labour costs in relation to sales, achieved by greater attention to employee productivity. For family firms, slower growth means the advantages of smallness are stretched over a longer period. Nevertheless, greater emphasis on employee wellbeing to the detriment of their performance means the gains in gross margins are absorbed by relatively higher labour costs.The advantages of smallness begin to diminish when family firms reach 100 or more employees and face greater competitive pressures. Their gross margin advantages decrease but the disadvantages of lower activity per employee and thus higher labour costs remain. Further, the pressures of funding growth from internal sources become apparent as increased debt at lower activity levels raises the interest burden for family firms compared with non-family firms.In summary, the findings mirror those of Anderson and Reeb (2003) that family firms perform at least as well as non-family firms and that initially performance increases with increasing family ownership up to an optimum and decreases thereafter. Similarly this study shows that there is a limit to the activity levels at which family firms can sustain and benefit from their informal relationships and management practices as well as from limiting capital to internal sources. For family firms the costs associated with the informal system begin to outweigh the benefits at 100 or more employees. The findings also show that greater access to capital and resources do not provide a competitive advantage for non-family firms.Implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of firm size on performance (measured as profits, growth, efficiency and liquidity) differences between family and non-family small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The samples of 441 family and 473 non-family firms were divided into four size groups and performance differences analysed for each size group using MANOVA.\nFindings: - The findings indicate that family SMEs perform at least as well as non-family SMEs. Although the two types of firms shared several similar performance characteristics at the small level, certain differences were evident. Performance differences between family and non-family SMEs became prominent at the critical growth phase (20-49 employees), reached an optimum at 50-99 employees and narrowed again thereafter. For family firms, the benefits of higher gross margins and efficient use of assets began to wane after 100 plus employees but the disadvantages of lower employee performance continued.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study could be improved by a longitudinal examination of the same firms across various growth stages. Further, the findings may be industry-specific and not generally applicable.\nPractical implications: - The findings show that greater resources do not necessary lead to better performance and that non-family firms could benefit from more efficient use of resources. The findings also confirm that the benefits of the informal system are not sustainable at larger firm sizes and that larger family firms would benefit from improved management of employee performance.\nOriginality/value: - The pattern of performance differences observed between family and non-family SMEs is unique to the paper. The paper shows that differences in performance between the two types of firms noted in the literature do no hold at all firm sizes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Shaping gender inequalities: critical moments and critical places	[ "Life course research", "Gender inequality", "Employment inequality", "High-skilled migration", "Intersectionality of gender and ethnicity", "Occupational trajectories" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An analysis of gender equality achievements in Switzerland shows that while legislative and educational progress has been made in recent decades, equal access to paid employment for men and women remains elusive (Buhler, 2011). Causes of persistent inequality can be recognized under both institutional and biographic conditions. The latter are increasingly receiving attention by researchers who emphasize that gender-based employment inequalities often occur (or are reinforced or reproduced) at key transition points during professional life: choosing a career, marriage, first pregnancy, divorce or retirement (Kruger and Levy, 2001), which can result in \"a loss or gain of privilege, influence or power, and a changed identity and sense of self, as well as changed behaviour\" (Glaser and Strauss, 1971, p. 2). Scholars have shown that life courses in Switzerland are sex-typed (Levy and Widmer, 2013). Unfortunately, there is still insufficient empirical knowledge about the relationship between key biographical passages and the emergence of gender-based employment inequalities. Furthermore, our knowledge of the role of critical periods - such as migration - is still limited (Liversage, 2009; Riano, 2011a). Finally, an analytical perspective on how employment inequalities are shaped by decision making within relationships has only rarely been used. Scholars have shown that living as a couple may affect the professional outcomes of both women and men (Levy and Ernst, 2002; Bathmann et al., 2013). Therefore, empirical studies are required to comparatively examine how the professional careers of both partners evolve over space and time, which decision-making processes underlie these evolutions and the influence of gender-related values and structural conditions on these processes.\nCase study and methodology: The case study presented in this paper is part of a larger research project examining how gender and ethnicity intersect to generate employment inequalities in Switzerland. It combines statistical analysis of survey data with qualitative and exploratory case analysis. The selection of relevant case studies for the qualitative study followed the principle of maximum variation sampling, or choosing individuals that represent a wide range of variation in dimensions of research interest, such as origin, age, family status, education and geographical location. The qualitative study sample comprises 85 migrants (from EU and non-EU countries) and non-migrant women and men, with and without children, who are (or were) in a couple relationship, are over 40 years of age (i.e. with life courses long enough to permit meaningful biographical analysis of professional careers), have completed vocational or tertiary education, and live in central and peripheral German-speaking Cantons. Research partners were found through personal contacts, leaflet advertising, the \"snowball\" principle and collaboration with professional associations.\nThe evolution of professional careers over space and time within a relationship: Based on their narratives, this section summarizes the professional biographies of Mr Heinz Durig, a Swiss forestry scientist, and Ms Elin Andersen, a Scandinavian agronomist, and describes their decision making over the years[1].\nCritical moments and critical places shaping inequalities: The former section showed that although Mr Durig and Ms Andersen started with the same assets of educational qualification and individual motivation, over time gender inequalities arose regarding their careers. What are the critical biographical moments when inequalities within a relationship begin to arise and consolidate? An analysis of their biographies shows four critical moments:\nThe role of gender, ethnicity and age in gender inequality: The biographical decisions made by the couple were professionally advantageous for Mr Durig and disadvantageous for Ms Andersen. How does a person like Ms Andersen - highly educated and originating from a country with a progressive gender culture - end up in such a situation? Intersectionality offers a valuable approach to this question. Factors of traditional gender roles, ethnicity and age interacted to create a hierarchy within the relationship that endowed Mr Durig with more weight in decision making when choosing which country the couple would migrate to and, ultimately, how to distribute work between the partners:\nFinal reflections: This paper reveals critical moments and places where professional inequalities within a bi-national relationship began to emerge and consolidate. The case study suggested that combined factors of gender, ethnicity and age created hierarchical powers of decision making favouring the Swiss male partner, who thereby achieved economic citizenship (paid, potentially long-term employment commensurate with his professional qualifications) whereas his foreign spouse did not.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: There is much scientific interest in the connection between the emergence of gender-based inequalities and key biographical transition points of couples in long-term relationships. Little empirical research is available comparing the evolution of a couple's respective professional careers over space and time. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by addressing the following questions: what are the critical biographical moments when gender (in)equalities within a relationship begin to arise and consolidate? Which biographical decisions precede and follow such critical moments? How does decision making at critical moments impact the opportunities of both relationship partners in gaining equal access to paid employment?\nDesign/methodology/approach: These questions are addressed from the perspectives of intersectionality and economic citizenship. Biographical interviewing is used to collect the personal and professional narratives of Swiss-, bi-national and migrant couples. The case study of a Swiss-Norwegian couple illustrates typical processes by which many skilled migrant women end up absently or precariously employed.\nFindings: Analysis reveals that the Scandinavian woman's migration to Switzerland is a primary and critical moment for emerging inequality, which is then reinforced by relocation (to a small town characterized by conservative gender values) and the subsequent births of their children. It is concluded that factors of traditional gender roles, ethnicity and age intersect to create a hierarchical situation which affords the male Swiss partner more weight in terms of decision making and career advancement.\nPractical implications: The paper's findings are highly relevant to the formulation of policies regarding gender inequalities and the implementation of preventive programmes within this context.\nOriginality/value: Little empirical research is available comparing the evolution of a couple's respective professional careers over space and time. The originality of this paper is to fill this research gap; to include migration as a critical moment for gender inequalities; to use an intersectional and geographical perspective that have been given scant attention in the literature; to use the original concept of economic citizenship; and to examine the case of a bi-national couple, which has so far not been examined by the literature on couple relationships.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Futures studies in the European Union's new member states	[ "European Union", "Decision making", "Strategic planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: On 1 May 2004, the European Union welcomed ten new member states: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Cyprus and Malta. Diversity was the keyword within this group. Both the north and south of Europe are present and huge countries rub shoulders with smaller areas. The communist experience itself is not a common denominator, because two Mediterranean islands did not belong to that bloc. Moreover, the path of \"sovereign\" communist countries cannot exactly be compared with that of former Soviet republics, nor with that of a former republic federated within the Yugoslav entity. These ten countries have therefore lived through extremely different historical and political experiences.\nOverview of the ten new members: The European Union changed appearance with this further enlargement, instituted during the Copenhagen summit: the population has increased by a quarter to reach 453 million inhabitants, with the ten new member countries together accounting for 75 million. The EU's area has grown by a third. Consequently, its center of gravity has shifted a little further towards the heart of the European continent even if, for the time being, gross domestic product (GDP) of the new member states only accounts for 5 percent of the total.On the political front, the systems of government of the ten entrants are all democratic and the organization of institutions is in keeping with a rationalized parliamentary system, often tempered by the presence of a presidency with powers of varied reach.Beyond the unity that belonging to parliamentary democracy and a social market economy brings, these states show great diversity that is not easy to confine to type. Many dividing lines can differentiate certain countries from others (Table I):* Geography first of all: there are Nordic countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) just as there are thoroughly Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, Malta and Slovenia) among the ten new entrants.* History next, and of course the link with the communist experience: within the Soviet Union for some (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania), within COMECON (Council for mutual economic assistance) for others (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland), Slovenia in the Yugoslav federation, whilst Malta and Cyprus, on the contrary, were opponents of the Soviet bloc.* As from 1990, the countries that had centralized and planned economies experienced two separate models of transition towards a market economy. Some transitions were rapid (Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia), others gradual (Hungary and Slovenia), whilst the Czech and Slovene transitions are based on very strong specificities.* Lastly, economic and social development draws other dividing lines between prosperous countries (Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta), \"intermediate\" countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) and those that are far from having caught up (Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). GDP per capita doubles between the countries in the first group and those in the third. The fact remains that all are experiencing a period of growth, admittedly of varying intensity; the period of economic decline that central and eastern European countries lived through up until 1995 appears to be over.General features appear from the point-of-view of futures studies. For the eight ex-communist countries, the planning mechanisms (imperative and indicative alike) naturally suffered from deep discredit in the early 1990s. For a time, the terminology related to forecasting the future in all its forms was linked to this discredit. Futures studies in the broader sense could have suffered from this. In addition, in a much-deteriorated economic and social context, the priority logically lay with short-term challenges.However, as the years 2000 approached, strategic programming and futures organizations came into being, particularly under the pressure of EU integration. The allocation of regional funds calls for national development plans to be drafted. In the second half of the 1990s, several countries spontaneously instituted futures studies on the consequences of their European integration and on the measures to be taken with a view to this. Where need be, government moves to set up forecasting authorities could be supplemented by initiatives from the academic sphere.In this way, all the new EU members do futures studies lato sensu, often according to the same institutional outline: a public player (a department under the aegis of the Prime Minister or a main ministry), an academic player (research institute within an academy or one of the country's major universities) and, where appropriate, a private player (regional or independent organizations). In particular, several countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Lithuania) have each drawn up an overall futures study, with the time horizon being 2015 or 2020, in the socio-economic, strategic or demographic fields. Lastly, it is worth noting that technology foresights are increasingly common.\nPlayers involved in futures studies in the new member states: Poland\nConclusion: It is clear to see that there is not a single country among the ten new member states that has not begun to build up expertise in order to anticipate the future more effectively.This is remarkable, more especially for the ex-communist countries. In 1978, the Czech novelist Milan Kundera wrote in Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Gallimard, Paris):The future is but an indifferent emptiness which does not interest anyone, but the past is full of life and its face annoys, outrages and hurts, to such an extent that we want to destroy it or paint it again.It is true that, in these countries, the past is still a thorny political subject; on the other hand, the profusion of organizations dedicated to futures studies seems to demonstrate a renewed interest in the future.There are exchanges from one country to the next in order to build these visions of the future, in particular among the three Baltic States. However, it seems that exchanges are still confined to similar institutions within the 15 other member states of the European Union. Fostering these relations is undoubtedly a big challenge if we want to disseminate, at continental level, data relating to possible futures - those futures that 25 states will from now on increasingly have to share.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - In May 2004, ten new member states joined the European Union (EU). Although these countries have experienced very different historical and political systems, they face a shared future. This paper seeks to answer the question: how do they analyze this future?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper considers approaches in the new member states including forecasting, strategic planning, foresight and futures studies - and highlights the link with public policies. The second part of this paper offers a detailed presentation of the main players involved in futures studies in each of these ten countries.\nFindings: - All of the new member states have begun to develop competencies in analyzing the future. This is particularly remarkable in the former Communist members states. Connections between the institutions of foresight are still limited, however, and fostering relations between foresight and other agencies across the EU is a significant challenge for the future.\nOriginality/value: - Provides an insight into the state of futures research in the new member states of the EU.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Predictors of purchase intention toward green apparel products: A cross-cultural investigation in the USA and China	[ "Theory of planned behaviour", "Purchase intention", "Environmental knowledge", "Cross-cultural comparison", "Green apparel product", "Man-nature orientation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Globally, green consumerism and retailers' concerns for environmental responsibility have accelerated due to climate changes and increased concerns for environmental issues (Hamilton and Zilberman, 2006). According to an international survey by BBC World News and Synovate, approximately 72 percent of the respondents worried about climate change and more than 61 percent of them have experienced purchasing green products (Hanson, 2013). The 2013 Green Gap Trend Tracker survey found that more than 70 percent of US consumers consider routinely or sometimes the environmental issues when they make a decision for purchasing products or obtaining services (Miller and Washington, 2014). Environmental consumption of apparel products is also increasing and numerous apparel brands operate green strategies and provide green apparel products as consumers' interest in green apparel products is increasing. Despite these trends, limited studies regarding consumers green behavior in apparel products have been conducted (Lee, 2011; Mahenc, 2008; Sampson, 2009) and some focused only on green issues in the production stage without looking at consumer buying habits.\nReview of literature: The status of green consumption in the USA and China\nMethodology: Data collection\nFindings: Preliminary data analysis\nDiscussion and implications: Discussion of H1-H7\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand consumers' purchase intention toward green apparel products using the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Specifically, this study aimed to compare US and Chinese consumers to understand how green apparel behaviors differ by a country's green market status and cultural differences.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By employing two antecedents, man-nature orientation and environmental knowledge into the TPB framework, a theoretical model was proposed and tested to explain how and to what extent each variable affected the purchase intention of US and Chinese consumers. To compare the two countries consumers' purchase intention, moderating effects were proposed. To test this model, a total of 437 valid data sets were collected at universities in the USA and China.\nFindings: Findings indicated that the subjective norm was found to have the highest direct influence on purchase intention in both countries. Regarding internal perceived behavioral control (PBC) and external PBC, internal PBC was important for purchase intention in the US consumers while external PBC significantly influenced purchase intention among Chinese consumers. For the USA, two indirect antecedents to purchase intention (man-nature orientation and environmental knowledge) positively influenced variables in the TPB. In contrast, for China, the path between man-nature orientation and attitude toward green apparel products was not supported, but all other paths were supported. Only environmental knowledge (indirect antecedent) positively influenced internal PBC. Country moderating effects were not tested because of lack of supported evidence of invariance tests.\nOriginality/value: This study is an empirical research that focuses on purchase intention of green apparel products rather than on the production of green textiles, a topic that has received considerable attention in previous studies. This research is based on TPB with specified indirect antecedents to purchase intention. By testing the proposed model, the study explains the paths from two indirect antecedents (i.e. man-nature orientation and environmental knowledge) to the intent to purchase green apparel products. Therefore, academically, this study contributes to understanding the interrelationships among the factors that lead to purchase intention of green apparel products.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An exploration of US-made clothing in China	[ "China", "USA", "Sourcing", "Brands", "Country of origin" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Clothing trade between the USA and China has been imbalanced for many years. In 2014, China exported $47.2 billion of textiles and clothing to the USA, whereas the total export of textiles and clothing from the USA to China was $1.2 billion, only 2.5 percent of the Chinese imports (Jones, 2016). In 2012, China exported $30 billion clothing to the USA, while the clothing export from the USA to China has remained low (Office of Textiles and Apparel, 2012). The size of the US clothing industry has significantly declined from one which accounted for one in ten manufacturing jobs and employed over one million workers in 1980 to only one-third of that number remained in 2002 (Doeringer and Crean, 2005). Today, 98 percent of the clothing in the US market is imported, and a large portion of the imports comes from China.\nLiterature review: Brand equity and country equity\nMethodology: Method and research design\nData analyses and results: Validity\nConclusions and implications: The purposes of this study are to examine Chinese consumers' perception of US-made clothing and purchase intention to US-made clothing; to explore the role of brand in the relationship between COO and consumer perception and purchase intention; and to investigate whether China is a significant potential market for US-made clothing. A survey was conducted in China among college students.\nLimitations and future studies: This study has limitations that could be improved through further research. First, the study employed college samples. Even though college students are considered as appropriate samples due to their high interest in fashion and foreign brands, they are still not the representation of the entire population. Further research could sample different groups which are better representative of the whole population. In addition, with a more representative sample, identifying the most ideal groups of Chinese consumers who have the highest purchase intention to US-made clothing will be important and beneficial as well. Furthermore, the sample is composed of more female participants than male participants. Even though it reflects the more dominating role played by Chinese female consumers than male consumers in today's Chinese fashion market, a sample with a better balanced gender ratio in the future studies will still be needed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese consumers' perception of US-made clothing and purchase intention to US-made clothing; to explore the role of brand in the relationship between country of origin (COO) and consumer perception and purchase intention; and to investigate whether China is a potential market for US-made clothing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among college students in three cities in China. A 2x3 within-subjects design with two countries and three brands was performed.\nFindings: For Chinese consumers, country equity of China is significantly higher than the USA. However, Chinese consumers hold significantly higher perceived quality and perceived price of product for US-made clothing for all American brands. Chinese consumers have significantly higher purchase intention for US-made clothing for popular American brands with average price points.\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research could sample different groups which are better representative of the whole population. Different COOs and industrial sectors will be worth of studying. Future research also needs to quantify the potential price increase.\nPractical implications: The conclusions can be applied to business practices by American companies identifying their brand category before developing effective sourcing strategies.\nSocial implications: This study sheds light on policy making by bringing a new approach to position US-made products in China and address the trade imbalance between the two countries.\nOriginality/value: This study deeply examines how different brands affect Chinese consumers' perception of US-made clothing and purchase intention to US-made clothing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strengthening student engagement: what do students want in online courses?	[ "Online learning", "Virtual learning", "Information technology", "Engaging students", "Virtual training", "Virtual working" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Innovations in technology and development of learning management systems (LMS), aimed at providing a supportive learning environment to students enrolled in online courses, are positive and encouraging developments. The easier, simpler and supportive alternatives to complete a course have transformed into the interesting, engaging and essential platform to excel in academic and professional curriculum (Rennie and Morrison, 2012). Online learning is becoming the focus in both personal and professional spheres. Murray et al., (2012) proposed that by 2014 most of the students will take some classes online. Instructors and facilitators of learning realize the importance of designing and delivering engaging online courses and, therefore, strive to gain learners' attention and interests in online class settings. Several researchers have addressed the issue of student engagement by considering the viewpoints of instructors and students (Berge and Collins, 1995; Han and Johnson, 2012; Harasim et al., 1995). The professional and educational communities of learning in this globalized and interconnected world realize the importance of delivering training and learning programs utilizing virtual learning environments. As noted, \"Online learning has been promoted as being more cost effective and convenient than traditional educational environments as well as providing opportunities for more learners to continue their educations\" (Han and Johnson, 2012, p. 69). Thus, issues of access, flexibility and cost effectiveness have been advanced to justify the growing investment in online learning programs (Nafukho et al., 2004).\nProblem statement and purpose: Although delivering learning content online is associated with numerous advantages, online classes often face skepticism. The issue of how to effectively engage students in online courses raises more questions than answers. Online classes need efficient strategies to provide effective learning experiences to the learners (Chen et al., 2010). The primary purpose of this study was to identify pertinent studies on the important issue of student engagement strategies in online courses and to establish from empirical studies student engagement strategies that work. First, the importance of incorporating online class engagement strategies is presented. This is followed by a discussion on existing recent research identifying effective student engagement strategies in online courses. In addition, the paper examines the engagement strategies that worked well and learning activities that led to enhanced online learners' experiences.\nDiscussion: Brooks (2012) referred to the recent changes in online education as a tsunami in education. In 2010, the US Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis study and concluded that online learning using suitable tools can be engaging and interesting than face-to-face classes. Christensen and Eyring (2011, p. 47) termed online learning as \"disruptive innovation\". Aslanian and Clinefelter (2012) admitted optimistically that with proper use of technology and communication tools, an online class can be even more engaging than traditional classroom. On this note, this section discusses in detail the student online engagement strategies mentioned earlier in the paper. Student engagement strategies indicated in the previous section can be clearly categorized into five sections:\nLimitations: This paper has some limitations. But each limitation presents a potential future research area. First, the paper adopted a literature review approach. Relevant studies are discussed following a content analysis method. Nevertheless, more research both quantitative and qualitative is needed to support the benefits of engaging students in online courses. Again, the studies included in this paper mostly addressed learners' perspective in drawing the research findings and conclusions. It is significant to include the professors or instructors' views about online class engagement strategies. Means et al. (2010) proposed that instructor's perspective on improving online classes can reveal various strategies aimed at improving computer-mediated class engagement strategies. The authors in this paper identified how online class strategies can benefit the instructors. Hence, empirical studies need to address both students' and professors' perspectives.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to identify pertinent studies on the important issue of student engagement strategies in online courses and to establish from empirical studies student engagement strategies that work.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper adopted the literature review approach. The authors conducted a thorough and systematic search of the literature to find empirical studies focusing on online engagement strategies within the field of education and distance learning. To generate as many relevant publications as possible, both manual and electronic searches were conducted. The databases used included; Academic Search Complete (Ebsco), Social Sciences Full Text (Wilson), ProQuest Education Journals, ProQuest Dissertation and Thesis, ProQuest Central, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCIISI), ERIC, (Ebsco), SAGE Full-Text Collection (CSA), Google Scholar and Emerald.\nFindings: The results of this paper revealed the several factors that can create engaging learning experiences for the online learners. The primary factors are as follows: creating and maintaining positive learning environment; building learning community; giving consistent feedback in timely manner; and using the right technology to deliver the right content.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is limited, as it is based on a review of literature. Empirical studies need to be conducted to support the ideas generated in this paper. For example, it is proposed that individual and institutional characteristics play an important role in promoting learner satisfaction in online courses. Additional studies that can explore this aspect in detail are needed.\nOriginality/value: The paper has both professional and educational implications. The findings of this paper can help identify areas where the instructors and designers of online classes need to focus. The student engagement strategies for online courses identified should assist both experienced and beginning online instructors in the design and successful delivery of online courses. Students taking online courses should find the results of this study invaluable.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
L'Aquila, central Italy, and the "disaster cycle", 2009-2017	[ "Post-disaster reconstruction", "Disaster cycle", "Earthquake disaster", "L’Aquila (Italy)", "Legal implications of disaster", "Recovery from disaster", "Shelter after disaster" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The magnitude 6.3 tremors that struck the city of L'Aquila (Figure 1) on 6 April 2009 killed 308 people, seriously injured 202 and left 67,500 homeless by damaging at least 30,000 dwellings (Alexander, 2010). The disaster offers a good example of what a medium power earthquake can do in an area of high vulnerability. It also provides a useful case history to examine the processes of recovery in an area that is not economically vibrant or strategically of great importance.\nBefore the event: L'Aquila and the creation of vulnerability to earthquakes: There is a strong relationship between the strength of anti-seismic building codes and the cost of measures designed to ensure that buildings resist earthquakes (Stucchi et al., 2011). Consistently since 1915, the city and municipality of L'Aquila have been placed in the \"moderate seismicity\" category, despite the fact that the core of the central Apennines is recognised to be highly seismic. Either this has represented the failure of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis to portray the situation accurately (Castanos and Lomnitz, 2002) or, quite possibly, it betokens a deliberate move to reduce the costs of construction in L'Aquila city by imposing a lighter regime - and thus putting residents at risk of structural collapse in earthquakes. In either case, it represents legislative inertia with respect to scientific knowledge of hazard (Meletti and Stucchi, 2009). The main building boom that led to the expansion of the urban area of L'Aquila occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s. Building codes were less stringent in this period than they are now, and especially so as building in L'Aquila was not subject to the highest category of restrictions.\nFrom disaster response to early resettlement: In the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, more people died in the collapse of reinforced concrete buildings than died in stone masonry ones, including buildings that predated the twentieth century (Alexander and Magni, 2013). Many of the buildings that suffered total or partial collapse were condominia four to six storeys high constructed in the 1960s or early 1970s. The prevalence of poor quality concrete, smooth reinforcing bars and bad design of column-beam junctions was evident. As a result, these buildings tended to have weak frames. The combination of basal acceleration and inertia at the top of the structure meant that mid-floor failure, either in total or incipient form, was prevalent wherever such buildings were concentrated (Plate 1). A historical building stock is vulnerable to earthquake damage almost by definition: that its vulnerability should be exceeded by that of a modern reinforced concrete building stock is exceptional.\nEmergency response: the trial of the \"L'Aquila seven\" - a retrospection: Italian Law 225 of 1992, which established the national civil protection system, also created the Commissione Nazionale per la Previsione e la Prevenzione dei Grandi Rischi (National Commission for the Prediction and Prevention of Major Risks). The Commission was intended to link the scientific community to the Department of Civil Protection. Its role was to provide advice and guidance on scientific matters.\nRecovery: Complessi Antisismici Sostenibili ed Ecocompatibili (CASE) - the permanence of the temporary: One element that makes the L'Aquila earthquake quite unique is the programme to rehouse 14,462 homeless Aquilani in the CASE (Calandra, 2012). These involved 19 new settlements that varied in size from a handful of dwellings to housing for 2,500 people. Only one of these so-called \"new towns\" was located in L'Aquila itself, while the others were constructed on farmland and conservation land within a 17 km radius of the city. Hence, the accessibility of the settlements varied substantially. The CASE buildings are three storeys high and each one is built upon an 18 by 54-metre concrete raft half a metre thick, located on 40 steel columns topped with ball-and-cushion (pendulum) seismic base isolators. Hence, the superstructure, of steel frame and wood infill, is not designed to be anti-seismic, given that it should be isolated from severe displacement by the arrangements beneath the base plate (Marioni, 2009).\nReconstruction: delays upon delays: Besides the issue of temporary shelter, the process of reconstructing L'Aquila and its satellite towns was characterised by inertia and delay. Some of the tardiness can be explained by the fact that L'Aquila is an economic backwater and thus of little strategic importance to the national economy. Moreover, other earthquakes supervened, notably in Emilia-Romagna in 2012, and distracted the national consciousness. Constraints upon the exchequer associated with the banking crisis and national debt took the impetus away from reconstruction, and the slowness of legislative and bureaucratic measures probably accounted for the rest of the delay.\nReconstruction: the source of complexity: There remains a problem about what would be the best way to reconstruct a complex urban environment characterised by a mixture of modern, old and ancient buildings, multiple ownership, a variety of different functions and uses, and heterogeneous states of damage and maintenance. The solution employed in L'Aquila does involve comprehensive planning, but has led to a piecemeal result, which was described by Contreras et al. (2014) as \"deflated\" but not \"stagnated\".\nMitigation: after the earthquake, what changed and what did not?: Seven years and five months after the L'Aquila earthquake, a series of tremors began in the area between Amatrice and Norcia, 50-80 km NNW of the Abruzzan capital. Over almost five months there were nine earthquakes with moment magnitudes in the range 5.1-6.5. These events were enormously damaging, in part because the frequencies of shaking that characterised some of the tremors were those most likely to damage vernacular housing. One is motivated to ask what had changed between the L'Aquila tremors and those that occurred seven years later. Were any lessons learned?\nDiscussion and conclusions: I will now summarise the main conclusions to be abstracted from the L'Aquila earthquake disaster in terms of the phases of the \"disaster cycle\".\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical examination of the aftermath of the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009. It considers the elements of the recovery process that are unique or exceptional and endeavours to explain them.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on a survey and synthesis of the abundant literature on the disaster, coupled with observations from the author's many visits to L'Aquila and personal involvement in the debates on the questions raised during the aftermath.\nFindings: Several aspects of the disaster are unique. These include the use of large, well-appointed buildings as temporary accommodation and the efforts to use legal processes to obtain justice for alleged mismanagement of both the early emergency situation and faults in the recovery process.\nResearch limitations/implications: Politics, history, economics and geography have conspired to make the L'Aquila disaster and its aftermath a multi-layered event that poses considerable challenges of interpretation.\nPractical implications: The L'Aquila case teaches first that moderate seismic events can entail a long and difficult process of recovery if the initial vulnerability is high. Second, for processes of recovery to be rational, they need to be safeguarded against the effects of political expediency and bureaucratic delay.\nSocial implications: Many survivors of the L'Aquila disaster have been hostages to fortune, victims as much of broader political and socio-economic forces than of the earthquake itself.\nOriginality/value: Although there are now many published analyses of the L'Aquila disaster, as the better part of a decade has elapsed since the event, there is value in taking stock and making a critical assessment of developments. The context of this disaster is dynamic and extraordinarily sophisticated, and it provides the key to interpretation of developments that otherwise would probably seem illogical.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Multicriteria reliability modeling and optimisation of a complex system with dual failure modes and high initial reliability	[ "Cost", "Components", "Complex system", "Minimum cut set", "Multicriteria reliability optimization" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Even though reliability is important, the study and development of it as a subject and discipline goes back only a few decades (Pham, 2003), to the Second World War, when it became necessary to deal with the high frequency of failure of equipment, especially complex electronic ones (Bernstein et al., 2006). Around the same time, a new branch of optimisation, the specialty of which was to develop techniques for optimising a set of criteria instead of just one, as was typical of traditional optimisation, was also growing in terms of development of theories as well as applications (Figueira et al., 2005). These two, now broadly called, respectively, Reliability Engineering and Multi-criteria Optimisation, have today become major fields of operational research, engineering and mathematics. Even though traditional optimisation has been very much a part of modern Reliability Engineering, this new branch has not seen as much application.\n2. Optimal reliability methodology: Reliability optimisation has traditionally been treated as a single objective problem in which the top level system reliability is maximised, subject to cost or other system constraints, or cost minimised subject to constraints on system reliability (Kuo and Prasad, 2000; Kuo et al., 2001; Twum et al., 2012). There is now increased frequency in the literature of models of the multiple criteria type, and while the number is still relatively low, it is nonetheless a significant development and a possible indicator of future growth of the area in terms of theory and applications. Additionally, one of three main strategies has been incorporated into the optimisation framework in order to optimise reliability in a system design; these are Allocation of Redundancy (RAP) to components, subsystems or systems, Allocation of Reliability (RA) to components, and Mixed Allocation of Reliability and Redundancy (RRAP) to components or subsystems. (The interested reader is referred to Twum and Aspinwall, 2013a; Zhao et al., 2001, 2007 for detailed discussions of the strategies.) Among these, RAP happens to be the most popular, whether or not the objective is single criterion (Pan et al., 2007). RA, even though a major design concern, appears to be the least popular.\n3. Application: 3.1 Gas carrying system\n4. Results and discussions: Tables III-VII present the initial (IR) and Pareto optimal (PR) components and system reliability (Rs) values obtained after optimisation. The tables also show the component types (CP), the (RIs) and the percentage levels of RI (%RI) achieved. The labels FO and FC identify those failing open and failing closed, respectively. Columns 4 and 7 of the tables record the generic initial and Pareto optimal reliability values for the components and the system. The eighth column shows the cost/penalty values (CT) corresponding to the Pareto optimal component reliability values and that (Cs) of the system.\n5. Conclusions: The methodology used to obtain the Pareto optimal system reliability values provides lower bound estimates of the values and are therefore approximations; the exact estimates are expected to be higher, even though the differences are expected to be negligibly small, due to the high component reliabilities involved in the computation of the estimates. The results indicate that the optimisation methodology could improve the system's reliability even from an initially high one, granted that the feasibility factor for improving a component's reliability was very high. In other words, unless the reliabilities of the components of the GCS were easy to improve, higher reliabilities than the initially high ones could be nearly impossible to attain.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: System reliability optimisation in today's world is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction, businesses competitiveness, secure and uninterrupted delivery of services and safety of operations. Among many systems configurations, complex systems are the most difficult to model for reliability optimisation. The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of a novel optimisation methodology of the authors, developed to address the difficulties in the context of a gas carrying system (GCS) exhibiting dual failure modes and high initial reliability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The minimum cut sets involving components of the system were obtained using the fault tree approach, and their reliability constituted into criteria which were maximised and the associated cost of improving their reliabilities minimised. Pareto optimal generic components and system reliabilities were subsequently obtained.\nFindings: The results indicate that the optimisation methodology could improve the system's reliability even from an initially high one, granted that the feasibility factor for improving a component's reliability was very high. The results obtained, in spite of the size (41 objective functions and 18 decision variables), the complexity (dual failure modes) and the high initial reliability values provide confidence in the optimisation model and methodology and demonstrate their applicability to systems exhibiting multiple failure modes.\nResearch limitations/implications: The GCS was assumed either failed or operational, its parameters precisely determined, and non-repairable. The components failure rates were exponentially distributed and failure modes independent. A single weight vector representing expression of preference in which components reliabilities were weighted higher than cost was used due to the stability of the optimisation model to weight variations.\nPractical implications: The high initial reliability values imply that reliability improvement interventions may not be a critical requirement for the GCS. The high levels could be sustained through planned and systematic inspection and maintenance activities. Even so, purely from an analytical stand point, the results nevertheless show that there was some room for reliability improvement however marginal that is. The improvement may be secured by: use of components with comparable levels of reliability to those achieved; use of redundancy techniques to achieve the desired levels of improvement in reliability; or redesigning of the components.\nOriginality/value: The novelty of this work is in the use of a reliability optimisation model and methodology that focuses on a system's minimum cut sets as criteria to be optimised in order to optimise the system's reliability, and the specific application to a complex system exhibiting dual failure modes and high component reliabilities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Customers' quality demands as directions to the cold chicken supply chain management	[ "Supply chain management", "Business decision-making", "Cold chicken", "Customers’ quality demands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The management of supply chains has been considered an important practice to obtain competitive advantages (Rungtusanatham et al., 2003; Janvier-James, 2012). Supply chain management emphasizes the interdependence between organizations working collaboratively to achieve efficiency in the supply chain (Shin et al., 2000; Narasimhan and Kim, 2002). A successful supply chain improvement project reduces costs, improves flexibility and quality and ensures customer satisfaction, all of which help to maintain a competitive advantage (Li et al., 2006; Mellat-Parast, 2013).\n2. Food supply chain management: In the last several decades, supply chain management has become extremely important for companies operating in an increasingly competitive global market (Baltacioglu et al., 2007). One of the most significant changes in the management paradigm is that companies do not compete like autonomous entities instead they compete as entire supply chains (Lambert et al., 1998). With the increasing reduction of the vertical business model, the supply chain has become a strategic step for the creation of value (Gottfredson et al., 2005).\n3. Materials and methods: Interviews with production and quality managers at slaughterhouses in southern Brazil helped to develop a research instrument with 26 questions that addresses cost, quality, flexibility and time as competitive priorities that should be considered in the management of the supply chain. The sampling procedures are not probabilistic for convenience. Participants were interviewed by a team of researchers and answers were noted into the research instrument.\n4. Results: The participants of the survey were divided into two groups: those who buy cooled chicken meat to resell, referred to as retail (such as supermarkets, butchers and steak houses), and those who add value to the products through preparation for final customers, referred to as restaurants (such as restaurants and fast food). Among the replies, \"flexibility in providing,\" \"availability of specific products and costs\" and \"delivery frequency\" presented significant differences of approximately 10 percent in the analysis of variance, indicating that the action strategies in chain management by suppliers must be adapted since the actors from the end of the chain demand quality aspects differently. The relationship between the defendant's quality characteristics and the process steps also shows different results for each customer group.\n5. Final remarks: This paper presented the needs in the chain of chicken meat product supplies from the perspective of retail and restaurant chains in relation to the manufacturer in terms of the main aspects of quality that these customers demand to meet the expectations of the end customers. The results showed aspects of demanded quality from each type of customer which should be considered and exploited by the poultry industry. The results also clarified for the industry the characteristics that should be considered in the strategic choice when the focus is on restaurants, retail or both. These characteristics shall serve as aid to decision making on where to apply efforts for quality in the supply chain in relation to retail and restaurants and to meet the satisfaction of the end customer. It was possible to present some peculiarities of the supply chain of a perishable product, where the value of the product deteriorates over time. More specifically, it was possible to increase the knowledge of chilled chicken supply chain.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception of the cold chicken meat value in its supply chain and how to manage the influence of quality demands in this supply chain. It is based on the views that retails and restaurants have about the main quality aspects required to meet their end customers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper surveyed 135 respondents from restaurants, butcheries, supermarkets, and convenience stores located in the Southern Brazilian metropolitan area. Principal component analysis followed by quality function deployment was performed to analyze the data.\nFindings: The principal component analysis results in seven factors: product quality and flexibility of delivery; supply flexibility; responsiveness to market changes and product assortment; measurements of the inventory and competitiveness; product specificity; product availability and specificity cost; and delivery frequency. The comparative study on the steps of the process between restaurants and retailers shows that distribution, cutting and packaging are the key process steps in this chain.\nPractical implications: The results show what process steps must be prioritized to comply with the customers' quality requirements. Since the most important process steps are different for different customers, companies may elect what steps require more attention to satisfy the most profitable customer types.\nOriginality/value: Several studies are found in the literature that present a theoretical discussion on the quality demands of perishable products. The management of factors related to the process steps can help members of the supply chain in their decision-making processes. The contribution of this research is to identify, by an applied study, how the demanded quality aspects should be considered by the poultry industry to satisfy customers in different market segments.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enterprise imaging: representing complex multi-organizational service enterprises	[ "Multi‐organizational", "Visualisation", "Co‐creation", "Public sector", "Service", "Public sector organizations", "Service industries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper develops a method for creating a visual depiction of a service enterprise, acknowledging both client and service provider roles in enabling behaviours that promote value co-creation (Vargo and Lusch, 2006). The widely recognized move by many product-focused companies towards integrating product and service offerings in a service-focused business model presents new managerial/operational challenges for participating organizations, particularly in the context of complex engineering services (Baines et al., 2007; Wilkinson et al., 2009). As Agarwal and Selen (2009) highlight, the provision of complex and innovative services requires multi-organizational collaboration. Customers become factors in production (Ramirez, 1999) as service often entails the utilization of customer resources as part of the realization of value (Vargo and Lusch, 2006). Yet current models and visual representations for understanding the delivery of value are mostly provider and product-focused and depict inward value flows, internal value transformations and outward flows to an uninvolved customer. Basole and Rouse (2008, p. 54) argue that:Existing models, traditionally used for describing the exchange of physical products, will not apply in the services context in which close interactions between suppliers, service providers, and customers exist, where knowledge is created and exchanged, and experiences, capabilities, and relationships are an integral part of the transaction.Spring and Araujo (2009) support the need for further development of methods to represent the complex organizational arrangements involved in the co-creation of value between clients and providers in service settings. In this paper a detailed case study of an availability contract between a public sector client and private sector providers is used to develop new methods of enterprise representation. The paper has been organized into six sections:1. A literature review addressing the evolution of multi-organizational enterprises in value co-creation and the use of images to aid the understanding of organizational phenomena.2. A description of the research methodology used.3. Analysis of the support contract \"Availability Transformation: Tornado Aircraft Contracts\" (ATTAC) leading to the identification of 21 organizational units involved and their placement on the generic Enterprise Image. The units included sub-organizations within both the prime service provider and the client as well as third-party provider organizations.4. An examination of the validity and utility of the visualization, and evaluation of the enterprise imaging tool.5. A section on the managerial implications of the research.6. Finally a summary section covering conclusions and areas of further research.\n1 Literature review: The review addresses two areas of existing research: the evolution of multi-organizational enterprises in value co-creation and the use of visualizations to aid the understanding of organizational phenomena. The review is focused upon representations of multiple organizations and specifically representations of the interactions between service providers and their clients.1.1 The need for a holistic understanding of multi-organizational enterprises in value co-creation\n2 Research method: ATTAC is a long term, whole-aircraft availability contract between BAE Systems and UK MoD, where BAE Systems took prime responsibility to support the RAF Tornado Aircraft, delivering defined levels of available aircraft, spares and technical support at a target cost (UK National Audit Office, 2007). While the limitations of single case study research are recognised, this particular case offered a unique opportunity to study complex servitization in-depth. It was the first of its scale and complexity between BAE Systems and the MoD and since both parties intended to continue to let and bid for such contracts, this first attempt was an opportunity for both parties to learn and enabled the researchers to gain significant access. The main rationale for choosing one case study is that it is expected to maximise the incidence of phenomena of interest and this is aligned with the exploratory aims of this research (Flyvberg, 2006).The wider research programme was focused on \"organizational transformation for service delivery\" and sought to understand the obstacles and enablers to implementing this servitized contract. The in-depth case study of the ATTAC programme enabled researchers to examine and interpret phenomena in situ and to understand the meanings actors bring to such phenomena. Case study research is also useful when the aim of research is to answer \"why\" and \"how\" questions (Yin, 2003). This matched the wider aims of this research, to gain an understanding of the drivers for the transformation of such complex service provision contracts and how they materialize in practice.Interviews were semi-structured, face-to-face, and took an average of 1.5 h. They enabled researchers to uncover how informants perceived and interpreted situations and events (Bryman, 2008). Themes covered were the organizational scope of the contract; the role of various organizational and sub-organizational units in implementation and the obstacles and enablers they faced in service transformation and service delivery. All interviews were recorded and transcribed and followed the ethical guidelines described by Maylor and Blackmon (2005). Thus, research subjects were informed fully about the purpose, methods, and intended uses of the research. Moreover, the confidentiality of the data was guaranteed and in line with these standards the interviewees participated voluntarily and free from coercion. 22 provider and six client interviews were undertaken.To visually map organizational entities involved in the service enterprise a generic framework was developed based on a development of the service blueprinting model (Figure 3).Initial data collection identified ten organizational units that were subsequently located on the Enterprise Image. An iterative process for further data collection was then adopted whereby subsequent interviewees were presented with a developing Enterprise Image and asked to comment on the comprehensiveness of the image. The front/back office framework for provider and client organizations provided a methodology for selection of interview respondents. Respondents were initially selected on the basis of their direct involvement in front office contract management and service delivery. Additional respondents were identified by front office staff who identified \"back offices\" on the basis of two rationales. First, as organizations whose proactive assistance was critical in order to deliver good service or help improve that service; and second, as the subject of instances where failure to support the front office had resulted in difficulties in service delivery. Front office staff thus provided clarity on interdependencies from both positive and negative experience. Following initial data collection and development of the Enterprise Image the resulting representation was presented to all interviewee constituencies to assess its validity, utility and to gain feedback on insights generated by the image.A set of validation and evaluation sessions were arranged to assess the validity and utility of the image. These sessions were designed to provide an opportunity for participants central to the ATTAC programme to provide feedback on and further develop the Enterprise Image. Each session began by presenting the Enterprise Image; participants were invited to comment on the validity of the image and to make any changes they felt were necessary to represent the key organizational units involved in value co-creation. This was followed by general discussion on the issues raised by the image. Finally, to critique the visual representation from a cognitive, academic perspective, the seven dimension framework developed by Bresciani et al. (2008), based on the work of Green (1989) and Hundhausen (2005) was used to assess interviewees' and validation session participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of the Enterprise Image.\n3 Case findings and analysis: Since the case is complex it is inevitable that this section contains some detail, however, the key outputs are the front and back office framework and the six defined organizational categories, based on their location, reporting lines and role in providing or supporting the overall service, which form the Enterprise Image. The specific elements identified are sub-organizational units within the provider, client or third-party organizations. A total of 21 sub-organizations were identified during data collection. These units varied in the extent to which they focused upon or supported the ATTAC contract. This highlighted that both client and provider back offices needed significant transformation to orientate their behaviour to support front office output in this new form of service contracting. The front office is shown in Figure 4 and presented in detail in Section 3.1. The full Enterprise Image (Figure 5) then shows all organizational units within both front and back offices of provider and client. Descriptions of each organizational unit are given in Sections 3.2 and 3.3.3.1 Front office: \"direct service delivery and contract management\" organizational units\n4 Validity, utility and evaluation of the Enterprise Image: In order to assess the validity and utility of the Enterprise Image four validation sessions were undertaken. The first was to the BAE Systems senior executives of the ATTAC programme with related Warton-based Human Resource Executives. Two further validation sessions were conducted with the BAE Systems on-base management team with members of RAF Air Command. Finally a validation session was held with a joint group including the two most experienced and senior representatives of the MoD's Tornado project team and senior members of the BAE Systems on-base management team. The outputs of these sessions are described in Section 4.1. A preliminary assessment of the Enterprise Image with respect to Bresciani et al. (2008) framework, with results captured from interviewee and validation session participants is presented in Section 4.2.4.1 Validity and utility of the Enterprise Image\n5 Managerial implications: The study suggests that the Enterprise Image takes the form of an epistemic object (Knorr Cetina, 2001) that together with its method of construction draws stakeholders into evolving conversations that explore alternative means of governance for multi-organizational service enterprises. Therefore, in terms of managerial implications, it is proposed that the Enterprise Image may: support service enterprise management teams in understanding the boundaries and interdependencies of their service enterprise; operate as an initiator and support for discussion at the enterprise level; provide a common reference point for multiple interpretations; form a basis for co-creating holistic enterprise management processes. Though this research was based on an existing contract it may well be that Enterprise Images may be useful during the development of a contract when the interactions between stakeholders can be explored more flexibly. This would potentially enable the inclusion of processes that support holistic service improvement within the contract. Finally, the application of Enterprise Imaging may also cast new light on provider/client interactions within a product-focused contract where traditionally the role of the customer has been underplayed. Clients are involved in a variety of ways including providing design specifications, design and purchasing roles and interdependencies may become clearer as a result of considering their role more formally in value co-creation.\n6 Conclusions and future research: This paper has been developed in the context of a trend in many product-focused companies towards integrating product and service offerings in a service-focused business model. Adopting a service-focused business model presents new managerial/operational challenges for these organizations, particularly in the context of complex engineering services (Baines et al., 2007; Neely, 2008). Complex service solutions, as Agarwal and Selen (2009) highlight, often require multi-organizational collaboration and the need for a holistic perspective in delivering value. This need is arguably greater in the service context, where providers also face the challenge of acknowledging and accounting for the significantly greater involvement of customers in value co-creation (Vargo and Lusch, 2006). Ramaswamy (2000, 2003) described customers as being \"co-opted\" into the design and delivery of services and suggest that the co-creation of value has shifted our ways of thinking about the boundaries between provider and customer. All parties may now be described as part of a common multi-organizational \"enterprise\", increasing the level of diversity and complexity in enterprise management where stakeholders may have differing agendas.To support the adoption of a systemic perspective in complex service enterprises, this research has sought to develop a tool to visually represent complex organizational arrangements for the co-creation of value between providers and clients in a servitized setting. The process of Enterprise Imaging, builds upon service blueprinting (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2004; Kingman-Brundage, 1989, 1993; Shostack, 1984) and extends it to enable the visual presentation of complex client and provider service contracts where both lead parties have back office functions and engage third-party providers. It provides an image that provides increased understanding of the scope and complexities of multi-organizational service delivery. An image is constructed using a framework of shared front office and separate client and provider back office spaces. Beginning with direct service delivery in the front office, organizational units involved in value co-creation are identified and located within the image. Supporting back office and governance processes are also identified and located in the image back offices for providers and clients. The Enterprise Imaging tool was developed through case study analysis of a complex engineering availability service contract awarded to an industrial provider by a public sector client. Within this case study of the ATTAC contract between BAE Systems and MoD client for fast-jet availability, the Enterprise Imaging approach communicated and provided visibility on four core issues: the significant complexity of the enterprise delivering the service (Agarwal and Selen, 2009); the interdependence between organizational units (Ordanini and Pasini, 2008); the need for co-ordination of front and back office functions; and the value of taking an enterprise perspective as opposed to a single organizational viewpoint when seeking to manage a multi-organizational enterprise (Purchase et al., 2011b).Further research is necessary to identify the extent to which findings within this study are generalizable to other public/private sector enterprises that are acknowledged to be highly complex in their functioning and contain major cultural distinctions. Applications of Enterprise Imaging are planned in a Borough Council; an NHS service provider; and a travel service provider. This research will test the generalizability and utility of the method and help develop a structured methodology for the production of an Enterprise Image that practitioners can use.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present a visualization method developed as a result of an observed need to capture the organizational arrangements of a complex engineering service enterprise. The focal case study is between a public sector client and private sector provider where multiple organizations contribute resource to create value. This visualization can assist client and provider stakeholders to take a holistic perspective of the purpose and management of their enterprise, highlighting the complexity of value co-creation in service enterprises and the interdependencies between organizational units.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Development of the Enterprise Image has drawn on research within the service, organizational and individual cognition literatures. Data were obtained from an in-depth Defence sector case study representing diverse interactions within client and provider communities. The case focused on a fast-jet aircraft availability contract, where the public sector client outsourced through-life support activities to a set of private sector providers. Preliminary testing of the validity and utility of the image was conducted by presentations to single and mixed communities of clients and providers involved in value co-creation.\nFindings: - The paper proposes a method of pictorially representing a complex alliance, called an \"Enterprise Image\". The work provides empirically based insight into the management processes of a complex, multi-organizational service enterprise, where little or no enterprise level management had been in evidence. The Enterprise Image appeared to have the effect of raising questions and conversations about how the overall enterprise might be managed and how ongoing service improvement might be achieved.\nPractical implications: - In this research the Enterprise Image was drawn by researchers - ongoing research aims to design a method that helps clients and providers co-create their own Enterprise Image. From current findings the implication of this research will be to encourage enterprise management of ongoing improvement in multi-organisational service enterprises.\nOriginality/value: - Models and representations for understanding the delivery of value are mostly provider and product focused, despite the recognition in a servitised environment of the complex interactions with client organizations. This paper presents a methodology for visually representing value co-creation in complex service enterprises where the service includes significant client resource involvement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A longitudinal study of material planning applications in manufacturing companies	[ "Materials management", "Order systems", "Parametric measures", "Manufacturing industries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Several different methods for the planning and control of the flow of material in manufacturing companies have been developed over the years and a number of these are used in manufacturing industry. These planning methods are based on different principles but all provide essentially the same type of support.Even though they are designed to provide the same type of support, they vary in applicability, with the extent to which they can be used in an efficient and effective way mainly dependent on environment. This has been emphasized by several researchers (Berry and Hill, 1992; Schroeder et al., 1995; Newman and Sridharan, 1995; Jonsson and Mattsson, 2003). Re-order point methods, for example, are component-oriented and primarily designed for items with independent demand. They are normally more appropriate the more standardized the product components are, the longer life cycles they have, and the more stable the demand (Newman and Sridharan, 1995; Jonsson and Mattsson, 2003; Vollmann et al., 2005). Material requirements planning (MRP) is a generally applicable method. It works reasonably well in all manufacturing environments, not least because of its strength in planning items with dependent demand. However, its major strength is in situations with complex standardized products or product options, long manufacturing lead times, and items with time variations and uneven demand (Plenert, 1999; Jonsson and Mattsson, 2003). Kanban is a re-order point method that works best with a regular and steady demand, where the products have a simple and flat bill of material and short lead times together with small order quantities (Gianque and Sawaya, 1992).As well as by matching methods to specific environments, planning performance also depends on how the methods are applied within the principles they are designed for. Extensive research has been conducted on the principles on which various material planning methods are built and even more on the technical and computational issues relating to them (Vollmann et al., 2005). Less effort has been spent on finding out how to apply them in order to obtain as efficient and effective material flows as possible. All material planning could be conducted without support from enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or other supporting planning and control software. However, the functionality supported by software and the way it is used could affect the possibility of successfully applying a material planning method. ERP is here defined in accordance with Bendoly and Jacobs (2004) as an integrated software approach used to manage the transactions and track the status of a firm's day to day activities. The ERP system is thus the vehicle through which different activities are accomplished (Jacobs and Bendoly, 2003). Most ERP systems include functional support for accomplishing material planning with different planning methods. Jonsson and Mattsson (2005) showed that, compared to low performing users, high performing MRP users-based lead-time determination on quantitative calculations in the ERP systems or monitored actual time to a greater extent. High performing users also reviewed lead times and safety mechanisms more frequently and used daily planning rather than the weekly planning of low performing users. High performing re-order point users calculated the re-order point as the demand during the lead time plus a safety stock; in contrast, low performing users-based re-order point determination on experience and judgment. High performers also reviewed the re-order points more frequently. Consequently, this study shows that the high performing material planning users work more analytically and with higher review frequency compared to the low performing users. This can partly be accomplished by more actively using the functionality of the ERP system.Considering that the planning environment and the way a material planning method is applied have a major influence on how efficiently and effectively it can be used, it is interesting to examine further which material planning methods companies use and how they use them. Several studies (McLaughlin et al., 1994; Roberts and Barrar, 1992) have suggested that practitioners have not done well in applying the models and functionality that are available to them. Thus, this knowledge is important. Most empirical studies covering the use of methods are relatively old (Davis, 1975; Newman and Sridharan, 1992). Most studies focus on a few material planning methods and none is longitudinal and identifies trends. Therefore, a description of the state of the art and recent trends in material planning practice would be an important input in identifying training and education needs, developing more user friendly methods and software, and to serve as a guide for choosing and applying methods.The objective of the paper is to describe the state of the art, reasons for selecting various material planning methods, and modes of applying methods for the initiation of inventory replenishment of purchased items. It is also to identify trends from 1993 to 2005, comparing the current situation in 2005 with that of 1993 and 1999.Most of the material planning methods can be used both in the manufacturing and distribution sectors. However, this study covers only manufacturing. The reason is that the current study is a replication of studies conducted in 1993 (Mattsson, 1994) and 1999 (Jonsson and Mattsson, 2002), where only manufacturing companies were examined. The description of present practice covers several methods, but the section on planning parameters and modes of application focuses on the two most commonly used methods: the re-order point and MRP methods.\n2 Usage and modes of applying material planning methods: Material planning can be seen as a tactical planning level. It concerns balancing supply and demand and in this respect deals with the initiation, control, and monitoring of manufacturing and purchasing orders in order to maintain an uninterrupted material flow and value-adding activity in manufacturing. The two basic questions to address in material planning are \"When to order/deliver?\" and \"How much to order?\" - i.e. one time-related and one quantity-related question.Some of the best known and widely used material planning methods are re-order point, fixed interval ordering, run-out time planning, MRP, and Kanban (Vollmann et al., 2005; Jonsson and Mattsson, 2002) methods. These methods are included in this study. They all answer the two basic material planning questions above, however, they can be applied in various ways.The material planning methods use specific mechanisms to determine the time and quantity-related questions and the uncertainty considerations related to balancing supply and demand. The quantity mechanisms are more or less the same for all methods, but the timing mechanisms are specific to each method.Consequently, as well as choosing a method that is appropriate for its context, it also needs to be properly applied, for example, determining and reviewing planning parameters in \"correct\" ways. The main types of planning parameters may be related to lot sizing, safety mechanisms, and lead times. The planning frequency, replanning strategies, etc. may also differ.2.1 Use of material planning methods\n3 Methodology: The analysis is conducted in two stages and is based on empirical data from surveys in 1993, 1999, and 2005:1. description and comparison of usage trends for material planning methods in 1993, 1999, and 2005; and2. description and comparison of the modes of applying re-order point and MRP methods in 1993, 1999, and 2005.3.1 The survey instrument\n4 Findings and discussion: 4.1 The use of material planning methods\n5 Conclusions and future research: 5.1 Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper seeks to describe the state-of-the-art, reasons for selecting various material planning methods, and modes of applying methods for initiating inventory replenishment of purchased items. It also identifies trends from 1993 to 2005.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Empirical survey data are collected from Swedish manufacturing companies in 1993, 1999 and 2005. The MRP, re-order point, fixed interval ordering, run-out time, and Kanban methods are studied.\nFindings: - MRP is the most commonly used method and its position has strengthened since 1993. A common way of determining parameters such as order quantities and safety stocks is to use judgment and experience. Parameters used in material planning methods are reviewed relatively infrequently. The planning frequency has increased, with daily planning now being typical.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The major limitation is that different data collection techniques were used in 1993 compared with 1999 and 2005. An important research implication is that the state-of-the-art applications differ from theoretically appropriate application modes. The trends are towards less appropriate modes among the most widespread applications.\nPractical implications: - The frequency of reviewing planning variables is relatively low in industry, and should in most situations be increased. The paper implies that more user-friendly software applications need to be developed and implemented. It could serve as guidelines when designing and developing training and education programs and function as a benchmark.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides a longitudinal state-of-the-art description of materials planning usage and identifies application modes with positive and negative performance impact.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The intellectual capital of business incubators	[ "Business incubators", "Intellectual capital", "Incubation path", "Tenant firms" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Business institutions supporting entrepreneurship as incubators and science parks are critical for economic development and wealth of nations. Among others, a typical goal of modern \"networked\" incubators (Bollingtoft and Ulhoi, 2005) is to provide intangible assets, as social capital and intellectual capital (IC), to firms hosted by the incubator (the so-called \"incubatees\" or tenants) (Hansen et al., 2000). The achievement of this specific goal is critical to enhance incubatees' IC, which is commonly defined \"the knowledge, applied experience, enterprise processes and technology customer relationships and professional skills which are valuable assets to an organization\" (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997). IC is usually decomposed in three sub-dimensions (Bontis, 1999; Johnson, 1999): human, structural and relational capital.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 IC\n3. Evaluating incubators: Over the last few decades evaluation of performance became a critical issue of incubation industry. Scholars, practitioners and policy-makers developed various frameworks for the assessment and evaluation of incubators. One of the first attempts of evaluating the general performance of incubators was developed by Mian (1996), which suggests three key dimensions to assess university technology business incubators:\n4. Integrated model: complementary usage of human, structural and relational capital of incubators: Business incubators' value proposition has largely evolved over time (Bruneel et al., 2012). First generation incubators that date back to the 1950s created value for incubatees by providing at a low cost common spaces and basic shared resources such as reception, clerical services, meeting rooms, conference rooms or car parking. Main advantage for new ventures was therefore the possibility to access relevant economies of scale without having the required dimension, so reducing start-up investments.\n5. Discussion: As previously noted BIs are producers of business assistance programs that provide new ventures specific targeted services. The number and variety of these services have increased over time leading incubators to evolve from mainly real estate businesses to complex networked systems that are able to provide a wide support to incubatees. Incubators' IC has evolved accordingly. However the dominant view has not deserved full consideration to IC as driver of value creation by new generation incubators (Phan et al., 2005).\n6. Conclusions: This paper developed a theoretical model in order to evaluate the needs of BIs in terms of IC. BIs work as multipliers of IC for tenant firms. The model contributes to a line of research to date guiltily neglected by scholars of IC. The argument of the paper make evident a new dimension to consider in order to analyse and measure the IC of BI: the capability of BI of designing effective and specific incubation paths to foster the IC of their tenant firms.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework to analyze the intellectual capital (IC) of new generation business incubators.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper carries out a literature-based analysis of the different components of the IC of business incubators and develops a conceptual framework that links the business incubators' IC to the IC of incubated firms.\nFindings: The paper provides an analytical model able to support practitioners and scholars to better understand and evaluate the IC criticalities and requirements of incubators. The notion of incubation path is developed.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to the extant literature about the intangible assets of business incubators by analyzing in detail how these structures use their IC to perform their activities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Promoting frontline employee customer orientation in China: a replication and a comparison	[ "China", "Cross-cultural management", "Frontline employees", "Customer orientation", "Managerial coaching", "Sales performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Research problem\n2. Literature review: Coaching is a developmental exchange between a coach and a coachee, where the former facilitates awareness, discovery, and growth of the latter by providing guidance, focused questioning, and feedback through which higher goals and performance are achieved (Ellinger and Bostrom, 1999; Ellinger et al., 2003). In business environments managerial coaching has been identified as a positive influence on employee commitment, satisfaction, and performance (Agarwal et al., 2009; Onyemah, 2009) and scholars found that the most effective managers were those who used coaching instead of old and traditional command-and-control styles (Ellinger et al., 2008; Hamlin et al., 2006). In commercial organizations, managerial coaching can impact frontline employees' customer relationship development (Deeter-Schmelz et al., 2002, 2008) as well as their own self-efficacy (Pousa and Mathieu, 2015) increasing the organization's competitiveness.\n3. Theoretical framework: In organizational contexts, the main focus of managerial coaching is to develop employees and help them to achieve higher performance (Fournies, 1978; Heslin et al., 2006) through a facilitative process of discovery, awareness, and empowerment (Ellinger and Bostrom, 1999; Ellinger et al., 2003). Through the use of active questioning, the coach helps the subordinate reflect on his/her performance problems, why these problems appear, and what potential changes that he/she can implement to achieve different results (Pousa and Mathieu, 2014a; Pousa et al., 2017). In a conversational way, they explore potential alternative solutions, the required resources to implement these solutions, and their potential effects on the identified problems. After this assessment and evaluation, they agree on the best solution and the subordinate commits to implement it in the weeks to come. The subordinate not only has a higher commitment to the solution--because it was not imposed by the manager--but he/she also has a more attentive mindset to identify situations where the solution would be appropriate to implement, thus making him/her more effective and capable of achieving higher results (Pousa et al., 2017). Accordingly:\n4. Method: 4.1 Research design and data collection procedure\n5. Analysis and results: 5.1 Sample\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Scientific contributions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of managerial coaching on frontline employee customer orientation, sales orientation and performance in a Chinese context. Further to this first goal, the authors also aim to compare these results with those obtained with a sample of Canadian bank employees in order to understand to what extent differences between Eastern and Western cultures affect business practices and employee responses in both environments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper replicates a study from 2014 that used a sample of Canadian financial advisors to test the impact of managerial coaching on customer orientation, sales orientation and performance. In this new study, 185 frontline employees from a large insurance company in Chongqing (China) answered a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in Mandarin providing information about the coaching received from their managers, their own customer and sales orientation, as well as performance. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS as well as multigroup confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate cross-cultural differences.\nFindings: The authors found that for the Chinese respondents managerial coaching is positively related to employee performance both directly and through the mediation effect of customer orientation. The authors found no support for the mediation of sales orientation between coaching and performance. These results suggest that managerial coaching might be a good strategy to promote relational behaviors in frontline employees, but not to reduce manipulative behaviors. The authors also found that these results are statistically equivalent for Chinese and Canadian respondents, suggesting that cultural differences are less prevalent than expected in this business sector.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study makes several contributions to research. First, it suggests that managerial coaching can help employees develop their customer orientation-a central construct for commercial organizations working under a relational marketing approach. Second, it presents one of the first studies that evaluate the efficiency of managerial coaching in an Eastern country. And finally, results underline the equivalence of results for Eastern (China) and Western (Canada) respondents suggesting that in a global environment (like the financial industry) the business logic guiding the development of good customer relationships and employee customer-oriented behaviors prevails over potential cultural differences and makes leader and employee behaviors more similar and comparable across different regions in the world.\nPractical implications: First, the use of managerial coaching seems to increase frontline employee relational behaviors, like customer orientation. Accordingly, managerial coaching seems to be a link that can help financial institutions bridge the formulation of a marketing relational strategy in the boardroom and the implementation of such a strategy at the customer interface between frontline employees and customers. Second, given the equivalence of results between the Canadian and the Chinese sample, it seems that the similarities between business models and business logics within the financial services sector are more important--and supersede--the potential cross-cultural differences between Eastern and Western countries.\nOriginality/value: The study makes a contribution to the limited literature on the use of managerial coaching in financial institutions to increase frontline employee relational behaviors. At the same time, it presents one of the few cross-cultural studies comparing results obtained from Chinese and Canadian respondents.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social networks in health care teams: evidence from the United States	[ "Health care", "Teams", "Networks", "Network theory", "Professional networks", "Personal networks" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Development of effective interprofessional teams are viewed by many as a means to increase the capacity of health care system in the USA (Green et al., 2013), which is facing major access, quality, and cost challenges due to an aging population and chronic disease epidemic. In addition, the insurance expansions under the health reform provided millions of uninsured Americans health care coverage, further increasing the care demand (Patient Protection and Affordable Care, 2010). Development of effective health care teams is a promising approach to address these challenges as research has demonstrated that in high-functioning teams, with the aid of technology, clinicians could see almost five times more patients (Green et al., 2013). However, to date little is known about these teams and what team structures are best for patient outcomes.\nConceptual framework: Network theory, which integrates perspectives from mathematics, sociology, social psychology, and other disciplines to study connections between individuals, was used to inform this review (Kilduff and Tsai, 2003). Accordingly, a network represents a set of actors (also called nodes) that are connected to each other through their relationships. Through these connections, actors can access and transfer resources including information, guidance, and assistance in order to complete tasks (Cross and Cummings, 2004; Sparrowe et al., 2001). An actor's position in the network and the relationships with others are important because these define, in part, the opportunities and constraints an actor may encounter (Borgatti et al., 2009). Networks may also affect individual behavior and promote or hinder work performance and job outcomes (Cross and Cummings, 2004; Kmec and Trimble, 2009; Sparrowe et al., 2001). In health care teams, actors represent an array of individuals including staff and clinicians who build relationships with each other for the purpose of sharing information, knowledge, or advice necessary to deliver care. If a health care team member is located centrally in a network (i.e. well connected to team members), then he or she may have greater access to important information and may achieve better outcomes. On the other hand, a lack of ties among team members might challenge information exchange and collaboration. If chains of communication are fragmented (i.e. hampered by silos or bottlenecks), then the risk of errors may increase.\nMethods: Literature search\nResults: Description of evidence\nDiscussion: This is the first review of up-to-date evidence from studies using SNA to investigate social networks in health care teams in the USA. The review found variations in the methods used across studies. Some researchers collected primary data while others utilized existing data. A number of emerged themes are discussed below. The findings of this review may have important implications for building optimal teams in the USA health care system as recommended by the Institute of Medicine (Mitchell et al., 2012).\nLimitations: This review has several limitations. Studies conducted before 2000 and outside the USA were excluded. The way health care teams are constructed and operated within the USA may differ from those in other countries. Additionally, findings were not summarized by health care setting type due to a limited number of studies. Another important limitation is that although a comprehensive literature search was conducted, it is possible that some studies may not have been revealed in databases or in peer-reviewed literature.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize existing evidence regarding health care team networks, including their formation and association with outcomes in various health care settings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Network theory informed this review. A literature search was conducted in major databases for studies that used social network analysis methods to study health care teams in the USA between 2000 and 2014. Retrieved studies were reviewed against inclusion and exclusion criteria.\nFindings: Overall, 25 studies were included in this review. Results demonstrated that health care team members form professional (e.g. consultation) and personal (e.g. friendship) networks. Network formation can be influenced by team member characteristics (i.e. demographics and professional affiliations) as well as by contextual factors (i.e. providers sharing patient populations and physical proximity to colleagues). These networks can affect team member practice such as adoption of a new medication. Network structures can also impact patient and organizational outcomes, including occurrence of adverse events and deficiencies in health care delivery.\nPractical implications: Administrators and policy makers can use knowledge of health care networks to leverage relational structures in teams and tailor interventions that facilitate information exchange, promote collaboration, increase diffusion of evidence-based practices, and potentially improve individual and team performance as well as patient care and outcomes.\nOriginality/value: Most health services research studies have investigated health care team composition and functioning using traditional social science methodologies, which fail to capture relational structures within teams. Thus, this review is original in terms of focusing on dynamic relationships among team members.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of the non-executive director: a personal view	[ "Non‐executive directors", "Chairmen", "Directors", "Recruitment agencies", "Remuneration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Discussion about the role and responsibilities of the non-executive director are increasingly in the news. Recent scandals, (Enron, Worldcom, Marconi) debate about remuneration policy (Reuters, Marks & Spencer, W.H.Smith and Sainsbury) and general management issues (Shell) have again highlighted the role of the non-executive director. The Higgs Report (Higgs, 2003) and the growth of shareholder action have increased public and governmental interest in the role.Higgs made practical, but controversial, suggestions which were criticised and resisted by many FTSE Chairmen and directors. The claim being that to implement Higgs would create a divide between the executive and the non-executive directors which would render the unitary board unworkable and hinder the day to day direction and management of the business.Higgs clearly hit a raw nerve but the furore seems to have died down, boards continue much as before and regulation is no closer than before Higgs reported.So what was the traditional role of the non-executive director, how and why has it changed and, given different options, what ought it to be in the future?\nThe traditional role: The role was relatively simple. An established board realized the dangers of becoming too introspective and wished to include an experienced \"outsider\" in board debate. The individual would be an experienced businessman, respected in his (usually \"his\") own field who would bring common sense, wisdom and strategic acumen to board debate. The new director would be part of the team and would enable \"the wood to be seen for the trees\" and provide \"the helicopter view.\" Naturally it would help the public and \"city\" perception of the business if the new director was a well known public figure with \"status\". A door opener to government would also be useful.The company expectation was that the new director would give about 15 days per year to the role and would, over time, become familiar with the business issues and would attend board meetings, contributing where appropriate. A fee in the region of PS20-PS30,000 per annum would be paid with the expectation that the relationship would be ongoing.For his part the new director would expect to \"attend\" board meetings, contribute but not be overtaxed by paperwork and be paid a modest per diem rate in comparison to actual annual remuneration. The quid pro quo was that the newly appointed director also achieved \"status\" by being chosen to sit on another board; this was useful professionally, personally and socially. The constraints of The Companies Act was acknowledged but regarded as being \"in the background\" and the risk of loss of reputation or close enquiry by the press considered to be small.\nThe changed role: The change has been dramatic. The advent of Cadbury (1992), Hemple, Myners, Smith, Higgs (2003) and Sarbanes Oxley in the USA has changed the role irreversibly. Scandal, business failure, excess and malpractice has highlighted the role of the non-executive director in the eyes of shareholders, the public and government.The issues of \"fat cat\" pay and \"parachute\" severance packages have been a blessing to a press hungry to sell newspapers in a fast changing society. The change in public mood and the willingness of shareholders to play a more active role coupled with the willingness of the major pension funds to use their power post Maxwell has been a real spur to action in this respect. These shareholders now take a detailed interest in the day-to-day management of the businesses that they invest in and expect to be kept informed in a detailed way. The non-executive director has become a prime target for their questions and seems to be increasingly seen as the main conduit for information and responsibility.It seems that the shareholders and other interested parties now see the non-executive director as their champion, who will represent their cause at board meetings and will be a check on the executive.It is, perhaps, worth speculating on why the non-executive rather than the executive director has become the main focus of attention.The executive directors have a daily functional responsibility for the successful management of the business. The non-executive directors are perceived as experienced and influential part-timers who are morally above the fray and can, therefore, be trusted to ensure that standards are maintained. The part-time nature of the role means that when scandal or malpractice or just plain incompetence occurs the natural port of call is the non-executive. The executives are not to be trusted because they are the perpetrators of the problem in the first place. So goes the theory. We live in a very fast changing society where a reluctance to accept responsibility has become a hallmark of public and business life. Sadly this is coupled with a win at all costs mentality which condones reward for incompetence and a wish to always find a culprit to blame. There is no longer such a thing as \"bad luck\" or \"chance.\" The easy target in these circumstances has been the part time non-executive director. In some cases this has been fair. The role has been seen by many as an easy option at the end of a career. It is not. The \"old\" non-executive has been caught up in a dramatic change in society and initially failed to change rapidly enough to meet the changed expectations.The result has been that in many cases a wedge has been driven between the executive and the non-executive directors. This in turn has called trust into question and has caused others to herald the demise of the unitary board - one chairman saying that it was, in reality, already dead due to the increasing use of executive committees of the board.The law, rightly, makes no distinction between directors but in the past there was a tacit understanding that the non-executive director could not possibly have the detailed knowledge available to the full time executive directors and that this \"difference\" was acknowledged by the law, shareholders and others.Today the non-executive directors are expected to \"police\" the executive, to be accountable for the ethical management of the business, remuneration policy, board composition and the sound management of the business. The expectation is clearly ridiculous.It is unrealistic to expect a part timer, however gifted or diligent, to be able to have the facts necessary to \"police\" a full time executive; nor should we expect it. It is, however, realistic to expect the full time executive to be honest, competent, ethical and committed to the business.It is the role of all directors and managers to run a business within the law, with propriety and with due regard for shareholder and other interests. It is the board collectively who are responsible to the shareholders for performance but this is especially true of the executive directors.\nThe chairman's role: It may be trite to state it but the Chairman's role is to chair the board. The chairman is responsible to the shareholders for ensuring that a competent executive is in place to put agreed strategy into practice. The chairman is the primary interface with the institutions along with the chief executive and the finance director. The non-executive directors are an integral part of the board and not separate from it and to suggest that the non-executive directors should be a regular conduit of information to the institutions is poor practice and divisive. Naturally the non-executives should be well connected and of stature so that they can have \"an ear to the ground\" and be able to feed comment back to the chairman and the board but this is a very different proposition from establishing them as a separate line of communication. The very strength of the unitary board is that it is a unit. It should act as one. The chairman is the main source for contact with shareholders and the institutions. The shareholders must be prepared to act forcefully if they are dissatisfied.The chairman is responsible for establishing board committees to ensure good practice and governance. Remuneration is key. A fair and morally acceptable remuneration policy is essential. The corporate stupidity and individual greed associated with some current contracts is unacceptable. The non-executive directors can play a part in this process but if the chairman and executive are determined, there is little they can do short of resigning. A weapon that should be used, but carefully.\nThe executive's role: The primary role of the executive directors is to implement the strategy agreed by the board. The chief executive is the main interface with the board and, indeed, in North America is often the only executive member of the board. The executives are the full time managers of the business and it is they, not the non-executives, who are the true custodians of the business. If the executives choose they can blind and deceive until they are caught. The hope is, as is the case in most of our businesses, that they are honest and direct and seek to run the enterprise morally, ethically and within the law. If they do not the full weight of the law should be used against them.Remuneration is a hot topic. Parachutes for failure, introductory bonuses, whether to compensate for loss of options or not, are poor practices. It is rarely the case that only one individual can perform a particular role; many skills are common and widely found. The claim that huge packages are required to attract excellent candidates is false. What is required is an appropriate package to appeal to a motivated candidate. Perhaps by looking more carefully at the candidate's motives in wanting any particular role the process of selection would be enhanced to the benefit of the long term future of the business.It is, of course, right that able executives are correctly rewarded and motivated but it is ridiculous to suggest that high, fail safe, packages are needed to attract the best candidates - it may well be that they are required to attract the \"obvious\" candidates but headhunters should present clients with real choice based on good research and market knowledge against a tight specification.It is the headhunter's role to challenge the client, to hone a specification and to produce a shortlist offering real choice.\nThe headhunter's role: When recruiting a non-executive director it is usually the chairman, aided by the nominations committee, who is the client. It is all too easy for a headhunter to provide an obvious shortlist for a client. It is, however, the client who makes the choice of headhunter, leads the discussion about setting the specification and makes the final choice of candidate. A recent headline in the business section of a major Sunday newspaper stated that a well known headhunter had \"appointed\" a candidate who was then forced to stand down because of shareholder action. A headhunter does not \"appoint\" anybody.The headhunter agrees the specification with a client and produces a shortlist. It is for the client to accept or reject the shortlist, if acceptable, to meet those on it and to make an offer to the chosen candidate. Again it is the chairman, aided by the nomination committee, who takes the lead in making a senior appointment, especially a non-executive appointment. Naturally the headhunter will facilitate any negotiation to effect a successful outcome.Perhaps a common fault is relying too heavily on past reputation rather than most recent performance; this applies equally in selecting headhunters, board members and chairmen.\nThe future: The role of the non-executive director has clearly changed and a return to the old laisse-faire days is both impossible and unacceptable. The UK has firmly remained with the unitary board and has stood out against the continental European practice of having a supervisory board. The separation of the roles is an option and the continued pressure on the non-executive directors has led some to wish to move away from the unitary board. Already mentioned is the view of one FTSE chairman that the practice of having executive committees of the board has, de facto, moved to a two tier board structure along continental European lines. It is my view that a correctly operating unitary board can better serve all stakeholders. In order for it to operate effectively expectations of the non-executive directors must be realistic. The non-executive directors must not be required to bear the brunt of the increasing demands that public, government, shareholders and institutions make on business. Legislation is not the answer. The Companies Act has all the required powers to control business and in any event government would regard it as a low priority to enter such a minefield. Shareholders are beginning to exercise their power and this is a welcome development. Shareholders, however, must accept that non-executive directors are only one area of influence and that their real target should be the board as a whole and the chairman and the executive directors in particular.The modern non-executive director must be professional, with more time to give to the role and must be properly remunerated. More time raises the issue that full time executives rarely have time to have more that one outside appointment. The population from which non-executives are drawn needs to be widened, while retaining business experience. This is a challenge for the headhunter. A possible answer lies in the number of senior executives retiring earlier that was usual. It raises the concept of the \"professional\" non-executive which in the past has been frowned on because of the perceived lack of independence. I believe that independence would only be compromised if there was no limit on the number of appointments that an individual could hold. The limit should be two chairmanships and two non-executive roles or four non-executive roles in a FTSE company. Remuneration should increase to better reflect the per diem rate of the individual.The non-executive role should move towards what it once was, that of guide, mentor and wise head on independent shoulders. It is in nobody's interest for one group to \"police\" another but it is in the interests of all to have business directed and managed legally, ethically and morally. If the board fail in this, especially the executive directors, the full weight of the law should be brought into play. It is the duty of the executive, led by the Chairman, to ensure that remuneration policy is fair and appropriate. Almost by definition those who demand excessive packages are unsuitable and should be discounted. Incentives should be long term and not a reward for failure or short-term success that causes long term damage.\nConclusion: The role of the non-executive has been increasingly in the spotlight. Impossible demands are being made on those who, because of the limited time that they give to a business, are in no position to respond practically to their critics. The real responsibility lies with the board as a whole, especially the chairman and the executive directors.Chairmen need to be more demanding of headhunters, to rely less on past reputation and more on ability now and, in their turn, headhunters need to be more creative in the shortlists they produce.The number of Chairman and non-executive roles that an individual holds should be limited to four for a FTSE company and the remuneration should increase to better reflect the individual's per diem rate.Finally, a personal preference. I would like to see the title \"non-executive\" dropped and replaced by the simple, \"Director\". The Companies Act makes no distinction and neither should we. A separate title to me implies a lesser responsibility which is not the case. A board would simply appoint a director without a particular functional responsibility.Business needs hard nosed, experienced and professional non-executive directors who have the time to give to the role. They must be diligent and, where necessary, forceful and diplomatic, with the required humour but expectations must be realistic.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to provide an informed but personal view on the debate surrounding the role of the non-executive director and the board.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach is that of a practitioner recruiting non-executive directors. The author offers a personal view.\nFindings: - The author has had extensive discussions with both chairmen and non-executive directors of FTSE companies and the views in the paper reflect these discussions.\nOriginality/value: - The value of the paper is to stimulate debate and to promote a realistic climate within which business can operate effectively.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mean reversion and predictability of remittances: Evidence from selected developing countries	[ "Migration/immigration", "Developing countries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Migrant remittances are an important source of external finance for many developing countries. Formal remittances to developing countries, that is, those that are captured in the formal financial system, have significantly increased in the recent times. For many developing countries they have overtaken other financial flows and thus becoming the economic lifeline for such countries. According to World Bank data, in 2012 recorded remittances to developing countries exceeded US$400 billion and estimated to increase by 6.3 per cent in 2013.\n2. Literature review: Extant literature on remittances presents them as a stable source of external finance less volatile and less responsive to business cycles and economic shocks than the FDI and other capital inflows (Mughal and Makhlouf, 2011; Chami et al., 2009; Ratha and Mohapatra, 2007; Bugamelli and Paterno, 2009; Greenidge and Moore, 2008; Ratha, 2003). However, the relative stability of remittances has been largely observed at the aggregate levels. Having withstood the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998 and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, the global financial crisis in 2008 presented another opportunity to test the stability of remittances. Indeed, in 2009 remittances fell by 6.1 per cent (i.e. by about US$27.2 billion) the first such fall since 1985. However, as noted by Jackman (2013, p. e38) the decline \"in global remittances was minor in comparison to contractions in international tourism receipts (US$108.7 billion or 105%) and private capital inflows (US$588 billion or 58.8%)\". This confirmed that studies that have consistently observed that the volatility of remittances is lower than other sources of external finance.\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1. Data\n4. Empirical results: Table II presents summary descriptive statistics. High remittance-receiving countries such as the Philippines, Mexico and Nigeria have very high mean values of monthly remittances. Nigeria which reported monthly series for four and half years (January 2005-June 2009) exhibits a mean value higher than that of the Philippines and has the highest volatility among all countries. The volatility of Nigeria's monthly remittances as measured by the standard deviation is over 70 per cent of the mean value. This high volatility is further reflected in the wide spread between the maximum monthly remittance value and the minimum monthly remittance value. Save for Nigeria, all the other countries have standard deviations that are <50 per cent of their mean values.\n5. Conclusion and policy implications: For many developing countries remittances constitute one of the largest sources of foreign exchange and external finance. Hence their predictability matters for purposes of forecasting future resources and for development planning. Prior research has largely focused on comparing the volatility of remittances with other foreign financial inflows. The low volatility of remittances when compared with these other financial flows, especially at aggregate level, has led researchers to conclude that remittances are a stable source of external resource flow. This paper that finds remittance series of individual developing countries to be mean reverting confirms statistically this long held view. Remittances are found to be not random flows but a predictable stream of financial flows that can be factored in economic planning. In 17 of 21 developing countries examined, evidence of mean reversion in remittance inflows is overwhelming.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictability of remittances in individual developing countries. It achieves this objective by testing for mean reversion (i.e. stationarity) in the monthly remittance series reported to the World Bank by 21 developing countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Unit root tests on remittance time series are undertaken using three tests - the augmented Dickey-Fuller test, the Phillip-Peron test and the Kwiatkowshi, Phillips, Schmidt and Shin test. Stationarity of series in levels would indicate mean reversion and predictability of remittances.\nFindings: The paper finds significant evidence of mean reversion and hence predictability in remittance inflows in 17 developing countries.\nPractical implications: Remittance inflows, which have become an important source of external finance for many developing countries, are not random flows but a stable and predictable stream of financial flows.\nOriginality/value: Prior research has focused on volatility of remittances in comparison with other capital flows and then inferred stability from them having lower volatility. Using available monthly data, this paper is the first to directly test for mean reversion and hence predictability of remittances.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identification of space management problems in public hospitals: The case of Maharaj Chiang Mai Hospital	[ "Public sector", "Planning", "Architecture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of the hospital landscape, medical treatments and hospital architecture in Thailand is strongly influenced by Western countries (Jungsateansup et al., 2016; Muangman, 1987; Seangwichean, 1988). This influence began in the early nineteenth century, and the influence has continued until the contemporary period. Today, Thailand provides public and private hospitals; both are under the authorization of the Ministry of Public Health.\n2. Research objective: The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of Thailand's health-care system and how the service of Thai primary health-care and the public health-care system are organized. An investigation was conducted to identify problems in relation to functional quality in the Thai public hospitals, using walk-through observation representing patients' journeys. This paper intends to contribute to further research on which hospital design approaches can be implemented in Thai public hospitals and how facilities planners, designers and other related professionals can collaborate and improve their functional quality. Therefore, this paper explores the following research question:\n3. Background: The background of this study is categorized into three sections: hospital building assessment, space management strategy concept and analytical drawing techniques for design assessment. The hospital building assessment identifies criteria for evaluation processes. The space management strategy identifies the strategy planning and development of the hospital space for long-term adaptation. The analytical drawing techniques for design assessment identifies the tool that we use to analyze the relationship between users and functional quality.\n4. Methodology: This study combines different methods, which include a literature review regarding the general context of the Thai health-care system and the selected methodologies of building assessments for hospital (clinic design POE), space management strategies and analytical drawing techniques for design assessment. We have created the methodology used in the study (Figure 2).\n5. Review of the general context of Thai health-care landscape: According to our literature review of the general Thai health-care landscape, high patient volume is the main factor that has impacted the architectural layout and function of Thai government hospitals. Three main factors of this are listed as follows:\n6. Findings from empirical studies at the Maharaj Hospital: 6.1 General information on the Maharaj Chiang Mai Hospital\n7. Discussion and conclusion: This study aims to investigate and assess the functional quality of Thai public hospitals, using the Maharaj Hospital as a case study. A literature review of the general context of the Thai health-care landscape reveals the current situation of the Thai health-care system. Selected methods for empirical observation, including clinic design POE (building functional evaluation and walk-through observations imitating patient journey) and analytical drawing techniques for design assessment, were conducted to analyze and underpin real situations that patients have to face during their journey. The walks were also used to evaluate the functional quality of the hospital using health-care evaluation criteria. We framed one main research question in our investigation of the hospital: what space management problems can be identified in Chiang Mai Government Hospital in relation to the functional quality of nonclinical area? The incremental development of Thai public hospitals was a major reason; the development of the Thai health-care system has caused a dramatically high number of patients in government hospitals. This development has affected an incremental development in the hospital architectural layout. Walk-through observations illustrate the functional quality of the Maharaj Hospital, which represents large-scale public hospitals in Thailand. Poor functional quality of the hospital is an effect of two factors:\n8. Further research: This study provides credible evidence for policymakers of the Thai government hospitals. The results indicate that the functional quality of large-scale Thai public government hospitals is poor. The incremental development could lead to poor functional quality and, therefore, a change during the hospital design brief processes should be considered. The influence of Western hospital design should be integrated into the local context and the culture of the Thai hospital. Moreover, the design of the hospital should fit with the health-care system of each country; the Maharaj Hospital design does not fit with the high number of patients.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the past decades, public hospitals in Thailand have developed gradually and been characterized by an incremental development of hospital facilities. First, this study aims to investigate the factors that have caused the incremental development and how such development has affected the hospital's architectural layout. Second, the paper assesses the functional quality of nonclinical areas in the Maharaj Hospital to identify space management problems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The first part of the study is based on a literature review of the Thai health-care landscape. The second part includes the functional quality assessment of nonclinical areas, walk-through observations and documentation. Obtained data were synthesized using building quality method and measurement criteria and analytical drawing techniques for design assessment.\nFindings: The first part identified three factors: the lack of local general practitioners, the limited number of public hospitals and the implementation of Thailand's universal coverage scheme. These factors have resulted in a dramatically high number of patients in public hospitals. The second part identified problems regarding poor accessibility, a low level of spatial flexibility and poor spatial orientation. These problems are related to a lack of appropriate strategic space planning and lack of integration of the Thai culture into hospital design processes.\nPractical implications: An identification of space management problems is a prerequisite to the improvement of hospital facilities.\nOriginality/value: This paper presents the first study of space management problems concerning nonclinical areas in Asian hospitals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The acceptance of blockchain technology in meat traceability and transparency	[ "Transparency", "Purchasing decision" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Over the past decade, a series of meat scandals in Europe (e.g. 2013 horse meat scandal, 2008 Irish pork crisis) has highlighted the importance of meat safety and quality regulations for consumers. Brazil's meat scandal of early 2017 had a dramatic impact on the European Union also, as the EU is the largest importer of Brazilian poultry (Bloomberg, 2017). Such crises also reiterate the need for traceability and transparency systems (TTSs) in food supply chains.\n2. Literature review: This paper focuses mainly on the traceability of meat products, which also reflects the supply chain's transparency. Dickinson and von Bailey (2002, p. 1) define meat traceability as the \"ability to trace the retail meat back to the farm or [the] animal of origin\" and transparency as \"knowing the meat was produced without added growth hormones, or knowing the animal was humanely treated.\"\n3. Methodology: To test the hypotheses empirically, an online questionnaire was sent via e-mail to approximately 500 meat consumers, and 212 participated in the survey. However, 71 incomplete/irrelevant responses and outliers had to be removed, resulting in a final sample size of 141 respondents. The questionnaire was distributed through the online service qualtrics.com, which applied convenience sampling. It also was distributed deliberately to various age groups, to establish a representative sample. The descriptive statistics for this consumer survey are in Table I, revealing a fairly well-mixed sample, other than a slight majority of young respondents (21-35 years, 60.3 percent) with a low-end income (less than EUR15,000, 72.3 percent). The consumers in our sample are omnivores, consume meat several times a week, and shop for meat at the supermarket and purchase organic foods with moderate frequency. Respondents related their food retail products of their choice where certification labels can apply. We refrained from asking about specific supply chains because consumers often lack such in-depth information.\n4. Results: 4.1 Survey\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Aligning the findings with BCT characteristics\n6. Managerial implications: This analysis clearly identifies the need to revise current TTSs because the average consumer seems overwhelmed by the complexity of available certification labels. Because these customers also appear to base their quality perceptions and purchasing decisions on the availability of a complete TTS, members of the meat supply chain should consider the application of BCT. In doing so, businesses should adopt an altruistic attitude and be responsive to stakeholders' articulated preferences (Okpara and Idowu, 2013). There is a clear need to form a census and shift the mentality in the meat supply chain. The meat-supplying firms bear the responsibility to facilitate this change, and to function as change agents and role models, due to their helicopter perspective on the supply chain (Buchanan and Boddy, 1992).\n7. Conclusion: This paper provides a holistic picture of the current status associated with the potential adoption of BCT in the meat supply chain. Considering the need to establish trust for any such radical change in technology, this study undertook an academic analysis of the different perspectives of various meat SCSs. Their opinions about and perceptions of TTSs in the meat industry diverge, which might be the reason current systems have stagnated in their evolution. Consumers are overwhelmed by the current certification system, yet their quality perceptions and purchasing decisions would depend strongly on a complete TTS based on BCT, if it were to exist. Moreover, DNA coding can enrich the beneficial features of BCT, namely, ensuring credible and reliable product information through the entire meat supply chain, from farm to fork.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate meat traceability by outlining the different perspectives and opinions of meat supply chain stakeholders (SCSs); it also evaluates potential of acceptance of blockchain technology (BCT) as a viable transparency and traceability system (TTS).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey of 141 consumers reveals their opinions about TTSs. In addition, semi-structured interviews with seven retail managers, four government officials and one blockchain service provider (Project Provenance Ltd) provide expert insights.\nFindings: The results demonstrate that consumers are overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of certification labels. As a TTS, BCT implementation appears to have significant positive influences on consumers' purchasing decisions, mediated by consumers' quality perceptions. This study reveals the discordant perspectives of different stakeholders with regard to the importance of a BCT-based TTS.\nOriginality/value: This study investigates current TTSs and certification labels, and probes customer perception of a potential BCT-based solution for meat traceability. Changes to supply chains' mentality and the active establishment of trust in BCT applications are needed. Firms should take both holistic and altruistic views to deal with the challenges of TTSs in the meat supply chain. The adoption of BCT, in combination with DNA coding, seems promising as a solution to many of the issues that currently plague TTSs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
To grab or not to grab? The role of trust and perceived value in on-demand ridesharing services	[ "Malaysia", "Trust", "PLS-SEM", "Continuance intention", "Perceived value", "On-demand ridesharing services" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Following the rise of digital technology, the sharing economy has expanded to an unprecedented scale, with many businesses either transforming or emerging into this novel business model. Frentken and Schor (2017, pg. 4) define sharing economy as a phenomenon where \"consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets ('idle capacity'), possibly for money.\" One of the most popular kinds of shared services, on-demand ridesharing services (ODRS), which is an alternative to traditional taxi and private vehicles, has engendered a spree of \"drive less, ride more\" behavior. ODRS are taxi-like services that leverage the use of mobile applications to match available drivers and passengers. Several known advantages of ODRS include a reduction in dependency on car ownership and traffic congestion rates, cost savings, convenience and environmental care (Belk, 2014).\nTheoretical foundations: Relying on the foundation of the means-end chain theory (Gutman, 1982; Woodruff, 1997) and ODRS' characteristics, this study addresses how perceived service attributes and service personal values influence customers' continuance intention toward ODRS. Zeithaml (1988) and Woodruff and Gardial (1996) manifested the application of means-end model in capturing the essence of customer value. The means-end approach to customer value stresses the role of offering's attributes and consequences derived from engagement with the offering (Woodruff and Gardial, 1996). The means-end chain theory postulates that decision making in consumption is influenced by connections among product attributes, perceived consequences of consumption and consumers' personal values.\nHypotheses development: Perceived innovativeness\nMethodology: Sample and data collection\nDiscussion and implications: The main question addressed in this research is: What are the critical antecedents that build perceived value and trust toward ODRS? In the process of addressing this question, this research has identified some interesting results. First, contrary to past research (Lin et al., 2013; Chang and Tu, 2005; Yi and La, 2004), this study has found that the relationship between perceived innovativeness and perceived value is not significant. One plausible reason is that customers may perceive ODRS as innovative, but its core remains a taxi-like service, thus hardly innovative enough for customers to perceive great value gained from this new way of taking a taxi. According to Meyers-Levy and Tybout (1989), an innovation perceived as highly congruent or one that assimilates with existing alternatives is unlikely to result in a particularly positive response. In addition, the effect of perceived innovativeness on trust is not significant, implying a paradox in which newness is not necessary to build trust but possibly does the opposite due to the extra uncertainty involved.\nConclusions: This study has certain limitations. First, this research sourced respondents from a single country (Malaysia), thus hindering the ability to generalize the findings to populations of other countries. A comparative study between countries can offer better insights. Second, this research was based on a cross-section survey, in which exposure and outcome are simultaneously assessed. A longitudinal study is suggested as value perception and its antecedents may change over time. Third, the dimensions of personal values and perceived values can be further explored using the mixed-method or qualitative approach to capture the richness and validity of the construct conceptualization in this context. Fourth, future studies are suggested to examine the subject from the perspective of intrinsic motivation, such as anti-consumption attitude, and extrinsic motivation, like marketing tools to promote the use of ODRS. Lastly, future research is suggested to test the construct of perceived innovativeness with a different scale that can better reflect the multiple dimensions of service innovativeness. Ridesharing services has emerged as a viable alternative to transportation that fulfills the needs of the consumers of today. As the size of the industry has continued to grow, so has the magnitude of its economic and social impacts. Hence, much more needs to be done to understand the complex economic, regulatory and technological issues surrounding the industry. The current study indeed provides the first step in understanding the interplay of consumer mechanisms that drive the sustainability of this unique service.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the antecedents and outcome of perceived value and trust toward on-demand ridesharing services (ODRS). The antecedents are perceived innovativeness, perceived personalization, perceived usefulness of rating system and service personal values. The outcome is the continuance intention toward ODRS. This study also aims to uncover the mediating role of trust and the moderating role of technology readiness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The ODRS considered in this research are Grab and Uber in the context of Malaysia. A questionnaire was constructed, and responses were obtained from 280 Malaysian consumers who have experienced ODRS. The authors tested the framework using partial least square structural equation modeling technique.\nFindings: The result indicates several significant relationships: perceived personalization, perceived usefulness of rating system and service personal values significantly influence perceived value and trust; trust mediates the relationships between perceived personalization, perceived usefulness of rating system, service personal values and perceived value; perceived value significantly influences continuance intention; and technology readiness moderates the relationship between perceived personalization and perceived value.\nOriginality/value: The current study adds significantly to the body of knowledge about ODRS by examining the direct determinants of trust and perceived value, and exhibiting how trust mediates the mechanism. This study also illustrates the interplay of moderator (technology readiness) and perceived value.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
No regrets? An investigation of the relationship between being laid off and experiencing career regrets	[ "Careers", "Career development", "Employment", "Redundancy", "Individual behaviour", "Organizational politics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Although much anecdotal evidence has been reported in the popular press about people who experience numerous career regrets as well as those who claim to have no regrets at all, little empirical research exists on the regrets individuals may have about their careers. Given the many changes (e.g. frequent downsizings, rapid technological advances, globalization, increased workforce mobility) that have occurred in today's turbulent career landscape (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Friedman, 2005; Hall, 1996, 2004; Kanter, 2001) studying career regrets is increasingly important because individuals face more career choices and alternatives. Comprehending what type of career regrets individuals experience may permit researchers to better understand how individuals enact their careers, provide greater insights into evolving career theory (e.g. boundaryless, protean career concepts; Arthur et al., 2005; Briscoe et al., 2006), and offer insights to individuals who are trying to navigate an ever more complex work environment.\nRegrets: The emotion of regret has been defined as remorse about outcomes of a decision different from the ones hoped for (Baron, 2000; Zeelenberg et al., 1998) or which compares unfavorably with real or imagined outcomes of alternatives not chosen (van Dijk and Zeelenberg, 2005). Scholars in a variety of disciplines, such as marketing, medicine, sexuality, psychology and economics, have studied different types of regrets, ranging from regrets about consumer purchases (Inman and Zeelenberg, 2002; Lin and Huang, 2006; Reynolds et al., 2006; Zeelenberg et al., 2006, Zeelenberg and Pieters, 2004), health choices (Abraham and Sheeran, 2004; Chapman and Coups, 2006; Connolly and Reb, 2005), sexual relationships (Oswalt et al., 2005; Roese et al., 2006), economic decisions (Connolly and Butler, 2006), actions during conflicts and negotiations (Van Kleef et al., 2006), and other life choices (Roese and Summerville, 2005). Who is most prone to regrets (Markman et al., 2002, 2005), how even individuals who experience exceptional accomplishments are not immune to regrets (Medvec et al., 1995; Roese and Summerville, 2005), and how regrets affect customer satisfaction and behaviors (e.g. Zeelenberg et al., 2006) have also been examined.Overall, the research suggests that the greatest regrets stem from situations in which individuals view the greatest possibility for change or corrective action (Roese and Summerville, 2005). In a meta-analysis of 11 regret-ranking studies, Americans ranked education as their number one regret, perhaps because various educational opportunities (e.g. community college, professional certifications, equivalency exams, distance learning) are seen as available to most individuals. Americans ranked careers as their number two regret, with romance, parenting, the self, and leisure, respectively, rounding out the top six (Roese and Summerville, 2005).Although little research has focused on business regrets (see Markman et al., 2002, for a study of entrepreneurs), the idea of reducing potential regrets, and the subsequent negative outcomes (e.g. dysfunctional turnover, job dissatisfaction), is the underlying foundation of a number of organizational processes. For instance, the use of realistic job previews during the organizational entry process to increase retention and job satisfaction (Blenkinsopp and Zdunczyk, 2005; Wanous, 1992) and the use of training to reduce the culture shock that often leads expatriate managers to prematurely terminate international job assignments (e.g. Black and Gregersen, 1999) are two such examples. In the next section, we hope to contribute to a greater understanding of the experiences of individuals in today's changing work environment by specifically discussing career regrets and suggesting hypotheses for examining this under-researched topic.\nCareer regrets: Because we could find no published studies specifically on career regrets, our approach to understanding regrets within the context of careers is exploratory and focuses on two major types of regrets. The first type we examined is those regrets associated with political behaviors. Given the long-held view of careers as a linear progression up the corporate ladder where success is rewarded with additional pay and promotional opportunities (e.g. Super, 1957), individuals may regret not being more savvy to corporate politics, including choosing allies more carefully and effectively networking, to enhance their career advancement and associated extrinsic outcomes (Forret and Dougherty, 2004; Judge and Bretz, 1994).The second type we examined is those regrets associated with career choices. In contrast to the traditional models, more recent models of careers suggest that individuals are redefining career success beyond extrinsic outcomes (Briscoe et al., 2006; Hall and Chandler, 2005). People may regret not engaging in behaviors that would have provided enhanced personal or spiritual fulfillment such as going back to school and pursuing a new career path, leaving the corporate world and becoming self-employed, or creating a better work/family balance for themselves (Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000; Hall, 1996; Heslin, 2005; Powell and Mainiero, 1992).To explore this issue further, we examined the career event of experiencing a layoff with these two types of regrets. We suggest that individuals who have been laid off from an organization are more likely to have regrets about their political behavior as well as regrets about their career choices than those who have not been downsized. The psychological contract between employee and employer has changed (Cappelli, 2000; Hall, 1996) and even employers known for their promise of life-long employment have engaged in downsizing and rightsizing (Rousseau and Wade-Benzoni, 1995). Research on the effects of layoffs, on both those terminated and those who remain, report many negative outcomes (Brockner et al., 1992; Leana and Feldman, 1991, 1994; Power, 2006). Besides the loss of income and status associated with losing one's job, Feldman and Leana (2000) found that downsized managers have lower trust and are more cynical about their careers. Having misplaced their trust in former employers, the negative attitudes of laid off workers spillover and adversely impact their perceptions of their careers. Because of societal definitions of success, with the explicit notion that \"up is the only way\" (Kaye, 2002), individuals experiencing layoffs may feel like losers, even those who previously had been successful executives (Kovach, 1989; McCall et al., 1988a, b). For instance, Shipper and Dillard (2000) found that individuals blamed themselves for not taking the necessary actions to prevent career derailment. Therefore, individuals who were laid off may regret not engaging in political behaviors that may have prevented their dismissal. They may also regret the time invested in jobs that \"died\" and wish they had made different career choices such as devoting more time elsewhere (e.g. family, personal pursuits) or choosing a different career path (e.g. self-employment). Therefore we hypothesize:H1. Individuals who report they were laid off will experience greater regrets about their political behaviors than those who were not laid off.H2. Individuals who report they were laid off will experience greater regrets about their career choices than those who were not laid off.\nMethod: Survey administration and sample\nResults: The correlations, means, and standard deviations of the study variables are shown in Table II. Being laid off was significantly associated with both political behavior regrets (r=0.18) and career choice regrets (r=0.08) in the hypothesized direction. A t-test was computed to examine the differences in means for the two types of regrets based upon whether the respondent had been laid off. The mean of political behavior regrets was 2.80 for those who were laid off and 2.43 for those who had not been laid off. In addition, the mean of career choice regrets was 2.59 for those who were laid off and 2.44 for those who had not been laid off. Both t-tests were statistically significant. Further examination of the correlation matrix shows that those who were laid off were more likely to be male, older, without children living in the household, at a lower income level, and less educated.Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed, with the personal background control variables entered as the first block, followed by the human capital control variables in the second block, and the laid off variable in the third block. The results of these regression analyses are shown in Table III. Being laid off was significantly related to experiencing greater political behavior regrets (b=0.19) and career choice regrets (b=0.09), providing support for H1 and H2, respectively.The control variables presented some interesting statistically significant results. Males and younger respondents were more likely to experience political behavior regrets. In addition, those with children and those with less education were more likely to experience regrets pertaining to their career choices. Overall, while both regression models were significant and the laid off variable contributed unique incremental variance, we note that the percentage of variance accounted for in both models was low (i.e. R2=0.04).\nDiscussion: Our research examines career regrets that individuals may experience during the course of their careers. We explored two major types of regrets: regrets about not engaging in more effective political behavior at work (e.g. building a stronger network, paying attention to corporate signals); and regrets about not pursuing alternative career choices (e.g. pursuing more meaningful work, focusing more on family). We investigated whether individuals who had been laid off would be more likely to experience greater regrets as to their political behavior and career choices. In light of the stress and turmoil associated with downsizing, it seemed appropriate that the topic of career regrets be examined so a better understanding of the complexities of how careers are enacted in the contemporary work landscape can be gleaned.Consistent with previous research that illustrates the negative effects of job loss (e.g. Leana and Feldman, 1994), the present study's findings supported both H1 and H2 in that individuals who had been laid off experienced greater regrets associated with both political behaviors and career choices. Individuals who have been laid off may engage in self-blame as they reflect upon actions they could have taken to enhance their job security. Additionally, they may feel their efforts to help their organization achieve success were wasted, and their time and energies could have been better spent elsewhere (e.g. pursuing self-employment options or going back to school to further their education).Those who were laid off were more likely to have greater regrets about their political behavior and, to a lesser extent, their career choices. These individuals' regrets about their political behaviors are consistent with the large number of studies that have examined the importance of political behavior to career success (e.g. Judge and Bretz, 1994; Perrewe and Nelson, 2004). Individuals may believe that they have greater control over their political behaviors, thinking that political skills such as networking and choosing allies can be more readily accomplished. In contrast, individuals may believe they have less control over their career choices, thinking that alternatives are constrained by factors including their spouse's job mobility, child and elder care demands, availability of resources for continued training and education, and the difficulties associated with balancing work and nonwork concerns.We also noted some interesting findings related to the control variables used in this study. Our results showed that men and younger individuals were more likely to experience regrets about their political behavior. Whereas research examining gender and age as antecedents of political behavior has tended to be nonsupportive (Kacmar and Baron, 1999) and few gender differences in networking behavior have been found (Forret and Dougherty, 2001), it appears that men and younger individuals regret not being more savvy about workplace politics and altering their behavior. Perhaps men experience greater regrets about political behavior than women because they perceive a level playing field and make internal attributions regarding the source of their regrets. In contrast, women may perceive that the workplace, especially in male-dominated industries, provides fewer opportunities for them regardless of their political skills. The finding that younger individuals had more political regrets than older individuals is somewhat surprising. One might expect that older individuals would have more behaviors to regret while perceiving less time to recover from errors and make things right. However, older individuals may have learned mental strategies for more quickly overcoming disappointments or to recognize the futility of regrets especially in terms of things that cannot be changed.In addition to gender and age, there were noteworthy findings associated with two other control variables. Having less education and having children, respectively, were associated with greater career choice regrets. Those with less education may have experienced blocked opportunities and feel they should have chosen a different path. In addition, one interpretation for the finding regarding children is that organizations have not made sufficient inroads for employees to satisfactorily balance work and family needs (Burud and Tumolo, 2004). As such, individuals expressing regrets as to their career choices may desire alternatives such as pursuing a new career path or self-employment to enhance their flexibility and give them more control over how they manage work and nonwork demands. Research on women entrepreneurs, for instance, has found that many women leave corporations in order to build companies that permit them to nurture their family while experiencing career challenge (Moore, 2002) or to create companies that promote better work/life balance (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005, 2006).Limitations of the study\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-examined topic of career regrets. Although much of the careers literature has examined factors that contribute to success, little research has been completed on the regrets individuals may experience as they enact their careers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A large internet sample of 1,480 professionals was used to examine whether individuals who had been laid off in their careers experienced greater career regrets.\nFindings: - Individuals who had been laid off experienced greater regrets with regard to their political behavior (e.g. lack of networking, not being more politically savvy) and their career choices (e.g. not spending more time with their family, failing to pursue more meaningful work) than individuals who had not been laid off.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The findings may have limited generalizability because of the use of a cross-sectional, internet-based survey design.\nPractical implications: - The regrets individuals have may influence their future career behaviors and choices, resulting in different approaches to their work and their lives. These findings may offer some insights to help individuals navigate their careers and make choices that they will be less likely to regret.\nOriginality/value: - Although a great deal of research has focused on strategies for career success, relatively little research has examined career missteps or career regrets. It is hoped this exploratory research encourages further study as well as the development of a theory-based model of career regrets.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Revisiting retail internationalisation: Drivers, impediments and business strategy	[ "Retailing", "International business", "Standardization", "Product adaptation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is evident from extant literature that retailers do not simply internationalise in response to declining sales or market share in the domestic market. A multitude of factors are likely to play a role in driving both this decision and the business strategy adopted in foreign markets. Whilst extensive research has been conducted in this area (Alexander, 1990; Alexander and Myers, 2000; Hutchinson et al., 2006, 2007; Quinn, 1999; Sternquist, 1997; Vida and Fairhurst, 1998; Williams, 1992a, b; Wrigley et al., 2005), the field of international retailing has reached a stage where it is appropriate to re-examine the drivers of, and impediments to, internationalisation and the degree to which retailers standardise or adapt their international business strategy.Moore et al. (2000, p. 923) argue that the value of revisiting the motivators of retail internationalisation:[...] resides in the fact that it assists in the recognition that the various authors' interpretations of these motivations were, in many instances, bound and influenced by the prevailing trading conditions of the time [...]This argument also holds for the examination of barriers to internationalisation and firms' preferences for standardisation or adaptation. Both issues are inextricably linked to the global business environment, which has altered considerably over the past few years. The maturity of domestic markets and consequent limited growth opportunities, technological advances, geo-political rebalancing resulting in the lowering of trade barriers, the internationalisation of financial markets and a trend towards concentration of ownership in the retail sector have all altered the landscape of international retailing. In view of the fact that the majority of research highlights the importance of external factors in driving international expansion and the potential to adopt a standardised business strategy, it seems timely to examine whether the motivations for and barriers to retail internationalisation and the preference for standardisation or adaptation have changed with the environment.\nConceptual background: Drivers of internationalisation\nMethodology: In order to address the above research questions, an exploratory qualitative study was deemed appropriate. This involved interviewing executives responsible for international business development and international retail operations within selected UK and US retail organisations. The use of qualitative research methods such as interviewing has become established in the retail internationalisation literature, complementing earlier studies which relied on the use of more quantitative methods (Doherty and Alexander, 2006). In this journal, for example, Alexander and de Lira e Silva (2002) used interviewing in their study of retail internationalisation in the Brazilian context. More recently, Palmer and Quinn (2007) have used the same method in their investigation of the divestment activities of Royal Ahold.In the present study, the two origin countries of the UK and the USA were chosen as they represent two of the major nations involved in retail internationalisation activity. In total, 12 interviews were conducted: seven with UK firms and five with US retailers. The original aim was to interview executives with knowledge or responsibility of international operations in around five-ten US and UK firms. It was felt this would be an adequate sample for obtaining a relatively broad and balanced perspective on the UK-US retail internationalisation scene.The firms interviewed were principally store-based and operated in a variety of sectors, including grocery, footwear, music, clothing, department stores and toys and games. The firms were chosen to ensure diversity or, within the sample, \"maximum variation\" (Carson et al., 2001, p. 103). Activity in international markets varied considerably: two US retailers studied were only present in a single foreign market, whilst one UK retailer had experience in over 50 countries. The mode of market entry varied: some retailers had entered via a process of the acquisition of existing retailers; some had developed a network of concessions in other overseas stores; others relied on a process of organic expansion, often through a joint venture process; whilst some had solely a franchising arrangement in operation. It is also important to note that many of the retail organisations studied used a variety of operating mechanisms in the markets in which they were present, combining the strategies mentioned above. However, in such cases, just one of these strategies typically remained the dominant mode of entry. The diversity in the sample, in terms of international activity and strategy, is representative of the wide range of strategies employed by international retailers around the world. There is certainly no dominant scale of operation or mode of entry present in the international retail sector. The key characteristics of firms involved in the study and their representative interviewees are highlighted in Table I, although it should be noted that details within this table have been kept at a \"broad brush\" level in order to preserve anonymity.The interviews that were carried out were in-depth and semi-structured in nature and all were tape-recorded. On average, interviews lasted for 45 minutes. The in-depth nature of the interviews has the benefit of \"[using] open, direct, verbal questions that elicit stories and case-oriented narratives\" (Miller and Crabtree, 1999, p. 93). A semi-structured approach to interviewing was considered to be the most appropriate one, as it allows a \"tighter\" more closely focused discussion to take place (Robson, 1993). Following Bryman (1989) and Keats (2000) a schedule of pertinent themes was drawn up but it was recognised that departures from this were probable. This type of interviewing is beneficial as it \"(encourages) respondents to express experience, attitudes, needs and ideas\" (Wright, 1996, p. 59). Indicative themes included a review of the history of the firm's international activities; reasons for both entering and not entering foreign markets; problems that had been encountered; entry mode experiences; strategy standardisation and adaptation decisions and performance in foreign markets.Analysis of the data were carried out using content analysis techniques, which involved the identification of key themes and the illustration of these through selected excerpts and quotations. The exact sources of these quotations are attributed via case letters (refer to Table I for characteristics of the case) while preserving anonymity. Data were \"revisited\" on occasions subsequent to the initial analysis, in order to gain further in-depth picture of the themes and topics (Robson and Hedges, 1993). No distinct patterns or themes emerged that could be linked to the country-of-origin of the firm.\nFindings: Drivers of international expansion\nConclusions: The findings of this study enrich the literature on retail internationalisation in several ways. First, the study confirms the findings of previous research in the sense that no one factor drove the decision to internationalise. All of the interviewees mentioned at least two factors when explaining what motivated the firm to internationalise. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the findings reveal a concerted move away from internationalising in response to unsolicited foreign interest. Many of the interviewees recognised the ad hoc nature of their initial foreign expansion decisions and that they were now driven by a strong focus on the transferability of their core competencies. The early experiences of the interviewees are consistent with the traditional view of international expansion expressed in the Uppsala model (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977; Nordstrom and Vahlne, 1994). In contrast, the new strategic focus is similar to Wrigley et al.'s (2005) characterisation of proactive opportunists. Moreover, the evolution of the firm's approach to retail internationalisation supports Palmer and Quinn's (2005, p. 27) assertion that \"from these experiences, important insights and lessons have been learned to develop and subsequently avoid previous mistakes and undertake a successful route to internationalization\".Despite this new strategic focus, the primary driver of retail internationalisation identified in this study was profit growth. While growth has been acknowledged in previous research (Alexander, 1990; Williams, 1992a) as a significant pull factor, the findings of this study reveal two important underlying factors to this somewhat all-encompassing driver. For some firms, growth through international expansion was prioritised in response to saturation of the domestic market. However, other interviewees viewed international growth as a part of their proactive business philosophy of continuously seeking out new opportunities for increased sales and scale efficiencies. This finding relates to the classification of international fashion retailers by Wrigley et al. (2005). The first part is indicative of the short-term profit fixation of a reactive opportunist, while the second part reflects the long-term planning approach of a proactive opportunist. Thus, profit growth can be both a proactive and reactive driver of retail internationalisation.In terms of the impediments to retail internationalisation, the findings confirm that barriers to the initiation of internationalisation often reside within the firm. A lack of management and resource commitment, combined with limited international managerial experience and insufficient infrastructure, prevented some firms from expanding into more than one or two foreign markets. Moreover, this research adds new insights into initiation barriers with domestic market conditions emerging as the most dominant initiation impediment. Both unexploited opportunities and competitive challenges dominated the strategic focus of some firms to the extent that they could not pursue foreign market opportunities.Internationalisation process barriers were also identified in the internal and external environment. Regarding the external environment, it was surprising that the relative economic and political instability of many international markets was not identified as a major barrier to foreign expansion. Rather, the regulatory environment emerged as a critical factor in the sense that it both deterred entry into certain markets and impeded the process of establishing foreign market operations. Thus, for some retailers, particularly those offering goods susceptible to counterfeiting and piracy, the lack of transparent and readily enforced intellectual property legislation was the primary barrier to internationalisation. This finding supports Evans and Mavondo's (2002) assertion that the appealing summary nature of psychic distance as a construct underestimates the contributions of the various dimensions. The findings from this exploratory study do suggest that some environmental factors have a stronger impact on internationalisation than do others.Similar to profit growth, international experience is often highlighted in extant literature, but is discussed in a general manner (Alexander and Myers, 2000; Vida and Fairhurst, 1998). The most dominant internal process impediment related to two specific aspects of the retailer's international experience. The first was referred to as \"baggage\" in the sense that the current management had inherited problematic contracts and markets that made further penetration of existing foreign markets and movement into markets within the same region difficult. The second aspect of the firm's international experience related to the performance of operations in existing foreign markets. Managers found it difficult to gain commitment from the Board to fund further international expansion when some foreign markets had performed poorly or taken a substantial amount of time to demonstrate an acceptable return on investment. This finding reinforces Burt et al.'s (2003) argument that incorporating aspects of failure in international retailing is critical to any discussion of retail internationalisation.This study also contributes to the standardisation-adaptation debate. Standardisation and adaptation are viewed as two extremes on a continuum, with most companies adopting a strategy somewhere between the two polars (Whitelock and Pimblett, 1997). The findings of this study are consistent with this conceptualisation of standardisation. None of the retailers interviewed adopted an entirely standardised strategy across all markets or a purely adapted business strategy. While advocates of standardisation often highlight the economies of scale advantages, the interviewees focused on the consistency of brand image and global positioning that were afforded by a standardised business strategy.Adaptation was also a strong feature of the globally standardised branding strategies pursued by many retailers. For some retailers the focus was on controlling the elements of the retail offer and marketing strategy that were core to the brand's image, but allowing foreign subsidiaries to adapt minor aspects of the strategy. Other interviewees emphasised standardisation of the brand's message, whilst allowing foreign subsidiaries to determine the most appropriate execution strategy for their market. This is consistent with research by Ozsomer and Simonin (2004) who found support for a strong association between centralization of marketing decisions and standardization of marketing strategy. Where retailers did adapt elements of their business strategy, this was often done so in reaction to strategies that had failed. A number of retailers had implemented standardised marketing strategies that were found to be incompatible with the culture in the foreign market. Through such experiences, managers became more culturally aware and recognised the importance of researching cultural norms, customs and lifestyle factors in each foreign market. This challenges the findings of Evans and Bridson (2005), who did not find a significant relationship between cultural distance and retail offer adaptation. It may be that the true nature of this relationship is revealed only through the sharing of specific experiences.In terms of managerial implications, the study provides a number of lessons particularly relevant to newly internationalizing firms. First, many interviewees characterised their initial decisions to internationalise as quite ad hoc. However, it was such decisions that also created strong obstacles to further internationalisation. Problematic contracts and markets often impeded further expansion attempts both within existing markets and into new markets. The key issue today for many retailers is a more strategic focus on the transferability of the firm's core competencies. Second, as part of this strategic focus transferability of a consistent brand image is at the heart of the standardisation-adaptation issue. In the past retailers tended to concentrate on what aspects of their strategy they should standardise or adapt in response to specific conditions in each foreign market. Insights from our interviewees suggest that it is more beneficial to identify what aspects of the retail and marketing strategy are core to the brand's identity and what aspects foreign subsidiaries can tailor to the local market.While our research has provided additional insight into retail internationalisation, the research is limited by the number and composition of participants. Further research could extend the study to a wider sample of international retail firms across a range of countries. In addition, the study relied on the key informant method. The perceptions of one senior executive from each firm were assumed to be representative of the organization as a whole. While this approach has also been adopted in previous studies, we recognize that there may be some variation in the perception of drivers and barriers to internationalisation within the firm. Thus, future research could attempt to survey multiple executives within an organization to ascertain a more holistic view. Finally, this research reveals a number of underlying factors to some all-encompassing terms. Future research can utilize these exploratory research findings as a basis for measurement development in a more generalisable empirical study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - In the light of recent changes in the international environment, the purpose of this paper is to consider whether the drivers of, and impediments to, retail internationalisation and the business strategy adopted have also changed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Interviews were conducted with 12 UK and US retailers. These exploratory data were combined with a review of the literature to explore changes in the drivers and impediments of retail internationalisation.\nFindings: - Findings of this study suggest that, while a variety of factors drive retail internationalisation, profit growth is the most dominant motivator. In terms of impediments to foreign expansion, domestic market conditions were a barrier to the initiation of foreign expansion, whilst the regulatory environment and previous experiences presented obstacles in the process of internationalisation. Interviewees also expressed a desire for increased standardisation, while acknowledging the need for a substantial degree of adaptation in response to cultural differences.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research findings are limited in terms of their generalisability.\nOriginality/value: - Much of the existing research into retail internationalisation was conducted in the 1990s. Given the substantial changes that have occurred over the past 15 years, the value of this paper lies in the updating of knowledge.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How do students trust Wikipedia? An examination across genders	[ "Gender", "Information", "Trust", "Wikis/Wikipedia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The academic community has begun to pay considerable attention to how students use Wikipedia (Lim, 2009). Many early studies make unfavorable observations about its use. For instance, Giles (2005) reports that Wikipedia content contains more inaccurate information than other online versions of the Encyclopedia. Magnus (2006) concurs in this observation but states that \"this does not mean that Wikipedia is worthless or that we ought not to use it at all. Yet, it does mean that we should be wary of it and that we should try to develop methods which are suitable to it\" (p. 7).\nTheoretical background: Conceptualization of trustworthiness\nModel development: Figure 1 presents our research model, which integrates Kelton et al.'s (2008) multi-dimensions of trustworthiness. We use our model to examine the impact of trustworthiness on information adoption intentions in Wikipedia, as well as the moderating effects of gender. The four dimensions of trustworthiness act as the basis of forming information in Wikipedia. This section addresses the key components of our research model and their interrelationships.\nResearch method: Instrument development\nDiscussions: Implications for theory and research\nConclusion: This study represents an attempt to respond to and assess the growing concerns about trustworthiness in Wikipedia, given its increasing popularity. Furthermore, we address a gap in the research by developing and validating a scale for trustworthiness in online information. This study has also empirically investigated the relationship between perceptions of trustworthiness and students' intentions to adopt information from Wikipedia. Gender differences have also been explored in order to understand the moderating role of gender in terms of the association between students' trust in Wikipedia and their intention to adopt information from Wikipedia. Our results have confirmed that accuracy, stability, and validity are directly related to users' intention to adopt information from Wikipedia. In addition, this study has found evidence for moderating effects of gender in most paths in the model, except for the relationship between objectivity and intention. Consistent with previous research on gender differences (Gefen and Straub, 1997; Venkatesh and Morris, 2000; Zhang et al., 2009), our sub-group analysis has showed that males are more motivated by cognitive factors (accuracy and stability) in terms of intention to use, while females are more influenced by affective factors (validity).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to tend to further develop an understanding of information trustworthiness in the context of Wikipedia and examine the moderating effects of gender on the association between trustworthiness and intention to adopt Wikipedia information.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a four-dimensional framework of information trustworthiness, the authors began the research by identifying Wikipedia as an application of online information so as to construct a model and develop an instrument based on this trustworthiness framework.\nFindings: The results confirm that information accuracy, stability, and validity are significantly related to users' intentions to adopt information from Wikipedia, but objectivity is not. Meanwhile, moderating role for gender on some of these effects is confirmed. Academic and practical implications are discussed.\nOriginality/value: Previous research considers the open-editing characteristics of Wikipedia as both strength and weakness; it allows for wide coverage of the information contributed by various users, but can also lead to a lack of trustworthiness. It has also been suggested that trustworthiness is perceived differently by males and females. Understanding how gender plays a role in differentiating the impact of trustworthiness on user intentions to adopt Wikipedia information could benefit both academics and practitioners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Team implicit coordination based on transactive memory systems	[ "Teamwork", "Team performance", "Team processes", "Transactive memory systems", "Implicit coordination" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, with the increasing complexity of social environments, many organizations have realized the difficulty of solving complex problems through individuals alone, emphasizing the importance of teamwork. Understanding the psychological processes of teamwork that lead to high performance is becoming increasingly critical. This study aimed to determine how daily communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) interact to promote implicit team coordination, which, in turn, promotes higher team performance in organizational settings.\nImplicit coordination in organizational teams: Coordination refers to core teamwork processes and it is defined as \"orchestrating the sequence and timing of interdependent actions\" in the team (Marks et al., 2001). Coordination among members is required when teams work on tasks; however, coordinating appropriately and achieving high performance is not easy for a group. Social psychological studies have shown that, even for simple additive tasks, group outcomes are lower than the sum of the potential powers of the groups' individual members (Latane et al., 1979). One reason for this is poor coordination among group members that is process loss (Steiner, 1972) or coordination decrement (Fiore et al., 2003). In other words, appropriate coordination among members is an essential factor for high team performance. Meta analytic studies have shown that coordination is one of the core dimensions of teamwork behaviors (Rousseau et al., 2006).\nImplicit coordination promoted by transactive memory systems: We focus on TMS as a factor to achieve high implicit coordination. A TMS is defined as a common understanding of \"who-knows-what\" among team members (Wegner, 1987; Lewis, 2003; Lewis and Herndon, 2011; Ren and Argote, 2011). The TMS emerges from a compilation process of each team members' distinct expertize, which combines in a complementary fashion such as a jigsaw puzzle, to form team cognition (DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010). A team that has a TMS can effectively conduct help-seeking/help-providing, workload adjustment and role-sharing so that its members can coordinate in a complementary manner.\nDaily communication as the basis of transactive memory system: As an antecedent to building a TMS in a team, we focused on daily communication. Daily communication was defined in this study as communication in daily situations, including both informal communication - greetings and chats - and formal communication about the task. Daily communication can deepen interpersonal relationships in teams and allows members to share interpersonal information both formally and informally.\nHypothesis of the entire implicit coordination process: The above hypotheses (i.e. H1-H4) posit that the following team-level process exists: daily communication - TMS - implicit coordination - team performance (Figure 1).\nMethod: This study conducted research using three companies in Japan. Employees answered questionnaires that measured variables related to teamwork. Two companies provided team performance indicators. Methodological features of this research included the following: to collect data from more than 200 teams; to conduct a statistically valid analysis using ML-SEM to understand the overall team-level process; and to use team performance indicators, which were provided by the two companies, to minimize self-rating bias.\nResults: Factor analysis in self-rating scales\nDiscussion: This study aimed to examine how daily communication and TMSs promote implicit team coordination, resulting in high team performance. We conducted a survey with 216 teams to investigate the process of daily communication - TMS - implicit coordination - team performance at the team level. Our hypothesized team process was tested using ML-SEM. The results demonstrate that implicit coordination is positively related to team performance. Moreover, the results suggest that daily communication and TMS are the basis of implicit coordination.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine how daily communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) promote implicit team coordination, meaning when team members cooperate smoothly without engaging in explicit communication, in organizations. In TMSs, members share knowledge of who-knows-what with one another.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted with 216 teams consisting of 1,545 people in three organizations. The relationships among daily communication, TMSs and implicit coordination in the survey data and in team performance were analyzed using multi-level structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Results confirmed a significant influence process model in which \"daily communication - TMS - implicit coordination - team performance\" at the team level. Therefore, as hypothesized, implicit coordination is positively related to team performance and daily communication has a positive relationship with implicit coordination through mediation by TMSs.\nOriginality/value: This study demonstrated the evidence of the relation between implicit coordination, TMS, team performance in organizational settings by using multi-level structural equation modeling.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Value-creation in new product development within converging value chains: An analysis in the functional foods and nutraceutical industry	[ "Product development", "Industrial performance", "Value analysis", "Pharmaceuticals industry", "Health foods" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Buyer-seller relationships are centre to value-creation. These occur in larger business networks as firms increasingly concentrate on core competences (Lindgreen and Wynstra, 2005). This is especially relevant for value-creation projects in new product development (NPD) (Moller and Torronnen, 2003). Industry convergence presents a special context for examining buyer-seller relationships where existing competences of individual firms are challenged in NPD (Broring et al., 2006a).There are many neglected factors, relevant for value-creation in NPD processes, rooted in industry differences (Malerba, 2002). Value-creation in innovation projects follow distinct approaches, for example, between the technology-intense pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries. While technology-intense NPD projects in the pharmaceutical industry are science-driven, projects in consumer-oriented food companies are typically market-driven. If both sectors witness a possible convergence, value creation in NPD processes is challenged by missing competences and basic understanding of innovation systems in unrelated industries.In general, industry convergence refers to the blurring of boundaries between industries due to converging value propositions, technologies and markets. Convergence can be observed in many sectors and leads to new inter-industry segments (Choi and Valikangas, 2001). Surprisingly, the impact of industry convergence on value-creation in NPD processes has not yet been addressed in the management literature (Pennings and Puranam, 2001). Therefore, this paper represents a contribution to the innovation management literature due to its focus on the special case of value creation in NPD projects and on the role of collaborations in that process.Industry convergence can currently be observed in the emerging Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (NFF) sector, which developed since the 1990s at the intersection of the food and pharmaceutical industry (Heasman and Mellentin, 2001; Broring, 2005). Hence, this paper focuses on industry convergence by examining cases in this fast growing new industry. In particular, this paper examines how value-creation in NPD projects that target NFF products look like when two industries begin to converge in activities and goals. The paper sheds some light on the role of buyer-seller relationships in R&D collaborations. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to explore how organisations, in different industries, and with disjointed histories, can successfully engage in value-creation in NPD projects that bring in convergence.The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. The next major section gives an overview of industry convergence and of its implications for value-creation in NPD. This is followed a brief literature overview on value-creation in NPD projects and on the role of collaborations in section three. Subsequently, section four provides an outline of the research design, and resulting empirical base for the qualitative multi-case research presented in the paper. Findings are discussed in section five. Finally, in section six, results are presented, managerial implications are highlighted. Conclusions, research limitations, and suggestions for further research are given in section seven.\nIndustry convergence and its implications for value creation in NPD: Defining convergence and the case of nutraceuticals and functional foods (NFF)\nExisting research on value creation in NPD collaborative arrangements: Value creation in new product development (NPD)\nResearch design and sample: The novelty of the research on industry convergence and of its impact at the front-end of innovation is the main motivation for the qualitative multi-respondent case study exploratory research presented in this paper. According to Glaser and Strauss (1967), the aim of case study research is to discover \"grounded theory\" by comparing different cases. Following de Weerd-Nederhof (2001), preliminary interviews were conducted to build the conceptual framework, which is the result of a literature analysis complemented by a refinement through first field insights into industry convergence.This paper presents the results of primary qualitative data generated from 54 in-depth interviews with project managers active in the field of R&D, NPD, corporate innovation management, and marketing of functional foods and ingredients of firms in the pharmaceutical, speciality chemistry, and food industries. The R&D case project was chosen as the unit of analysis. Selected projects were considered in the research based on its successful closing with an outcome in the NFF sector. In addition, each respondent originated from different organisations and provided information on only one project. Thus, the 54 cases for which data were collected are independent observations. The interviews were conducted in Quebec (Canada) during the fall 2003. Quebec was chosen, since it includes nearly half of the economic activity of the NFF sector in Canada (Cloutier and Saives, 2002). The interviews were conducted in a two-step process:1. Semi-structured-type questions to describe the background of the organisation and the characteristics of the sample R&D project.2. Structured-type questions to collect detailed information on the importance of different sources of ideas and forms of collaborations, and on the importance of existing competences within the NPD-process.Following Greene et al. (1989) a triangulation of methods was used to include qualitative and quantitative analyses. The intent was to benefit from complementary data and information from both semi-structured and structured type questions.\nEmpirical evidence on value creation in industry convergence: Types of NPD projects and collaborations in industry convergence\nImplications for value-creation from buyer-seller relationships in convergence: This exploratory study identified three different groups representing a certain project type. The empirical results reported an analysis of 54 R&D projects in the NFF segment between the traditional food and pharmaceutical/chemical industries. In converging industries, one can associate project types with different buyer-seller relationships, and thus, identify alternative forms of value-creation. This indicates that there are multiple approaches towards convergence in the management of R&D projects for this new product segment.As illustrated in Table II, the three groups were distinguished by means of:1. how the R&D projects were conducted and what kind of collaborations were typical;2. what were the type of value creation (intangible versus tangible); and3. how much projects were influenced by supply and demand trends of industry convergence.The findings show that buyer-seller relationships differ according to project type. The findings furthermore suggest three different ways of setting up NPD project at times of convergence:In group (A), labelled as \"technology developers\", collaboration towards the very front-end of NPD seemed valuable. This is because companies in this group did not intend to change their value chain position but rather intended to remain technology developers. Value-creation is rather intangible, but at the same time, companies need to keep up with the speed of technology development, hence new technologies need to be monitored and assimilated. At this point, the value of the appropriate technology supplier (academic institute, or university spin-offs) needs to be carefully assessed and long-term relationships need to be built. Hence, relationship value has an impact. It is very important for the technology development-focussed organisations in group (A) to find the appropriate academic partners early in the process. As the cases illustrate, this can be done via patent and literature analyses, conference attendance and close contacts with leading universities. These relationships very often serve as an investment into absorptive capacity (see Cockburn and Henderson, 1998).By contrast projects in group (B), consisted of \"technology-intense consumer product developers\", presented dynamic inter-industry relationships. For conducting NPD projects destined to technology-intense consumer products, both industries need to work together since no industry possesses state-of-the-art technology knowledge and unique consumer insights required to address consumer markets in the NFF Sector. NPD projects subsume full networks of different subprojects, either related to technology development, contract research for mandatory clinical trials or market-related to get access to consumer markets. Hence, it was found that technology-oriented speciality chemical companies that presented the focal company in this group do need to master a very complex set of different relationships and collaborations along the value chain. By contrast to a technology-intense product to be sold as an ingredient (see group C), market knowledge, such as deeper insights into consumer needs and buying behaviour, appeared more tacit (Stieglitz, 2002). Since market capabilities are difficult to transact on the market, but are rather specific to a firm, strong ties with consumer goods companies are required for technology-intense companies in the NFF sector. Here, relationship value appeared very important between different companies with distinct industry background. This calls for strong partnering capabilities, since NPD projects can be characterised by a number of inter-industry collaborations involving many interfaces in need to be managed (Kogut and Zander, 1992).Similar to projects in group (A), projects in group (C) are less complex than the multifaceted projects in group (B). The firm as a \"consumer product developer based on existing technologies\" only engaged in collaborative agreements towards the back-end of the NPD process. Similar to the technology-focussed companies in group (A), firms within group (C) did not intend to change their value chain position by integrating technology development. Rather, they concentrated on marketing FMCG products and intended to benefit from the emerging NFF market by strengthening existing products with existing ingredient technologies. To do so, the choice of the appropriate supplier capable of delivering a system solution, and thus, creating a rather direct and tangible value proposition was important. The food company had little previous experiences with functional ingredients. As a consequence the relationship between the technology supplier and the technology buyer (food company) could have experienced knowledge asymmetry. The recipient (food company) lacked the technological understanding to integrate the ingredient technology in its existing development process (see Tatikonda and Stock, 2003). Thus, assessing the right ingredient supplier may be a difficult task at times of convergence since food firms not only lack the absorptive capacity needed to identify the appropriate technological trends, but also may have difficulties to assess the innovative capability of a supplier (see Lindgreen and Wynstra, 2005) since it lacks the understanding of a technology field. Thus, one implication for companies as either the technology supplier, or the recipient, could be to hire \"match-makers\" or \"idea brokers\" to connect both parties (Herzog and Niedergassel, 2007).\nConclusions: Value-creation in NPD in converging industries is a complex problem to tackle. This article addressed the problem of how different firms with distinct industry path dependencies can successfully engage in NPD in the context of industry convergence. Due to the overlap of industries, firms are faced with different bodies of knowledge owned in different sectors. The NFFs project cases presented showed alternative forms and purpose for value-creation in buyer-seller relationships.Value creation in converging value chains\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to shed some light on value-creation in new product development (NPD) projects within the context of industry convergence and to explore alternative types of projects characterised by different buyer-seller relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - There has been much research on value-creation in general, but limited emphasis on value-creation in NPD projects addressing new industry segments emerging from industry convergence (for example, the segment of nuctraceuticals and functional foods (NFF) products that is positioned between the food and the pharmaceutical industries). Based on a multi-case study approach, this paper pursues an exploratory research strategy and investigates 54 NPD projects drawn from a Quebec (Canada) NFF foods cluster.\nFindings: - In the context of convergence a new value chain is emerging between two formerly separated sectors. Value-creation networks spread across industries and reinforce trends of convergence. Firms face competence gaps in NPD and seek to close these by choosing alternative forms of collaboration. Different types of NPD projects involve alternative forms of buyer-seller relationships and their approach of value-creation is analysed.\nResearch limitations/implications: - A typology of different approaches to NPD in converging value chains is presented along with type-specific implications for value-creation for the required buyer-seller relationship.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides a unique insight into value-creation in NPD in the emerging NFF sector, in particular, and for converging industries, in general.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A critical investigation of the briefing process in Hong Kong's construction industry	[ "Project brief", "Construction industry", "Hong Kong" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Briefing (also known as architectural programming in the USA) is the process whereby a client clarifies and informs others of his or her needs, aspirations and desires, formally or informally (CIB, 1997). It provides a channel to convey decisions and information between clients and consultants. Thus, a better understanding of their requirements and preferences at the project inception stage can be achieved (O'Reilly, 1987; Fisher, 1998). Blyth and Worthington (2001) describe briefing as a problem formulation and solving process, which identifies an organization's needs and resources, and matches these to its objectives and mission. It helps to balance the distinct interests of the users, client advisors, client founders and legislators from the demand side and those of the designers, consultants, contractors, property agents and facilities managers from the supply side.Briefing generally starts with a statement of need, followed by stages of:* drawing up a functional brief;* concept design; and* scheme design.A brief, which is a product of the briefing process, is a formal document containing the written instructions and requirements of a client for a building project (MacPherson et al., 1992; CIB, 1997; Blyth and Worthington, 2001; Kamara and Anumba, 2001 and Kamara et al., 2002). The brief acts as a means to facilitate communication between the parties from the supply and demand sides. It also forms a record of decisions, information, agreements, amendments, conflicts and uncertainties to ensure continuity and consistency throughout the construction process (O'Reilly, 1987). Konya (1986) pointed out that a brief can vary considerably in length, content and form depending upon the nature and complexity of the project. Briefing is a critical process in construction and a considerable amount of research has been conducted into how to improve briefing since the Banwell Report was published in 1964 (Newman et al., 1981;O'Reilly, 1987; Salisbury, 1990; MacPherson et al., 1992; Latham, 1994; Green, 1996; CIB, 1997; Fisher, 1998; Barrett and Stanley, 1999; Kamara et al., 2001; Blyth and Worthington, 2001). However, as Barrett and Stanley (1999) pointed out, many people still overlook the importance of briefing in construction. These people feel that a brief can be constructed quickly and efficiently merely by writing down the client's requirements at the start of the project. Consequently, the client's requirements may end up not being clearly defined for the reasons stated in Table I.The Banwell Report (1964) stated that insufficient resources were devoted to the briefing. After thirty years, the Latham (1994) report also concluded that effort is required to understand the needs of clients. Recently, a recent report by the Construction Industry Review Committee (2001) also recommended that clients should set out the requirements of their projects clearly, systematically and comprehensively in construction projects. This reveals that the practice of briefing is still considered \"inadequate\" in the construction industry and that further improvement is required (Barrett and Stanley, 1999). In Hong Kong, little work has been undertaken to study the practice of briefing in sufficient depth in the construction industry, although the output of the construction and real estate industry approached HK$260,000 millions (23.5 percent of the territory's GDP) in 1995 (Rowlinson and Walker, 1995). It is observed that the practice of briefing is informal and confidentiality in the industry and are hardly known to outsiders. For these reasons, a study has been conducted to investigate the practices and problems of the briefing in the industry in Hong Kong. This is the first piece of work on the subject. This paper begins with an introduction to the research methods employed and detailed illustration of research findings on current practices in briefing. A discussion on the limitations of the practice is given at the end of the paper.\nResearch methodology: The aim of this study is to investigate briefing in the construction industry in Hong Kong. Specifically, it sets out to discover:* the current practices on briefing in the industry; and* the limitations of these practices.To complete the study within six months, the research was limited to focus on briefing on residential projects in the private and public construction sectors only, which played a significant role in the industry.Methods of study\nFindings on the practice of briefing in Hong Kong: Clients are usually categorized in accordance with the following factors: sector (public or private); size of organization (small or large); project interest (developer or owner-occupier); project continuity (continuing or one-off), and level of experience (high or low) (Naphapiet and Naphapiet, 1985; Rougive, 1987; MacPherson et al., 1992). Referring to these factors, the characteristics of clients in Hong Kong's construction industry are illustrated in Table III.Table III shows that the characteristics of clients in the public and private sectors are almost the same except for their project interests. These clients are large in size. For example, the Hong Kong Housing Authority, which is a statutory body, is one of the largest property developers in the world. It has over 15,000 employees and annually provides an average of 50,000 subsidized homes in the industry (Housing authority, 2002). Chiang (2002) suggested that the clients are \"elite developers\" who are normally very powerful in the industry. To gain insight into the practice of briefing in the industry, a series of focus group interviews and individual interviews were undertaken and the collected data is presented as follows.Procedures of briefing\nDiscussion on the findings: Most of the interviewees believed that the current practices in briefing sound practical in the public and private sectors of the industry. However, the research findings revealed that these practices are not effective in providing a clear understanding of client requirements and preferences. A number of problems have been identified. These problems are in line with the work by MacPherson et al. (1992) and a detailed discussion is given below.Lack of a comprehensive framework\nConclusions: The paper has described the practice of briefing and its limitations in Hong Kong's construction industry. It improves our comprehension of the nature of client requirements and provides valuable insights into the details of briefing in the public and private sectors of the local industry. The study has revealed that current practices, which have been in operation for a long time, are practical in the industry. However, they are subject to the constraints such as lacking in a comprehensive framework; lacking in identification of client requirements; lacking in contributions from clients; lacking in involvement of stakeholders; and lacking in time spent on the briefing. It is concluded that these limitations must be properly addressed by the industry in order to improve briefing and to avoid subsequent problems in the design and construction phases, and that more resources should be allocated. To address these problems, further research will be conducted to explore how value management, which has been introduced in a number of briefing-related publications (MacPherson et al., 1992; Latham, 1994; Atkin et al., 1995), can be applied to improve the practice of briefing in the industry.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to investigate briefing in the construction industry in Hong Kong. Specifically, it sets out to discover the current practices on briefing in the industry and the limitations of these practices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study consists of a literature review and a pilot study, structured focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews.\nFindings: - The study has revealed that current practices, although have been in operation for a long time, have a number of limitations such as lacking in a comprehensive framework; lacking in identification of client requirements; lacking in contributions from clients; lacking in involvement of stakeholders; and inadequate time spent on the briefing. It is concluded that these limitations must be properly addressed by the industry in order to improve the briefing and to avoid subsequent problems in the design and construction phases, and that more resources should be allocated.\nOriginality/value: - So far, little work has been undertaken to study the practice of briefing in sufficient depth in the construction industry in Hong Kong. This paper improves our comprehension of the nature of client requirements and provides valuable insights into the details of briefing in the public and private sectors of the local industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
GLOBE Study culture clusters: Can they be found in Importance ratings of managerial competencies?	[ "Cross-cultural management", "Management", "Competencies", "Importance ratings", "GLOBE Study", "Culture clusters" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Organizations are becoming increasingly global in terms of where they operate and with whom they interact (Echols and Tsai, 2005). As a result, workforce compositions are becoming culturally diverse (Lloyd and Hartel, 2010), requiring managers to develop competencies for dealing with individuals from various cultural backgrounds (Barkema et al., 2002). The manner in which leaders are able to influence, implement and participate in global initiatives can affect both the short- and long-term success of the organization (Schein, 2010). Thus, there has been increasing interest in examining and understanding the cultural impact on leadership attributes most effective in the global context (Dorfman et al., 1997; Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 2004).\nReview of literature: To avoid wasting significant resources, organizations need to closely assess their management and leadership development processes to improve performance and achieve both individual- and organizational-level benefits (Naquin and Holton, 2006). It has been estimated that unproductive or counter-productive managerial behavior could cost organizations millions of dollars (Finkelstein, 2004), and to prevent such consequences and avoid costly failures, organizations invest in various resources to assess and develop competent managers to increase the likelihood of success (Fleenor et al., 2010).\nInstrument (PROFILER): The multisource instrument used in this study, The PROFILOR(r) for Managers, contains 135 behavioral items, grouped into 24 competency scales (PDI Ninth House, 2004; See Appendix 1). The PROFILOR(r) for Managers was designed to represent the domain of behaviors associated with effective management (Hezlett et al., 2006). The instrument was developed from a review of the management and psychology literatures, exhaustive analysis of a large database (Sevy et al., 1985), job analysis questionnaires and interviews of hundreds of managers, representing many functional areas and most major industries. From this broad survey of managerial competencies, only those competencies consistently identified as important were retained in the final model.\nMethod: The PROFILER for Managers(r) is a multisource feedback questionnaire administered around the world (PDI Ninth House, 2004). The countries in which the questionnaire was completed were used as grouping variables. Only countries that were included in both the GLOBE Study and available in the PROFILER for Managers(r) database were included in this study. This left the 22 countries listed above. These countries allowed for at least partial representation of nine of the ten GLOBE clusters. Within each country, known expatriates were removed from the analyses, as their responses might have represented some combination of home culture and local culture, which could confuse the analysis. These known expatriates represented 5.2 per cent of the total sample. The remaining sample size was 74,931 managers.\nResults: All confirmatory factor analyses were run using LISREL 9.1 on mean importance ratings for competencies, as rated by the managers. Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and comparative fit index (CFI) were used to determine adequate model fit. Cutoffs suggested by Hu and Bentler (1999) to display adequate model fit are less than 0.06 for RMSEA and greater than 0.95 for CFI.\nDiscussion: An examination of Figure A1 factor loadings indicates that although there are some elements of similarity, the competency priorities are far from identical. Clearly there are some countries that are, in fact, similar to other countries, and many countries that are substantially different from others. For example, in comparing South Korea and Denmark (not in the same GLOBE country clusters), the correlation is 0.39. In comparing the USA and Canada (both in the Anglo cluster), the correlation is 0.99. In comparing Japan and South Korea (both GLOBE Confucian cluster countries), the correlation is 0.71 (Table I). In comparing Spain and France (both GLOBE Latin Europe cluster countries), the correlation is 0.77. In these last two comparisons, the correlations would indicate that while there are some similarities, the competency priorities in each of these paired comparisons are not identical. In the first pair, they share about half of the variance in common, and in the second pair, they share just over half of their variance in common.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore patterns of importance ratings of managerial competencies in 22 countries in different regions around the globe, to guide specificity in assessing and developing managers in multiple geographies. Additionally, this study examined the utility of clustering countries based on shared culture, as defined by House et al. (2004), to determine whether such clustering aids in interpreting and acting on any differences identified.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The PROFILOR(r) for Managers contains 135 behavioral items, grouped into 24 competency scales. The instrument was developed from a review of the management and psychology literatures, exhaustive analysis of a large database (Sevy et al., 1985), job analysis questionnaires and interviews of hundreds of managers representing many functional areas and most major industries.\nFindings: Results suggest that clustering countries together for the purpose of providing prescriptive guidance for the development of individuals planning expatriate assignments does not clarify such guidance; in fact, it masks unique differences in competency priorities as measured on a country-by-country basis.\nResearch limitations/implications: The participants for this study come from mid- to large-size organizations in 22 countries around the world. The organizations represented sought out management consulting services from a large, highly respected private-sector consultancy. As such, these findings are likely to be generalizable to managers from similar organizations. No attempt has been made to generalize these findings to entrepreneurial start-ups, small local organizations or organizations not inclined to seek Western-style management consulting services.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first to examine the effectiveness of the GLOBE clusters as they relate to managerial competencies in multicultural workforces.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Art history: a guide to basic research resources	[ "Arts", "History", "Undergraduates", "Research", "Resources", "Academic libraries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: As a branch of the liberal arts education, art history courses are widely offered as part of the core curriculum for undergraduate studies. Yet many of the students writing art history papers are not art majors and are unfamiliar with resources in art history. Even for art majors, research is often conducted in a haphazard manner, the outcome depending as much on luck as on skills. This paper presents a practical and methodical guide to undergraduate art history research. The strategies detailed here are based on discussions with art history professors and students as well as my experience as an art librarian and instructor of an art history survey course[1].\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present basic resources and practical strategies for undergraduate art history research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is based on the author's experience as both an art librarian and instructor for a core requirement art history course.\nFindings: - The plan detailed in this paper covers every step of the research process, from exploring the topic to citing the sources. The resources listed, which include subscription databases as well as public web sites, are deliberately limited to a manageable number. Additional topics include defining the scope of inquiry and making appropriate use of internet resources such as Wikipedia.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides the academic librarian with clear guidance on basic research resources in art history.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategy development processes as determinants of B2B e-commerce performance: A comparative model in a supply chain management context	[ "Electronic commerce", "Corporate strategy", "Supply chain management", "Australia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The study of organisations as systems, particularly in the context of rapidly changing business paradigms driven by technological, social and economic change, has become increasingly relevant to understanding the dynamics of their interaction with the business environment. Traditional methods employed to understand the way organisations function, and can thus be best managed, have focused on analysing individual components and developing models based on the characteristics of each separate element. Examples of this approach can be found in the fundamental principles of cost accounting, marketing theory and traditional approaches to the development and implementation of strategic policy. The focus on unit costing rather than total product/service cost, the relentless drive for sales regardless of capacity and capability of the organisation to cope with demand, and the development of strategies based on short term operational performance criteria, are common business models symptomatic of this approach to organisations as aggregates of parts. The view of organisations as systems, on the other hand, attempts to take a holistic view of the organisation as an open system in the context of it is interaction with the environment in which it operates. As such, the management of the organisation becomes focused on the processes operating within (and across) superficial functional groupings, rather than attempting to manage (and optimise) each of these in isolation. The importance of understanding and applying this systemic approach to the management of organisations is amplified in the study of techniques and methodologies being applied to the management of supply chains. In this case, the complexity of managing across organisational boundaries creates a need for developing means to coordinate an array of activities and potentially conflicting priorities. The use of technology along with the development of partnerships and cooperative business practices have been proposed as means of counteracting these complexities, and of enabling more effective business practices. On the other hand, it is perhaps useful to look past the use of these techniques and technologies, and to the nature of strategy formulation processes being used. The development of strategy within individual organisations perhaps provides a more fundamental point of comparison for the assessment of how organisational performance is determined in a supply chain context.\nLiterature review: Supply chain management\nMethodology: A survey was conducted within Australian companies that are members of EAN Australia. As members of this organisation (EAN Australia is the local organisation that administers and controls the European article numbering standard) these companies are involved in the use of B2B e-commerce technologies and methods (at least to a minimum level). This survey covered a broad range of issues relating to the strategic and operational aspects of the use and implementation of B2B e-commerce technologies. There were 553 responses received, indicating an estimated response rate of 16.5 per cent. This response rate, although lower than anticipated, was deemed to be acceptable based on the results of a survey of 1,707 non-responding organizations. This survey indicated that there were no significant differences between the two groups based on either company size or primary business activity. The sample size was reduced to 335 companies for the analysis using the structural model. This was done in order to reduce the proportion of missing data for some constructs, as the AMOS package used for this model requires a complete data set. The components of a structural model were initially developed using exploratory factor analysis. From this process the composition of the factor variables making up the observed and unobserved variables within the model was determined. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to establish the integrity of the unobserved construct \"Process\" (representing the Sanchez and Heene model elements), and the structural model formed based on the hypothesised relationships.\nStructural model: Rationale\nAnalysis: General discussion\nConclusions: The importance of organisational cognition being informed by the use of \"higher order control loops\" (as proposed by the Sanchez and Heene model) is highlighted in this research. The data indicates that (within the limitations of this model) the process by which organisations formulate their strategic logic is an important determinant of both how resources are selected and deployed, and of business performance. At the same time, it is evident that these same resources are not likely to yield significant benefits without such a process, and in fact that their effectiveness is very much a function of the nature of this process. In dynamic environments, there is also some evidence suggesting that the strategy formulation process provides a basis for promoting flexibility in both development and deployment of resources. It is also apparent that the nature and strength of the influence of this process is situational, in the case of this research due to extent of implementation across the supply chain, and to the nature of business activity (or in other words - position in the supply chain). The implication for organisations looking to implement e-commerce related methodologies for the improved management of supply chains, is that focusing on developing effective methods for developing strategy can be expected to yield better ultimate performance, rather than concentrating on the technologies, supporting infrastructures, and trading partner relationships themselves.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between the use of business to business (B2B) e-commerce enabling technologies and infrastructure, cooperative partnerships between trading partners, firm performance, and a \"systems\" view of strategy formulation processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A structural model has been developed from a survey of Australian companies. This survey covered a broad range of issues relating to the strategic and operational aspects of the use and implementation of B2B e-commerce technologies.\nFindings: - The data indicate that the process by which organisations formulate their strategic logic is an important determinant of both how resources are selected and deployed, and of business performance. At the same time, it is evident that these same resources are not likely to yield significant benefits without such a process, and in fact that their effectiveness is very much a function of the nature of this process.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study has been limited to organizations operating in the Australian fast-moving consumer goods sector. The results therefore need to be read in this context, and it would be useful if these findings could be compared with those from other countries and different industry sectors.\nPractical implications: - A practical implication of this study is that the nature and strength of the influence of this process are situational, in the case of this research due to the extent of implementation across the supply chain, and to the nature of business activity (or in other words - position in the supply chain).\nOriginality/value: - The importance of these findings for organisations looking to implement e-commerce related methodologies for the improved management of supply chains is that focusing on developing effective methods for developing strategy can be expected to yield better ultimate performance. This highlights the need to focus on strategy rather than concentrating on the technologies, supporting infrastructures, and trading partner relationships themselves.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Advancing service design research with design science research	[ "Service innovation", "Methodology", "Service design", "Design science research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Service design plays an increasingly important role in service research, as it brings new service ideas to life (Ostrom et al., 2010), thus enabling new forms of value co-creation with customers, organizations and societal actors, in general. Service design can be defined as a human-centered, holistic and iterative approach to the creation of new services (Blomkvist et al., 2010; Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011). It integrates a service perspective through a creative and iterative process of exploration (understanding the experience of customers and other relevant actors), ideation (envisioning new service futures), prototyping (representing and testing the new services) and implementation (Patricio et al., 2019). Service design creates new service futures through a human-centered approach that allows a contextual and holistic understanding of customer experiences, aligning system actors to support customer experience and supporting codesign and prototyping with creative tools (Yu and Sangiorgi, 2018). Overall, leveraging service design has been highlighted as a service research priority (Ostrom et al., 2010, 2015).\n2. Service design research and DSR: Service design is an evolving field, and although it is frequently considered as originating from and as a subfield of design, the initial contributions to service design can be traced to Shostack's (1984) seminal article on service blueprinting. Recently, service design multidisciplinary contributions have been traced to service research, design, IS, interaction design and operations management (Joly et al., forthcoming). According to this study, a service perspective provides the conceptual framework to design for value co-creation within service systems (Edvardsson and Tronvoll, 2013), whereas design offers the methods and tools to support the process of understanding and envisioning new forms of value co-creation through service (Kimbell, 2011). Marketing brings an extensive understanding of customer-centric service systems (Mahr et al., 2013) at both frontstage and backstage of service provision (Bitner et al., 2008). The design of service interfaces to support the user experience is a key contribution of interaction design (Zimmerman et al., 2011). Operations management, in turn, focuses on planning and controlling service operations and on designing the entire service delivery system to enable the customer experience (Sampson, 2012). In parallel, IS contributes with the information technology (IT) component of service systems (Glushko and Nomorosa, 2012). With such rich multidisciplinary contributions, it is not surprising that service design research assumes many forms and its methodological foundations need further exploration (Ostrom et al., 2015).\n3. Applying the DSR methodology to service design research: Many different approaches to conduct DSR have been proposed in the literature, such as in the pioneering works by Nunamaker et al. (1990) and Walls et al. (1992). Hevner et al.'s (2004) seminal article offers a set of guidelines to conduct DSR, and this is later extended and arranged into a three-cycles view, encompassing relevance, design and rigor (Hevner, 2007). The relevance cycle bridges the research contextual and empirical ground, i.e., the organizational or societal problems addressed by the research with the design of the artifact. The design cycle involves building, designing and evaluating the artifact. Finally, the rigor cycle relates the design of the artifact with existing and relevant scientific and methodological foundations. Offering a structured and step-by-step approach, Peffers et al. (2007) propose the design science research methodology (DSRM). DSRM is well suited for cross-disciplinary research and has already been applied in service design research (Teixeira et al., 2017; Patricio et al., 2018).\n4. Implications and future research: Service design research has already successfully applied DSR to develop new service design methods. However, advancing service design as a human-centered, participatory and multidisciplinary approach to creating new services can benefit from dedicated DSR approaches for service design. This cross-fertilization between DSR and service design has several implications and opens new and promising avenues for research.\n5. Conclusion: DSR is a well-known and documented methodology in IS but despite being used increasingly in service design and service research, it is still new to many scholars in these fields. This paper makes a first attempt at introducing DSR literature, terminology and processes, including potential contributions and respective evaluations, to service design researchers. This paper also presents an application of DSR, showing how it can be used to support service design research. Finally, this paper presents how future research can leverage DSR to expand service design research impact on the real world, expand service design research knowledge base and evolve DSR for service design research. These research directions also address recent calls for future research in service design and innovation namely: expanding the foundations of service design by integrating multiple perspectives and methods, advancing service design by leveraging the role of technology; and strengthening research impact through transformative service research (Patricio, Gustafsson and Fisk, 2018).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Service design is a multidisciplinary approach that is key to service innovation, as it brings new service ideas to life. In this context, the development of new service design methods and models for creating new service futures is an important stream of service design research. Such developments can benefit from a systematized research methodology that builds on existing knowledge and robustly evaluates the suitability of research contributions. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper is to present design science research (DSR), an established methodology from the information systems field, and examine how it can be useful for service design research by supporting the development of new artifacts, such as service design constructs, methods and models.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper presents DSR and related literature and shows how DSR can support service design research through a step-by-step approach. A methodology to develop prescriptive-driven solutions for classes of problems, DSR can support service design research in developing rigorous and relevant research. One illustrative example of a service design research effort using the DSR approach is presented.\nFindings: Building on DSR's robust methodological background, this paper discusses how DSR can support service design research, namely, through the development of new methods and models, and how DSR can be adapted to leverage service design research participatory, iterative, human-centric and creative approach.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides an overview of DSR and proposes it as a methodology to conduct service design research, offering step-by-step guidance on the application of DSR in service design research and discussing how it can be adapted according to the specific characteristics of service design research and drive future research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Determinants of hotel social media continued usage	[ "Interaction", "Social media", "Hotel industry", "Continued use", "Ubiquity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The emergence of Web 2.0 has transformed the way in which people communicate, share experiences and search for information about traveling (Ayeh et al., 2013a) and increased the use of social media networks before, during and after travel. Minazzi (2015, p. 12) has defined social media networks as \"websites that allow subscribers to connect and interact with other people [...] [which] creates a group of people who share information and content.\" In effect, social media networks allow users to engage with businesses and other users anywhere and at any time.\nLiterature review and conceptual model: Social media in the hotel industry\nMethods: Sample and data collection\nResults: Sample characteristics\nDiscussion and conclusion: Discussion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: With the emergence of mobile devices, factors such as interaction and ubiquity have become increasingly important in the use of social media networks. However, regarding hotel guests' use of social media, knowledge about how those factors contribute to guests' continued social media use remains limited. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of interaction and ubiquity mediated by trust, benefits and enjoyment on hotel guests' continued use of social media networks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To examine the hypotheses, a self-administered questionnaire was posted by ten UK hotels on their social media pages. A total of 258 usable data were collected and analyzed using partial least squares analysis.\nFindings: Two social media characteristics - interaction and ubiquity - influenced hotel guests' continued use of social media via the mediating variables of trust, benefits and enjoyment.\nOriginality/value: This study bridges the gap in research regarding intended continued use of social media networks by offering new empirical evidence concerning the determinants of hotel guests' continued use of social media.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Selecting ideas for new product development: Comparison of monadic test and adaptive concept screening under the G theory framework	[ "New product development", "Product innovation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Firms continue to struggle with making effective and efficient continuation or termination decisions in their new product development (NPD) process. To select a few viable new product concepts, marketers need to conduct concept screening by asking consumers to evaluate many new product ideas, sometimes up to hundreds of them at a time (Anschuetz, 1996; Moore, 1982). To date, researchers have mainly used two methods to screen potential product concepts, i.e., monadic concept test using sequential ratings and the preference-based comparisons. The traditional monadic test, which asks each customer to indicate his/her purchase intention, remains a widely used screening approach in practice, although it is less sensitive to small differences and tends to provide \"average\" results with no significant differences for most of the concepts tested (Bengston and Brenner, 1964; Peng and Finn, 2010a; Trebbi and Flesch, 1983). Recently, Toubia and Flores (2007) have proposed the adaptive concept screening (ACS) approach, which assesses consumer preferences for a new product concept in comparison with others, and claimed that ACS can identify the concepts that have a greater chance of success with a smaller sample of respondents, therefore is more cost-effective. However, since direct comparisons of the two methods are not available, it is premature to conclude that ACS is superior to the monadic test in terms of its psychometric quality and accuracy for screening decision making.\n2. Literature review: Despite the increasing frequency of new product introduction and the growing sophistication of new technologies, many new products fail to realize their potential or experience adoption at a much slower rate than expected (Cui et al., 2009). Businesses have a long way to go in terms of understanding consumer needs and developing viable new product ideas. As the phenomenal success of Domino's and Nestle and other makers of consumer packaged goods attest to, effective new product concept testing remains one of the most important activities that can lead to successful new product launches and enhance the competitive advantages of firms (Crawford and Di Benedetto, 2015). Meanwhile, firms continue to struggle with making continuation or termination decisions in their NPD process.\n3. A Generalizability theory framework: Concept testing practitioners typically do not consider the issues of measurement and data quality and mostly rely on simple measurement heuristics, such as the percent Top 2 Box (hereafter called T2B) scores on a rating scale. There is virtually no publicly available evidence to address the reliability or validity of concept testing practices (Peng and Finn, 2008). Likewise, there is also no readily available framework or metrics to assess and compare different concept screening methods. Since the screening methodologies are based on different assumptions and analytical metrics, researchers need a common and coherent theoretical framework and consistent analytical tools to assess their relative performance in selecting viable new product concepts. Without such a common ground, it would be difficult to \"compare apples with oranges.\" Since screening tests typically rely on some questions (i.e. measurement tasks) and selected respondents, the generalizability of the measurement tools can serve as an adequate basis for comparing different methods and the robustness of their results.\n4. Methodology and data: A multinational company of fast moving consumer goods with a strong market share and a history of concept testing in Paris made the data available with the provision that no proprietary information is published. The data are based on the two screening methodologies in a screening test, in which 50 similar concepts with small changes are tested among the product class users, aiming to identify the best concepts for further development. Two independent field screening projects were run simultaneously in Paris in the fall of 2009 to screen the same 50 yogurt concepts. The concepts are presented with a simple factual statement giving minimum descriptions of the attributes. A few examples of the stripped concept statements are provided as following:\n5. Empirical analyses and results: In this section, we compare the testing results from the two screening methodologies and their psychometric quality. We first report the percent T2B Purchase Intent distribution of the 50 concepts. On a five-point scale measure of purchase intent, T2B would include all positive responses (\"Will definitely buy\" and \"Probably buy\"). As shown in Figure 2, T2B distribution varies from a high 83 percent of consumers to a low 53 percent, with an average of 73 percent and a standard error of 5.9 percent. Clearly, although there is some variation within the distribution, it remains difficult to discriminate between concepts.\n6. Conclusions and implications: 6.1. Findings\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: New product concept screening, i.e., selecting a few viable innovative concepts from numerous candidates, involves high stakes and is complicated and resource intensive. Over the years, there has been heated debate about the relative merit of monadic (sequential) tests vs that of preference-based paired comparisons. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study proposes the Generalizability Theory as a framework to assess and compare the performance of traditional monadic test with the Adaptive Concept Screening (ACS) in terms of their testing results and psychometric quality.\nFindings: Using 50 yogurt concepts and two independent groups of respondents, the results indicate that ACS requires a significant smaller sample of respondents to achieve a necessary minimum G coefficient for decision making. Moreover, ACS offers a more discriminating and reliable solution for early stage concept screening as manifested by a higher G coefficient and greater percentage of variance due to the selected concepts given the same sampling design.\nPractical implications: The results lend strong support to ACS as a more cost-effective method for screening new product concepts and the Generalizability Theory as a systematic framework for assessing concept testing methods.\nOriginality/value: This study adopts the Generalizability Theory framework to assess the validity of new product concept screening method.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A heuristic model for explaining diversity's paradox	[ "Demographic diversity", "Diversimilarity curves", "Economic heuristic", "Similarity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The intensive study of how workforce diversity affects organizations is a relatively recent phenomenon, triggered in part by the conclusions of the Hudson Institute's 1987 report that identified the implications of major ongoing demographic changes in the work environment (Johnston and Packer, 1987). Initially, scholars, corporate leaders, human resource managers and consultants posited the \"business case\" that argues that organizational increases in demographic diversity resulted in competitive strategic advantages for corporations (Thomas, 1991; Cox and Blake, 1991). However, subsequent studies have begun to question the presumed automatic link between diversity and organizational performance (Lindsay, 1994; Milliken and Martins, 1996; Williams and O'Reilly, 1998). While some studies suggest that organizations benefit from demographic diversity through increases in creativity and better quality decision-making (Cox et al., 1991; Herring, 2009; McLeod et al., 1996; McVittie et al., 2008; Miller and Triana, 2009; Watson et al., 1993), other studies suggest that an increase in workforce diversity is associated with dysfunctional organizational outcomes such as conflict, decreased organizational commitment and increased turnover (Chen, 1992; Mobley and Payne, 1992; Pelled, 1996; Pugh et al., 2008; Tsui et al., 1992). A third set of studies suggest that to understand the workforce diversity - performance relationship, researchers need to account the moderating effects of diversity climate (Gonzales and DeNisi, 2009; Kossek et al., 2003; McKay et al., 2008).\nDiversity and similarity curves: a brief overview: Ofori-Dankwa and Julian (2002, 2004) used the notion of diversity and similarity curves to capture the simultaneous interaction of demographic diversity and value congruence and their subsequent effects on conflict and creativity. Figure 1 presents of the basic DSC model that mirrors the supply and demand curves from economics. In the DSC model, the X-axis represents the potential range of an aggregated measure of creativity in an organization and starts from no creativity, at the left, to a very high level of creativity at the right end. The Y-axis represents the potential range of an aggregated measure of competitiveness across the organization. The Y-axis ranges from no competitiveness (a very high level of conformity), through moderate competitiveness, to a very high level of competitiveness that is highly conflictual and dysfunctional.\nVaried organizational outcomes associated with demographic diversity: a short-run perspective: With the conceptual tools from the enriched DSC model, we can begin to assess the effects of changing combinations of demographic diversity and value congruence levels and how these lead to either positive or negative organizational outcomes. When dealing with the implications of interacting curves, the economics discipline suggests a distinction between a short-run and a long-run analysis. The short-run can be distinguished from the long run by the relaxation of certain ceteris paribus assumptions. For example, a shift in either the supply or demand curve may eventually lead to a shift in the other curve. This takes time and less than this amount of time (when such additional shifts cannot occur) is called the short-run and greater than this amount of time (when such additional shifts can occur) is called the long-run (Mankiw, 1998). We will first use the \"short run\" perspective to explore the effects of an exogenous shift in demographic diversity levels and then subsequently examine the effects of an exogenous shift in value congruence levels.\nVaried organizational outcomes associated with demographic diversity: a long-run perspective: Turning our focus to longer time horizons, some studies show how an increase in demographic diversity may lead, in the long-run, to the development of cooperative (hybrid) cultural norms that enable the emergence of positive organizational outcomes (Watson et al., 1993; Chatman and Flynn, 2001; Earley and Mosakowski, 2000). Other studies suggest, however, that an increase in demographic diversity may, in the long run, lead to the backlash effect (Tsui et al., 1992; Mobley and Payne, 1992). The backlash effect occurs when an organizational demographic diversity initiative leads to a decrease in valued organizational outcomes such as organizational commitment and creativity (Tsui et al., 1992) and an increase intra organizational tensions and conflicts (Mobley and Payne, 1992; Chen, 1992).\nImplications for understanding diversity and its inherent paradoxes: This article makes a contribution to the diversity literature by presenting a framework for better understanding the mixed organizational outcomes associated with demographic diversity (Milliken and Martins, 1996; Williams and O'Reilly, 1998). The DSC model explains situations wherein increases in demographic diversity or value congruence could lead to either increases or decreases in both creativity and conflict (Ely and Thomas, 2001; Chatman and Flynn, 2001). There are several implications associated with this study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a heuristic model to better understand the inherently paradoxical and concomitant positive and negative organizational outcomes associated with demographic diversity and value congruence in organizations. It further illustrates the resultant organizational dynamics that result from shifting levels of diversity and value congruence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper adopts the supply and demand heuristic from the economics discipline and further develops the diversity and similarity curves (DSC) model proposed by Ofori-Dankwa and Julian. Further, this analysis is carried out from both short-run (static) and long-run (dynamic) perspectives.\nFindings: This study illustrates how different levels of organizational diversity and value congruence (reflected by diversity and similarity curves respectively) could concurrently result in both positive and negative levels of organizational creativity and competitiveness.\nResearch limitations/implications: As a heuristic, this study's model is a simplistic representation of the inherently complex set of relationships and outcomes that are associated with paradox in a social setting.\nPractical implications: This model has managerial utility for explaining how different levels of diversity in an organizational setting could potentially have different positive and negative outcomes.\nOriginality/value: This study unpacks the implications of different levels of diversity in an organizational setting and sheds original light on the dynamic nature of virtuous and vicious organizational cycles associated with diversity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The dual impact of online communication on older adults' social connectivity	[ "Panel data", "Longitudinal data" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In today's aging world, online communication is often believed to enhance the social connectivity, i.e., an \"individual's perception of the interpersonal relationships and social roles in their life\" (WHOQOL Group, 1995, p. 1405), of older adults (Ambient Assisted Living Joint Program, 2012; Cody et al., 1999; Erickson, 2011; Shapira et al., 2007; Saunders, 2004; Waycott et al., 2013). Allegedly, online communication has the potential to enhance older adults' social well-being, and, as a consequence, improve health status (Berkman et al., 2000; Fees et al., 1999; Hawkley and Cacioppo, 2010; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010) and reduce healthcare costs associated with aging (Alemayehu and Warner, 2004; De Meijer et al., 2013; Przywara, 2010). As such, online communication and the tools that allow for such communication form a noteworthy example of a social information system, especially given the alleged potential of making a substantial beneficial contribution to society at large (Hasan et al., 2014).\n2. Literature review: Longitudinal and structural equation modelling studies have found contradictory effects of online communication on social connectivity (Brandtzaeg, 2012; Burke et al., 2011; Hampton, 2007; Lampe et al., 2006; Miyata and Kobayashi, 2008; Park, 2011; Steinfield et al., 2008; Valkenburg and Peter, 2009; Vergeer and Pelzer, 2009). These conflicting findings may be explained by implicit differences in previous studies as to who uses what, how, and to communicate with whom. Here, we address these assumptions and formulate and test four hypotheses, recognizing that online communication and social connectivity are multifaceted.\n3. Methods: 3.1. Population and sample\n4. Results: 4.1. Who uses what and how\n5. Discussion: In answering our research question, we find that online communication in general does not enhance the social connectivity of older people. Rather, e-mail use negatively impacts on neighborhood connectivity, and Facebook use on connectivity with friends. These findings are surprising given that older adults are increasingly a target group for online communication design and diffusion projects aiming to improve health and social well-being (Ambient Assisted Living Joint Program, 2012; Cody et al., 1999; Erickson, 2011; Shapira et al., 2007; Saunders, 2004; Waycott et al., 2013). In addition, our findings have important theoretical implications regarding conceptualizations of online communication tools and social connectivity. Finally, we have demonstrated that initial social connectivity is an important explanatory variable.\n6. Conclusions: The impact that online communication tools have on older adults' social connectivity appears to be mixed: positive or non-existent under some conditions but negative under others. In seeking to explain this mixed impact, this study first highlights the importance of carefully considering the characteristics of online communication tools, such as their information richness and privacy riskiness, as well as characteristics of the social contact, including geographical proximity and emotional closeness. Second, our results indicate a buffering effect, with older adults that are initially well connected apparently immune to the negative implications of online communication seen in others. This seems to imply that online communication reinforces the social differences between the haves and the have nots. Finally, the findings in this study demonstrate the relevance of taking the heterogeneity in populations of older adults into account. We highlighted a number of factors that deserve focussed attention both of researchers and policymakers. Although the relevant factors may differ per older adult population, the significant factors in our population form a good starting point.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In today's aging world online communication is often viewed as a means to enhance social connectivity, and therefore well-being, of older adults. However, previous research on the influence of online communication on social connectivity largely disregards older adults, yields conflicting results and fails to assess the - debatable - causal direction of relationship. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these issues by developing four hypotheses related to who uses what, how, with whom.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a panel data study to test the hypotheses, including 302 older adults. Response rates are between 62 and 75 percent.\nFindings: The authors find, first, that older adults differentiate between social connectivity with other village members, i.e., village connectivity, and connectivity with friends. Second, the impact of online communication varies among these two types of social connectivity. Where e-mail use has a negative impact on village connectivity, it does not affect connectivity with friends. Facebook use on the other hand has a negative impact on connectivity with friends, but not on village connectivity. The negative effects were not found among those older adults that were already well-connected on forehand, indicating a buffer effect.\nPractical/implications: Policy makers' implementing online communication tools to strengthen social connectivity of older adults, may want to carefully select tools based on the type of connectivity they aim to enhance. Impact needs to be monitored.\nOriginality/value: The authors contribute by analyzing how characteristics of online communication tools, i.e., information richness and privacy protection, as well as social connectivity, i.e., geographical proximity and emotional closeness jointly shape older adults' social connectivity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"Grab gatorade!": food marketing, regulation and the young consumer	[ "Policy", "Child", "Media literacy", "Food marketing", "Food literacy", "Teenager" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In 2012, Gatorade released Bolt!, a free, mobile-app videogame available for download on iTunes. The videogame featured Olympic Gold Medalist Usain Bolt in cartoon form racing to pick up gold coins: the objective for players was to navigate Bolt through the course in the fastest time possible. Collecting Gatorade along the route increased Bolt's speed, whereas touching water droplets slowed him down. The game tutorial instructed, \"Keep Your Performance High By Avoiding Water\" and \"Grab Gatorade To Fill Your Fuel Meter\". Described as \"addictive\" and as offering \"hours of entertainment\" by the developer and promoted on social media by celebrities like Justin Bieber, Bolt! enjoyed 2.3 million downloads and 87 million gameplays between 2012 and 2013. Over 70 per cent of the players were in the age group of 13 to 24 years (The People of the State of California v The Gatorade Company, 2017, p. 3).\nRegulating food marketing to children: Food marketing to children has become a hot-button issue over the past few decades, largely due to the problem of childhood obesity. Recent reports by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that, globally, the number of obese children and adolescents (age group 5-19 years) has increased 10-fold since 1975 [NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), 2017]. As of 2016, 337 million children and adolescents were overweight or obese [NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), 2017]. In countries like Canada or the USA, this represents approximately one-third of young people (Rao et al., 2016)[1]. Such alarming statistics are often linked to the influence of unhealthy food marketing to children (Sadeghirad et al., 2016), and the ways that Big Food work to target young people with products that will compromise their long-term health. Recognizing the need to protect children from the marketing of foods high in sugar, fat and/or salt, in 2010, the WHO developed a set of recommendations on the topic [World Health Organization (WHO), 2010], as well as a framework document to help policy makers wanting to implement the recommendations [World Health Organization (WHO), 2012]. Among other things, the WHO documents draw attention to the complexity of contemporary food marketing to children. No longer limited to spokes-characters on cereal boxes or television advertisements, modern marketing techniques to children range from product placement and sponsorship to celebrity endorsement, branded computer games and social media messaging. Television advertising certainly does remain a pressing problem, with American and Canadian children viewing (on average) nine to ten food-related TV commercials each day, primarily for unhealthy products [Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF), 2017; Frazier and Harris, 2017]. In the supermarket, \"fun\" child-oriented appeals on packaged foods can be found on hundreds of products in every food category (Elliott, 2012, 2008). (Indeed, a recent survey of my local supermarket revealed products ranging from Spiderman-branded \"FunCookies\" and frozen chicken nuggets licensed with Star Wars characters to Disney Frozen-themed tuna fish and \"Kids Ice Cream\" in \"Princess Potion\" flavour).\nA problem of food promotion, a problem of definition: the child/teenager divide: Taking steps to combat childhood obesity is a good thing, as is the goal to limit the promotion of poorly nutritious foods. Without question, the food industry has transformed what we eat, how we eat it and what we think of food (Patel, 2012) and calls for government regulation (not industry self-regulation) are intended to provide some measure of protection against the \"eat more\" environment (Nestle and Nesheim, 2012) both created and promoted by Big Food. According to the US Federal Trade Commission, 48 food and beverage companies spent $1.8bn in 2009 marketing foodstuffs directly to youth in the USA using \"a full spectrum of promotional techniques\" [Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 2012]. In Canada, more recent (2017) statistics note that advertisers spend over $1.5bn annually advertising food products to all Canadians [Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), 2017, pp. 20, 22] - $703m on television food advertising and $801m on internet food advertising. Even though the food industry has worked to improve the nutritional profile of foods marketed to children (especially through the industry-driven Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative), health and policy advocates argue that these nutritional improvements are not enough, and that the current self-regulatory system \"is failing to protect children from food marketing high in fat, sugar and sodium\" (Potvin-Kent and Wanless, 2014, p. 558).\nConsidering the teenage consumer when it comes to regulating food marketing: agency, competency, possibility [...]: Two problems, I suggest, arise from conflating children with teenagers in the discussions over regulating food promotion to young people. The first difficulty is that it can be viewed as political sleight of hand conducted by those opposed to the food industry and to Big Food marketing. Consider, for example, the Bolt! case detailed at the beginning of this commentary. Attorney General Becerra's legal complaint states that the game had a \"largely teen and young adult audience\" - over 70 per cent of its players ranged from age 13 to 24 years (The People of the State of California v. The Gatorade Company, 2017, p. 1). However, Attorney General Becerra's press release quotes him as commenting on the immorality of making misleading statements to children. He transforms the teenager/young adult specifically identified in the legal complaint into the far more vulnerable sounding \"child\" for the purposes of a press release - presumably because it is more offensive to disparage water to children than it is to disparage water to teenagers and young adults. Rhetorically, the use of \"children\" in the press release serves to bring to mind precisely the commercial manipulation (and the vulnerability) that the evidence suggests typifies children's experience with food promotion. It does not conjure up notions of the teenager who is cynical of media messages and certainly does not suggest a 24 year-old adult. Equal critique might be levelled at the M2K Coalition's decision to limit its explanation of why teenagers \"are vulnerable\" to food promotion to their \"overwhelming\" hormones and \"aroused\" emotions. Such explanations reduce decision-making to a biological function, suggesting that teenagers are not in control. In fact, the Association of Canadian Advertisers critiqued Health Canada's 2017 proposal on Restricting Unhealthy Food and Beverage Marketing to Children for citing similar studies on teenagers' \"impulsive, risk-taking, emotional nature\" [Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), 2017, p. 11]. The ACA argued:\nConclusion: The promotion of unhealthy foods to children is ubiquitous and problematic, and steps must be taken to create a food environment that fosters long-term health. Parents/guardians are the gatekeepers to food in the home and should not have to withstand a tsunami of commercial messages in the quest to feed their children well. Preventing the marketing of food to children is an important step in this regard. When it comes to teenagers, however, much is to be gained by recognizing their consumer status and how they negotiate food, food identities, food products and food promotions. They are forming the (food) attitudes and purchasing behaviours that they will hold as adults, and implementing top-down restrictions on food advertising to a 16-year-old is not only unlikely to happen but also is equally unlikely to change those attitudes/behaviours (indeed, many teenagers reject the paternalism of such a move). Even if regulations are successful, something more must be done. In my research with teenagers, I have learned that they strongly assert their need for information as consumers of goods, but seldom as consumers of food. Teenagers generally dismissed that food marketing influenced their own consumption and demonstrated limited ability to critically assess the health qualities of packaged foods (Elliott, 2017). This signals the opportunity to teach the skills required to navigate a complex food environment and to question how marketing appeals influence attitudes. Yet teaching skills is only part of the equation, as it needs to be a partnership with teenagers and a process of engagement. Teenagers' own cynicism about marketing messages can be engaged to encourage them to buy and think differently, and to reject the ways that the food industry manipulates consumer preferences towards highly processed, low-nutrient foods.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine current regulatory initiatives on food marketing to young people and to highlight unique considerations when it comes to teenagers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper integrates the policy and public health literature with the literature on childhood studies and consumer studies.\nFindings: Since the policy goal is to mitigate the impact of food marketing on young people's attitudes and behaviours, it is necessary to recognize the consumer competencies of teenagers and consider the social and symbolic meanings of food for them. It is suggested that radical media literacy, coupled with food literacy, is essential to navigating a complex food environment filled with promotional messages for ultra-processed foods.\nResearch limitations/implications: This analysis has implications for policy development.\nPractical implications: Consideration of age - in terms of different developmental competencies, motivating factors and additional initiatives to support healthy eating (such as teaching media literacy skills) - is necessary to policy development related to food marketing to children.\nOriginality/value: Little research integrates the literature on food policy/regulation with the critical work on consumer studies/childhood studies. This commentary also directs attention to novel areas of consideration related to teenagers and food marketing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Effects of regulations and competition on the innovativeness-performance relationship: Evidence from the financial services industry	[ "Firm performance", "Competition", "Financial services", "Process innovativeness", "Product innovativeness", "Regulatory regime" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One of the most highly regulated - and highly competitive - industries in the world is the financial services sector (Zineldin, 2005; Blankson et al., 2007; Sanchez et al., 2009; Cepeda-Carrion et al., 2016). This is most likely due to the delicate nature of the service to national economies, livelihood and even the stability of the world. Both regulatory regime and competition serve as external environmental factors impacting both the financial and non-financial performance of financial service firms. Saemundsson and Candi (2014) and Lane and Maxfield (1996) have found that such environmental factors also affect firms' innovation propensity. In the financial services sectors, the regulatory regime and competition is likely to predict innovativeness, influence innovation implementation, and shape the relationship between innovativeness and performance. Innovativeness in this study is defined in line with Hult et al. (2004) as the firm's capacity to engage in the introduction of new processes, products, or ideas. Competition in this study reflects the intensity with which financial service firms contest against each other in a specific industry. Regulatory regime indicates the level of supervision and monitoring over the activities of financial service firms.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Drawing on the absorptive capacity theory, this study argues that the extent to which financial service firms assimilate, transfer, and apply new external information regarding regulatory regime and competition will determine their innovativeness and firm performance (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Zahra and George, 2002). Financial service firms' ability to appreciate relevant information and knowledge of the external environment and its impact will help them become more innovative. This in turn will help them achieve higher levels of performance that they would not have achieved without absorbing relevant and new knowledge.\nMethods: Sample and data collection\nMeasures: Regulatory regime\nControl variables: As was in the literature (e.g. Wang, 2008; Odoom, 2016), the study controlled for firm size, type of service, firm age, number of owners and form of ownership as having potential impact on the performance of financial service firms. The study measured the size by the log of total number of full time employees and firm age by the log of the number of years the firm had been in business. As indicated, the study controlled for the number of owners and the form of business ownership in terms of private or public.\nMeasurement assessment: The study initially assessed the reliability and validity before estimating the hypothesized model. To test the reliability and validity of the measures, the study used Amos 20 and the maximum likelihood estimation procedure to examine all scales in a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Exact model fit was assessed using kh2 test. Following Bagozzi and Yi (2012), Boateng et al. (2016) and Okoe et al. (2016) a number of approximate fit heuristics were also examined to provide additional information on model fit, and the indices ranged from good to very good. A four-factor CFA model fits the data well, with indices meeting the respective criteria (kh2 (335)=832.442; GFI=0.96; NFI=0.94; TLI=0.95; CFI=0.96; SMSEA=0.062). We include process and product innovativeness from the CFA since they were single factor constructs. All factor loadings were positive and significant as shown in Table I. The study inspected the internal consistency values and loadings of the items on their corresponding constructs (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The values were good and above the minimum threshold of 0.70 (Bagozzi and Yi, 2012) and ranged from 0.70 to 0.84 (Table I). We followed Fornell and Larcker's (1981) recommended test to assess discriminant validity. On the basis of this test, the study found that the correlation between any pair of main constructs was not larger than the respective square root of the average variance extracted for each of the constructs, in support of discriminant validity (Table II).\nCommon method bias: We conducted two tests to show that common method bias was not a problem for the current study. A Lindell and Whitney's (2001) test was first conducted through the market variable approach before a Harman one-factor test. Both approaches showed that common method bias was not a problem for the current study.\nResults: The analysis for this study was conducted on two fronts, thus, through multiple regression and structural equation modeling. To assess the hypotheses, six different regression models were specified with robust standard errors. Model 1 (see Table III) specifies only the controls on the dependent variables (firm performance), i.e. financial and non-financial performance of financial service firms. To test H3 and H4, the direct effects of competition and regulatory regime were regressed on firm performance (financial and non-financial) in model 2 while including controls. H3 predicted that higher regulatory regime would lower firm performance. The study did not find support for this hypothesis as the coefficients on both financial (b=0.212, p<0.001) and non-financial performance (b=0.228, p<0.001) were positive and significant. This result suggests that higher regulatory regime increases firm performance. This may be explained that in financial service firms, the increase in regulatory systems may make them more efficient and therefore increase their performance. H4 also predicted that higher level of competition would lower firm performance. The results showed significant and negative coefficients for both financial (b=-0.407, p<0.001) and non-financial performance (b=-0.476, p<0.001). The results indicate that H4 is supported.\nConclusions and implications: The aim of this study was to assess the influence of environmental factors (such as regulations and competition) as predictors of innovation development and as moderators of innovation implementation and performance relationship. Environmental factors play an important role in the operations of businesses, as they shape the development and implementation of strategies. In spite of this, the extent to which they predict innovation strategy and moderate the relationship between innovation and performance in the financial service sector has not received adequate empirical interrogation. This study asserts that in developing and implementing innovation strategies in the financial services markets, the firm must recognize the value of new external information on regulatory regime and competition as key environmental factors. Financial service firms must assimilate, transform and apply such new knowledge in their innovation development and implementation in order to improve performance. The findings of this study show that both competition and regulatory regime influence innovation development. It also found that regulatory regime positively moderates process innovation and firm performance, but does not affect product innovation. However, competition was found to negatively moderate the relationship between process innovation and performance, but had a positive effect for product innovation. The interaction among the two external factors and product innovation had a negative effect on performance, but a positive effect was recorded in the case of process innovation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and the extent of moderation effect of the regulatory regime and competition, on the innovativeness-performance relationship among financial services firms. Based on the absorptive capacity theory, this study argues that firms must gather adequate knowledge from the external environment (specifically on regulatory systems and competitive landscape) to assist in developing competitive innovation strategies, and to realize the needed performance benefits from such strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from the Ghana's financial services sector with a focus on banking and insurance institutions. Structural equation modeling and regression models were specified to test both the direct effects of variables of interest, and the moderation effects of environmental factors on the independent and dependent variables.\nFindings: The results of the study show that both process and product innovativeness enhance financial services firms' performance. While competition was found to stifle innovativeness, regulatory regime was found to promote innovativeness in financial services. Regulatory regime was also found to positively moderate the relationship between process innovativeness and performance, while competition was found to positively moderate the relationship between product innovativeness and performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: The firms sampled are from an emerging economy with a growing financial services sector, and as a result, the findings may not apply to contexts with different economic characteristics.\nOriginality/value: This study asserts that in enhancing innovativeness in the financial services markets, firms must recognize the value of new external information on regulatory regime and competition as key environmental factors. Financial service firms must assimilate, transform, and apply such new knowledge in their innovation efforts in order to improve performance. For firms to fully benefit from their innovation, process innovativeness must be aligned with regulatory systems while product innovation yields best returns in competitive periods.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Preventive maintenance (PM) planning: a review	[ "Planning", "Maintenance policy", "Preventive maintenance", "Cost-based", "Failure-based", "Time-based" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In general, maintenance is defined as the combination of all technical and administrative actions, including supervision, which ensure that a system is in its required functioning state (Reason, 2000; Swanson, 2001). Maintaining a system is usually related to maintenance actions such as repairing, replacing, overhauling, inspecting, servicing, adjusting, testing, measuring and detecting faults in order to avoid any failure that would lead to interruptions in production operations (Duffuaa et al., 1999; Ismail et al., 2009). Performance measurement for maintenance systems can be based on various factors (Parida et al., 2015).\n2. Overview of maintenance policies: Nowadays, the efficiencies and effectiveness of the whole of a manufacturing operation are dependent on the sustainable performance of systems or equipment, which can lead to valuable improvements in terms of quality, cost and time (Nakajima, 1986; Khan and Darrab, 2010). In order to produce better product quality at a minimal cost, the availability and reliability of the production line, widely known as \"the system\", plays a central role in sustaining a competitive edge over other manufacturing organizations (Muchiri et al., 2011). The word \"system\" in engineering terms is translated as, \"the assemblage of machines which consists of mechanical or electrical devices that transmits energy to assist in the performance of human tasks\". \"System\" usually refers to the machines by which equipment, such as tools, as well as materials, people and information, are utilized to produce value-added physical and informational products. Hence, systems are considered to be an inevitable part of production, which require constant attention and maintenance to achieve the desired operating conditions (Ahmed et al., 2005).\n3. PM planning: In the context of maintenance, planning encompasses activities that are undertaken with the aid of all maintenance resources such as material requirements, labour requirements, time assignments and technical references related to equipment, that are determined and prepared prior to a task's performance (Duffuaa et al., 1999). In other words, without proper planning, inconsistent and unreliable procedures will result, which may lead to interruptions in production. Therefore, proper planning is basically the preparation for performing necessary maintenance tasks on a priority basis by referring to the required resources, information and schedule.\n4. PM planning concept: In general, the PM planning concept is briefly described as the general idea that covers the elements of PM in a simple and systematic way. The process for determining a PM planning concept is based on an investigation of the characteristics of the conceptual description, specifications and application domains (Young, 2003). Hence, in this research, the literature on the PM planning concept that is reviewed and discussed consists of three facets:\n5. Planning-based PM: Planning-based PM is all about the essential analysis of comprehensive planning for PM. It involves the fundamental maintenance criteria of systems as the basis for an analysis that derives the best PM plan. Planning-based PM is categorized in three ways, i.e., cost-based, time-based and failure-based planning. Details of planning-based PM will be discussed in subsequent subsections.\n6. Literature assertions: PM is one of the maintenance actions that is normally applied in industry to ensure that systems get to perform their intended functions for a long time. Effective PM has proven to have a positive impact on organizations' operations and profits. According to the survey above, each of the literatures concerning PM planning was studied by discussing the elements underpinning the PM planning concept, namely, the objectives, the states of systems and the methods applied. Gaps in the available literature and the justifications for these have been stated in the literature findings. They can be discussed further from three perspectives: the trends in the PM planning used, analyses of PM planning elements; and remarks for the direction of future research. Each of these perspectives will be briefly discussed in the subsections that follow.\n7. Conclusion and remarks for future research direction: Based on the discussions derived from the literature's assertions, it has been identified that most of the applied PM methods have tended towards the development of complex mathematical equations in order to solve maintenance issues. However, according to Almomani et al. (2012), relatively few studies have focussed on the determination of optimal PM planning. The authors have advanced a method for simplifying maintenance operations by grouping systems, which ca enhance PM planning. Yet, the condition of systems should be taken into consideration when developing an optimal plan prior to the ratification of a grouping process. Therefore, it is preferable to have a model or framework to act as guidance in the proper procedures necessary for optimal PM planning.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide comprehensive information on preventive maintenance (PM) planning and methods used in the industry in order to achieve an effective maintenance system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The literature review is organized in a way that provides the general overview of the researches done in the PM. This paper discusses the literatures that had been reviewed on four main topics, which are the holistic view of maintenance policies, PM planning, PM planning concept and PM planning-based in developing optimal planning in executing PM actions.\nFindings: PM policy is one of the original proactive techniques that has been used since the start of researches on maintenance system. Review of the methods presented in this paper shows that most researches analyse effectiveness using artificial intelligence, simulation, mathematical formulation, matrix formation, critical analysis and multi-criteria method. While in practice, PM activities were either planned based on cost, time or failure. Research trends on planning and methods for PM show that the variation of approaches used over the year from early 1990s until today.\nPractical implications: Research about PM is known to be extensively conducted and majority of companies applied the policy in their production line. However, most analysis and method suggested in published literatures were done based on mathematical computation rather than focussing on solution to real problems in the industry. This normally would lead to the problems in understanding by the practitioner. Therefore, this paper presented researches on PM planning and suggested on the methods that are practical, simple and effective for application in the real industry.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper comes from its detail analysis of PM planning in term of its research focus and also direction for application. Extensive reviews on the methods adopted in relation to PM planning based on the planning-based such as cost-based, time-based and failure-based were also provided.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaboration strategies for a transition economy: measuring culture in Albania	[ "Confirmatory factor analysis", "Albania", "Collaboration strategies", "Instrument validation", "National global culture model dimensions", "Transition economy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: National culture models help professionals strategically manage diverse values and practices when conducting business across countries (Caca, 2010; Chen et al., 2010; Michailova and Hutchings, 2006; Pheng and Yuquan, 2002; Siakas et al., 2010). More to the point, \"mismanaging cultural differences can render otherwise successful managers and organizations ineffective and frustrated when working across cultures\" (Pheng and Yuquan, 2002). Therefore, it is important for multinational managers to be aware of national culture theories.\n2 Theoretical background and literature review: 2.1 National culture models and problems\n3 Research design and methodology: The researchers held a post-positivist research ideology, which according to Creswell (2009) means the philosophy was to test a known theory or concept by gathering quantitative data. Ideologies are determined by the:\n4 Results and discussion: 4.1 Factor analysis and validation\n5 Conclusions: Albanian national culture was estimated for the first time in the literature, using a five-factor model adapted from the work of Hofstede. A multicultural model developed by the authors was piloted in the USA and then applied in Albania. The instrument was validated, and a statistically significant five-factor structure was confirmed using factor analysis. An asymmetric plot was created for critical comparison of Albania with five other theoretically selected countries, using the indexes for PDI, ICI, MFI, UAI, and LTI. Albania was found to be similar to its Balkan and Turkish neighbors, namely Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey, as compared with Asian or Western cultures such as that of the USA.\n6 Implications and future research: From a business standpoint, the multicultural indexes for Albania provide general indicators of the national beliefs, norms, and values, which foreign organizations may compare to their own cultural profile when interacting with professionals in this country. The indexes are aggregated means of Albanian nationals rather than exact measures (as with all other cultural coefficients at the country level of analysis). The best use of these indexes is for benchmarking and comparison. Foreign government, private corporations, or nonprofit organizations may compare their own culture profile with that of Albania to be aware of the similarities and differences.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The researchers in this study reviewed the literature to locate the most relevant multicultural theories, factors, and instruments in order to measure Albania's national culture. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An innovative combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to fit the multicultural construct to the sample data and then estimate the national culture (n=73). The multicultural indexes were calculated for five generally accepted national culture factors to compare with the benchmarks published in the literature.\nFindings: The multicultural indexes were calculated for five generally accepted national culture factors to compare with the benchmarks published in the literature. An asymmetric plot was created for critical comparison of Albania with five other theoretically selected countries, using the indexes for PDi, ICi, MFi, UAi, and LTi. Albania was found to be most similar to its Balkan and Turkish neighbors, as compared with Asian or Western cultures such as that of the USA.\nResearch limitations/implications: The researchers discussed the implications of knowing Albania's national culture profile with reference to how other countries might collaborate and transact with this emerging transition economy.\nPractical implications: From a business standpoint, the multicultural indexes for Albania provide general indicators of the national beliefs, norms and values, which foreign organizations may compare to their own cultural profile when interacting with professionals in this country. The best use for such indexes is for benchmarking and comparison. Foreign government, private corporations, or nonprofit organizations may compare their own culture profile with that of Albania to be aware of the similarities and differences.\nOriginality/value: Albanian national culture was estimated for the first time in the literature, using a five-factor model adapted from the work of Hofstede.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave among IT professionals in India: the mediating role of affective commitment	[ "India", "Affective commitment", "Voluntary turnover", "Developmental HRM practices", "Information technology sector", "Voluntary intention to leave" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: How to address the issue of arresting high rates of employee turnover notwithstanding the adoption of diverse organizational-level interventions in the Indian information technology (IT) sector has perplexed both academicians and practitioners. The IT sector is among the fastest-growing private sectors in India (NASSCOM, 2017) and contributes significantly to the country's economy. In fact, the contribution of Indian IT sector to the country's economic growth can be gauged by the fact that it offers direct employment to approximately 3.5 million people and also contributes 7.7 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country (IBEF, 2017).\nTheory and hypotheses development: Social exchange theory\nMethods and procedures: Sampling and data collection\nResults and discussions: Data screening\nManagerial implications: For HRM practitioners, the findings of this study provide a few important managerial implications in the context of addressing the problem of high voluntary turnover among Indian IT professionals.\nLimitations and future directions: This study has some limitations. First, this study adopted a cross-sectional design. In this connection, though the empirical findings of this study offer cogent evidence for the presence of a partial indirect association between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave through affective commitment, the evidence to infer causality (Little et al., 2009) between the variables of interest is limited at best. Further, studies in future, by adopting longitudinal design, can account for the time-varying nature of employee commitment (Gao-Urhahn et al., 2016) and voluntary intention to leave. Furthermore, this study has not captured the actual turnover behavior of employees. Studies in future can adopt a longitudinal design to measure the nature and extent of causality between intentions and actual behavior (Ramaprasad et al., 2017b). Second, this study has used individual-level of analysis. However, organizations comprise an intricate network of multiple levels. These levels which exist either individually or collectively can include, for example, employees, teams, work-groups, departments or even business units. Therefore, studies in future are encouraged to adopt multi-level analysis to account for variance in the perception of HRM practices, attitudes, and behaviors that emerge from different levels of operations (Wright and Boswell, 2002). Further, it would also be beneficial to examine the underlying mechanisms through which developmental HRM practices or systems foster team-level outcomes given the fact that IT organizations, in particular, comprise multiple teams. Experts (Jiang et al., 2012) conceptualize team-level HRM as the practices operationalized at the team-level or the organization-level interventions that are modeled to elicit team-work. Future studies, therefore, can investigate the impact of HRM practices or systems on team outcomes like aggregate turnover through the collective commitment of employees across different teams.\nConclusion: Empirical results of the present study, using mediated regression analysis on 752 IT professionals from the Indian IT sector, suggest that espousal of developmental HRM practices enhances employee attitudes and significantly mitigates the voluntary intention to leave among employees. In fact, this study enunciates the critical role of affective commitment and situates it as an important intervening variable between the relationship of developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to advance the research on the relationship between developmental human resource management (HRM) practices and voluntary intention to leave among information technology (IT) professionals from the Indian IT sector by investigating the mediating role of affective commitment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study adopted a cross-sectional design at the individual-level of analysis. Data on the study constructs (i.e. developmental HRM practices, affective commitment, and voluntary intention to leave) were collected from 752 IT professionals from 17 Indian IT organizations from the city of Bengaluru through a web-based survey between February 2016 and March 2017. Further, this study used the confirmatory factor analysis technique to establish reliability and construct validity for the study constructs. Furthermore, this study tested the research hypotheses empirically through mediated multiple-regression analysis using the bootstrap procedure.\nFindings: Empirical results of the present study suggest that espousal of robust developmental HRM interventions enhances affective commitment and significantly attenuates the voluntary intention to leave among employees. Further, the results of this study have indicated that the relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave was partially mediated by affective commitment.\nOriginality/value: Past empirical studies on HRM - turnover discourse, in the IT sector, have predominantly examined the direct influence of HRM systems and/or internal labor market strategies on turnover intentions and actual turnover behavior. Rarely have the past studies in the IT domain attempted to examine the intervening role of employee attitudes in the relationship between HRM practices and employee-level outcomes. Addressing this gap, the present study enunciates the critical role of affective commitment and situates it as an important variable that mediates the relationship between developmental HRM practices and voluntary intention to leave among IT professionals in India.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Global dynamics of immigrant entrepreneurship: Changing trends, ethnonational variations, and reconceptualizations	[ "Immigrants", "Entrepreneurship", "International entrepreneurship", "Ethnic groups" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For nearly a half century, concepts and theories on immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurship, including middleman minority, ethnic enclave, ethnic economy and ethnic niching, have shaped how we understand economic activities in immigrant and ethnic minority communities (Zhou, 2004). As is well known, immigrants are more likely than natives to participate in self-employment of different types. Recently, in the USA, immigrants owned more than a quarter of the newly established businesses, despite accounting for less than 15 percent of the total population (Bluestein, 2015). In recent years, we have witnessed remarkable shifts in immigrant entrepreneurship, from local, labor-intensive, service-oriented enterprises to global, knowledge-intensive, and professional services. For example, some of the largest US venture capital backed public high technology companies were started by immigrants, such as Intel, Solectron, Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Yahoo! and Google (Anderson and Platzer, 2006). We have also observed the emergence of new immigrant entrepreneurs among national origin groups that historically had low rates of self-employment, such as Mexicans and Filipinos, and among the newest of the more recent immigrant groups, such as Vietnamese, Cambodians, Bolivians, Ethiopians and Eritreans (Curtis, 2013; Eckstein and Nguyen, 2011; Hernan and Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2009; Idris, 2015; Nazareno, 2018; Price, 2012; Rangaswamy, 2007; Valdez, 2011; Vallejo and Canizales, 2015; Verdaguer, 2009). Immigrant-owned businesses have made tremendous contributions to the US economy, paying approximately $126 billion in wages and employing 1 in 10 Americans in the private sector in 2015 (Bluestein, 2015).\nMethodology: This review builds on two International Migration Review essays - \"Outsiders' Business: A Critical Review of Research on Immigrant Entrepreneurship\" (Rath and Kloosterman, 2000) and \"Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergences, Controversies and Conceptual Advancements\" (Zhou, 2004). Our goal is to critically examine findings from existing research that has been published since the mid-2000s to address the divergent patterns and emerging forces shaping immigrant entrepreneurship. We limit the published works for this review to peer-reviewed academic journals in social science and business fields. In so doing, we conducted a search in SocIndex and Proquest Business Premium Collection. Within both databases, we applied Boolean search terms including the following syntaxes: \"ethnic* OR \"immigrant OR transnational\" AND \"global\" AND \"entrepreneur OR international business enterprises\" AND \"computer OR tech\" AND \"united states NOT histor\" to identify all publications, published since 2004, that contained ethnic, immigrant, transnational, entrepreneur, international business enterprises, computer, tech and related terms such as ethnicity, globalization, globalized, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial, technology in the publication's title, keywords, or abstracts. We specifically focused on articles on contemporary immigrant entrepreneurship that had a USA connection. However, we also included relevant publications that examined emerging transnational entrepreneurs in other Western countries of immigrant reception. We imported each set of results into the reference manager software Zotero, deleted duplicates and our initial search yielded 263 articles. Afterward, we read through abstracts, and in some cases the full article, to decide what to include or exclude in our review. We excluded articles that discussed international business enterprises but had no direct relationship to immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurs. Our final data set comprised of about 100 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals. We coded our final data set and examined themes emerging from the publications. We then classified them by the following: changing trends and varied patterns, causes of change and variations and new theoretical advances.\nFindings: Changing trends in immigrant entrepreneurship\nDiscussion: reconceptualizing immigrant entrepreneurship: The changing patterns and ethnonational variations in immigrant entrepreneurship suggest that some of the key concepts, models, and theories - e.g., middleman minority, ethnic enclave, ethnic economy, ethnic niching - in the existing literature have their limitations as they are constrained by boundaries of nation-states and ethnonational groups within the contexts of immigrant reception. Recent research has produced ample evidence to suggest that there are new structural forces shaping immigrant entrepreneurship, which calls for further empirical research and reconceptualizations. Recent research has made significant theoretical advances through the transnational lens and frameworks that transcend the ethnonational confines. Out of the many theoretical breakthroughs, we discuss four: transnationalism, mixed embeddedness, simultaneous embeddedness and welfare state replacements - models that take into account local and global forces shaping immigrant entrepreneurship.\nConclusion: This review essay aims to identify changing trends, variations, and theoretical advances shaping immigrant entrepreneurship in today's rapidly globalized world. Our analysis of the recently published works, with a focus on Western societies as contexts of reception, over the past decade suggests that the conditions and structural opportunities and/or constraints on immigrant entrepreneurship have changed and that the ways in which these broader factors intersect have also changed. We find that new trends and ethnonational variations are not only created by uneven access to different forms of capital and cross-border venture capital, but also by differences in broader circumstances in the home country and/or host country and the transnational social fields. Some new forms of immigrant enterprises have also changed from local, labor-intensive, and service-oriented enterprises to global, knowledge-intensive, and diverse professional services. Immigrant entrepreneurs can now be found in more mainstream economies and in different industries, including the health and long-term care sector. Moreover, the global forces that have shaped contemporary immigrant entrepreneurship are increasingly intertwined with institutional forces within nation-state boundaries.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on immigrant entrepreneurship since the mid-2000s to examine the changing trends, variations and theoretical advances in immigrant entrepreneurship in Western societies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using the SocIndex and Proquest Business Premium databases, the authors conducted a literature review of about 100 peer-reviewed articles published since the mid-2000s. The authors critically assess the main research findings, identify key concepts and models that have been developed over the past decade, and offer new theoretical insight into the ever-changing global dynamics of immigrant entrepreneurship. Although the focus is on the USA, the authors also include some seminal research based in other Western countries of immigrant reception.\nFindings: Based on a critical review of existing research that has been published between 2004 and the present, the authors highlight main trends and variations of the entrepreneurial endeavors among diasporic migrants, address the emerging forces shaping immigrant entrepreneurship, highlight theoretical advances in the field of entrepreneurship studies, and suggest new directions for future research. The authors note that the changing trends and ethnonational variations are caused not only by unequal access to human capital, social capital, financial capital, and cross-border venture capital on the part of individual entrepreneurs, but also by differences in broader structural circumstances in the home country and/or host country and interaction between national/local and transnational/global forces. The authors discuss new theoretical advances, identify gaps and raise questions for future research.\nOriginality/value: The review offers important insight into the ever-changing local and global dynamics of immigrant entrepreneurship and broadens the established conceptual and theoretical models in the sociology of immigrant/ethnic entrepreneurship.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The accounting profession's influence on academe: South African evidence	[ "Case study", "Institutional theory", "Accounting profession", "Autoethnography" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: By taking for granted those things which others take for granted, we fail to understand how those things arise, and how they are sustained, through being taken for granted and thereby forming the basis for thought and action (Hines, 1988, p. 257).\nIntroduction: Professionals such as accountants, lawyers and engineers associate themselves with both an organizational identity and a professional identity (Hekman et al., 2009). Professional identification tends to develop in the early stages of socialization into a profession, implying that professional identification often precedes specific organizational identification. Therefore, professionals who later become academics are likely to associate themselves strongly with their profession. We aim to contribute to an understanding of how this strong professional identity influences academe.\nInstitutional theory and professional-driven institutions: In this section, we discuss the theory that provides the framework for our analysis. Institutional theory suggests that institutional pressures on organizations cause myths or certain ideas to be taken-for-granted (ideation), which leads to the adoption of formal rules and structures that provide organizational legitimacy (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2008b; Suddaby, 2010). These rules lead organizations that occupy a similar position in a given field to embrace similar structures and thus to become isomorphic with their environment (Dacin, 1997; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Organizations sometimes continue to behave in inefficient ways (Suddaby and Viale, 2011) because similarity in structures legitimizes organizations in the symbolic rather than the material realm (Deephouse, 1996; Euske and Euske, 1991). Thus, an impressive downtown head office location has symbolic value, but may be operationally and financially less efficient than locating the head office closer to operations.\nThe role of universities: Universities are involved in gaining knowledge (research) and imparting knowledge (teaching). In teaching, academics transform students from being uninitiated in a subject to having an understanding of the issues within and surrounding the subject (Watty, 2005). Principles and thinking skills are emphasized to ensure that students will be able to cope with new developments (Oliverio, 2004). Technical skills can be honed in practice (Albrecht and Sack, 2000). In research, academics examine the social consequences of accounting (Burchell et al., 1980; Tuttle and Dillard, 2007), for example, by bringing new insights into the accounting choices exercised by accountants, managers, and regulators (Kinney, 2003), or into institutional structures in the profession (Cooper et al., 2005). Scientific progress depends on the quality of critical discourse within a discipline, and research provides a forum for such a critical conversation (Reiter and Williams, 2002). The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) asserts that scholarly inquiry is the differentiating factor between institutions of higher education and training providers (AACSB, 2008). Thus, a university's reputation and societal impact depends on the pursuit of knowledge, including quality teaching and research.\nMethodology: Case and context\nCA education and training in South Africa: In this section, we provide some preliminary contextual information. More detail is provided throughout the findings section to illustrate our analyses.\nFindings: This section consists of two sub-sections. First, using our own synthesised framework, derived from Suddaby and Viale (2011) and Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), we trace the historic development of institutions in the South African accounting academy and show how profession-inspired institutions were created and are now maintained. Second, we extend the theory by showing that the combined institutional work of the professional body and professional actors within academia result in institutions that do not support university values. Our study is the first to synthesise the creation framework of Suddaby and Viale (2011) and the maintenance framework of Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), and in addition, our study is the first to provide empirical evidence from a single case study to investigate both the creation and the maintenance of profession-inspired institutions.\nDiscussion: Summary of findings\nConclusion: This autoethnographic case study investigates how the accounting profession takes advantage of the professional identification of academics to influence the rules and structures of the accounting academy. These rules and structures, premised on taken-for-granted beliefs, do not stand up to academic ideals, because they result in technical teaching and the absence of research. In addition, many of these beliefs may be myths.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the influence of academics who are members of the profession on academic institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An analytic autoethnography of the influence of accounting academics who are members of the profession on South African universities, supported by publicly available information, such as policy and other documents, web sites, and published material; documentation the authors are able to gather as participants; and formal and informal interviews the authors conduct with academic managers.\nFindings: The paper finds that profession-identifying academics create and maintain rules and structures within academe, rules and structures that suit the profession. Managers who are members of the profession identify more closely with the profession than with their university. The analysis reveals the mechanics of this influence, as well as the consequences.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to theory by synthesizing the creation of profession-inspired institutions framework and the maintenance of an institutions framework into a single framework. It also applies the theory by providing an example of a profession creating and maintaining institutionalization in an adjacent institution. The findings have implications for academia in cases where academic staff members are members of professional bodies, such as engineering and law faculties. The insights highlighted here may also be of interest to Australasian, UK and US accounting academics, because the literature contains evidence of pressures from professional bodies there.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Ramping up: Evaluating large-scale digitization potential with small-scale resources	[ "Management", "Academic libraries", "Digital libraries", "Digitization", "Workflow", "Large-scale digitization" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: the mandate to increase digital production: The digital collections community has done excellent work over the past decade to communicate the value of digitization in facilitating access to unique collections. The message has shifted from gaining buy-in for digitization projects to advocating for and securing resources to boost the capacity of digitization projects. The question is no longer, \"should we digitize?\", but \"why aren't we digitizing more material?\".\nThe landscape: Demographics of large-scale digitization\nChoosing the right method: Inventory existing organizational resources and strengths\nEstablishing a foundation for success: While it may be tempting to get the resources first and figure out the details later, most funders would need detailed information about the project's specifics before moving forward. Many project managers learn through experience that when key decisions are considered at the beginning of a project, there is significantly less confusion than once the project is underway. There will always be inevitable surprises in any project, but some can be eliminated from the beginning by having discussions on the following topics.\nIdentifying additional resources: With resource needs in mind and the data on costs calculated, it is time to get creative and start brainstorming ways to meet resource needs. Three potential strategies, temporary staffing, outsourcing and equipment, are listed in the resource chart above and offer the most potential to move organizations forward despite limited resources.\nConclusion: As the digitization landscape evolves with a stronger emphasis on large-scale digitization workflows, many digital library managers will be faced with the goal to increase the number of objects they capture and put online. This transition should not be taken for granted, and rather careful consideration should be made of local circumstance and organizational goals. Regardless of resources available, no evolution will happen overnight. But with evaluation of current workflows, an inventory of organizational strengths and strategic identification of growth, progress is possible for all. By taking a nuanced approach on the path to large-scale digitization, any manager can feel empowered to embrace the opportunity that lies ahead. Explorations of creative staffing, experiments with outsourcing materials and smart investments in new equipment are three avenues that, when adapted to local need, offer practical solutions. While the road to large-scale digitization takes different routes for different organizations, the common mission of cultural heritage organizations to increase access to their collections remains a shared value and an achievable goal.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Digital library managers are faced with growing pressure to digitize materials efficiently on a larger scale. This paper aims to address the staffing and other resources needed to evolve smaller scope operations into teams capable of outputting larger-scale production.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Much of the current literature focuses on philosophy of these projects and issues of metadata and user access. In contrast, this article seeks to supply the much-needed practical information for digital library managers who need to take immediate action to meet new mandates and reach higher target goals within the constraints of limited resources.\nFindings: The author will provide an overview of resources needed to increase digitization output and provide an analysis of three key resources that can be targeted by digital library managers in a range of environments. These resources will be examined with practical advice given on how new staffing configurations, outsourcing of materials and high-efficiency equipment can be implemented in phases.\nOriginality/value: This paper examines the gap between smaller-scale digitization and successful large-scale projects, and offers several possible scenarios for organizations to consider as they choose to move forward in a way that suits their goals. The focus of this study is neither on the rationale for large-scale digitization nor on the detailed specifications for large-scale digitization workflows. Rather, it will outline the types of resources (internal and external), decision points and specific practical strategies for digital library managers seeking to start ramping up the production.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leader-follower pessimism (in)congruence and job satisfaction: The role of followers' identification with a leader	[ "Job satisfaction", "Pessimism", "(In)congruence", "Identification with a leader" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Pessimists set low expectations for upcoming events, even when they acknowledge that they have historically done well in similar situations (Chang et al., 2009). However, pessimists do not suffer performance deficits as a result of their negative approach (Gasper et al., 2009). In fact, pessimists may perform well on account of such negative perspectives (Sanna et al., 2006). Pessimists self-report bad moods and lower levels of job satisfaction (Carver et al., 2010), which is why research on whether pessimism generally leads to positive work outcomes (e.g. job satisfaction, job performance) remains inconclusive (Baumeister et al., 2016; Norem and Cantor, 1986a, b; Norem and Illingworth, 1993; Tenney et al., 2015), and specific boundary conditions (such as the role of the leader-follower relationship) are largely unexplored (Baker, 2007; Epitropaki and Martin, 2005; Wong and Giessner, 2018). Specifically, pessimists report lower levels of satisfaction regarding their performance, past accomplishments and ongoing attempts to achieve goals than do optimists (Al-Mashaan, 2003; Kluemper et al., 2009; Norem and Cantor, 1990; Norem and Illingworth, 1993).\nTheory and hypotheses: Implicit leadership theory (ILT) and leader-follower characteristics (in)congruence\nMethods: Procedures and sample\nResults: Table I presents the descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, a reliabilities and correlations) of all variables used in the study. Next, to test for the validity of the measurement instruments that we used in our empirical setting, we observed the factor structure of the focal variables, using confirmatory factor analysis procedures in AMOS software version 21. The expected four-factor solution (followers' pessimism, leaders' pessimism, identification with leaders and job satisfaction) displayed a good fit with the data kh2 (38) = 72,279, CFI = 0.958, SRMR = 0.0610, RMSEA = 0.056. The standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.47 to 0.78 for follower pessimism items, from 0.53 to 0.81 for leader pessimism items, from 0.74 to 0.81 for identification with leader items, and from 0.85 to 0.92 for job satisfaction items.\nGeneral discussion: This study examined the role of leader-follower relationality in terms of their congruence in pessimism regarding job satisfaction. Notably, identification with a leader was higher when leader-follower pessimism scores were congruent at lower levels than when they were congruent at higher levels (H1). Further, followers' identification with leaders mediated the relationship between leader-follower pessimism and job satisfaction (H2).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the (in)congruence of leaders' and followers' cognitive characteristics (i.e. pessimism), followers' identification with a leader and job satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data from 291 working professionals are analyzed, following a series of hierarchical linear modeling and mediated polynomial regression analyses.\nFindings: Polynomial regression analysis results indicate that alignment (congruence) between leaders' pessimism and followers' pessimism, when both are at high levels, is related to low levels of job satisfaction. Further, leader-follower congruence at lower levels of pessimism leads to high levels of job satisfaction through the mediator of followers' perceived identification with a leader.\nOriginality/value: By identifying (in)congruence of leader-follower pessimism as a key antecedent, and taking an explanatory mechanism of identification with a leader into account, the authors contribute to disentangling the conceptual paths that underlie the mode by which implicit leadership theory might explain instances of individual job satisfaction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Surgeons' efficiency change is a major determinant of their productivity change	[ "Efficiency", "Productivity", "Malmquist index", "Throughput" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Japanese healthcare system has had universal health insurance for more than half a century. Most healthcare providers are reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis according to a fee schedule that sets prices uniformly at the national level. The same fee schedule is enforced for all plans and almost all healthcare providers. The services covered and the fees set for physicians and hospitals have been uniform across nation since 1959 (Ikegami et al., 2011). However, the sustainability of this healthcare system is in question because the Japanese government has had a huge fiscal debt. Despite an enormous effort to cut the deficit, our healthcare expenditure is increasing every year, because of our rapidly aging population. One of the solutions for this problem is to improve the productivity of healthcare.\nMethods: Teikyo University Hospital is located in metropolitan Tokyo, Japan, serving a population of ~1,000,000. It has 1,152 beds and has a surgical volume of approximately 9,000 cases annually. It has 13 surgical specialty departments. We collected data from all the surgical procedures performed in the main operating rooms of Teikyo University Hospital from April 1 through September 30, 2014 (Period 1) and those from April 1 through September 30, 2015 (Period 2). We extracted the necessary information from surgical records in the Teikyo University Hospital electronic medical record system. The Teikyo University Institutional Review Board approved our study.\nStatistical analysis: We first compiled the natural logarithms of MIs, ECs and TCs of all surgeons, and calculated their means and standard deviations. We then divided the surgeons into two groups; one whose productivity progressed and the other whose productivity regressed. We compared their characteristics between these two groups. We used Excel Statistics 2008 Software (SSRI Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan) for our statistical analysis. Student t-tests were used to compare the numerical data. kh2-tests were used to compare the categorical data. A p-value\nResults: We analyzed 4,925 surgical procedures performed by 100 surgeons (DMUs) during the two study periods.\nDiscussion: We demonstrated that the percent changes of surgeons' productivity and efficiency in the operating rooms were not significantly different from 0. This demonstrates that the surgeons maintained their overall productivity and efficiency in one year. However, the variances of these data are large; some surgeons gained productivity and efficiency significantly during the year, and others lost them. Therefore, we re-divided these surgeons into two groups, which we discuss later. On the other hand, their percent change of technique was significantly negative. This result demonstrates that the surgeons' technique regressed significantly by 5.0 percent on average in one year. The reason for this technical regression is difficult to explain because surgical technology, as well as surgeons' surgical technique, is assumed to progress year on year.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The sustainability of the Japanese healthcare system is in question because the government has had a huge fiscal debt. Despite an enormous effort to cut the deficit, our healthcare expenditure is increasing every year because of the rapidly aging population. One of the solutions for this problem is to improve the productivity of healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors that change surgeons' productivity in one year.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors collected data of all surgical procedures performed at Teikyo University Hospital from April 1 through September 30 in 2014 and 2015, and computed the surgeons' Malmquist index (MI), efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC) using non-radial and non-oriented Malmquist model under the constant returns-to-scale assumptions. The authors then divided the surgeons into two groups; one whose productivity progressed and the other whose productivity regressed. These two groups were compared to identify factors that may influence their MI.\nFindings: The only significant difference between the two groups was ECs (p\nOriginality/value: EC is a major determinant of surgeons' productivity change. The best way to improve surgeons' productivity may be to enhance their efficiency regardless of their surgical volume and personal backgrounds.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Library resources, student success and the distance-learning university	[ "Online resources", "Student success", "Distance learning", "Data", "Undergraduates", "Open University" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For many years, the library of the Open University (OU), a UK-based distance-learning higher education institution has collected statistics of access to online resources as a means of measuring use of subscription resources. The potential of these data to provide a greater depth of insight into the relationship between library online resource accesses and student success has become apparent through innovative work in libraries worldwide.\nBackground: The OU is a large distance-learning institution, with over 170,000 students.[2] Students are mainly part-time, and have a higher average age than at traditional \"campus-based\" institutions. Students rarely visit the main university campus in Milton Keynes. The OU model of distance learning, called \"supported open learning\", provides students with the materials they need to study, using a comprehensive mix of virtual learning environment, printed and audio-visual course materials. Support is provided by a network of over 4,000 tutors. Students are able to communicate with their peers at tutorials, day schools, study groups and via online channels.\nLiterature review: Research by academic libraries in the UK, the USA and Australia has provided evidence that there is a positive relationship between different dimensions of library use and academic achievement.\nLibrary data: Data about student access to online resources at the OU are derived from two different systems - OCLC EZproxy and Eduserve's OpenAthens online resource sign on system. EZproxy, a proxy server application, is used by many libraries as a means of managing \"off-campus\" access to library subscription resources. As students are \"off-campus\" at the OU, EZproxy provides a convenient access mechanism for the majority of online resource accesses. OpenAthens is used for a small number of online resources where IP authentication is not supported. As some courses make use of online resources that are accessed through OpenAthens, data from both systems have been combined by the project.\nLibrary data and student success data: Student results data from the institutional data warehouse provided several measures of student success. An overall continuous assessment score (OCAS) made up from the assessment scores throughout the module, an overall examination score (OES), and a result - variations of fail, pass, distinction but also withdrawn and deferred. Broadly, at the OU, 40 per cent is required to gain a pass and 85 per cent to gain a distinction in a module.[3]\nChallenges: A particular challenge at the OU is the nature of the student journey. At the OU, undergraduate students study their degree through a number of separate 30 or 60 point modules and need to assemble 360 points from a mix of compulsory and optional modules at levels one, two and three. The student journey is not a fixed path, and students may be studying more than one module at a time, have overlapping modules or have study breaks.\nFindings: There are clearly a wide variety of factors that influence academic success. Correlation between library resource use and student marks is not causation, as the Library Impact Data Project noted (Stone and Ramsden, 2013). It does not necessarily follow that the resource has been read, or understood. It may also be that students have found other routes to accessing the library resources they want to use, e.g. via other institutional affiliations.\nStatistical analysis findings: Discussions with colleagues and a review of the other approaches, notably the work by the University of Wollongong on the Library Cube (Cox and Jantti, 2012), identified several methods that could be used for the statistical analysis of the data.\nDiscussion: The initial analysis showing rising amounts of resource accesses as students study at higher levels seems to fit with a pattern at the OU where students are expected to be using library resources much more at levels two and three. The analysis proved to be valuable as an advocacy tool in conversations with senior stakeholders about library data and was included as part of a new annual report provided to schools. The results shown in Figure 1 suggest that, at the very least, there is an interesting relationship between student success and library engagement. Students who are getting better results are accessing more online library resources, and students who are failing are accessing fewer online library resources, and this pattern goes across the different levels of study.\nConclusions: At the OU, there is a clear pattern of an increase in the average number of library resources being accessed by students as they rise through the undergraduate levels of study. Students who attain higher grades are accessing a larger number of library resources across all levels.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Research at the Open University Library Services has been investigating the relationship between access to online library resources and student success. The purpose of this study/paper is to help to understand whether there is a similar relationship at a distance-learning university to that found in other institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A small library data project was established to investigate this area. The study analysed online library resource data from access logs from the EZproxy and OpenAthens systems. A data set of 1.7 million online resource accesses was combined with student success data for around 90,000 undergraduate students and a series of analyses undertaken.\nFindings: The study found a pattern where students who are more successful are accessing more library resources. A chi-square test indicated a statistically significant association between library resource accesses and module result, while an ANOVA test suggests a medium-sized effect. The study also found that 152 (76 per cent) of the 199 modules had a small, medium or large positive correlation between student success, measured by the overall assessment score, and online library resource accesses.\nOriginality/value: This study builds on evidence that there is a relationship between library use and student success by showing that this relationship extends to the setting of a non-traditional, innovative library service supporting part-time distance learners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Connecting personality traits to social networking site addiction: the mediating role of motives	[ "Motives", "Big five personality", "Social networking site addiction", "Behavioural addiction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Social networking sites (SNSs) have become a prevalent and indispensable tool for individuals to preserve relationships, create new connections and engage with many people, events and organizations. Approximately 69 percent of American adults use at least one SNS, and a majority of users visit SNSs several times a day (Pew Research Center, 2018). SNSs help people strengthen online and offline connections (Chen et al., 2014), build social capital (Kuem et al., 2017) and acquire social support (Lee et al., 2016; Matook et al., 2015). However, SNSs can be addictive. By providing a continuous stream of social information across a wider range of people, SNSs enable connectivity in a way that goes beyond what face-to-face or traditional media can afford (McFarland and Ployhart, 2015). In contrast to utilitarian technologies like spreadsheet applications, SNSs strive to create an engrossing and enjoyable user experience. Yet this often creates intense demand that may result in user addiction (Kuss and Griffiths, 2011). By fulfilling people's primitive motivation to seek fun through the integration of content, communication and entertainment functions within a social setting, SNSs provide a rewarding experience that users wish to sustain or repeat. Nevertheless, excessive SNS use has been associated with deterioration in physical and financial well-being (Wilcox and Stephen, 2013), loss of workplace productivity (Kuss and Griffiths, 2011; Yu et al., 2018) and even job loss (Grant et al., 2010). Thus, despite their benefits, detrimental outcomes from the addictive nature of SNSs require us to further understand the drivers of SNS addiction (Block, 2008).\nTheoretical foundation: Technology addiction\nResearch model: Figure 2 depicts our research model. We draw upon the Five Factor Model of personality, a theoretical framework that captures the most salient traits of human personality - agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae and Costa, 1990). Widely studied in many areas of organizational behavior, this framework represents a fruitful approach to incorporating broad dispositional traits into IS research (Devaraj et al., 2008). Considering the importance of a more specific matching of personality traits with the phenomenon and research context (Barrick and Mount, 2005), we focus on personality traits that are most likely to lead to SNS addiction - agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness. We also include impulse control as a moderator of the relationship between motives of SNS use and SNS addiction.\nResearch method: We collected survey data from Facebook users to test our research model. We chose Facebook as our SNS of interest for several reasons. First, there is a rising incidence of problematic Facebook use and its crippling effects. Users spend over 30 percent of their online social networking time on Facebook (Asano, 2017). Facebook has been overtaking daily activities in such a way that users' healthy balance of such activities is adversely affected, leading to significant impairment in various aspects of their life (Kuss and Griffiths, 2011). Second, Facebook's impact may intensify over time given the growing number of American users, with 74 percent being daily users (Pew Research Center, 2018). Readily accessible on mobile devices, Facebook is one of the top mobile social networking apps and is deeply embedded in many users' lives. As such, it is important to gain an in-depth understanding of Facebook addiction to inform future interventions. We examine one SNS because it allows us to control for the effects of technology characteristics.\nDiscussion: Different personalities have different motivations for using SNSs, which may in turn lead to SNS addiction. We found that the conformity motive partially mediates the relationship between agreeableness and SNS addiction. Agreeable individuals may be driven by a compliance mentality and become addicted to SNS use via their attempts to avoid social rejection by their online community. As a result, they are prone to exhibit behavioral addiction symptoms. Our respondents reported an average of 88.5 percent of their friends being on Facebook, which represents a strong push factor for users to stay engaged or even become addicted. At the same time, agreeable individuals' desire to please others also makes them sensitive to the feelings of people in their offline environment who expect regulated use of SNSs and undivided attention to their face-to-face interaction. This represents a pull factor for users to moderate their SNS use so that it does not jeopardize their functioning in the offline environment. Our results indicate that agreeableness has a negative direct effect on SNS addiction when we consider the mediated effect through conformity motive. The tension between online and offline influences may be an interesting direction for future research.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether four motives - conformity, enhancement, social and coping - mediate relationships between four personality types - agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience - and social networking site (SNS) addiction. Impulse control is included as a moderator.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses a survey to collect data at two points in time from 304 SNS users. Structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.\nFindings: Empirical results show that conformity, enhancement and coping motives act as mediators between various personality types and SNS addiction. Furthermore, impulse control weakens the effects of two motives - enhancement and social - on SNS addiction.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research model included only four motives. Future research could investigate other motivational mechanisms and moderators. The research method surveyed university students in the USA; thus, results may not generalize to a different user population. The method also included only one SNS, Facebook.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to the literature by showing that motives of SNS use connect personality to SNS addiction. This study also shows that self-reflective factors like impulse control can reduce the positive effects of motives on SNS addiction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Patients' perspective of a dedicated biologic clinic for inflammatory arthritis	[ "Service quality", "Patient satisfaction", "Biologic DMARDs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Chronic inflammatory arthritides, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS), are associated with significant disability, reduced quality of life and work productivity (Michelsen et al., 2015). The advent of biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) together with more intensive treatment strategies have significantly improved the outcomes of these patients such that remission is a realistic goal (Nam et al., 2010; Van Nies et al., 2010). These treatments have inevitably changed the way rheumatology services are delivered, making ambitious outcomes more realistic Nevertheless, these recent developments have brought new challenges both in terms of sustainability due to the high costs as well as the need for specialized long-term monitoring to ensure maintained efficacy and safety.\nAims and objectives: The aim of this quality improvement survey was to evaluate the level of patient satisfaction with our dedicated biologic clinic and identify whether there were any unmet patient expectations.\nData and methods: In total, 44 consecutive patients attending our dedicated biologic clinic were recruited over a five-month period. Patients suffered from RA, AS and PsA were included as long as they had been on the same biologic for the previous six months. All these patients would have been seen in the general rheumatology outpatient clinics before transfer to the biologic clinic, i.e. they would have experienced both services. The biologic clinic is run jointly by a rheumatologist and specialist nurse and is carried out in the same location as general rheumatology clinics but on a different day.\nResults: In total, 44 patients participated in this survey (23 females). In all, 48 percent suffered from RA (n=21), 39 percent from AS (n=18) and 13 percent from PsA (n=5). The mean age was 55.1 years (SD=12.62). Disease duration was less than 5 years in 20 percent (n=9), 6-10 years in 30 percent (n=13) and more than 10 years in 50 percent (n=22). There were 76 percent of patients with RA in remission, which defined as a DAS28<2.6, 14 percent had low-disease activity defined as DAS28 of 2.6-3.2 and the remaining 10 percent had moderate disease activity with DAS28 of 3.2-5.1. With regard to the subgroup of patients with AS there were 49 percent of patients with BASDAI <4 which constitutes disease remission and the remaining 61 percent (n=11) had a BASDAI of >4. The mean Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for pain was 4 (SD=3.1) and that for fatigue was also 4 (SD=3.2) (see Table). Patients' satisfaction with arthritis education before starting treatment was 91 percent (n=40); however, this dropped to 76 percent (n=33) while on treatment (paired t-test p=0.5). On the other hand, satisfaction with medication education was more constant, at 84 percent (n=37) and 81 percent (n= 35) before and after starting treatment, respectively. In total, 84 percent of patients (n=37) reported to be satisfied with their involvement in the decision to start and continue biologic therapy.\nDiscussion: bDMARDs targeting tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-1, interleukin-6 receptor, B cell depletion therapies, T cell costimulatory blockade therapies and new generation kinase inhibitors have revolutionized the management and clinical outcome for patients with inflammatory arthritis (Nam et al., 2010). bDMARDs and targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs incur significant higher treatment costs. A patient treated with a conventional synthetic DMARDs incurs an annual cost of approximately PS150 to the health service, whereas a patient receiving treatment with a biologic or a biosimilar incurs annual costs of up to PS9,000 and PS8,000, respectively (NICE Technology Appraisal Guidance, 2016). Health providers are legally bound to fund these highly efficacious treatments but on the other hand, clinicians need to ensure their judicious use so that patients and taxpayers get the best value for the money. Management of inflammatory arthropathies has become increasingly complex and delivering timely, sustainable holistic care is a major challenge particularly when resources are finite. Clinicians are increasingly under pressure to support sustainably the healthcare services by ensuring maintained efficacy and safety of high cost drugs. Specialized clinics have several advantages including protection of clinic slots for patients with more severe disease, less risk of patients being lost to follow up, comprehensive data collection, good continuity of care, provide an excellent opportunity for teaching and training, while more time-consuming clinical assessments such as BASDAI, DAS28 and patient questionnaires among others are more likely to be done. Specialized clinics also provide an opportunity for patient support group representatives to meet patients while they are waiting for their appointment in the waiting area. Nevertheless, proper evaluation needs to be carried out to ensure that these aims are met and to keep improving the service. Whilst the quality of care pertaining to the diagnosis and management of a disease can be assessed clinically by doctors, patient satisfaction can only be obtained by directly interviewing the patient (Alzolibani, 2011). In fact, patients are being increasingly viewed as customers or consumers of the services provided by the country's healthcare system (Kleeberg et al., 2008). As a result, the quality of such services should be partly judged by the level of patient satisfaction (Alzolibani, 2011). Hence, a structured survey was considered the best method to capture the level of patient satisfaction with this new service.\nConclusion: This survey confirms that patients highly value being seen at a dedicated clinic rather than in a general rheumatology outpatient setting. Patients attending the specialized dedicated clinic reported better access, a personalized approach, greater involvement in decision making and better overall care compared to generalized clinics. Patient education delivered by clinicians remains an essential component of the consultation. This study strengthens the case for having specialized clinics dedicated for particular patient groups even when services are under pressure to see increasing number of patients.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the patient's perspective on a dedicated clinic set up for patients diagnosed with an inflammatory arthritis who are being treated with a biologic. It proposes that dedicated clinics offer better overall care. The aim of this quality improvement survey is to evaluate the level of patient satisfaction with this clinic and identify any unmet needs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was based on a quality improvement survey, which was developed using Zineldin's five qualities model and assessed various aspects pertaining to service quality and improvement. A structured interview approach was used and 44 consecutive patients were recruited.\nFindings: This paper explores key aspects that influence patient satisfaction within a rheumatology outpatient setting such as education on arthritis and biologics and involvement in decision making. It provides insight on what patients value most and it also addresses organizational aspects that can have an impact on patient satisfaction. It suggests that service quality can be linked to the degree of patient satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: Direct interviewing of patients could have introduced a source of bias whilst questions are being answered. On the other hand, it provided an opportunity to clarify instantly any doubts and therefore avoiding any inadvertent errors.\nPractical implications: This paper reinforces that specialized clinics enable the caring rheumatologist to provide better care for patients on biologics. Service providers should continue developing their services around the patient's needs and perspectives in order to continue improving the service.\nSocial implications: Dedicated biologic clinics allow more judicious monitoring of patients who are taking these highly efficacious but costly medications.\nOriginality/value: This survey has reinforced that patients highly value dedicated clinics. These results strengthen the case that healthcare services should continue investing on specialized clinics.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty: exploring the role of identification, satisfaction and type of company	[ "Satisfaction", "Identification", "Customers", "Banking industry", "Loyalty", "CSR image" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Loyalty behaviour is one of the most representative ways in which customers express their satisfaction with corporate performance, and it is closely linked to the profitability of companies (Garcia de los Salmones et al., 2009). Nonetheless, loyalty is a complex concept, and the models that scholars apply to describe its formation continue finishing off with the plus of new variables with explicative power. Along this line, scholars have started to consider the inclusion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) image in loyalty behaviour models. However, the results of these studies generate controversy because empirical evidence keeps showing contradictory results. Although some scholars perceive positive effects of CSR image on customer loyalty (Perez et al., 2013), this influence is rejected in other studies (Carrigan and Attalla, 2001). Thus, new research is needed in this field to clarify the role of CSR image in the formation of customer loyalty behaviours.\nConceptual framework: Along with the work of Perez and Rodriguez del Bosque (2013), the conceptual framework of this paper is built on the principles of the hierarchy of effects model. This approach considers that the stages of customer behaviour are divided into three parts:\nMethod: For testing the hypotheses, a quantitative study based on personal surveys on customers of savings and commercial banks in Spain was conducted. The surveys were filled up with in-depth interviews that were undertaken along one month in Spring 2010. Customers only had to evaluate their main banking company. After the collection and processing of information, 1,124 valid surveys remained (response rate = 93.7 per cent). In all, 648 customers evaluated 14 savings banks, while 476 customers evaluated seven commercial banks.\nFindings: Once the validity of the measurement scales was successfully tested, the causal relationships in Figure 1 were estimated in the savings and commercial banks' samples. The results of both studies were compared using multi-group structural equation modelling (SEM) to determine how differently the dimensions of the CSR image influenced customer affective and conative responses in each sample.\nDiscussion: The results presented in this paper confirm the validity of the cognitive - affective - conative sequence to understand the effects of the CSR image on customer affection and behaviour. Specifically, the CSR image influences the affective responses of customers, such as their identification with the company and satisfaction. Subsequently, these affective responses determine customer recommendation and repurchase behaviours.\nConclusions, implications, limitations and future lines of research: From a theoretical perspective, this paper has tried to bridge some gaps in the literature on the effects of the CSR image on customer loyalty. In this regard, the paper contributes to the academic literature in three different ways.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of the authors of this paper is to propose a cognitive - affective - conative sequential model to study how three dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) image (society, customers and employees) impact customer affective (identification and satisfaction) and behavioural (recommendation and repurchase) responses in the banking industry. The authors also test how the type of company (savings banks vs commercial banks) moderates customer responses to these three dimensions of CSR image.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A multi-group structural equation model is tested using information collected from 648 savings banks' customers and 476 commercial banks' customers in Spain.\nFindings: The findings demonstrate that the perceptions of customer-centric CSR initiatives positively and consistently impact customer identification with the banking institution, satisfaction, recommendation and repurchase behaviours in the savings and commercial banks' samples. The dimensions of CSR image that concern the activities oriented to society and employees only positively impact customer responses in the savings banks' sample.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study can assist scholars in creating more informative CSR-based loyalty models that take into consideration new variables (satisfaction and type of company) and better approaches to the conceptualization of CSR image (e.g. the formative approach). The findings can also assist savings and commercial banks in better designing their CSR and communication initiatives to benefit from customer affective and conative responses.\nOriginality/value: The contributions of the paper are threefold: the authors include satisfaction as a new variable in the study of the CSR-based loyalty model; the CSR image is conceptualized as a formative construct, and this provides new justifications for the mixed results reported by previous scholars who have analysed the effects of CSR image on customer loyalty; and the authors explore the moderating role of the type of company on the CSR-based loyalty model proposed in the paper.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Crises through the consumer lens: the role of trust, blame and risk	[ "Blame", "Crisis management", "Consumer trust", "Product-harm crisis", "Perceived severity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: According to Haas-Kotzegger and Schlegelmilch (2013), product safety is a key issue with social and economic dimensions, as the number of defective and dangerous products has significantly increased over the past few decades. Product-harm crises are incidents where a product is found to be unsafe for consumers, defective or dangerous (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000) and may have negative consequences for a company's entire product portfolio (Mackalski and Belisle, 2015).\n2. Conceptual framework - research hypotheses: Consumers are more likely to trust a company when they perceive lower levels of risk (Jarvenpaa et al., 1999; Suh et al., 2015). According to Kim et al. (2008), trust is a precursor to perceived risk, and there is a negative relationship between trust and perceived risk (Ratnasingham and Kumar, 2000; Kim et al., 2008). The studies of Hart and Saunders (1997) and Pavlou and Gefen (2002) reached similar conclusions (i.e. trust diminishes perceived risk). Onyango et al. (2008) examine consumers' perceptions of food safety after the US spinach recall in 2006. They conclude that trusting private and public food organizations has a significant effect on consumers' perception of food safety. Moreover, other studies (Pavlou, 2003; Schlosser et al., 2006) found support that perceived risk mediates the relationship between trust and buying intentions. Thus, it may be concluded that the existence of trust decreases the risk as perceived by consumers (Gefen et al., 2003; Nykanen et al., 2009; Lai et al., 2013). Based on the above, the first research hypothesis is the following:\n3. Methodology: Several empirical studies on crisis management are based either on real crises (Choi and Lin, 2009) or fictitious scenarios (Laufer et al., 2005; Dardis and Haigh, 2009; Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009). In the current study, a real scenario was preferred, as imaginary scenarios could provoke demand bias (Cleeren et al., 2008). Moreover, as Wirtz and Mattila (2004) state, the main drawback of the method of hypothetical scenarios is the potential inability of respondents to see themselves in imagined situations and react, as they would likely react to real crises. Yen et al. (2004) believe that the fictitious scenarios do not include all aspects of an actual experience that the consumer had with the defective product or service. The hypothetical scenarios do not raise the same level of emotion that can result from a real experience (McColl-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003). Thus, in the current study, a real crisis (i.e. faulty pacifier) was used.\n4. Results: To ensure validity and reliability of the measurements, Cronbach's alpha (Cronbach, 1951), construct reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) were calculated (Table I). For the confirmatory factor analysis, the method of Maximum Liklelhood Estimators (MLE) was preferred to estimate the parameters. This method is usually preferred because it is considered most appropriate for large samples (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1982) and commonly is used by researchers in marketing (Crosby et al., 1990). In the CFA of the six scales, results show goodness of fit. The scales are reliable since the discriminant validity (discriminant validity = AVE/(Corr2)) is greater than 1 and the convergent validity is greater than 0,5 (AVE= S(standard loadings)2/S(standard loadings)2 + Seij; Conv >0,5). The standardized regression coefficients are statistically significant (p < 0.05) for all scales (Table I).\n5. Theoretical implications: This study's key theoretical contribution lies in proving a framework which includes important factors that influence consumer purchase intentions after product-harm crises and investigates the relationships among them. Structural equation modeling (SEM) has several advantages against the traditional statistical analyses used in many of the crisis management studies. In this study, SEM gives the opportunity to approach the topic holistically, by exploring simultaneously the relationships among variables in the model.\n6. Practical implications: Results showed that perceived severity has an impact on the attribution of blame. Blame attribution could possibly be weakened if consumers knew the exact reason which provoked the crisis. As a result, companies should try to give as precise information as possible, and emphasize the fact, if true, that the company is not fully responsible for the crisis.\n7. Limitations and directions for future research: One of the limitations of the current study is connected to the use of a real crisis situation for testing consumer's reactions. The use of a real crisis cannot eliminate the pre-existing attitudes towards the company that may exist (Dardis and Haigh, 2009). In addition, some variables that could greatly influence consumers (e.g. involvement, demographic characteristics) were not included in the current model. However, as Coombs (1998) states, it is impossible to incorporate all crisis elements in a one study. Thus, future research could add and explore the impact of other variables in the examined model. For example, taking into consideration various precursors of trust, such as loyalty and satisfaction, could expand the model and shed light on proactive crisis management and effective pre-crisis strategies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine consumer reactions during product-harm crises by measuring the impact of perceived risk, blame and trust on consumer purchase intentions. Moreover, the role of perceived crisis severity is examined as affecting the three main endogenous variables of the conceptual framework.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study uses the real-scenario approach for empirically testing the proposed conceptual framework. Participants were called to assess the story of a defective product (i.e. a soother that was recently recalled).\nFindings: Results of the equation modeling demonstrate that perceived severity significantly influence trust and blame while it does not affect perceived risk. In addition, trust, blame and perceived risk notably affect purchase intentions.\nPractical implications: Based on the study's results, companies could implement appropriate strategies for reducing the negative consequences of a product-harm crisis.\nOriginality/value: The paper presents four key originality traits: Crisis management from the consumer perspective has received little attention. The relationship between trust, perceived risk and purchase intentions has not been explored in the crisis management field. Attribution of blame is a new variable added to the perceived risk-trust-purchase intention model. Perceived severity is examined as a moderator affecting the main endogenous variables of the conceptual framework.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"What you'll say is ... ": represented voice in organizational change discourse	[ "Organizational change", "Narratives" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In the 20 years that have passed since Pettigrew's (1985) critique of the change literature, we have seen several studies that have tried to meet his challenge to focus more attention on the processes and contexts of change. Dissatisfaction with the prescriptions and control orientation of dominant management perspectives has led many researchers to closer examinations of the structures and discourses of change, as well as a rethinking of the relationship between organization and change. By looking beyond how managers define and control change, and rejecting the notion that change is a specific phenomenon based in an objective reality, recent perspectives on organizational change propose that change is an evolving achievement, a process of sharing and constructing new meanings and interpretations of organizational activity. When we look beyond prescriptive approaches but look instead at how change is constructed and formed in conversation, change becomes a process of the spreading, sharing, interpreting, adopting and rejecting of meanings and ideas (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996). This perspective has given rise to social constructionist and discourse approaches to organizational change that examine how organizational members negotiate meaning in the change process through various discursive practices and textual objects.\nSetting, method and materials: This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team at a high-tech corporation in the western US. \"Techco\", the name I give to this organization, manufactures products for use in large corporate computing environments. (The name of the organization and the names of speakers in transcripts are pseudonyms.) Just fewer than half of Techco's employees are located at its corporate headquarters, with several thousand employees in offices around the globe, including subsidiaries in Latin America, Australia, Europe and Asia. Techco has gone through periods of significant turmoil in the past several years as revenues have stalled and new management was brought in to improve productivity and cut costs.As one of his final acts, the former company president brought in a consulting organization to study Techco and make recommendations for change. One of the changes recommended by the consulting group was to Techco's process for forecasting sales demand for its products. Most manufacturing organizations find significant incentives to forecast sales accurately. Building more products than customers want means excess costly inventory; building too few means that customers wait weeks or months to receive their orders and thus might decide to purchase elsewhere. The consulting group found that Techco had millions of dollars tied up in excess inventory. To remedy this problem, a project team was put together with representatives from sales, manufacturing, finance, marketing and product development. The team was given the responsibility to understand the current process and to redesign it to increase the company's forecast accuracy. This case study represented an appropriate one for a discourse study of organizational change, since all members all represented defined elements of the process and members had the explicit goal and objective to achieve an organizational change.I studied Techco as a participant-observer for one year, from October 2000 to 2001. With the approval of Techco management, my university's institutional review board and the project manager, I studied this forecasting team from its first meeting. For 4 months the team met at least weekly. Meetings varied in length from 1 h to a full day but averaged 2 h, and the team granted me permission to audiotape every team meeting. In addition, I interviewed five of the core team members individually in semi-structured formal interviews (each lasting approximately 60 min) and I audio-taped these interviews as well. In all, I gathered over 33 h worth of team meeting conversation and 5 h of interview data. I transcribed each of the audiotapes at a moderate level, including pauses and overlapping speech but not intonation or volume for a total of almost 300 single-spaced pages of transcript data. Data analysis generally proceeded in the manner prescribed by grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000; Glaser and Strauss, 1967), involving sorting transcript excerpts containing representations of the past and future in discourse, re-sorting, and verifying categories. Excerpts used in the paper come substantially from two of the most important team meetings, one in which participants spent time understand the current forecasting process and a second near the end of the project in which they were most concerned with generating ideas for how the new process would work. In these two meetings participants concentrated on the current (and past) process and the new (future) process. The themes developed in the next sections emerged as patterned ways that the team represented voices during project team meetings, with two functions: to represent routine practices of the past and to demonstrate potential future voices of a proposed practice.\nRepresentations of voice in the team's change discussions: Represented voices demonstrate routinized practices\nConclusion: I have argued that the discursive practice of represented voice that allows organizational members to make a logical inference between organizational practices (what members consider to be organizational routines) and the individual speech of members. Members represent the past in ways that organizational members \"usually\" talk, which allows them to think of organizational routines as genres of speech. Organizational members achieve generalized meanings about organizational life by reporting past utterances as representative of all events of a certain kind. They do this by representing voices of specific organizational members as well as in the voice of member categories, such as managers. These generalized understandings, however, are constructions of organizational members. Members frame \"the undifferentiated flux of raw experience\" (Chia, 2000, p. 513) into routines and genres out of everyday speech, and then consider those routines as potential areas for change. Crucially, organizational members smooth over and filter variations in embodied routines through repetition of typical speech patterns heard in any routine. Abstracting and distancing in the form of repeated speech allows the routine to be discussed as a generic object, a stable practice agreed upon by members that can then be opened up as a possible object of change. These representations of current practice stabilize it for the purpose of change.Once these representative utterances become stabilized as the current organizational practice, members identify possible changes to the general practice, which implies new kinds of utterances. They \"try on\" (Barrett et al., 1995) this new language by considering the logical implications of any proposed organizational change as it might sound in the future by articulating the proposal in the voice of an organizational member on a future occasion. While this trying on process is hypothetical, not enacted in an actual practice, it gives organizational members the opportunity to hear how organizational members might work out the new practice in discourse. They then began to critique the future language and debate whether the proposed change would be an effective one.The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references to what \"usually happens\" via what is \"usually said\"). These stabilized forms are what people take to be the enduring patterns that happen over time. Members propose new practices which imply shifts in activities, behaviors, and speech, and members make these inferences on their own through represented discourse. By voicing these new practices people can judge the merit of the proposed practice as they hear how those practices might sound in the voices of organizational members (specific people or roles). It is this translation between past, present and future discourses that allows organizational members to make the transformation from past to future organizational meanings, and by implication, to achieve organizational change.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Following Bakhtin, organizational discourse scholars have examined ways in which organizational actors draw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, and transform them into future discourses. This paper examines how this practice occurs discursively as members in a high-tech corporation conduct an organizational change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team in the western US. Through participant-observation and discourse analytic methods, the data gathered consists of field notes, over 33 hours' worth of team meeting conversation and five hours of interview data.\nFindings: - Through the use of represented voice, organizational members work out how an action or practice has sounded in the past as spoken by another member, and they articulate how proposed organizational changes might sound in the future. By making these inferences, members are able to discursively translate between a single situated utterance and organizational practices.\nPractical implications: - The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references to what \"usually happens\" via what is \"usually said\") and new practices (as references to what might be said in the future). It is when these practices are solidified and made real through these translations between identity, voice, and organizational practices that members are able to draw comparisons and transformations between \"past\" and \"future\" language, and thereby experience and achieve organizational change.\nOriginality/value: - The paper furthers our knowledge of how organizational members discursively negotiate meanings during the process of organizational change through a specific discourse pattern.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Technological innovation in food supply chains: systematic literature review	[ "Supply chain", "Systematic review", "Technological innovation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Technological innovation is one of the main drivers of economic growth (Grunert et al., 2008) and business success (Fortuin and Omta, 2009), facilitating companies' adaptation processes (Gopalakrishnan and Damanpour, 1997). In the agri-food sector, innovations have enabled food to be mass-produced and consumed at a lower cost, increasing consumption (Cutler et al., 2003). Despite this, several contradictions arise regarding the innovation rate in the agri-food sector.\nLiterature review: Food supply chains\nConjunctions between food supply chains and technological innovations: With globalisation, companies need to adapt to new competitive patterns in which new business strategies emerge to increase efficiency, not only individually, but also collectively. Thus, business success depends on the ability to integrate a complex network of business relations, structured through supply chains (Beamon, 1998; Lambert and Cooper, 2000; Mentzer et al., 2001). Correspondingly, an important aspect of supply chain management is its potential for adding value. Pryke (2009) stresses that adding value is a process facilitated through the supply chain. Lambert and Cooper (2000) further note that SCM's primary goal is to add greater value, not only to the company but also to the entire supply chain network, including the final consumers.\nMethod: A systematic review was conducted to explore how innovation and food supply chains have been researched in the literature. Such a review is a technique suitable for dealing with a large amount of information. Especially, to develop a systematic review, the Methodi Ordinatio method was used, seeking to select the relevant scientific articles. The Ordinatio Index (InOrdinatio) equation was applied to classify the articles, considering the year of publication, the number of citations and the impact factor of the periodical in which the paper was published (Pagani et al., 2015). Pagani et al. (2015) establish phases for their success, as shown in Figure 1.\nResults and discussion: To systematically review the literature on innovation and the food supply chain, 22 articles were delimited. The results revealed a wide variety of journals. Only \"Food Policy\", \"International Journal of Production Economics\" and \"Trends in Food Science & Technology\", contained over one selected article.\nConclusions: This paper systematically reviews the literature on innovation and the food supply chain to perform a broadly theoretical assessment of the subject. These highlighted points are researches on packaging matters (Vanderroost et al., 2014; Licciardello, 2017; Werner et al., 2017), and on the focus on integration (Wolfert et al., 2010; La Sala et al., 2017; Wong et al., 2017). In addition, focused researches are also emphasised: in Big Data (Sonka, 2014; Wolfert et al., 2017) and in bio-economy (Levidow et al., 2012; Golembiewski et al., 2015).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the literature on innovation and the food supply chain to synthesise and explore their interactions, determining what it is known and what gaps there are in the knowledge regarding these subjects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic review of technological innovation and the food supply chain was conducted based on the Methodi Ordinatio protocol. This method seeks to select and rank papers according to their scientific relevance.\nFindings: This study has highlighted the importance of research focused on specific matters, such as food packaging, integration, Big Data and bio-economy. Considering the stages of innovation, the portfolio has focused mainly on innovations' generation. As for adoption, the multiple obstacles responsible for the few successful innovations were highlighted. Adopting these innovations has become complex, with a high level of failure and several critical points, ranging from the level of research to acceptance and purchase, with consumer indifference and even negative positions towards innovation.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the debate about innovations in the food supply chain, providing a research agenda.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Public libraries as public sphere institutions: A comparative study of perceptions of the public library's role in six European countries	[ "Public libraries", "Democracy", "Public sphere", "Citizenship information", "Community meeting place", "Social role of libraries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction and research questions: A central part of the legitimacy of public libraries is rooted in their role as institutions underpinning democracy and a rational public discourse and their role related to building communities. This is far from a new role, but it has received increased attention in recent years, possibly due to the challenges related to upholding a sustainable public sphere that result from digitization and globalization. This increased attention is reflected in public library legislation. Library legislation in Sweden and Norway was revised in 2013. In the mission statements of the library laws in both countries, the library's role as a meeting place and an arena for an enlightened public discourse (Norway) and as an institution supporting democracy and the free formation of opinion (Sweden) is stressed. Finland got a new library act in 2016, also focusing upon citizenship and democracy.\n2. Literature review: Jaeger et al. (2013) state there is little empirical evidence that public libraries support democracy, although their role as democratic champions are central in the field's self-perception (Wiegand, 2015). The British sociologist Frank Webster (2014) argues in his book Theories of the Information Society that the public library network is \"the closes we come to a developed public sphere.\" Anne Goulding's (2009) empirical study of British public libraries and community engagement, concluding that \"the public library is positioned not just as a place to borrow or read books or even to access digital material, but as a key community resource and facility which can act as a venue for community events and as an access point connecting individuals with one another, connecting people with their local communities, and connecting communities with wider society,\" supports Webster's argument regarding the library network as a developed public sphere (p. 47). There are some evidence that libraries promote the generation of trust and social capital, which usually is regarded as a precondition for a sustainable democracy. Widdersheim and Koizumi (2015, 2016, 2017) have made important contributions in conceptualizing libraries as public sphere institutions, yet they also lament the lack of empirical work related to libraries as public sphere institutions, with the exception of research done within the framework of the PLACE project and its off-springs (Aabo et al., 2010; Audunson et al., 2011; Aabo and Audunson, 2012; Johnston and Audunson, 2019; Varheim, 2007, 2011, 2014a, b, 2017; Varheim et al., 2008). The PLACE research referred to above together with the research of Catherine Johnson (Johnson, 2010; Johnson and Griffis, 2013; Griffis and Johnson, 2013) indicates that libraries might play a role in generating trust and social capital, usually seen as a precondition for a sustainable democracy. In addition, Wiegand (2015) asserts that in spite of mission statements, there is little evidence that public libraries have, for example, been instrumental in promoting democracy by giving us a more informed citizenry.\n3. Design and methodology: The study was undertaken by the professional survey organization Sentio Research as a web panel survey based upon a probability sample. Web panels are increasingly used in survey research as they are cost effective and open up for accessing large and diverse samples quickly. They are, however, not without challenges. There is a distinction between probability based and non-probability based (convenience) samples (Hays et al., 2015; Svensson, 2013). Representativity might be affected by differences in internet access, recruitment procedures and the element of self-selection, which are inherent in the procedure. Svensson (2013) argues that due to this, probability samples tend to end up as non-probability samples. Chang and Krosnick (2009) did an experiment where they administered the same questionnaire using telephone interviewing, an internet probability panel[1] and a non-probability sample where people volunteered to do surveys for money and compared the outcomes. When comparing errors in the two internet panels regarding demographic variables with real life figures, they found that the average errors were modest, although larger for the convenience panel than for the probability panel and largest for both when it came to education and income. The experience, which the panel members gain, improves performance. Their conclusion is that \"the results from the national field experiment suggest that the Internet offers a viable means of survey data collection and has advantages over telephone interviewing in terms of response quality.\"\n4. The sample: The survey was undertaken in the first half of June 2017. The national samples vary from 1,002 respondents up to 1,021. Altogether, we have 6,050 respondents.\n5. Basic figures - differences in library policies and resources spent on public libraries: There are some important differences between our six countries regarding library policies and public library structure, which might be of importance when interpreting our findings:\n6. Findings: 6.1 Which library roles are most important in legitimizing the local public library?\n7. Discussion: We started out with three research questions:\n8. Conclusions: Our major conclusions, then, can be summarized as follows:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of public libraries as institutions underpinning a democratic public sphere as reasons legitimizing libraries compared to reasons that are more traditional and the actual use of libraries as public sphere arenas.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey of representative samples of the adult population in six countries - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland - was undertaken.\nFindings: Legitimations related to the libraries role as a meeting place and arena for public debate are ranked as the 3 least important out of 12 possible legitimations for upholding a public library service. Libraries are, however, used extensively by the users to access citizenship information and to participate in public sphere relevant meetings.\nOriginality/value: Few studies have empirically analyzed the role of libraries in upholding a democratic and sustainable public sphere. This study contributes in filling that gap.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Harnessing the customer identity in the construction sector	[ "Construction", "NLP" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The construction sector experiences ever increasing challenges of a competitive market place, tight financial constraints and higher customer expectations. Brand loyalty is hard won with few in the construction sector willing to invest the time and resources required to really understand customer needs and wants. Those companies who are investing in their customer relationships are reaping the rewards with consumers who are willing to pay premium prices to have their needs met.\nBackground to \"Harnessing the Customer Identity\": The company\nProject outcomes: The project had some clearly identified outcomes:\nNLP modelling process: The consultants worked closely with the organisation to identity the target audience using some of the questions from the well-formed outcome model within NLP (de Rijk, 2015, pp. 33-35).\nThe event process: Invitations\nOutcomes of the event: Each of the themes emerging from the event was explored in further detail and using the work of Graves, Beck and Cowan, and McClelland, the consultants modelled the application of the emerging themes for the developer.\nSummary of the project: A summary document reflecting the key themes and recommendations for action was provided to the organisation. This included key value words to use in subsequent marketing literature, key concepts to be included or considered, and practical areas that required addressing or mitigating. Additionally a number of considerations were offered to the developer for ongoing organisational and brand development.\nImplications for the application of NLP modelling of buying strategies: This process used the modelling methodology within NLP and an adaptation of the values work of Graves, Beck and Cowan and McClelland. The original work of these authors does not give sufficiently specific language to utilise in motivating each value level. Poetic licence was therefore utilised as the consultants developed the \"flash\" cards for the themed workshop.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show the reader how to harness customer identity in the construction sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using the NLP modelling process to identify customer personas.\nFindings: The consultants discovered that it was easier to elicit values and motivational traits using Charvet's (1995) work during the actual workshop. This enabled more specific examples of motivational language to be used in summarising the findings of the workshop and recommendations for application to the developer. Charvet's work does provide recommendations on motivational language to be used, and she is now developing software that enables this to be used in written language such as e-mail: www.weongozi.com\nOriginality/value: All original research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Consumer perceptions of extended warranties and service providers	[ "Consumer goods", "Buying behaviour", "United States of America", "Warranties", "Consumer research", "Individual perception" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Extended warranties are offered for a wide range of durable consumer goods, including automobiles, home appliances, and electronics. They are offered for sale directly by manufacturers, retailers, and independent agents (Day and Fox, 1985). In addition to generating direct profits, extended warranties are used as a means to retain customers. To illustrate, a system builder in the US offers three-year extended warranties on notebook computers in order to maintain customer loyalty as well as generate additional revenue (Zarley, 2005).To those marketing such consumer durables, extended warranties can be very profitable. According to one study (Desai and Padmanabhan, 2004), the percentage of consumers purchasing such warranties ranges from 20 percent for automobiles to 75 percent on home electronics like stereos and computers. The Consumer Electronics Association estimated that only 20 percent of consumers purchasing an extended warranty for an electronic device ever use the service (Noel, 2001). It is clear that this is a big and highly profitable business, especially for retailers like Best Buy (Berner, 2005). Extended warranties offer retailers margins ranging from 44 to 77 percent (Noel, 2001), and can account for as much as 50 percent of an independent retailers' profits (Baird and Benady, 1996). To illustrate profitability, Eric Arnum, editor of the trade newsletter Warranty Week, stated for retailers the following: \"You sell a $400 television set and maybe make $10 ... But you sell a $100 warranty and make $50\" (cited in Consumer Reports, 2006, p. 40). A recent study of the server market in the US provides evidence of the economic value of warranties to manufacturers, downstream firms, and customers (Chu and Chintagunta, 2009). These researchers report that warranties add significant value to these three groups. Warranties can be used by manufacturers to screen consumers in order to increase profits. However, Soberman (2003) studied what happens when screening and signaling happen simultaneously in the used-car market. He found that the need to signal can seriously impair the ability of a high quality seller to screen (Soberman, 2003, p. 188).Are extended warranties a good investment for consumers? Answers to this question, which are varied, are provided elsewhere (Maronick, 2007; Consumer Reports, 2006; Bradford, 2005; Day and Fox, 1985). One indication that the purchase may be a good investment, at least for some products, is provided by Bradford (2005) who shows that the repair rate within the first three years of use of selected products varies as follows: desktop PC (37 percent); laptop PC (33 percent); washing machine (22 percent); gas range (19 percent); dishwasher (13 percent); clothes dryer (13 percent); digital camera (8 percent); 25 to 27 inch TV (5 percent). Whether extended warranties in fact are a worthwhile investment for the consumer depends on the price of the warranty, the cost and failure rate of the product, and the consumer's risk aversion. The practicality of having warranty work done and the probability that problems will be solved also determines the perceived value of the extended warranty to the customer. This paper explores such issues.More than 30 years ago Lehmann and Ostlund (1972, p. 52) wrote that \"despite the widespread concern over product warranties, little research has been conducted on how consumers behave toward warranties.\" Not much has changed since then. Subsequent research indicates that consumers view an extended warranty as a signal of product reliability/quality/value, a means by which perceived risk can be reduced, and from a perspective of deriving benefit from the cost of the purchase (Maronick, 2007; Kelley and Conant, 1991; Shimp and Bearden, 1982; Perry and Perry, 1976). Of the five major risk reduction dimensions (psychological, social, physical, financial, and performance), Shimp and Bearden (1982, p. 39) point out that financial and performance risk are most susceptible to warranty influence. According to these researchers, a warranty provides at least a tacit promise that a product will perform its intended function, and if it does not, financial redress is possible. A recent study by Ercsey and Jozsa (2008) examined the impact of service guarantees on perceived reliability and affective psychological affect within a service industry - the postal service in Hungary. Results of this study indicate that specific guarantees have a significant impact on perceived reliability, general guarantees have an impact on the psychological affect, and there is no significant relationship between a specific guarantee and its psychological effect. When viewed as a means by which perceived risk can be reduced, according to Hollis (1999) an extended warranty becomes a form of insurance.Finally, from the perspective of retailers, Voss and Ahmed (1992, p. 885) concluded that there are three types of consumers who are predisposed to purchase an extended warranty:1. Those who are inherently very risk averse.2. Those who have experienced prior losses in the product category.3. Those who use a price-seeking search strategy.\nThe research questions: The above discussion deals with economic and psychological reasons for why extended warranties might have value for customers. Whether customers actually ascribe value to extended warranties depends a variety of factors, not the least of which is whether they correctly perceive provisions of the warranty.There are ample opportunities for buyers to misinterpret the provisions of extended warranties. A recent study examined consumers' perceptions of the terms of an extended warranty, specifically the length of the warranty contract (Maronick, 2007). This study found that a large majority of consumers misconstrue the time period covered by an extended warranty offered by retailers. While the extended product warranty is promoted by those selling them as an extension of the durable consumer goods manufacturer's original warranty - which may be 30 days, 90 days, or one year depending upon the product - such is not always the case. That is, for many products such as consumer electronics, the extended warranty includes the original manufacturer's warranty time period within the time period of the extension. Furthermore, it often (if not usually) is the case that the manufacturer, retailer, or independent agent selling the extended warranty is not the company that will provide the service covered by the warranty.The present paper examines consumers' perceptions of extended warranties that are marketed by the manufacturer of computer products for an independent service provider. Prior research has studied innovative product concepts (Shimp and Bearden, 1982), automobiles (Padmanabhan and Rao, 1993), and appliances and home electronics (Maronick, 2007). Specifically, in the present study the computer product is to be purchased by mail catalog, the internet, or telephone ordering. In this situation, the manufacturer typically has a statement in a footnote in its advertising and on its website as follows:In-home service may be provided via third-party contract with customer. Technician will be dispatched if necessary.In order to request service, the consumer contacts the manufacturer, not the service provider. Current thinking is that consumers are unaware of who provides the warranty service, and probably are not concerned. Rather, their interest is in getting the needed repairs made. But, there could be a potential ethics issue involved depending on whether the product problem is solved. If it is promptly solved, the consumer probably does not care who solved it. However, if the problem is not promptly or successfully solved, there is a consumer misinformation \"issue.\" In these circumstances, the consumer undoubtedly holds the entity that sold the warranty to be the guarantor of performance. Failure to provide warranty performance may adversely impact the relationship with the customer of the firm that sold the warranty (Danaher et al., 2008). A recent meta-analysis of the literature concerned with the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty, and purchase intentions provides clear evidence that service quality plays a vital role in a firm's quest for building long-term relationships with customers (Carrillat et al., 2009).The major research questions addressed in this paper are:RQ1. Do consumers value the benefits promised by extended warranties?RQ2. Is the question of who provides the warranty services an issue for buyers?RQ3. Do purchasers correctly perceive who provides warranty service?To the best of the authors' knowledge, the specific questions to be examined in the present study have not been examined in the literature. Thus, the present study is a descriptive study.\nMethodology: An internet-based survey was conducted of a large national sample of the general public in the USA. A commercial list broker provided the sample of e-mail addresses. An invitation to participate in the survey indicating a link to the website where the short questionnaire was housed was sent by e-mail to the original sample members. The study was not conducted as a panel study. The sponsor was identified as a university.The questionnaire consisted of eight statements structured as Likert-scales of agreement. A five-category response format was used: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree. A sixth option, \"no opinion\", also was provided. The statements covered concerns when purchasing a computer by mail catalog, the internet, and telephone ordering. Of particular interest was need for repair service in general and extended warranty and service policies, and who was performing any necessary service. In addition, two demographic questions were asked - gender and age. The statements are shown in the Appendix.\nResults: Results are presented in two parts. First, a brief reporting of sample characteristics is presented. Second, perceptions of respondents regarding warranties and repair service are discussed.Respondent characteristics\nDiscussion and conclusion: A large-scale survey of the general public in the US was conducted to explore three key aspects of extended warranties available with purchase of a computer, whether by mail catalog, the Internet, or telephone ordering. The three aspects are: whether consumers value the benefits offered by extended warranties, who they perceive is responsible for honoring the warranty, and whether they are concerned with who actually provides the warranty service. The results for the product studied in the present research indicate that consumers do value the benefits offered by an extended warranty, they believe the vendor of the warranty (in this case the manufacturer) is responsible for the warranty being honored, and finally that consumers do not attach great importance to where service will be provided, although there are some who do. These results confirm conventional wisdom that consumers are unaware of who provides the warranty service and that from the consumer's perspective, the key issue is getting the product repaired.Although the above results confirms what is generally considered conventional wisdom on the topic, there are indications of requirements for future research. First, the consistent finding of gender differences points to the need for further segmentation research. Gender differences are significant, though modest, suggesting that gender may be acting as a surrogate for other more fundamental factors. For example, to the extent extended warranties are a form of insurance, fundamental insurance related factors, such as risk aversion or income/wealth, may be the source of the differences. It also is possible that women may be more likely to be purchasing for others, such as for the family or household, which add a social risk to the purchase decision. The work of Shimp and Bearden (1982) is relevant to these issues.In the context of retailing, Voss and Ahmed (1992, p. 885) concluded that three types of consumers are predisposed to purchase an extended warranty: those who are inherently very risk averse; those who have experienced prior losses in the product category; and those who use a price-seeking search strategy. It is likely that these groups also are primary targets for extended warranties vended by manufacturers and independent companies who offer extended warranties.The fact that consumers view those who actually do warranty work to be representatives of the vendor of the warranty (in this case the manufacturer) suggests extended warranties provide an opportunity for research on agency. What circumstances, for example, lead consumers to believe a service provider is acting as an agent for another, rather than acting as an independent entity?Finally, it would be helpful to extend this research to examine literature on consumer understanding, misunderstanding, or knowledge of other complex goods and services.\nManagerial implications: Extended warranties typically are offered by manufacturers, but also are offered by retailers and independent vendors. As noted above, it is common for manufacturers to outsource warranty work. One way manufacturers have accomplished this is by entering into exclusive arrangements with retailers, who both carry inventory and provide service. The auto industry is the classic model for this strategy, with the manufactures distributors providing service. As noted above, however, manufactures increasingly are turning to third parties to outsource warranty work.Retailers historically also have provided limited \"warranties,\" at least to the extent of accepting returns of products for a limited period. Typically, they act as intermediaries between the customer and the manufacturer, accepting the returned product and providing a replacement, and then returning the product to the manufacturer, or wholesaler. Increasingly, retailers also are selling extended warranties for products they sell, and as noted above, these warranties may overlap provisions of warranties offered by manufacturers of the product. Finally, it should be noted that vendors of extended warranties are beginning to sell directly to consumers. The result of multiple vendors offering extended warranties is the opportunity for overlapping coverage and confusion on who is responsible for doing warranty work.Multiple sources for extended warranties, however, raises an important question, which is \"who should control the information generated by warranties?\" Warranty information is a fundamental source of information about the age, geographic distribution, and reliability of a firm's products. The firm has an interest in controlling this information. It also is in the interest of the firm to access information on the quality of warranty service. These considerations favor the manufacturer being the interface between the customer and the provider of warranty service.On the other hand, it is in the interest of the firm to acquire information about the age, geographic distribution, and reliability of its competitors' products. Retailers are better positioned to provide such competitive information. Retailers, however, can only provide information regarding the subset of products they carry and for the regions in which they operate. Warranty service providers may be in a position to provide information on a broader variety of products and for more larger geographic regions, but probably are not the best source of information about the quality of their own work. Clearly, the ongoing evolution of extended warranties has the possibility of fractionating information about the installed base of products.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to assess consumer perceptions of extended warranties that are marketed by the manufacturer for an independent service provider as applied to the purchase of a computer by mail catalog, telephone ordering, or the internet.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A descriptive survey of a large sample of consumers in the USA was conducted using data collection by the internet. Measurement was responses to eight Likert scales of agreement and two demographic items.\nFindings: - Significant differences between perceptions of females and males were observed. Overall, there was no relationship between perceptions and age, although there were significant differences for some scale items. There were no interaction effects of gender and age. A major finding is that although service is provided by an independent service company, consumers believe it to be provided by the manufacturer.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first known examination of the specific research questions underlying the study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of card payments on VAT revenue in the euro area: evidence from a panel VECM	[ "VAT", "Card payments", "Tax compliance", "Euro area", "Panel VECM", "H21", "H25", "H26" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A growing strand of the literature on tax compliance has emphasized the role of the information trail of taxable transactions. Field experiments, inter alia, in the US (Slemrod et al., 2001), Denmark (Kleven et al., 2011) and Chile (Pomeranz, 2015), as well as administrative microdata form Brazil (Naritomi, 2019), provide evidence that tax compliance increases for transactions that are subject to third-party reporting. The Value Added Tax (VAT) by design provides incentives for generating a paper trail between firms along the production chain. However, these incentives break down at the final consumer stage [1]. The so-called \"last-mile\" problem of VAT arises due to the typically limited incentives for consumers to request a receipt, which creates scope for collusion with sellers to under-report the transaction. Increasing the information trail of consumption expenditure may therefore lead to higher VAT compliance.An interesting implication of this is that tax compliance could be related to payment preferences, as information trails may vary sharply between cash and non-cash transactions. Rogoff (2014) argues that in most countries well over 50% of currency is used to hide transactions. In contrast, non-cash payments are typically traceable and generate third-party information, for example through the banking system. Increasing the use of traceable, non-cash payments can, therefore, be expected to improve tax compliance by increasing the perceived probability of detection [2]. As far as retail purchases are concerned, Esselink and Hernandez (2017) report card payments to be the dominant alternative to cash in the euro area. A higher share of card payments in consumption expenditure may therefore be expected to improve the efficiency of consumption taxes, such as VAT.Evidence on the effect of card payments on VAT revenue performance is scarce. Madzharova (2014) investigates the effect of card transactions on VAT revenue efficiency, using annual observations in a panel of 26 EU countries during 2000-2010. She reports evidence that cash transactions impede revenue performance, although, card payments are not found to have a significantly positive influence. More recently, Hondroyiannis and Papaoikonomou (2017) studying the VAT performance in Greece, report a positive effect of card payments on VAT compliance, triggered by the imposition of cash restrictions in July 2015 [3].This paper revisits the question of the effect of card payments on VAT revenue performance by using annual and quarterly panel data for the 19 euro area member states, covering the period 2000-2016. The main part of the empirical analysis is carried out within a panel VECM, in order to address endogeneity issues and to explicitly account for the time-series properties of the data. Taking account of common stochastic trends, in particular, is shown to be crucial in revealing the positive effect of card use predicted by the literature on tax compliance. In line with the micro-data literature on information trails, the analysis confirms that a higher share of card payments in private consumption expenditure increases VAT revenue and improves the efficiency of revenue collection. The analysis also indicates that the gains are more pronounced for countries with above average self-employment.The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, to our knowledge it provides the first confirmation of the well-established literature on information trails using aggregate macroeconomic time series in a multi-country setting. Second, it has very timely policy implications, as low-hanging fruit are identified in euro-area economies with much to gain from strengthening the credibility of their fiscal performance, such as Greece.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the analytical framework. Section 3 describes data sources and concepts and reports on the unit root properties of the variables. Section 4 reports the empirical results. A preliminary analysis is included to illustrate the properties of the data and to motivate the subsequent cointegration analysis and estimation of the VECM. Section 5 discusses robustness checks, with a main focus on parameter heterogeneity across units and through time. Section 6 concludes.\n2. Analytical framework: It is assumed that actual VAT revenue (VAT), is a positive function of the hypothetical amount of revenue that could be collected under universal application of the standard rate to the tax base, denoted as BASERATE, and a positive function of the latent variable tax compliance, [?](VAT)[?](BASERATE)>0, [?](VAT)[?](compliance)>0. According to the literature on information trails, tax compliance is positively related to the amount of third-party reporting of transactions, which establishes a positive relation between VAT revenue and information trails. As a proxy for information trails in private consumption we use the share of private consumption that was spent using payment cards, denoted CARDSHAREP. We investigate the predicted positive effect of card use on VAT revenue by examining the empirical relation between (the natural logarithms of) the three variables VAT, BASERATE and CARDSHAREP using annual and quarterly data during the period 2000q1-2016q4 for the 19 members of the euro area [4]. The choice of analytical framework is guided by the need to address two potentially important issues. The first is the likely endogeneity of BASERATE, reflecting the two-way interaction between VAT revenue and macroeconomic activity. The second is the possible presence of unit roots considering the non-negligible time dimension of the sample.We propose to address these issues by employing a panel VECM of the following form for cross-section i:(1)Dzi,t=ci+dit+ab'zi,t-1+[?]k=1p-1GkDzi,t-k+ ei,twhere the n-vector zi,t=[ln (VATi,t),ln (BASERATEi,t),ln (CARDSHAREPi,t)]', ei,t~iid(0,O) over i and t and O positive definite, the Gk 's are n x n coefficient matrices, common across cross-sections, a and b are n x r full column-rank coefficient matrices, common across cross-sections with 0<=r<n, r denoting the number of cointegrating vectors, ci is an n-vector of cross-section-specific fixed effects and di=-ab'gi is an n-vector of cross-section-specific loadings on linear deterministic trends, restricted inside the cointegrating space in accordance with Case IV in Garratt et al. (2006). Collecting multiples of b the VECM given by (1) can be reformulated more compactly as follows:(2)Dzi,t=ci+axi,t-1+[?]k=1p-1GkDzi,t-k+ ei,twhere xi,t-1 denotes the error correction terms, that is stationary deviations from the r cointegrating relations. In the case of a single cointegrating relation normalized on ln (VATi,t), xi,t-1 denotes the (lagged) residual from the following regression:(3)ln (VATi,t)=b1ln (BASERATEi,t)+b2ln (CARDSHAREPi,t)+mi+dit+xi,twhere b1, b2 are the long-run elasticities of VAT revenue with respect to BASERATE and CARDSHAREP, respectively, common across cross-sections and di=-b'gi.For zi,t=[yi,t', xi,t']' the VECM given by (2) can be written in partitioned form as follows:(4)[Dyi,tDxi,t]=[cyicxi]+[ayax]xi,t-1+[?]k=1p-1[GkyGkx]Dzi,t-k+ [eyi,texi,t]where yi,t=[ln (VATi,t),ln (BASERATEi,t)]', xi,t=ln (CARDSHAREPi,t)' and similarly O=[OyyOyxOxyOxx]. Provided ax=0, the vector xi,t can be treated as weakly exogenous, [5] or long-run forcing with respect to yi,t and the model of the endogenous variables in yi,t can be formulated conditionally on xi,t:(5)Dyi,t=bi+ayxi,t-1+[?]k=1p-1PskDzi,t-k+UDxi,t+ ui,twhere bi=cyi- Ucxi, Psk=Gky- UGkx and ui,t=eyi,t- Uexi,t, U=OyxOxx-1 and ui,t is by construction orthogonal to exi,t. In this setting, the endogenous variables in yi,t are affected by CARDSHAREP in both, the short-run through Psk Dzi,t-k and the long-run through ayxi,t-1. In contrast, CARDSHAREP does not adjust in response to departures from the long-run equilibrium xi,t-1, although it can be temporarily affected by yi,t through GkxDzi,t-k in (4), provided the first ny elements of Gkx corresponding to the endogenous variables are different from zero. Under the joint hypothesis that ax=0 and that the first ny elements of Gkx are zero, CARDSHAREP becomes exogenous.While the value of card payments, that is the numerator of CARDSHAREP, can be expected to be dependent on economic activity and the prevailing tax rates, the intensity of card use in private consumption measured by CARDSHAREP is likely to reflect exogenous influences. Such influences may include payment culture, the penetration of card-related technology and the availability of payment terminals, administrative incentives such as lottery draws with monetary rewards for card use, or even direct restrictions to cash withdrawals, as in the case of Greece in July 2015. Indeed, the treatment of CARDSHAREP as exogenous in our sample receives empirical support, as is discussed in the main empirical analysis.\n3. Data: 3.1 Sources and definition of variables\n4. Empirical analysis: 4.1 Preliminary analysis\n5. Robustness checks: In addition to generating and reporting estimates using both annual and quarterly frequencies in the context of the main empirical analysis, the sensitivity of the results has been checked over the following range of different specifications and modelling options: (1) Impulse responses have been computed within the full system in (2) with the shock identified using a Cholesky decomposition with the causal ordering CARDSHAREP - VAT - BASERATE, as well as using the Generalized Impulse Responses in Koop et al. (1996), which are unique and invariant to the ordering of the variables; (2) Bayesian estimation of the short-run dynamics of the VECM, as well as (3) different lag-lengths and (4) an alternative pre-tax definition of the tax base, measured by subtracting VAT from BASE. In all cases, we obtain confirmation of the main finding, namely that higher card use has a persistent positive effect on VAT revenue and on EFFICIENCY.A key assumption underlying the main empirical analysis is that of parameter homogeneity. In particular, it is assumed that the long-run elasticities b1 and b2 in (3), as well the short-run dynamics described by a and Gk in (1) are common across cross-sectional units. However, the literature on the role of information trails on tax compliance alludes to two potentially important sources of heterogeneity, which are considered in more detail in the following sub-sections. 5.1 Heterogeneity in self-employment\n6. Conclusions: There has been a growing amount of evidence that tax compliance is positively related to the information trail of transactions. This suggests that the performance of consumption taxes such as VAT can benefit from increased use of traceable transactions, such as card payments. Although cash transactions in the EU have been reported to have an adverse effect on the efficiency VAT revenue, the anticipated positive effect of card payments had eluded empirical confirmation, except for the recent experience of Greece.This paper fills the gap by providing confirmation of a positive effect of card payments on VAT revenue and revenue efficiency in the euro area over the period 2000-2016. Using a panel VECM in order to address endogeneity concerns and to account for the presence of unit roots, we find evidence that an increase in the share of consumption that is spent through payment cards generates a persistent positive effect on VAT revenue and on revenue efficiency. Taking account of common stochastic trends, in particular, is shown to be crucial in revealing the positive effect of card use predicted by the literature on tax compliance. The long-run elasticity of VAT revenue with respect to the share of private consumption spent by cards is estimated for the full sample in the region of 0.1. This is equivalent to 1% higher VAT revenue for a 1 percentage point increase in CARDSHAREP when the latter stands at 10%, as was the case in Greece in 2016, which is exactly in line with the country-specific estimate reported in Hondroyiannis and Papaoikonomou (2017). The analysis also indicates that the gains are more pronounced for countries with above average self-employment, as suggested by studies based on micro data. Further investigation on the role of self-employment has been left for future research.Promoting the use of traceable transactions, such as card payments, could be of benefit in particular to Greece and Italy, which are the two countries in our sample with the lowest level of VAT efficiency Figure 11, the highest levels of self-employment Figure 9 and have two of the lowest levels of card use Figure 10. 6.1 Data appendix\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A growing amount of micro-data analyses has highlighted the importance of information trails, such as generated by card transactions, for improving tax compliance. Yet, time series evidence indicating a positive effect of card payments on VAT revenue performance has been scarce. This paper revisits the question of the effect of card payments on VAT revenue by using annual and quarterly panel data for the 19 euro area member states, covering the period 2000-2016.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A panel VECM is employed in order to address endogeneity issues and to account for common stochastic trends, which, is shown to be crucial in revealing the anticipated positive effect of card use on the performance of VAT.\nFindings: The analysis confirms that a higher share of card payments in private consumption increases VAT revenue and the efficiency of revenue collection. Higher gains are estimated for countries with above average self-employment.\nOriginality/value: The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, to our knowledge it provides the first confirmation of the well-established literature on information trails using aggregate macroeconomic time series in a multi-country setting. Second, it has very timely policy implications, as low-hanging fruit are identified in euro-area economies with much to gain from strengthening the credibility of their fiscal performance, such as Greece.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Self-efficacy and workaholism as initiators of the job demands-resources model	[ "Burnout", "Work engagement", "Workaholism", "Self‐efficacy", "School principals", "Leaders", "Quality of life", "Retention" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: School principals of primary and secondary schools play important organisational roles. Many of the principals' daily activities are comparable to managerial activities, especially in terms of the hours worked per week. In Italy, school principals are nowadays fully responsible for a wide range of organisational (e.g. the recruitment of fixed-term teaching personnel, organisational, and operational control), pedagogical (e.g. the quality of the teaching activity of the whole institution), and political (e.g. relationships with elected representatives of students' parents) activities.Italian law is granting more and more autonomy to schools as organisations. This trend has made school principals directly responsible for a growing number of organisational tasks and outcomes. This changing role has produced a double effect. On the one hand, it has subjected school principals to pressure regarding results and placed them under stress; on the other hand, having gained managerial status their job may now be considered a more challenging one, making job engagement and commitment more likely. As Westman and Etzion (1999) pointed out, these kinds of professionals are exposed to many stressors; at the same time, however, they have a lot of autonomy in their jobs, which enables them to be engaged.Given this, the job of school principal appears a good opportunity for capturing both positive and negative aspects of well-being.The current study focuses on the well-being of school principals by using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework. It aims to make a significant contribution to the development of this model by considering not only job demands and job resources, but also the roles of personal resources and personal demands as predictors of work engagement and burnout.Burnout, work engagement, and the JD-R model\nMethod: Procedure and participants\nResults: Descriptions\nDiscussion: The purpose of this study was to explore the roles of personal demands and personal resources in the JD-R model among school principals. More specifically, we hypothesised that workaholism constitutes a personal demand that has a positive impact on job demands, which in turn have a positive impact on burnout. Concerning the motivational process, it was assumed that self-efficacy constituted a personal resource that has a positive impact on job resources, which in turn have a positive impact on work engagement. In addition, a mediating role was hypothesised of job resources in the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout. Thus, we hypothesised that personal variables operate as initiators of the health impairment and the motivational process. Our results supported all hypotheses. In particular, job demands mediated the relationship between workaholism and burnout, whereas job resources mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement and burnout.Therefore, this study lends support to the literature on individual resources that underlines the role that personal resources play in work engagement and burnout (Xanthopoulou et al., 2007). This is also in line with Social Cognitive Theory of Bandura (1997), which suggests that personal resources determine how employees perceive their work environment. Indeed, our results revealed that school principals who are confident about their capabilities may identify more aspects of their work environment that are resourceful, which in turn might lead to higher levels of work engagement and lower levels of burnout. In addition, our study contributes to the JD-R model by highlighting the role of personal demands (i.e. workaholism), which has an effect on the development of burnout in school principals. Indeed, and in line with previous studies (Taris et al., 2005), our findings revealed that workaholism and burnout are related to the mediation of job demands (i.e. work/family conflict and inequity).The idea to expand the JD-R model with individual aspects (e.g., personal resources and demands) is partly based on the interactive perspective in psychology (Pervin, 1989), which indicates that behaviour, attitudes, and well-being are determined jointly by the person and the environment. Seen in this way, it seems important to prevent burnout and to promote work engagement among school principals by means of interventions at both the organisational (e.g. job redesign and training programs) and the individual level (e.g. through counselling). Beyond of the type of intervention (i.e. at the individual and/or organisational level), the focus should be the roles of school principals, because they are the formal leaders of their schools.Practical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to investigate school principals' well-being by using the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework. It aims at making a significant contribution to the development of this model by considering not only job demands and job resources, but also the role of personal resources and personal demands as predictors of work engagement and burnout. In particular, it was hypothesised that job demands may mediate the relationship between workaholism and burnout, whereas job resources may mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement and burnout.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey study was conducted. In total, 224 school principals (67 percent women) during training activities completed a questionnaire.\nFindings: - The results of SEM analyses largely supported the hypotheses by showing that personal variables operate as initiators of health impairment and motivational processes.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study lends support to the literature on individual resources that underlines the role that personal resources play in work engagement and burnout. It contributes to the JD-R model by highlighting the role of personal demands (i.e. workaholism), which has an effect on the development of burnout in school principals.\nPractical implications: - The implications of these findings for interventions aimed at the promotion of school principals' well-being are discussed.\nOriginality/value: - This study advances the understanding of the role played by personal resources and personal demands in the job demands-resources model. The value added is represented by the study of workaholism as personal demand, which in turn influences job demands and also the health impairment it triggers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improving workplace learning: The role of assessment activities	[ "Learning", "Design and development", "Assessment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Training and development has always played a key role in ensuring that organizations remain competitive. In today's volatile business world, it's arguably become even more crucial. Fortunately, most company leaders are aware of this importance.\nTraining v. development: Training is invariably formal and task or job specific, which is all well and good for the here and now. But how does it equip the workforce to meet new challenges and those not yet even identified?Formal training clearly has its place but a future orientation is arguably even more imperative. The astute leader will understand that placing a greater onus on development can bring added value at both individual and organizational levels in the shape of:* employees who are able to acquire a wider range of transferable skills and capabilities essential for career enhancement; and* the organization increasing productivity and profit, and a stronger likelihood of retaining or even improving its competitive edge.A selection of activities that include coaching, appraisal, 360 degree feedback and development centers (DCs) are becoming increasingly linked to development. The challenge is to achieve a blend that offers the greatest impact and is best able to satisfy organizational needs.This demands alertness to the similarities and differences between the various activities. Take formality, for instance. With the exception of coaching, all of the above are typically formal in nature with content, aims and objectives largely determined by established assessment criteria. In contrast, the greater flexibility offered by coaching means that everything is usually more negotiable.Whether or not the activity incorporates an assessment strand is to some extent shaped by its level of formality. Assessment is non-essential to coaching and less likely still where highly informal processes such as mentoring or work shadowing are concerned. In the other cases, assessment is intrinsic to the process with performance measured in terms of competency-related dimensions. By definition, however, assessment has a limited scope. But leaders should be alert to the value of the self-assessment aspect within each activity. Evidence suggests that self-aware individuals boast such as cognitive reasoning skills and are superior performers.And is the activity compulsory? If so, there are several important considerations that include:* a possibility of subordinate hostility towards the process and subsequent lack of commitment towards any future development plans that arise;* content being aimed at multiple participants and therefore not tailored to individual needs; and* the likelihood that data from the encounter will be shared more widely. The point here is that feedback not confined to the immediate context is more susceptible to alteration and therefore distortion and unreliability.This situation is hardly unique as personal data and feedback from appraisals and sometimes DCs will often be used to shape other HR decisions within the organization. Promotion is one obvious example. But the inevitable conflict of interests inherent within such situations usually means that individual development plays second fiddle to the company's assessment agenda. Surely that can't always be the right way to go?The degree of simulation can also be significant. The premise here is that activities which closely resemble the actual job may inspire a more immediate transfer of learning into the workplace role. Being based on agreed performance standards, appraisals fit the bill in this respect. Coaching's focus on concrete work issues makes the process similarly realistic. On the other hand, DCs lean heavily towards simulation and are thus more detached from the immediate workplace environment.\nFeedback: who and what?: What about 360 degree feedback? Does the additional number of feedback sources involved make the process somewhat artificial and therefore of limited value? Or is variety the spice of life in this instance? That would seem to depend on what perspective you adopt. Those who favor the process argue that blending self-assessment with feedback from peers, managers and sometimes customers produces more balanced ratings. But too many cooks can spoil the broth and it's a real danger here too. Different stakeholders have different agendas and bias can be the outcome. For that reason, it is inappropriate to use feedback from multiple sources for important decisions such as those relating to promotion or financial rewards.Where feedback is concerned, its source is an important issue. With 360 degree feedback, the argument prevails that participant response is heavily influenced by the rank and perceived credibility of each source involved. This has likewise been noted for appraisals, where employees benefit more from enjoying a mutually-positive working relationship with the manager who conducts the review. Other managers could be trained to adapt their behavior to create the organizational conditions necessary for development and change.Positive feedback increases motivation and desire to participate in further development programs or activities. The reverse is also true. With DCs, feedback can impact on performance and shape subsequent attitudes towards job involvement and career planning. Similar findings exist for the other activities.\nDifferent aims, different effects: Appraisal, DCs and 360 degree feedback are essentially driven by the aim to combat weakness and lower development needs. Coaching is somewhat different. Recent moves have seen a psychological approach emerge with the result being an emphasis on developing strength and capability. Apart from within team scenarios, coaching feedback remains private and confidential and thus eliminates the danger of bias resulting from multi-stakeholder involvement. It's not all good news though, as coaching can be too centered on the individual and thus misaligned with broader company objectives. The result of this? Developmental activities become detached from the workplace context and make little if any contribution to learning in the organizational whole.Leaders must be aware of how frequently they expect their subordinates to participate in assessment and/or developmental activities. It is suggested that:* one-off events can often be costlier to run than those taking place more frequently;* correlation exists between frequency of event and degree of similarity to the actual job. It is perceived as more real if it is held more often; and* participant motivation is higher for specific and unique events than for those that are on-going or cyclical. Regular activities must therefore be monitored to ensure they continue to stimulate and serve the intended purpose.It appears that no single activity is effective enough on its own. The ideal package will therefore be a process that incorporates strands of both diagnosis and development so that broad plans and goals can be set. In terms of assessment, clear objectives are a must if evaluation is to be accurately benchmarked. But where less-formal development is concerned, the blend should allow scope for personal as well as professional growth. There is also need to ensure that the chosen activities cover the whole cycle of development and not just the initial diagnosis as is often currently the case.\nComment: The review is based upon: \"Developing a framework for assessing effective development activities\" by Almuth McDowall and Christopher Mabey. The authors examine different development activities with the aim being to provide a framework with which to assess each one's effectiveness. They compare the processes incorporating a range of significant factors and highlight several important implications that arise for any aim to meet organizational objectives while also addressing the development of individual participants concerned. This informative article concludes by stating that an unequivocal case cannot be made for the superior effectiveness of any of the four activities discussed. Consequently, a key implication is that blending different elements of each process may prove the best strategy until future research suggests otherwise.\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: - Training and development has always played a key role in ensuring that organizations remain competitive. In today's volatile business world, it's arguably become even more crucial. Fortunately, most company leaders are aware of this importance. While awareness is one thing, focus is an entirely different proposition. And even though the majority of leaders remain on the ball where training is concerned, the same cannot always be assumed for the development part of the equation. This evident disparity is similarly reflected in the extent of available research. Training is invariably formal and task or job specific, which is all well and good for the here and now. But how does it equip the workforce to meet new challenges and those not yet even identified?\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" } ]
A context-specific model of organizational trust: An examination of cognitive and socio-affective trust determinants in unique cultural settings	[ "Organizational justice", "Organizational trust", "Cultural research", "Hofstede cultural dimensions", "Organizational respect", "Trust measurement" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Organizational trust relates to an employee's perception of an organization's trustworthiness and that employee's propensity to trust (Mayer et al., 1995; Schoorman et al., 2007). Trust is important as it is linked to organizational outcomes (Fulmer and Gelfand, 2012), including organizational change effort and survival success (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; Sonpar et al., 2009) and outcomes of mergers and acquisitions in business developments (Maguire and Phillips, 2008; Stahl and Sitkin, 2005). It has also been linked to individual outcomes such as effectiveness of managerial problem solving (Boss, 1978; Zand, 1972), psychological contract breach (Deery et al., 2006), job satisfaction and organizational identification (Edwards and Cable, 2009), organizational citizenship behaviors (Yilmaz and Altinkurt, 2012) and turnover intentions (Yu et al., 2007). When trust levels are high, organizations are better equipped to take risks and use resources optimally (Yilmaz and Atalay, 2009). Managers are particularly interested in trust as higher trust levels result in decreased need for physical monitoring (Ammeter et al., 2004) and is a key determinant of employee commitment (Liu and Wang, 2013), performance (Davis et al., 2000; Paliszkiewicz, 2011) and an organization's ability to achieve its objectives (Gilbert and Li-Ping Tang, 1998).\nTraditional conceptualization and operationalization of trust: Although the literature outlines several forms of trust, this study focusses on the trust an employee has for his/her organization and the measurement of trust at the individual level. Here, organizational trust is defined as a feeling of confidence and support in an employer, where an employee believes an employer will be straightforward, follow through on commitments and not be opportunistic (Bradach and Eccles, 1989; Cummings and Bromiley, 1996; Gilbert and Li-Ping Tang, 1998). In contrast, other researchers propose that human resource (HR) practices, organizational culture, organizational structure and trust in supervisors lead to employees trusting their organizations (Whitener, 1997; Whitener et al., 1998). In the popular model of trust proposed by Mayer et al. (1995), employees' perception of an organization's trustworthiness (ability, benevolence and integrity), combined with employee trust propensity (ETP) determines the organizational trust relationship. Here, organizational trust is conceptualized as an employee's decision or intention to trust his/her organization. It is defined as an employee's willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of his/her organization based on expectations that the organization will perform a particular action important to the employee, regardless of the ability to monitor or control that employee (Mayer et al., 1995; Schoorman et al., 2007). While this model of trust is not employed within this study, its popularity necessitates referencing as it adopts a multi-level and multi-referent framework. It, therefore, accommodates various forms of trustor and trustee relationships, including employees' trust of organizations. The model contends that trust is based on the trustor's disposition to trust (trust propensity) and the trustee's trustworthiness, and clarified for the trust literature that trust, trustworthiness (characteristics of the trustee - ability, benevolence and integrity) and trust propensity are all separate constructs (Colquitt et al., 2007). In situations where individuals are ignorant of others, it is trust propensity that is salient and leads to trust. However, when knowledge of the trustee's trustworthiness is obtained, trustworthiness is salient (Mayer et al., 1995). This distinction between trust propensity and trustworthiness was confirmed in a meta-analytic study where trust propensity remained a significant, but smaller predictor of trust, when trustworthiness became prominent (Colquitt et al., 2007).\nInfluence of culture on trust determinants: In a review of the role of culture on trust development, Ferrin and Gillespie (2010) found that research has mainly focussed on the effect of individualism/collectivism on trust or trust levels across countries. For example, in a comparative study of bank managers' trust levels across six Asian nations (collectivist) and the USA (individualist), findings revealed organizations in the USA had significantly higher levels of interpersonal trust than those in Asian countries (with the exception of Malaysia). The study also found that interpersonal trust was significantly higher in general in the USA than all Asian nations and Hawaii (Huff and Kelley, 2003). Studies have concluded that societal culture impacts trust levels across countries (Casimir et al., 2006) and that citizens' trust propensity levels were based on national culture, developmental experiences and individual personality. Researchers, therefore, recommend the inclusion of these variables in trust analyses (Schoorman et al., 2007; Wasti et al., 2007). Although preliminary evidence indicates an association between culture and trust (Chatterjee and Pearson, 2002; Wang and Clegg, 2002), more research is needed to establish the influence of culture on specific trust determinants. The disparity between available quantitative research and researcher suggestions stems from traditional belief that trust measures are inherently generalizable and universal (Noorderhaven, 1999; Tan and Chee, 2005; Zaheer and Zaheer, 2006). In fact, researchers acknowledge that a large body of trust research assumes concepts, models and measures of western countries are adequate to study the phenomenon in other cultures (Ambrose and Schminke, 2003; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Dietz et al., 2010; Laschinger and Finegan, 2005). However, the analysis of organizational trust and its determinants in under-explored contexts would contribute significantly to understanding and measuring trust. For example, a critical incident interview study of employees in collectivist countries of China and Turkey (Wasti et al., 2011) revealed that while the defacto determinants of trust (ability, benevolence, integrity) were present, social values of delegation (China), identification (Turkey) and humility and closeness (Turkey and China) were also important. Similarly, in an interview study of Chinese-Singaporeans, Tan and Chee (2005) found that while traditional determinants of ability, benevolence and integrity were key components of trust, affective-based determinants, namely filial piety, diligence, perseverance, humility and respect for authority, were also present. Kim's (2005) study of trust in e-vendors across cultures also highlights the influence of culture on trust determinants with findings indicating cognition-based trust determinants were more related to individualist cultures, while affect-based trust determinants were more important in collectivistic societies. Such findings led Wasti et al. (2011) to conclude that although the popular trust model by Mayer et al. (1995) captures some universal aspects of trust formation, it is a reflection of work habits of the USA and limits the social, emotional and relational aspect of trust formation and relations in other contexts.\nSocial values influencing trust formation in Jamaica: A lack of trust between workers and management has been cited as the source of many workplace challenges in Jamaica (Carter, 1997; Downes, 2003; Powell, 2009, 2010; Stone, 1982). Downes (2003) found a lack of trust resulted in poor work relationships and the demotivation of workers, while Carter (1997) suggested that labor productivity could be increased by building trust and having good industrial relations in the workplace. Fifteen years earlier, Stone (1982) found Jamaican workers regarded the workplace as unjust with only 34 percent of employees believing that managers rewarded the hardest workers. In a study of Jamaican social values with over a thousand citizens, Powell (2009) found respect and justice were important cultural values for successful worker-manager relationships. Carter (1997) also found that Jamaican workers ranked respect and appreciation at the workplace higher than tangible rewards. Given that respect and justice have been found to correlate well with trust (Ambrose and Schminke, 2003; Cohen-Charash and Spector, 2001; Laschinger and Finegan, 2005), developing a model of trust that is psychometrically robust, culturally tailored and practically relevant for organizations in Jamaica must include these socially affective variables as determinants.\nThe present study: The primary aim of the study is to develop a culturally tailored, valid and reliable model of trust for Jamaican organizations that is comprised of both cognitive and socio-affective components. To that end, the research also determined the construct validity of Rawlins' (2008) cognitive model of organizational trust in order to establish which model was the better fit for this unique cultural setting. The following hypotheses were investigated:\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Data screening\nDiscussion: Trust research has been criticized for its restricted theoretical conceptualization and limited evidence of trust formation in different cultural contexts. Specifically, researchers lament the limited understanding of trust formation in non-westernized and non-individualistic countries, the low replication of trust measures in research and the accompanying lack of validity evidence reported in research findings. To address these concerns, this study developed a culturally tailored and valid model of organizational trust by using three key approaches: first, by re-conceptualizing organizational trust as both a cognitive and socio-affective construct comprised of competence, goodwill, integrity, employee propensity to trust, justice and respect; second, by utilizing a non-replicated model of organizational trust to demonstrate its validity thereby building researcher confidence and encouraging replication; and finally, by investigating the construct validity of the model in a cultural context atypical to those traditionally represented in organizational trust research. Findings support earlier theorizing and recommendations that contextual and emotional variables should be considered to improve trust measurement and provide evidence that inclusion of affective variables improved the validity of cognitive-based trust models when applied to more restricted trust domains (Schoorman et al., 2007; Tan and Chee, 2005; Wasti et al., 2011).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Employee trust research has been criticized for restricted theoretical conceptualization, limited contextual application and low replication of measures in organizational studies. The purpose of this paper is to expand the theoretical framework underpinning individual-level organizational trust to include cognitive and socio-affective components in order to examine trust determinants in a unique cultural setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A national survey of 653 employees from six companies in Jamaica completed the perceived organizational support scale, perceived organizational justice scale, employee trust propensity scale and the organizational trust measure (Rawlins, 2008) after focus groups revealed the role of socio-cultural values in employee trust relationships.\nFindings: Controlling for common methods variance, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a model of organizational trust that included a combination of cognitive and socio-affective determinants was more valid in the Jamaican culture than a model comprised of cognitive determinants alone. National social values of justice and respect were significant determinants of employee trust. Results also provide validity evidence for the previously non-replicated Rawlins trust scale, thereby, providing future researchers with a measure that can be readily replicated.\nResearch limitations/implications: Employee trust levels influenced participation and consequently restricted the sample size and industry profile of the survey. Cross-cultural trust researchers are, therefore, encouraged to design studies with similar subject loss projections.\nOriginality/value: Strict focus on the collectivistic/individualistic dimension of culture restricts researchers' ability to measure trust effectively across a range of settings. The authors, therefore, propose the uncertainty avoidance dimension as a more valid paradigm to understand inter-cultural differences in trust orientations, particularly in restricted trust domains.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The Internet in six words or less	[ "Internet", "Research", "Worldwide web" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nSix words: 1. Infrastructure.2. Organization.3. Commerce.4. Governance.5. Linking.6. Interface.Six words which are far more than simple keywords or concepts. In these six words lies the essence of 20 years of internet research - 20 years of Internet Research.Summarizing a 20-year history of the fastest moving scientific endeavor known to man is a formidable task. We have been witness to two decades of unprecedented innovation, massive investments in telecommunications infrastructure, two destructive global economic crashes, and a sea change in communication and commercial norms in the developed world with equally significant changes in developing countries.In these six words we can find much of what has driven those changes and much of what still remains ahead of us.In this article we introduce six landmark articles that appeared in the pages of Internet Research in its first four years of publication. What these articles have in common is that each relates to elements that had a significant impact on the growth and development of the Internet; yet each focuses on a different key piece of the puzzle that would eventually have to be put in place. Infrastructure - the systems and standards that made the explosive growth of the Internet possible; Organization - the seemingly impossible task of matching humans with the information they seek, when the totality of the world's information is now within reach; Commerce - a revolution in how industry communicates and transacts; Governance - dealing with questions of rights, obligations, jurisdiction, and freedom in the realm of cyberspace; Linking - a fresh look at core concept that has since morphed into the ubiquitous WWW; and Interface - examining the roles that presentation and interaction play in our acceptance, adoption, and integration into an online world that continues to expand our horizons.\nInfrastructure: What infrastructures contributed to the ultimate growth of the Internet?\nOrganization: Are we really finding what we need?\nCommerce: When the Internet had a mere 5,000 computers interconnected, and when web-based consumer e-commerce was not even a glimmer in the eye of Jeff Bezos, the article \"Commercialization of the Internet\" by Allan H. Weis (1992) appeared. It dealt with one of the stickiest issues of the time - how do we take a government/military controlled network dominated by academia and research, and open it up to industry and the public at large?The significance of (Weis, 1992) lies in the recognition of the real issues. While technologies may abound, and applications may burgeon, the evolutionary path to adoption can be full of regulatory potholes and standards barriers. Allowing and addressing the commercialization of Internet traffic was perhaps the most significant policy turning points of the past two decades. Without it the commercial Internet would not have come into being and e-commerce as we know it today would never have followed. Creating a \"single Internet\"was fundamental to its success - but will that reality continue? Will we yet see a fractured global Internet (Segal, 2010) in which China converges on an internal network?Is global e-commerce really as smooth and frictionless as it could be? Have we even begun to effectively address micropayment or link-based payment mechanisms (Ruiz-Martinez et al., 2009) that might fundamentally change Internet economics?\nGovernance: Another linchpin in the commercialization of the Internet would be legal jurisdiction, liability law, and governance. This was recognized early on by Henry H. Perritt and became the central theme of his 1992 article \"Tort liability, the first amendment, equal access, and commercialization of electronic networks\" (Perritt, 1992). He begins by stating what is far from obvious but has become a fundamental insight with respect to information products \"This disaggregation of supply means that the relationship between vertically related stages in the production process that used to be organized through internal firm hierarchy now must be organized through the market and the legal system.\" - a rather formal description of online syndication and mashups (see Palfrey and Gasser, 2007 for a related case study) over a decade before they were to appear. The order of terms, placing \"the market\" ahead of \"the legal system\" was no haphazard placement. It is indicative of the overriding view put forth by Perritt that while the legal system must address the changing needs brought on by the Internet, it had best do so by following the lead of the market rather than expecting the market to follow the lead of legislation.Built around the three legal doctrines of Universal Access, Liability that excludes Intermediaries, and Protecting Freedom of Speech, the policy platform presented in this article regarding both the areas upon which the law should focus, and the mechanism through which the law should evolve, have withstood the test of time and proven to provide a sound basis for the unfettered growth of Internet services while maintaining the checks and balances that protect the public interest. Will this same approach continue to serve us well or are there new challenges being brought on by social networking and ubiquitous connectivity that we are not equipped to address?\nLinking: The link is perhaps the single most important conceptual leap in computing history. More accurately referred to as networked hypertext, the link takes centre stage in the 1992 article by Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Calliau, Jean-Francois Groff, and Bernd Pollermann - \"World-wide web: the information universe\" (Berners-Lee et al., 1992). Even in retrospect it is difficult to read this paper describing the humble beginnings of the world wide web and comprehend how the concepts described within would change the information consumption, communications, commerce, entertainment, banking, dating ... the list goes on ... habits of the world.While we have become accustomed to the juxtaposition of the terms \"web\" and \"site\", it is interesting to note that the term \"website\" appears not once in the original article. What Berners-Lee et al. gave to the world was a generalizable concept of how documents and other sources of information can be associated over a network, and an elegant mechanism to implement that concept through the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (Cailliau and Ashman, 1999).The \"website\" is clearly one of the most significant things to develop from that initial concept, but it is the simplicity, clarity, and effectiveness of the web's design goals and protocol that really made possible the tremendous deluge of creative implementation that was to follow.\nInterface: But in order for the deluge of creativity and web site design to be fully unleashed it would take one more piece of the puzzle. That piece came from NCSA in the form of a graphical browser as described in the 1994 article, \"NCSA mosaic: a global hypermedia system\" by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina (Andreessen and Bina, 1994).With its stated goal that Mosaic \"... allows the user to focus all of his or her attention on the real task at hand - interacting with the information itself.\", the NCSA browser not only provided a seamless integration of the complete TCP/IP, HTTP, FTP, and NNTP protocols, it did so in a decidedly user-centric way. History tracking, bookmarking, and link annotation were just a few of the innovations that would continue to flow from the NCSA labs as Mosaic's user-base began exponential growth.The challenges of Interface continue to grow as the Internet enters new application areas, different platforms, increasingly diverse user populations in terms of age, culture, literacy and technical ability.\nConclusions: Some of the six elements that we have culled from the early pages of Internet Research developed independent of each other, and some, the most obvious being the elements of Linking and Interface were and remain tightly bound. But they all interrelate and share common ground. Each of the core areas has research challenges ahead and the questions put forth in this article are just a taste of areas of research which, after twenty years continue to grow and show no sign of slowing down.In the six early works we have discussed the approaches taken towards infrastructure, organization, governance, commerce, linking, and interface have one important thing in common. And that is the clarity with which each idea was expressed in its respective article. For to change the world through research it is not enough to have a good idea - one must find the proper metaphors, examples, comparisons ... and words to ensure that good ideas, inspiring thoughts, elegant designs, and disruptive technologies find their way out of the labs and think-tanks, and into the hearts and minds of people around the world.Six words, six areas of research, six articles that have left a lasting impact.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to present six key articles from the archives of Internet Research within a research framework, covering infrastructure, organization, commerce, governance, linking, and interface.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The six articles are introduced, summarized, and used to focus attention on each of the core areas of research that impacted the growth of the Internet.\nFindings: - The prism of time is one of the most powerful tools of observation available to scientists and researchers. Palaeontologists think in terms of aeons, archaeologists consider millennia a mere starting-point, even the biologists, chemists, and physicists have centuries of prior research to consider. Internet Research, the Journal, is only 20 years old - and the field only slightly older than that. Yet what decades those have been. Six articles from the early years of Internet Research epitomize much of the innovation, excitement, challenges and vision that would reshape the world. While tremendous advances in technology have been made in the past 20 years, a number of the original issues and challenges remain unresolved.\nPractical implications: - The paper serves to frame the historic articles within a broader research context.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides a conceptual framework for researchers seeking insights into some of the early formative research on the Internet and web.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Family dynamics and gender perspective influencing copreneurship practices: A qualitative analysis in the Brazilian context	[ "Business development", "Corporate entrepreneurship", "Intrapreneurship" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Currently, the economic business sector is formed above all of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with many of them being family concerns. Family firms will have an increasingly important role in countries' economies, since this firm sector grows quickly (Chrisman et al., 2007; Ramadani and Hoy, 2015). Family firms add to countries' economic and social well-being (Welsh et al., 2018). In addition, many of these family SMEs are created and managed by couples, and in this study they are called \"copreneurial family businesses\" (Nieman, 2006) or \"copreneurs\" (Farrington et al., 2011). Therefore, copreneurship is characterized as a family business, where the couple, whether formally married or simply co-habiting, share management and the responsibility of running a common business (Barnett and Barnett, 1988; Rutherford et al., 2006).\nLiterature review: Copreneurial family businesses\nResearch methods: Type of study and participants\nResults: This section will present the empirical evidence about the context experienced by the copreneurs in the seven copreneurial family businesses selected, based on the aim of this study, i.e., to understand the family dynamics factors and gender roles influencing the functioning of copreneurial businesses practices.\nDiscussion: This section discusses the empirical evidence about the context experienced by the copreneurs in the seven copreneurial family businesses selected and located in Brazil (developing country), based on the research question formulated, i.e., to identify the factors associated with family dynamics and gender roles influence copreneurial family business practices and the stability of the couple's relationship.\nConclusions: Overview of contributions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the family dynamics factors and gender roles influencing the functioning of copreneurial business practices, to propose a conceptual framework based on these factors/roles.\nDesign/methodology/approach: For this purpose, a qualitative approach was adopted, through the analysis of seven businesses created by copreneurial couples in an emerging economy - Brazil. Data were obtained from an open interview with each member of the selected couples who are in charge of firm management.\nFindings: The empirical evidence obtained shows that the most important factors for successful copreneurial family businesses are professionalization, dividing the couple's tasks and business management. Trust, communication, flexibility and common goals are other essential relational-based factors for the good functioning of this type of family business and stability in the personal relationship.\nPractical implications: It is clear that professionalization and the separation of positions and functions are fundamental for a balance between business management and the couple's marital life. When couples are in harmony and considering factors such as trust, communication and flexibility (relational-based factors), the firm's life-cycle and business success become real and more effective.\nOriginality/value: From the family dynamics factors and gender roles, this study focused on one of the most important and integrated family firm relationships, copreneurial couples. As there is little research on the heterogeneity of family firms runs specifically by copreneurial couples, this study is particularly important and innovative in the context of a developing economy, such as Brazil. Based on empirical evidence, this study was proposed an integrative and holistic framework that shows the functioning of copreneurial businesses practices.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between pre-construction decision-making and the effectiveness of risk control: Testing the time-safety influence curve	[ "Design and development", "Decision making", "Health and safety", "Pre-construction", "Planning and control" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Safety in Design in the construction industry\nMethods: Case study design\nResults: The sample\nDiscussion: The timing of risk control interventions\nConclusions: The research provides preliminary empirical evidence in support of the positive benefits of considering construction workers' WHS when making decisions in the planning and design stages of construction projects. The statistical results suggest that when hazards are identified and risk control measures are chosen in the early stages of a construction project, they are more likely to be of a higher order, technological nature, than when WHS is not considered until construction work commences. The prospective nature of the research sheds light on the strength of the link between early intervention and WHS hazard/risk control outcomes. Further, the use of a leading, as opposed to lagging indicator of WHS provided a more direct measure of the dependent variable than has been used in previous studies. The research highlights the importance of encouraging project participants engaged in the planning and design stages of construction projects to identify the WHS implications of their decisions and consider ways to eliminate or reduce WHS risks using technological control measures when practicable.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the timing with which decisions are made about how to control work health and safety (WHS) risks in construction project (i.e. either pre- or post-construction) and the quality of risk control outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 23 construction projects in Australia and the USA. Totally, 43 features of work were identified for analysis and decision making in relation to these features of work was mapped across the life of the projects. The quality of risk control outcomes was assessed using a classification system based on the \"hierarchy of control\". Within this hierarchy, technological forms of control are preferable to behavioural forms of controls.\nFindings: The results indicate that risk control outcomes were significantly better in the Australian compared with the US cases. The results also reveal a significant relationship between the quality of risk controls and the timing of risk control selection decisions. The greater the proportion of risk controls selected during the pre-construction stages of a project, the better the risk control outcomes.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results provide preliminary evidence that technological risk controls are more likely to be implemented if WHS risks are considered and controls are selected in the planning and design stages of construction projects.\nPractical implications: The research highlights the need for WHS risk to be integrated into decision making early in the life of construction projects.\nOriginality/value: Previous research has linked accidents to design. However, the retrospective nature of these studies has not permitted an analysis of the effectiveness of integrating WHS into pre-construction decision making. Prospective studies have been lacking. This research provides empirical evidence in support of the relationship between early consideration of WHS and risk control effectiveness.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evolving roles and structures of triadic engagement in healthcare	[ "Healthcare", "Empowerment", "Emancipation", "Consultations", "Triadic engagement" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: I would look at all avenues, so I'd talk to the consultant, he would set up an appointment with another specialist, but in the meanwhile, I would go onto the Internet and then I would look at written work, I would look at blogs to see if other people with similar conditions have had it, how have they reacted to a particular kind of treatment and were they positive(Diabetes Patient discussing influences they bring to the consultation).It is increasingly acknowledged that the delivery of healthcare services should be a collaborative effort between professional partners in the health value chain, patients and their wider care network to facilitate more effective treatment outcomes (Hammerschmidt et al., 2012; McColl-Kennedy et al., 2017). Engaging people in this way can realise better quality healthcare, improved efficiency in healthcare service provision, and improved health for society (Gregory, 2008; Wolff et al., 2015). As such, engagement roles in healthcare service encounters involve a wider circle of actors, extending the traditional dyadic engagement typically associated with consultations. Further, the fragmentation of healthcare and reduced opportunities for professionals, patients and carers to develop long-term relationships increases reliance on other sources of information and support (often virtual) that can compete with formal services (Keeling et al., 2015). For instance, the notion of \"carers\" has now come to comprise virtual (e.g. other patients with the same condition) and local networks (e.g. family members or friends).\nConceptual development: Triadic consultations\nMethodology: The research focusses on four condition categories representing acute and chronic conditions: breast cancer, prostate cancer, types 1 and 2 diabetes and multiple conditions (incorporating mental health). Full ethics approval was gained from relevant committees prior to commencement of the study, with additional ethical approval updates obtained during the study as required. Under the requirements of this approval the data were carefully managed, which involved recording, organising and storing of all resources (including contact sheets, transcripts and field notes) to preserve its authenticity and protect those involved.\nFindings: The findings are mapped onto the two-layered framework of structures and roles that informs the conceptualisation of triadic engagement (Figure 1).\nDiscussion: This study contributes to an understanding of how to move beyond the traditional dyad of consultations and recognise that engagement in healthcare is increasingly triadic. Our first contribution is to offer a framework for triadic engagement based on the fundamental premise that triadic engagement is an evolving process. Our framework positions this process as composed of two interlinked layers: triadic engagement structures and triadic engagement roles that are adopted by three main categories of actors; consultants, patients and third voices in people-centred healthcare (Danaher and Gallan, 2016).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the changing nature of healthcare service encounters by studying the phenomenon of triadic engagement incorporating interactions between patients, local and virtual networks and healthcare professionals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An 18-month longitudinal ethnographic study documents interactions in naturally occurring healthcare consultations. Professionals (n=13) and patients (n=24) within primary and secondary care units were recruited. Analysis of observations, field notes and interviews provides an integrated picture of triadic engagement.\nFindings: Triadic engagement is conceptualised against a two-level framework. First, the structure of triadic consultations is identified in terms of the human voice, virtual voice and networked voice. These are related to: companions' contributions to discussions and the virtual network impact. Second, evolving roles are mapped to three phases of transformation: enhancement; empowerment; emancipation. Triadic engagement varied across conditions.\nResearch limitations/implications: These changing roles and structures evidence an increasing emphasis on the responsible consumer and patients/companions to utilise information/support in making health-related decisions. The nature and role of third voices requires clear delineation.\nPractical implications: Structures of consultations should be rethought around the diversity of patient/companion behaviours and expectations as patients undertake self-service activities. Implications for policy and practice are: the parallel set of local/virtual informational and service activities; a network orientation to healthcare; tailoring of support resources/guides for professionals and third parties to inform support practices.\nOriginality/value: Contributions are made to understanding triadic engagement and forwarding the agenda on patient-centred care. Longitudinal illumination of consultations is offered through an exceptional level of access to observe consultations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Post-purchase shipping and customer service experiences in online shopping and their impact on customer satisfaction: An empirical study with comparison	[ "Customer satisfaction", "Shipping", "Customer service", "Online shopping", "Future purchase intention", "Post-purchase activity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The ubiquitous internet and its development through mobile and social media have boosted the growth of global e-commerce to an unprecedented level. Consumers shop enormously online. Global e-commerce sales has demonstrated consistent growth for many years and is said to top $27 trillion in 2020 (eMarketer, 2016). This is partially true in emerging market such as Asia-Pacific, which increased 31.5 percent in 2016 and will remain the largest retail e-commerce market around the world in the near future, while its sales is expected to top $1 trillion in 2016 and reach $2.725 trillion by 2020 (eMarketer, 2016). Within the Asia-Pacific region, China is said to represent almost half (47.0 percent) of the world's retail e-commerce and to reach $899.09 billion in 2016, compared to $423.34 billion in North America and the second largest regional e-commerce market (eMarketer, 2016).\nTheoretical background and hypothesis: This section provides a comprehensive review of the literature on e-commerce and online shopping, the role of customer service in online shopping, customer satisfaction in online shopping across regions. The review is followed by a research model with a set of hypotheses that are intended to explain the relationships between post-purchase logistic services (shipping, tracking, and return) and customer service in an online shopping environment and their impact on customer satisfaction and purchase intention (see Figure 1).\nThe role of post-purchase logistic services: On-time delivery and shipping and handling are ranked moderately important to predicting customers' satisfaction as compared to price, which is often what e-commerce research has emphasized (Reibstein, 2002). The past literature has found that delivering goods to the customer's home accurately and dealing with returned goods properly are two reported factors that influence the satisfaction of online shoppers (Hsu, 2008). Ho and Wu (1999) found that logistic specifications were the most important factors to determine customer's satisfaction in e-business. These characteristics included timely delivery, after service repairs, warranty availability, and ability to return merchandise. It is expected that post-purchase logistic activities such as shipping, tracking, and return services are positively associated with customer satisfaction. Therefore, this study hypothesizes that the following:\nCustomer satisfaction and continued online shopping: The majority of studies focusing on antecedents and customer satisfaction with e-business have examined the relationship between customer satisfaction and purchasing intention. Lee and Lin (2005) reported that service quality and customer satisfaction are significantly related to customer purchase intentions. It is expected that customer satisfaction with the online store quality of service will result in repeat purchase and customer online store recommendations to friends and family. Thus, this study hypothesizes that the following:\nE-commerce and customer satisfaction in different regions/countries: Local culture has an impact on online shopping behavior and outcomes. For example, Malaysian consumers prefer in-store shopping over online shopping because they engage in other activities such as having dinner with friends or family while shopping (Vegiayan et al., 2013). Also, they are not able to bargain if they purchase products online (Vegiayan et al., 2013). Nevertheless, given the similarities in culture between China and Taiwan, there is no reason to expect any systematic differences in factors that influence customers' satisfaction regarding online shopping, particularly around post-purchase logistic activities. Thus, we hypothesize the following:\nMethodology: Data collection\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussions and conclusions: Discussions of the findings\nConclusions: In sum, this study examined the impact of post-purchasing activities on online shopping satisfaction and future purchase intentions in China and Taiwan. The findings of this study suggest that customers' post-purchase activities related to shipping and tracking play a significant role in online shopping for both Chinese and Taiwanese online shoppers. The results also show that customer service is the most significant factor among the examined antecedents for online shoppers in China. Return service is important for shoppers in Taiwan whereas there is limited return policy in China. In predicting customer future purchase intention, customer satisfaction played a stronger positive role for online shoppers in Taiwan as compared to their counterparts in China. Such differences in determinants of customer satisfaction may be due to the market contexts in different parts of the world. Future studies may examine the role of post-purchasing activities in other emerging economies.\nImplications, limitations, and directions for future research: Research implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of post-purchase logistic services on customer satisfaction and future purchase decision, to reveal any differences across China and Taiwan, to fill in a gap in the literature focused on post-purchase logistic activities related to shipping, return, and tracking, to provide managerial guidance in logistics for e-commerce, and to develop insights on logistic services for future research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a validated survey instrument, 384 respondents in China and 145 respondents in Taiwan are collected. The research model is analyzed using component-based estimation approach to structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The structural equation analysis of the study found that post-purchase shipping and tracking have an impact on customer satisfaction in both China and Taiwan. It also found that customer service is the most significant factor among the examined antecedents for online shoppers in China. While, return service is more important for shoppers in Taiwan. Finally, customer satisfaction played a stronger positive role for online shoppers in Taiwan as compared to their counterparts in China.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research extended the current literature about post-purchase logistic services in an online shopping environment with a literature-based research model and good empirical data support. However, one limitation of the study is that the data collected represents a cross-sectional sample; future research should examine longitudinal sample to study customers' purchase intentions over time.\nPractical implications: This study can help both scholars and practitioners understand the importance of tracking, return, shipping, and customer service in an online shopping environment and across countries. It provides insights on designing e-commerce relevant shipping services to satisfy and attract customers across countries.\nOriginality/value: The study investigated how post-purchase activities contributed to customer satisfaction in online shopping and explored the influence of customer satisfaction on future purchase intention in China and Taiwan. This is one of the first studies available in the literature to provide empirical support and managerial insights about post-purchase activities related to shipping, tracking, and returns for e-commerce with cross-regional comparison.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Measuring quality service : The use of a SERVPERF scale as an input for ELECTRE TRI multicriteria model	[ "SERVPERF", "Customer satisfaction", "Competitive strategy", "ELECTRE TRI", "Service quality assurance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The level of quality importance differs across customers (Jain and Gupta, 2004). Many researches showed that service quality is an essential strategy to win and retain customers (Ghobadian et al., 1994; Buzzell and Gale, 1987; Zeithaml et al., 1990). But, measuring the customer's perceptions is always a challenge, many techniques are used: service audits (Takeuchi and Quelch, 1983), gap analysis (Zeithaml et al., 1988), SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988), SERVPERF (Cronin and Taylor, 1992), critical incident technique (Bitner et al., 1990) and sequential incident technique (Strauss and Weinlich, 1997).\nMethodological background: ELECTRE TRI\nThe multicriteria model of quality management: The proposed model focusses on the interactions, the last one re-evaluates another in order to meet strategic activity plan. A new cycle of strategic activity starts when the action deviates from the previous plan, controlling actions may occur every week. A deviation may happen while the service is being carried out. It reveals the repetitive aspect of the decision process, since evaluating activities occur from one period to the next one. Interference from one activity to another may change the whole chain of activities. The structure of the proposed model has four steps (Figures 1 and 2), apply ELECTRE TRI multicriteria and the SERVPERF dimensions to assign the management of service activities that needs a special attention.\nApplying the model: A numerical application as an illustration of the use of the proposed decision model for multicriteria SERVPERF assessment quality into management categories is presented in this section. The real application is based on data from an Inn organization, was applied with ten guest's family group at the check-out moment.\nManagerial remarks: This model seeks to represent more consistently the customer perception uncertainties of quality service. The perceived service is the result of a series of internal decisions and management activities. The notion of internal-service quality has considered employees as the internal customers (Sasser and Arbeit, 1976) and applying a combination of marketing and service quality to the internal aspect of a business in the six dimensions. According Gronroos (1984) an organizational should have a holistic perspective, which emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, reinforce the commitment and develop of their employees to organizational strategies.\nConclusions: The adaptation of SERVPERF and ELECTRE TRI methodology proposed in this paper allows the DM to use the notion of weights to manage quality effort, because it is not always possible to improve all quality actions on the service, since resources has been scarce. To improve quality, DM may address the following questions proposed by Chow and Luk (2005, p. 286):\nLimitations and research directions: A limitation of the present study is the non-investigation of different parameters of (p) preference, (q) indifference of DM behavior. A further limitation in the present approach is the notion of a ranking. Because, ELECTRE TRI does not provide a ranking of the priority action, that has to be implemented first. Many actions stay into the ELECTRE TRI classes and it is difficult to understand which one has to be implemented first. Future studies could extend the framework in this respect.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to guide organizations according to the relative importance of customer's satisfaction about six quality service dimensions: reliability, empathy, assurance, tangibility, responsiveness (Parasuraman et al., 1985) and price.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The present study uses SERVPERF customer requirements and weights of ELECTRE TRI multicriteria method to provide guidance on an appropriated action plan. Subsequently, it was demonstrated how the proposed model applied to the Inn.\nFindings: SERVPERF is based on the subjective and cognitive perception of customer's service analyses. ELECTRE TRI decreases the deviation of subjectivity and develops manager's energy flow, focussed on enterprise resources.\nResearch limitations/implications: Measuring quality is hard work and usually the customer perceptions are not well understood, because it changes many times. In addition SERVPERF and ELECTRE TRI weights do not order the quality importance.\nPractical implications: Together, SERVPERF and ELECTRE TRI allow managers to prioritize the service level desired by the customer.\nOriginality/value: The importance of this analysis follows the competitiveness approach: productivity, quality and flexibility (Boljwin and Kumpe, 1990). The paper develops an approach to lead organizational quality performance based on the customer view. It provides a sustainable competitive advantage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of reward personalisation on frequent flyer programmes ' perceived value and loyalty	[ "Frequent flyer programme", "Rewards", "Perceived value", "Scale development", "Self-determination theory", "Purchase orientations", "Airlines", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\n1. Introduction: Customer relationships have been increasingly studied in the academic and professional marketing literature. Customer retention rates and customer share of category purchase are important metrics in customer relationship management (CRM). To maximize these metrics, almost all airlines use customer relationship management instruments, and frequent flyer schemes have become key marketing activities for many companies. Airlines reward travelers with free flights, free hotel stays or other benefits after they accumulate sufficient travel miles.\n2. Conceptual framework: We require a better understanding of how rewards influence perceived value, and then affect loyalty. Therefore, we define the loyalty concept clearly and turn to theories pertaining to perceived value, self-determination, and purchase orientations.\n3. Hypotheses: These ideas have significant implications for frequent flyer programmes, because they suggest that economic or promotional rewards might undermine some consumers\n4. Methodology and empirical investigation: To test our hypotheses, we considered the air transportation sector as it was pioneered to operate large scale electronic loyalty programmes. Indeed, AAdvantage, the frequent flyer program of American Airlines, launched in 1981, was the first such loyalty programme in the world, and remains the largest with more than 50 million members. The airline sector continues to innovate and to integrate the latest innovations before all other service and retailing sectors. For our empirical investigation we worked with a major international airline.\n5. Results: To explore the relationship between individual purchase orientations and programs\n6. Discussion, academic and managerial implications: To improve knowledge about the effectiveness of frequent flyer programmes, we have investigated how purchase orientations moderate perceived value from rewards, motivation, and loyalty. Accordingly, we note the following: Customers\n7. Limitations and future research directions: Our research suffers several limitations that further research should consider. First, the external validity is limited as our results come only from one investigation in one sector (airline). The transferability of the results to other sectors (e.g. FMCG) might be difficult and one should be beware of overestimating the findings. Although previous experimental investigations indicate that loyalty scheme effectiveness depends on the programme\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this research is to contribute to a better theoretical and empirical knowledge about the way frequent flyer programmes influence customer behaviour. It aims to describe the relationships between purchase orientations and personalized rewards on customers\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research uses self-determination theory (SDT) and purchase orientations to classify types of rewards in terms of their effect on perceived programme value and loyalty. Scales are developed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. To validate the hypotheses, surveys are realized in a major international airline. Structural equation modelling confirms the research model.\nFindings: Perceived value and loyalty vary according to purchase orientation, in support of the SDT. Intrinsic (extrinsic) rewards motivate customers to act to obtain a benefit within (apart from) the target of their purchase orientation and influences loyalty positively (have low impact on loyalty).\nResearch limitations/implications: Further testing of reward types, in(ex)trinsic motivation, SDT, across multiple contexts is necessary for validity enhancement.\nPractical implications: Differentiation through tailored (non-)monetary rewards is possible in markets marked by strong competition to appeal to different segments.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the pioneer articles in the use of SDT in marketing research. The development of scales which focus on reward types and the moderating impact of purchase orientations on frequent flyer programmes\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Time preference and the process of civilization	[ "Development", "Global political economy", "Productivity", "Community" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: How civilization developed is a common question with many ambiguous, location-dependent, or time-dependent theories. McNeill (1963/1991) stressed the importance of communication networks, especially via sea, in expanding the trade relationships (\"foreign stimuli\") that fostered the process of civilization. In his pioneering work in Figurational Sociology, Elias (1969/1982/2000) attributed the historical developments of civilization to alterations to the then-prevailing social attitudes. As thresholds for shame and repugnance were altered, whether endogenously through more interconnected social relations or exogenously through an increasingly centralized state presence, attitudes toward what are now regarded as anti-social norms (e.g. regarding violence, sexual behavior, table manners, speech, etc.) were altered to usher in an increasingly civilized society. Proponents of the world-systems analysis approach to civilization see the macro-development of the world as a result of increasing division of labor, dividing the world broadly into core and periphery countries and allowing the core countries to focus on high-skilled and intensive productive enterprises (Wallerstein, 1974/2011).\n2. The process of civilization: What properly constitutes a \"civilization\" is as contested as the process by which it comes about. Traditional views on what is, exactly, a civilization have rested on the vague notion of advanced cultures in contrast to primitive ones (Wright, 2004). In more concrete renditions, \"advanced cultures\" are given attributes such as a separation from or domination over the natural world (Fernandez-Armesto, 2001), domestication of humans or other organisms (Wright, 2004), higher or more complex levels of communication (Llobera, 2003, pp. 136-137), or an increased ability to live under ever more highly populated conditions, i.e., increased urbanization, as in Haviland et al. (2008, p. 250). Alternatively, one may look at more material factors such as an increased specialization through the division of labor (Wright, 2004; Haviland et al., 2008), large-scale architectural achievements (Llobera, 2003), or an ability to pursue geographically expansive ventures, e.g., long-distance travel or trade (Wright, 2004).\n3. Time preference the process of civilization: One important factor was omitted from the previous discussion: time. When Crusoe foregoes consumption, he is really foregoing consumption in the present in order to be able to consume more in the future. In more modern financial terms, we say that when someone saves in the present, they are really \"saving up for something\" in the future (Garrison, 2001, pp. 40, 62).\n4. Factors affecting time preference: The process of civilization is a self-reinforcing spiral, whereby saving and investment lead to an increased future income, which in turn lead to a decrease in time preference and an increase in saving and investment. Hence, over time there is an inverse relationship between the real level of income and the rate of social time preference.\n5. Effects of changes in time preference: The behavior of individuals is uniquely related to their time horizons. Individuals oriented to the long term and having lower time preference will adapt their behavior in the present in order to gain a potential benefit in the future. Even if potential benefits could be had in the short run, in the long run it pays off to be peaceful, honest, polite and well-mannered since people will trust you more and show you the same behavior in return. In short, these civilized behaviors create bonds and trust, and thus make possible potentially stronger friendships and relationships. All these behaviors are also to some extent self-reinforcing: politeness, honesty, trust, etc. beget politeness, honesty, trust, etc.\n6. Conclusion: The beginning of this paper provided a theoretical foundation to explain how civilizations can and must develop. The key concept in the development of civilization is savings, which makes investment and production possible. The amount of savings and investment is determined by time preference, where lower time preferences result in an increasing amount of savings and production, which in turn lowers time preferences further. This self-reinforcing spiral of increasing civilization and increasingly higher standards of living is called the \"process of civilization.\"\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The authors begin with an admittedly simplistic statement: \"civilization\" is best represented by the increased availability of utility providing goods and services. In other words, civilization is synonymous with economic development. The purpose of this paper is to concern three questions. First, how does civilization develop? Second, what is time preference and how does it affect the development of civilization, or what the authors call the \"process of civilization.\" Third, what factors affect time preference, and how do changes in time preference affect this civilizing process? Through these three questions, the authors provide the theoretical answer to why civilization developed, instead of the more common historical how civilization actually developed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors survey a variety of theories of civilization, and then develop an alternative that answers the question of \"how civilization develops\" rather than the more common \"how did civilization develop.\"\nFindings: Endogenous reductions in time preference are determined to be the best explanation of the spark that instigates the process of civilization. It also allows for other approaches to fall under its umbrella, thus providing one general theory in place of the current-specific theories.\nOriginality/value: The value lies in the creation of a general theory of civilization, against which other theories looking at specific factors can be gauged.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Are theatre and business links relevant? A conceptual paper and a case study	[ "Managers", "Training", "Theatre", "Self development", "Communication skills", "Training manager", "Theatre exercises", "Corporate theatre", "Personal development of managers", "Self‐awareness communication abilities", "Creativity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Relationships between theatre and business: Two relationships have developed between theatre and business in recent decades - theatre techniques as training tools and corporate theatre as a change management tool. We describe both and suggest reasons for their success, and outline one case that combines both management training and corporate action-theatre approaches.\n2. Theatre as a relevant manager training tool: The first way theatre can be relevant to business practice is in providing management training tools. The professional training of actors in drama schools involves specific pedagogical methods which work on the essential elements of the actor's craft: body, voice and emotions. These include some techniques which physically exercise and train the body and the voice (their main expressive instruments), and other techniques to develop their expressiveness, imagination and creativity - these latter are often given the portmanteau label \"theatre games\". To transfer pedagogical tools from the acting school to the business training environment, we need to understand the goals of organisations using theatre to train managers. There are two categories of goals (Barthelemy Ruiz, 1996): first, to develop verbal communication, negotiation and public speaking abilities, and second, to develop imagination and creativity. It seems that theatre training techniques constitute an original pedagogical approach to understanding people along both intellectual and emotional dimensions. Salgado (2008) has demonstrated the relevance of theatre techniques as management training tools by collecting the reactions of managers who have experienced theatre training programmes, as well as of their managers. In total, 88 per cent of the trainee managers - and 83.3 per cent of their managers - find the programmes \"relevant\" or \"very relevant\" to training for management. We have been using theatre as a means to train young business school students (as well as adult business students) for ten years. Courses (which are 12 or 15 hours long) generally take place at the start of larger programmes which usually also include more traditional elements, such as marketing, finance and human resource courses. In addition to the two objectives outlined above as the main goals (increasing communication and creativity), another indirect side-benefit appears: developing their sensory awareness seems to increase managers' awareness, of both themselves and others, and thus improves their ability to make positive contributions to team building.2.1 Self-awareness\n3. Corporate theatre: The second way in which theatre can be relevant to business is via what is called corporate theatre. This approach involves theatre professionals analysing a company, diagnosing a specific problem, then writing, rehearsing and performing in front of the \"protagonists\" in order to try to help them recognise and/or solve the problem, or at least to facilitate positive change in the company.One of the main definitions of corporate theatre is given by the famous William Shakespeare (1602), in Hamlet \"Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear me, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicle of the time [...]\" (Act II Scene 2); \"[...] the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image [...]\" (Act II Scene 3); \"[...] the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all [...] or any show that you'll show him: be not you a shame to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means\" (Act III Scene 2).Hamlet asks the visiting players to play a scene showing the murder of a king in front of his uncle - who has, in fact, murdered the king (his own brother and Hamlet's father), married Hamlet's mother and seized the crown. In the same way, actors in corporate theatre can tell a company what no-one inside it can - although we hope with better outcomes than in Shakespeare's tragedy. Corporate theatre can take many forms, from \"catalogue scenes\" to \"action theatre\" (as shown in Figure 1), with employees having no, partial or full involvement, according to whatever goal the company defines - to inform and develop awareness, to change attitudes or to change behaviours.3.1 Informing and developing awareness\n4. Mixing training theatre and corporate theatre: a case study: 4.1 Case description\n5. Conclusion: further research to understand: 5.1 Managers and their bodies\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine why theatre-business links are relevant to management. The focus is on two types of links: using theatre techniques as a training method for managers, and using corporate theatre as a change management tool. The paper seeks to share an experience and tries to explicate the processes involved in order to explain the success of these two kinds of courses, both training theatre and corporate theatre (specifically, action theatre in this case).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This is a case study. Theatre has been taught for ten years at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business under the author's responsibility, and also the corporate theatre method is taught to initial students and to continuing training managers. This paper is based on those teaching experiences. To explain the relevance of both of theatre as a training tool and corporate theatre as a management tool, the author relates to both theories of body memory from neuroscientists and to the catharsis phenomenon.\nFindings: - The goal was to make hypotheses from the above theories which explain the process that takes place inside the manager undergoing training and to open further research.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Main limitations come from the lack of established empirical and relevant measures of the effects of such theatre processes on participants' management abilities and from the lack of tools to measure the long-term effects of theatre.\nPractical implications: - The most important implication is that practitioners could make more relevant use of such techniques when designing training sessions or utilizing corporate theatre interventions.\nSocial implications: - Social implications come from how the \"human\" face of theatre can help the personal development of managers, improving or changing their views on the world and other people.\nOriginality/value: - Although theatre and business links are more than 20 years old, nobody has previously tried to understand the inner processes involved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
If I cannot see them, how can I lead them?	[ "Teambuilding", "Leadership", "Remote workers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In today's global world, remote workers are very common in organizations. Whether in a different city or country or just on another floor or working at home, there are more remote workers in organizations today than ever before. For many managers, managing these remote employees is more challenging than managing co-located employees.\nBuilding and maintaining relationships: The first key to focus on is building and maintaining relationships. Relationships need to be built and maintained between you, the leader and each team member as well as among team members. When you worked side-by-side with colleagues, you got to know each other almost without realizing it. You would have a cup of coffee or lunch together. Or, you would notice a picture of someone's children on their desk and ask about them. You did not think about building relationships - you just did it.In the remote environment, those casual encounters are gone and so are the body language and facial clues we have depended on to help us get to know and understand each other. So, now you have to be deliberate about remote relationship building. This has to be a daily priority because it is keeping you and your employees from being as productive as you all need to be.Here are a few ideas on how to build relationships with remote colleagues:* If you can have a face-to-face meeting to get to know one another, do it. Make relationship building the majority of the agenda. All of the current literature on remote work speaks of the pay off of face-to-face meetings - particularly early in the relationship.* Use conference calls to build relationships. Use the first ten minutes of the agenda for relationship building. Have each person share things like: what they did this weekend, what challenges they have for the week, something they are proud of, a thank you to someone on the call, etc. Use your creativity.* Schedule regular one-on-one phone calls. Include time to talk about something other than the work.* Remember special occasions. Remembering an employee's business anniversary date or their birthday demonstrates that you care. Just be careful - if you recognize something special for one employee, you need to do it for all. Set up a system so you do not forget!* Meet each commitment you make to an employee. If you promise to provide some information or do something by a particular date, do it. It is very easy to break trust by missing a commitment with any of your employees. Trust is very difficult to build when you do not interact regularly with your employee, so each opportunity to build trust is critical.To be successful working remotely, put relationship building and maintenance on your \"To Do\" list and check-in with yourself weekly. Ask yourself if you are building the relationships you need and seeing the results you want. If you are, congratulate yourself. If you are not, refocus and make it happen!\nCommunicating appropriately: Another key strategy for building relationships and teamwork is to know each individual's communication preferences. Ask:* What is the best way to contact you (e-mail, phone, instant messaging)?* What is your preferred telephone for phone calls (cell, land line)?* Where do you like to receive voice mail messages (cell, land line)?* How should I contact you when an issue or situation is urgent?You may have other questions as well. If you have a team, have everyone share this information with each other. It will speed up communication for everyone.All of these strategies require communication. As you decide how to communicate with your remote employees, consider the pros and cons as shown in Table I.\nTeam development: Many people are familiar with the four stages of team development, first put forth by Bruce Tuckman and modified and reinforced over the years by many others. This model provides an excellent structure for looking at the process of developing teams and teamwork. When a team is remote, many aspects of the stages are amplified or diminished.The forming stage\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to provide leaders with a clear understanding of some key issues they face when leading remote workers and to provide practical suggestions on how to deal with those issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The main method of research for this paper is data from participants in workshops over a ten-year period. Participants included all levels of management, as well as non-managers in a variety of large organizations across industries. Industries include high-tech, food, consumer products, energy, entertainment and manufacturing. Participants included those with global teams, teams within a country and teams with work-at-home members.\nFindings: - The key finding is that remote leadership requires the same good management and leadership skills that co-located leadership requires. However, in the remote environment, leaders must be more deliberate and planful about building relationships and trust and in communicating.\nPractical implications: - Leaders can implement specific techniques, several of which are presented in the paper, to increase their effectiveness of leading remote employees and teams.\nOriginality/value: - While remote leaders often struggle as they try to work effectively with their employees, they do not often identify that it is specifically the remote factor that is causing much of the challenge. This paper provides practical techniques for anyone trying to get work accomplished with remote employees.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Producer push to consumer pull: Who curates new media content? Developing strategies for new media environments	[ "Innovation", "Market orientation", "Computer-mediated communication", "Customer-orientation", "Consumer empowerment", "Innovation management", "Integrated marketing communications", "Media business models", "New media", "New product management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A fundamental question in marketing is how do we create for and capture value from consumers. Are consumers active and can they pull products and services as they desire? Do marketers first find out what consumers want and then provide it? Or are consumers passive and uncertain about what they want and they need to have products offered or pushed upon them? In viewing an industry under threat from digital disruption, we hope to shed light on how to respond to the transformative power of new technology.\nThe age of consumer control: The upsurge of consumer control, autonomy and creativity (Berthon et al., 2007) has been of much interest to researchers in the past 10 years. The advent of Web 2.0 enabled consumers to be increasingly in control of their navigational experiences, providing them with increased freedom to do whatever they want, whenever and wherever they see fit (Hoffman and Novak, 2009; Napoli, 2011). Empowered consumers are growing insensitive to old-fashioned ideas of content that is pushed upon them by the media industry (Constantinides and Fountain, 2008). Moreover, content itself has become free. Digital content can be infinitely copied, reproduced and shared without any loss of quality and at little or no cost. Consumers can share, create and build their own bundles of products as per their tastes (Mulhern, 2009), creating customized and personalized offerings (Sundar and Marathe, 2010).\nMethod: Qualitative research was deemed most appropriate, as the amount of knowledge available on consumer behavior through the lens of content push by businesses and content pull by consumers is still \"embarrassingly meager\" (Schultz et al., 2012, p. 176). The phenomenon that has been little understood and important categories of meaning need to be identified (Marshall and Rossman, 2006). Moreover, many studies have not touched on the felt consumer experience; most are done through an industry lens. The very engaged and active nature conceptualized in the Interact strategy, where organizations need to be both innovative and enable the same in their consumers, suggests the deep and rich understanding enabled by qualitative methods (Agee, 2009).\nResults: During the course of the interviews, the themes that emerged from the responses are represented graphically in the image below (see Figure 1, overleaf). These themes demonstrate the journey of consumer empowerment and content pull in the media landscape similar to what the literature anticipated. As evidenced in Figure 1 below, traditional media is viewed in decline, empowering consumers and enabling them to pull content at will. Business responses were mixed, weighing up both opportunities and challenges that the new environment presents.\nDiscussion and conclusion: Are consumers in control?\nLimitations: Exploratory research provides deep insights and fuller understanding of an issue and provides impetus for further research of the phenomenon, but there are certain limitations associated with this approach. Definitive conclusions cannot be drawn on the issue being investigated from this kind of research and the interpretations of the findings can be judgmental (Saunders and Lewis, 2012). The absence of large digital natives, that is companies which are borne into the digital environment, certainly hampers the full appreciation of the innovation approach. Nevertheless, while new media producers appear to have a greater handle on extracting value from the new media landscape, it is many of the traditional content providers who have the greatest change to make. Many are still not certain of the road ahead. They often fear rather than embrace consumer creativity.\nPractical implications: Vollmer and Precourt (2008) in their book \"Always On\" stated that consumer control has generated a \"mutiny in media\" (p. 79), as it freed consumers from the shackles of traditional media control. Media consumers now have more media outlets at their disposal than ever before. They are multi-tasking, diversifying and moving away from traditional mediums to new digital ones. Their communication has changed; so has their means of interaction with content providers, content and each other (Gironda and Korgaonkar, 2014; Pynta et al., 2014). The current research has found that there is still a role for the media industry. They can beat \"free\" if they are able to create value. Value creation comes from consumers, whether in their active design of products and platforms (Berthon et al., 2007), or through their data, which enables customization and curatorship. Value in a diverse and fragmented landscape could come from enabling consumer management of the bewildering set of choices they face. Most successful media models, embraced by the likes of Netflix, operate with the Interact strategy. The company works with and for consumers to enhance their consumption experiences.\nAvenues for future research: There is a strong interaction between how the innovation of technology changes and shapes consumer behavior. In corollary, this affects their expectations, brand experiences and product demands. While branding has been found to be important as a content provider, as such its function for a media agency is less clear. Could it be that media distributors have value mainly as curators or is it the experience they provide? Is this how they can beat \"free\"? What is the brand equity of new media businesses?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to explore if, with increasing consumer empowerment, consumers are actively pulling content through a multitude of platforms rather than relying on media owners to dictate their product choices. How do media owners and content producers move toward a more reciprocal and interactive business strategy to deal with the change?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was qualitative and exploratory in nature and utilized in-depth and semi-structured interviews of media consumers and experts.\nFindings: Consumer behavior has changed due to increased product control, in terms of type and occasion, across all income levels. The value of curatorship has increased and social media has fundamentally changed consumption patterns. Using the Berthon et al. model of response functions, we found that, content producers often suffer from inertia and operate with an Isolate strategy. The second most common approach is that of Follow or customer orientation. There is limited engagement with the innovation orientations of Shape and Interact. It is best for the industry to move toward an Interact model, accepting that consumers sometimes wish to create and at other times wish content to be effortlessly provided to them.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study adopted a qualitative approach of industry experts and consumers within a single context. The further implications would be to develop the Interact strategy in more detail, especially toward the end of how to get media providers to change their current orientations.\nPractical implications: Business models of product producers in the new business environment seek to be more consumer-centric. This must not be done at the expense of an innovation orientation.\nOriginality/value: There has been a lot of discussion on the need to change business models in the wake of changed consumer behavior. The current paper provides guidance on how to respond to the new media world.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Benchmarking performance measures in traditional and just-in-time companies	[ "Performance measures", "Production management", "Manufacturing industries", "Benchmarking", "Just in time", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In a global market, knowing how the best organizations conduct their business is a critical element of successful competition. Benchmarking is a valuable tool that provides an opportunity to learn from other organizations. It is an effective means for learning and change because it exposes employees to new approaches, systems, and procedures (Welch, 1993; Kuebler, 1993). Benchmarking may be defined as a process in which an organization tries to learn from the best-in-class organizations, determine how the best-in-class achieve superior performance levels, and utilize those practices as benchmarks to their own organization (Watson, 1992, 1993; Whiting, 1991). Benchmarking is a flexible tool that can be used for gradual continuous improvement, as well as for major changes of process reengineering. For the past three decades, world-class organizations have utilized benchmarking to improve aspects of their competitive advantage such as cost, quality, delivery, and customer service. Deming (1982) and a number of other quality advocates have strongly recommended the use of benchmarking as an essential component of continuous improvement (Graham, 1993; Ishikawa, 1985; Venetucci, 1992; Dawkins et al., 2007). The use of benchmarking as an effective quality improvement tool was started by Xerox in the early 1980s in order to overcome severe international competition. Since 1987, benchmarking has been a major component of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. Out of a total of 1,000 Baldrige points, benchmarking have consistently influenced more than 500 points (Bogan and English, 1994). No other quality fundamentals, such as process management, employee involvement, and quality planning, have had such a broad influence on the Baldrige criteria as benchmarking. Positive attitude toward learning and the use of benchmarking have been common characteristics of Baldrige winners and finalists (Ford and Evans, 2001). More recently, the practice of benchmarking is being widely used for six sigma process and for organizations seeking ISO 9000 certification.Although benchmarking has proven to be a valuable tool and there has been a large volume of research on the topic, the primary focus of the research, however, has been on short term technical and financial aspects of benchmarking. As a result, the benefits of these papers have generally been limited. To recognize its full benefits, benchmarking needs to be integrated into organizational strategy and the process needs to employ a broad range of performance measures that are consistent with organizational strategy. The objective of this paper is to investigate if just-in-time (JIT) organizations are more effective than traditional organizations in selection of benchmarking performance measures that are consistent with organizational strategy.\n2. Literature review: Since the early 1980s a large number of papers have been written on the development and application of benchmarking in diverse areas of businesses such as manufacturing, health care, marketing, supply chain, human resources, and accounting. Harrison (1999) presents an analysis of the evolution of different aspects of benchmarking activities. A comparison of the Xerox and Kodak benchmarking processes has been reported by Bogan and English (1994). Although the two benchmarking methods utilize a different number of steps, but their overall benchmarking activities are quite similar. Zairi and Whymark (2000) report successful results of the application of benchmarking at British Royal mail. Applications of benchmarking to world-class purchasing and to the US service sectors have been reported, respectively, by Newman et al. (1995) and Roth et al. (1997). Singh et al. (2006) utilized benchmarking and performance measurement to investigate supply chain management practices at a number Indian manufacturing organizations. They found that Indian organizations were using benchmarking mainly as a continuous improvement tool. Bartley et al. (2007) utilized benchmarking to provide insights into how organizations can develop more customer-focused culture. The impact of benchmarking on transparency and economic performance of a public sector has been investigated by Braadbaart (2007). The use of benchmarking as an effective organizational learning tool has been presented by Senge (1990), Garvin (1993), Ford and Evans (2001), Smith (1997), Hambly (1997), Watson (2001), Chen and Paetsch (1995), O'Dell and Grayson (2000), Saunders et al. (2007), and Evans and Dean (2003). A comprehensive list of legal and ethical issues of benchmarking is presented by Brue (2002), Vaziri (1992), and Bogan and English (1994).Although the content of these papers is diverse, their primary focus has been on short term technical and financial aspects of benchmarking. These papers typically address the technical aspects of departmental benchmarking along with limited success stories. As argued by Furey (1987), Goldwasser (1995), Kaplan and Norton (1992, 2001), and Talluri and Vazacopoulos (1998), benchmarking is more than a comparative analysis of financial and technical measures from one company to another. To be effective, benchmarking activities need to be integrated into organizational strategy and the process needs to employ a broad range of balanced performance measures consistent with organizational strategy. Meybodi (2005a, 2006) demonstrated the inconsistency of traditional organizations in choosing benchmarking performance measures at various levels of organization. That is, performance measures chosen by managers at operational levels were inconsistent with overall organizational strategy. The lack of a consistent strategy is a major impediment in building core competencies to ensure long term organizational competitiveness. In a number of JIT studies, researchers showed that organizations with effective JIT system are successful not only in areas such as inventory reduction and quick delivery, but also in other areas such as quality improvement and new product development (Cumbo et al. (2006); Handfield, 1993; Meybodi, 2005b). Cook and Rogowski (1996) and Blackburn (1991) argued that, to understand application of JIT in other areas, one has to carefully examine the two fundamental principles of waste elimination and respect for people in a JIT system. Looking at JIT as a process to used eliminate waste and respect people, rather than as an inventory reduction and frequent delivery method, its principles can be applied to other areas including services in which there is no physical inventory.The objective of this paper is to investigate if there are differences between JIT and traditional organizations in their consistency of choosing benchmarking performance measures at various levels of organization. Specifically, the focus of the paper is to answer the following questions:* Are there differences between JIT and traditional organizations in aligning their core competencies with their goals and objectives?* Are there differences between JIT and traditional organizations in aligning their competitive priorities with their goals and objectives?* Are there differences between JIT and traditional organizations in aligning their competitive priorities with their core capabilities?* Are there differences between JIT and traditional organizations in aligning their manufacturing performance objectives with their competitive priorities?* Are there differences between JIT and traditional organizations in aligning their manufacturing action plans with their manufacturing performance objectives?\n3. Benchmarking and performance measurement: Total quality management (TQM), six sigma, just-in-time systems, and a number of other important developments during the last three decades have helped organizations to recognize effective performance measurement to be the core of organizational success. Managers across various industries practicing TQM and JIT have also recognized the importance of managing integrated processes, as well as the fact that what gets measured is what gets managed and improves. The special focus of well-known quality improvement and quality award processes such as six sigma, ISO 9000, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and Deming prize on benchmarking and performance measurement is perhaps a clear indication of the critical role of these elements in managing and improving organizational processes. As argued by Eccles (1991) and Eccles and Nohria (1992), organizations in the past used performance measurements that contributed primarily to short-term financial and technical results. How the organization achieved those results and their impact on the entire organization was secondary. Today, managers understand that focus on short-term financial and technical results without consideration to overall organizational strategy could produce devastating results over the long term. As a result, organizations are learning to manage the system in a way that crosses departmental boundaries. In this new horizontally integrated system, organizations need to accept a long-term perspective and to utilize balanced, broad reaching financial and nonfinancial performance measures to carefully improve the competitiveness of the entire organization. This approach requires that benchmarking organizations develop a complete understanding of their own business strategy and deployment of the strategy into functional strategies. This process will ensure that there is a consensus within the organization about long term and short-term performance measures that are consistent with organizational mission and goals (Day, 1992; Papke-Shields et al., 2002; Madigan, 1992). By using measurable performance results with focus on the entire organization, managers will be able to determine their progress toward long term goals and objectives. The aim of this paper is to examine if there are differences between JIT and traditional organizations in selecting benchmarking performance measures that are consistent with organizational strategy.\n4. Methodology: A questionnaire-based mailed survey was used to examine the five questions stated earlier. The survey contained a series of questions on the use of strategic and operational benchmarking performance measures for traditional and JIT organizations. Strategic questions are concerned about organizational mission and goals, as well as attitude toward customers, competition, technology, globalization, and development of core competencies. Operational items are related to specific technical performance measures such cost, quality, and delivery.The target population for this study consisted of manufacturing firms in Midwestern United States. A sample of 500 manufacturing firms was chosen from manufacturers' directories of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The sample covers organizations in a variety of industries ranging from fabricated metal, communication, electronics, automotive, toots, chemicals, rubber, and paper products. In addition to general organization and managerial profile items, the survey contained series of questions regarding organizational goals and objectives, competitive priorities, manufacturing performance objectives, manufacturing action plans, and JIT system. Out of 91 completed surveys received, 84 surveys were usable resulting in a response rate of 17 percent. Out of 84 usable surveys, 33 respondents declared their organization to be a JIT organization and 51 respondents considered their organization to be a traditional organization.The survey data indicates the majority of respondents had various levels of managerial positions of organization with less than 500 employees. Presidents and vice presidents accounted for 29 percent and plant managers accounted for 30 percent of the sample. About 35 percent of the sample had other managerial positions such as operations/production managers, quality managers, and the remaining 6 percent were production line supervisors. In terms of manufacturing experience, about 28 percent of the respondents had between 10 and 20 years and 60 percent had more than 20 years of manufacturing experience.\n5. Results: 5.1 Corporate goals and objectives\n6. Conclusion: This paper examined the differences between traditional and JIT companies in selecting benchmarking performance measures and detecting and reconciling possible inconsistencies in the process. A set of five questions was developed to examine the consistency of the decision at various organizational levels. Statistical results indicate the following:* At the corporate level, the primary goals and objectives for traditional organizations are market expansion and profitability by focusing on customer service. However, understanding external environmental factors such as competition, global issues, technology, and developing core competencies to effectively deal with these factors are considered to be secondary. This indicates the existence of possible misalignment between organizational goals and objectives and proactive development of core competencies for traditional companies. For JIT organizations, there is a better alignment between organizational goals and objectives and proactive development of core competencies.* The respondents from traditional companies ranked product reliability, conformance quality, delivery reliability, price, and fast delivery as the top five important competitive priorities. The top five competitive priorities from JIT companies were product reliability, delivery reliability, fast delivery, new product development speed, and product customization. It is clear, while traditional companies placed higher emphasis on price; JIT companies emphasized more the elements of time-based competition. Also, for JIT companies there is a better balance between importance of competitive priorities and strength of organizational core competencies.* For manufacturing performance objectives, the respondents from traditional companies ranked improving conformance quality, product design, and supplier quality as the top three followed by reducing the costs of labor, overhead, materials, set-up, and increasing capacity utilization. However, JIT organizations placed higher emphasis on fundamental organizational factors such as changing organizational culture, improving inter-functional communication, improving employee morale, improving team work, and improving supplier relationships. Since the latter factors are the foundation of successful organizations, it seems JIT organizations have been more consistent in placing greater emphasis on these factors.* For traditional companies, manufacturing action plans will primarily focus on quality improvement activities followed by linking manufacturing strategy into corporate strategy, manufacturing reorganization, and employee related activities. While the emphasis on quality improvement activities is a sound action plan, the order of the last two activities should have been reversed. For JIT companies, manufacturing primary action plans will focus on manufacturing reorganization, linking manufacturing strategy into corporate strategy, developing collaborative supply chain, and integrating information systems into supply chain. Focus on a number of employee related issues such as employee training, empowerment, teamwork, and fair compensation followed by a set of quality improvement activities are the next series of manufacturing action plans. The ranking for JIT organizations are more consistent with organizational goals and objectives and with the principles of JIT systems.* In summary, the paper showed evidence of misalignment, inconsistencies, and lack of consensus in selecting benchmarking performance measures at various levels of traditional organization. However, JIT organizations are more consistent in choosing benchmarking performance measures. Managerial implications of the paper are that lessons learned from a JIT system go beyond inventory reduction and frequent deliveries. Since successful implementation of JIT principles requires a thorough understanding of organizational strategy and deployment of the strategy into sub strategies, JIT companies have a better understanding of choosing consistent benchmarking performance measures at various levels of organization.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to show if there are differences between traditional and just-in-time ( JIT) companies in choosing benchmarking performance measures at various levels of organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A questionnaire-based mailed survey was used to examine five questions on the differences between traditional and JIT companies. The target population for the study was manufacturing firms in midwestern USA. The sample covers organizations in a variety of industries ranging from fabricated metal, communication, electronics, automotive, toots, chemicals, rubber, and paper products. In addition to general organization and managerial profile items, the survey contained series of questions regarding organizational goals and objectives, competitive priorities, manufacturing performance objectives, and manufacturing action plans. Out of 91 completed surveys received, 84 surveys were usable resulting in a response rate of 17 percent. Out of 84 usable surveys, 33 respondents declared their organizations to be JIT organizations.\nFindings: - The paper finds that JIT companies are more consistent in choosing benchmarking performance measures that are aligned with organizational strategy.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This research is general and not industry specific. Future research needs to focus on specific industries.\nPractical implications: - Successful implementation of JIT principles requires a thorough understanding of organizational strategy and deployment of the strategy into consistent sub strategies and action plans.\nOriginality/value: - The paper shows that the benefits of JIT principles go much beyond inventory reduction and frequent deliveries. These principles could be applied to other areas of business.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Understanding organizational aspects for managing crisis situations: A comparison between military and civil organizations: Part II	[ "Psychological perspective", "Safety culture", "Human factor", "Organizational values", "Crisis and risk management", "Military and civilian organizations comparison" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nPart II: 4.4 Cohesion\n5. Discussion: According to Cooper (2001), what emerged in this study is that reliable performance outcomes are strongly influenced by the organizational culture (Peters and Waterman, 2005). Interesting differences emerged between the two organizational models.\n6. Conclusion: The present research gives an original perspective on the organizational and human attributes involved in the risk prevention and management, comparing military and civil organizational culture.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The uncertainty of the current economic environment increases the risk of organizational failure. The traditional approach intends the crisis as a phenomenon that can be managed according to some predetermined and well-defined procedures. Although this traditional approach emphasizes on the technical dimension, it does not take into account that organizational dimension, which instead plays a crucial role in the circumstances of today's crisis. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which are the most effective organizational practices able to promote an adequate culture prevent or manage effectively crisis situations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A group of Italian military and civil opinion leaders took part in the study. Authors hypothesized that the military organizations, being defined as \"High Reliability Organization,\" have organizational characteristics that allow them to manage crisis situations more effectively, and, for this reason, they can be taken as a reference by civil organizations.\nFindings: The results show noticeable differences about organizational attributes concerning the two organizations. According to the results, the military organization has the most appropriate organizational dimensions to prevent and manage the crisis situations.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper lies in the empirical and theoretical framework provided to analyze risk and crisis management, based on the comparison between military and civil organizations. The paper aims to be a starting point from which a positive process of cultural osmosis between the two organizations can be promoted.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Contagion among major world markets: a wavelet approach	[ "World equity markets", "Wavelet correlation", "Wavelet coherence", "Waves", "Waveforms", "Transforms" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The debate around a phenomenon called contagion has been active in recent years. Contagion has many definitions and there is widespread disagreement about the correct definition. Forbes and Rigobon (2002) define contagion as an increase of correlation between markets after some crisis. This is a narrow definition that is not universally accepted. Some researchers argue that contagion cannot be defined based on changes in cross-market linkages. Instead, they argue that analysis of contagion should be based on the analysis of shock propagation from one country to another and that only certain types of transmission mechanisms constitute contagion. However, Forbes and Rigobon's definition has been the most popular in recent papers discussing contagion. Their definition is adopted in this study with a slightly different perspective. Contagion is defined as a temporary increase of short time-scale co-movements. Examining the structure of co-movements along the scale dimension this study avoids the heteroscedasticity problem that has plagued contagion research based on correlation coefficients. Using wavelets as a tool, linkages between markets can be studied at different time scales. If the structure of linkages along the scale dimension changes in periods of turmoil, it should be an indication of contagion.A significant increase of interest in contagion occurred after the 1987 stock market crash. King and Wadhwani (1990) study correlations around the crash, focussing on the major stock markets. They find an increase in contagion, evidenced by an increase in stock market correlations, during periods of turmoil. Lee and Kim (1993) add developing countries to the study and also find evidence of contagion. Overall consensus during the 1990s was that contagion exists[1]. Forbes and Rigobon (2002) argue that previous studies found contagion because they did not correct the correlation measure for heteroscedasticity. Using a heteroscedasticity corrected correlation measure, they find that contagion does not exist. Following the guidelines of Forbes and Rigobon, other studies end up with similar conclusions. For example, Collins and Biekpe (2002) study the integration of African countries with the world financial markets and find very little evidence of contagion. Lee et al. (2007) find that the South-East Asia tsunami did not trigger contagion in international stock markets (although they find some signs of contagion in foreign exchange markets). Recently the contagion and financial crisis analysis has become more and more specific. For example Zaki et al. (2011) analyze the behavior of UAE banks during financial distress and stress out the independence of the banks of these markets for macroeconomic situations. Yang and Chang (2008) analyze the contagion from currency movements to stock prices. Their empirical results show that managers who invest to newly emerging markets need to evaluate the currencies also as part of their investment decisions. Lien and Yang (2009) analyze intraday data for return and volatility spill-over across international copper futures markets. They find similar findings as others have found in the equity markets like increasing integration and prominent contagion. The recent global financial crisis of 2008 has also been analyzed. Bancel and Mittoo (2011) for example examine how financial flexibility affects the firm's ability to survive from the crisis.Corsetti et al. (2005) argue that Forbes and Rigobon's model assumes unrealistic restrictions on the variance of country-specific shocks. Bartram and Wang (2005) note that the bias Forbes and Rigobon document follows directly from the assumptions of their analysis (see also Pesaran and Pick, 2007). Hon et al. (2007) correct the bias using a GARCH-model (see also Jokipii and Lucey, 2007). Rodriguez (2007) uses a copula approach to investigate contagion and finds that the dependence structure is different when studying tail dependence compared to overall dependence. The tail dependence exhibits strong changes during the Asian and Mexican crises which is a clear sign of contagion. Taking this recent criticism into account, overall consensus has changed from \"no contagion\" to \"at least some contagion\" or in some cases very strong signs of contagion (see e.g. Yang and Bessler, 2008; Dungey et al., 2007).The interdependencies of markets have also been examined with different perspectives than contagion. Lin et al. (1994) study the correlation of the volatility of the New York and Tokyo markets and they notice that one market has a global impact on the returns of the other market. Ramchand and Susmel (1997) examine the relation between correlation and variance using a switching ARCH technique. They find that correlations between the USA and other world markets are on average 2 to 3.5 times higher when the US market is in a high-variance state, as compared to a low-variance regime. This underlines the statement that one has to be very careful in contagion conclusions based purely on correlation. Andersen et al. (2001) study volatility and correlation using high-frequency data on individual stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average. They find that correlations move together with volatility, reducing the benefits to portfolio diversification when the market is the most volatile. Longin and Solnik (2001) question this and find that correlation is not related to market volatility per se but to the market trend and that correlation between markets increases in bear markets. Ball and Torous (2000) examine correlations across a number of international stock market indices using stochastic correlation from returns data. They find that the estimated correlation structure is dynamically changing over time emphasizing the need for more detailed analysis of correlation structure. Kearney (2000) finds evidence of world equity market volatility being caused predominantly by volatility in the Japanese and US markets, which is subsequently transmitted across European markets. He also finds that low inflation tends to be associated with high stock market volatility. Morana and Belratti (2008) study the co-movements in international stock markets. They form monthly realized moments for stock market returns and find progressive integration of the four stock markets, leading to increasing co-movements in prices, returns, volatilities and correlations. Beaulieu et al. (2009) focus their integration analysis to Canada and the USA. Their analysis stresses the importance of integration analysis to portfolio managers who try to diversify their portfolio as much as possible.Overall the recent consensus emphasizes the increasing integration of world markets (see e.g. Rua and Nunes, 2009) and skepticism for volatility being the driving factor of correlation. For example Amira et al. (2011) find evidence using impulse response functions that the past returns and the market direction are the driving factors of correlation. Mun and Brooks (2012) also note that news have a significant role to the level of correlation between market.Wavelet correlation is achieving increasing popularity in financial time series analysis. Although other approaches for improved co-movement analysis (see e.g. Mendes and Aiube (2011) for copula-based dependence analysis) have been proposed, the wavelets have acquired the most attention. The intelligent compromise between time- and frequency dimensions of wavelet analysis gives researcher a possibility to separate new relationships from financial time series. Long list of wavelet correlation research includes Gallegati and Gallegati (2005) in the study of the industrial production index of the G-7 countries, Kim and In (2005) in the analysis of stock returns and inflation, In and Kim (2006) analyzing stock and the futures markets, In and Brown (2007) comparing international swap markets and Raghavan et al. (2010) comparing the Malaysian stock market to leading world markets. All mentioned paper stress out the efficiency of wavelet methods to separate new connections from the analyzed time series that are not easily identified using ordinary methods.Wavelet dependence methods applied to financial and economic time series have evolved greatly since then. Ranta (2008) integrates GARCH model to wavelet correlation and present rich structure between interactions of international markets at different time scales. Nikkinen et al. (2011) apply wavelet correlation to option-implied volatility and end up to similar conclusions of richer structure between interactions than previously thought. Rua (2011) extends recent wavelet methods to forecasting. He joins wavelets and factor-augmented models and shows how the unification of these two methods helps to improve the forecasting power.In the evolution of wavelet dependence methods, the wavelet correlation of discrete wavelet transform has been recently accompanied by the wavelet coherence of continuous wavelet transform that is quickly gaining popularity in finance and economics. The wavelet coherence estimator was introduced by Grinsted et al. (2004), Torrence and Webster (1999) and Torrence and Compo (1998). Rua and Nunes (2009) analyze the co-movements of stock market returns using wavelet coherence. They examine the overall dependence of developed markets at the aggregate level and also separated into different sectors. One of the main conclusions is that in the side of analyzing time-varying properties of the co-movements, it is also of utmost importance to analyze frequency-varying properties of the co-movements. McLoughlin (2010) applies wavelet coherence methods to study the evolution of international consumption risk sharing over time and frequency. He shows how the inclusion of new dimension reveals new information of correlation between output and consumption. Graham and Nikkinen (2011) find a high degree of co-movements of stock returns and volatilities at low frequencies between Finland and rest of the world using wavelet coherence. They also find high levels of co-movement of returns and volatilities across all frequencies between the world equity portfolio and equities in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. Graham et al. (2012) apply wavelet coherence for thorough analysis of co-movements of emerging markets and find significant differences between markets. These all papers stress out the importance of taking into account the time scale in analysis. Vacha and Barunik (2012) apply wavelet coherence maps to analyze the co-movement of energy commodities. They end up to similar conclusion in energy commodities as others have ended up in equities. The rich structure of interrelations and co-movements need methods that can analyze both the time- and frequency dimensions.This study addresses the debate around the correlation measure being a biased measure of contagion by studying co-movements at different time scales. In addition to making conclusions about co-movements as a function of time, conclusions as a function of time scale (frequency) are made. If short time-scale co-movements change (increase), while long time-scale co-movements remain approximately the same, this is considered as a sign of contagion. This study is divided into two parts. The first part uses wavelet coherence of the continuous wavelet transform similar to Rua and Nunes (2009). The second study uses the estimator of wavelet correlation calculated with the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform to analyze and support the findings of the wavelet coherence findings.\n2. Wavelet correlation: 2.1 Maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT)\n3. Empirical analysis: 3.1 Empirical data\n4. Conclusion: This paper studies the presence of contagion between major world markets. Contagion has been a widely studied subject for two decades. Papers after the 1987 stock markets crash provide evidence of contagion between markets (King and Wadhwani, 1990; Lee and Kim, 1993). Somewhat later, many papers examined the presence of contagion in developing markets. There the results were mainly similar and provided evidence of contagion (see e.g. Calvo and Reinhart, 1996). Forbes and Rigobon (2002) end up with a different conclusion since they argue that the heteroscedasticity of the return series causes a bias in the correlation and therefore contagion mostly does not exist. Their conclusions are criticized by Corsetti et al. (2005) and Bartram and Wang (2005) as they note that their results are caused by the model assumptions. Today the consensus of contagion research concludes that there is some contagion but exact specifications have not yet been established.This paper extends the contagion literature by adding a time scale dimension to the analysis. Different time scales are analyzed using the continuous wavelet transform-based wavelet coherence and the discrete wavelet transform-based wavelet correlation. As Rua and Nunes (2009) note, much more thorough analysis of interrelations can be achieved using the wavelet methods. This also applies to a study on contagion. The co-movement structure changes that are found with wavelet methods might be missed with ordinary methods, since co-movements in time could change only at certain time scales. The definition of contagion in this study follows Forbes and Rigobon (2002). If there is an increase of co-movement after some crisis point, we have contagion. In this paper contagion is defined to be a change in the short-time scale co-movements while long time-scale co-movements remain the same. Using this definition, clear signs of contagion are found. This is most clearly seen with the 1987 stock market crash, the Gulf War and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. Some signs of contagion are seen with other crises, both in the wavelet coherence analysis and the wavelet correlation analysis. However, these changes are not as clear. The results also show how the short time-scale correlations decrease at tranquil periods (bull markets) giving support to the conclusions of Longin and Solnik (2001). Also long time-scale correlations indicate an overall increase of interdependence during the studied time period.The inclusion of a multiresolution analysis, i.e. different time scales, proves to be very important since co-movements change quickly as a function of the time scale. With the inclusion of the time scale dimension, we are able to see how the short time scale interdependencies react to the major incident and at the same time observe the behavior of long time-scale interdependencies. The results indicate that contagion has been a major factor between the markets a few times in the last 25 years. Also the contagion phenomenon is not disappearing since very strong signs of contagion can be seen during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine contagion among the major world markets during the last 25 years and propose a new way to analyze contagion with wavelet methods.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The analysis uses a novel way to study contagion using wavelet methods. The comparison is made between co-movements at different time scales. Co-movement methods of the discrete wavelet transform and the continuous wavelet transform are applied.\nFindings: - Clear signs of contagion among the major markets are found. Short time scale co-movements increase during the major crisis while long time scale co-movements remain approximately at the same level. In addition, gradually increasing interdependence between markets is found.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Because of the chosen method, the approach is limited to large data sets.\nPractical implications: - The research has practical implications to portfolio managers etc. who wish to have better view of the dynamics of the international equity markets.\nOriginality/value: - The research uses novel wavelet methods to analyze world equity markets. These methods allow the markets to be analyzed in the whole state space.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Fault accommodation in bilinear systems - a logic-dynamic approach	[ "Bilinear systems", "Control law", "Decoupling", "Fault accommodation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction and relevant literature: An increasing demand on reliability and safety for critical purpose control systems calls for the use of fault tolerant control (FTC) techniques. The goal of FTC is to determine such a control law that preserves the main performances of the system in the faulty case while the minor performances may degrade. There are two principle approaches to FTC. The first of them involves adaptive control techniques and assumes on-line fault detection and estimation followed by control law accommodation (Blanke et al., 2003; Jang et al., 2006; Staroswiecki, 2005; Staroswiecki et al., 2006). The second approach is focused on such a control law determination which provides full decoupling with respect to fault effects in the output space of the system. In contrast to the first approach, the second approach does not need in fault estimation. Therefore, such an approach looks reasonable if on-line fault estimation is problematic.\n2 Preliminary results: As indicated above, system (3) can be used to design the observer estimating the initial system state vector when the fault occurred. It is known from Shields (1995, 1996) that for such an observer design, the state vector x\n3 Materials and methods: logic-dynamic approach: So-called logic-dynamic approach developed in Zhirabok and Usoltsev (2002) will be used for overcoming mentioned above difficult. The feature of this approach is the use of conventional linear algebraic tools contrary to nonlinear algebraic and differential geometric tools of works (Shumsky and Zhirabok, 2006; Shumsky et al., 2009).\n4 Main results: 4.1 System S0 design\n5 Illustrative example: Consider the bilinear system described by the model: Equation 42 The task is to find the control guaranteeing full decoupling with respect to parameter th(t) and to construct models (3), (4) and the function g in equation (2). Consider the main steps of the task solution.\n6 Conclusions: The paper is devoted to the problem of FTC in technical systems described by bilinear models. The goal of FTC is to determine such a control law that preserves the main performances of the system in the faulty case while the minor performances may degrade. In this paper, this goal is achieved by finding the control law guaranteeing full decoupling with respect to faults effects.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the problem of fault accommodation in bilinear dynamic systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Solution to this problem is related to constructing the control law which provides full decoupling with respect to the fault effects. The so-called logic-dynamic approach will be used to solve this problem. The main steps of this approach are: replacing the initial bilinear system by certain linear one, solving the problem under consideration for this linear system by well-known linear methods with some restrictions, taking into account the bilinear term to correct the obtained linear solution.\nFindings: Existing conditions of the fault accommodation problem in a form of rank equalities and inequalities are formulated. Calculating relations for the control law and the auxiliary systems are given.\nPractical implications: The suggested method allows determining such a control law that preserves the main performances of the system in the faulty case, while the minor performances may degrade.\nOriginality/value: The main advantage of the logic-dynamic approach is a possibility to solve the problem of fault accommodation for nonlinear systems by linear methods without decreasing the main properties of the obtained solution.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Research reveals major reasons why manufacturers adopt green HRM in Malaysia	[ "Malaysia", "Sustainability", "Green manufacturing", "Green human resource management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research on companies in Malaysia has revealed four major factors that influence the adoption of Green HRM (human resource management) strategies. The study was based on face-to-face interviews with human resources directors and managers from four large manufacturing companies. It showed the key factors to be stakeholder pressure, relative advantage, top management commitment and green intellectual capital.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The authors wanted to identify the factors that facilitate the adoption of Green HRM in Malaysia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The required data for this study were collected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews with human 10;resources directors and managers from four large manufacturing companies in Malaysia\nFindings: The four key factors were found to be stakeholder pressures, relative advantage, top management commitment and green intellectual capital.\nOriginality/value: Research studies on Green HRM in Malaysia are rare. The originality of the research lies in its exploration of Green HRM in an environmentally sensitive sector. The conclusions will be useful for both practitioners in manufacturing and also academics wanting to more research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The digital society and provision of welfare services	[ "Welfare", "Big data" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The digital society has been announced (Lupton, 2015), and has already established a position in the zeitgeist of modern society. The digital society has emerged from and developed further via: digitising, online information in almost real time, algorithms, data-informed decision-making processes, data-driven management (DDM) and, ultimately, big data. We expect to see further digitising, more sophisticated algorithms and more big data. We suggest that a new model of the provision of welfare services to citizens will emerge from the development of the digital society. We also suggest that this new model will compete with the classic model of the provision of welfare services. In the modern world, citizens face issues with health, disability, caretaking, pensions, unemployment, education and many more. To help them deal with these issues, citizens demand services provided by service professionals: teachers, pedagogics, social workers, doctors, dentists, nurses and others. Historically, professionals are seen as experts, given their established training and experience, and citizens follow the advice and services provided by them.\n2. Analytical framework: Drawing on the literature concerning professions, it is possible to define the classic ideal model and practice of the service professionals' provision of welfare services directly to citizens as end-users. Drawing on Lipsky's (1980, 2010) classic analyses of street-level bureaucrats; Mintzberg's (1983) studies of professional bureaucracy; Thornton et al.'s (2012) institutional order of Profession within the Interinstitutional System Ideal Types; Lerborg's (2010) public service professionals' paradigm of the provision of welfare services; Schon's (1991) classic analyses of \"the reflective practitioner\"; Polanyi's (1966/2009) investigations of \"the tacit dimension\" in professions; and Fledderus et al.'s (2014) analyses and discussions of trust, co-production and public services, it is possible to define the classic ideal model and practice of the service professionals' provision of welfare services to citizens. This model and practice consists of four steps:\n3. Blind spots, digital society and a new model of the provision of welfare services: At least four blind spots can be identified in the classic ideal model and practice of the professionals' provision of welfare services. These include: economic efficiency in daily operations; loyalty; the documentation of the provided services' impact on citizens' welfare; and learning as anticipated.\n4. Data-driven management, blind spots and new participatory spaces for actors: DDM, defined as management rooted in explicit knowledge and extracted from the four aforementioned key elements of the digital society via data analytics' algorithms, is proposed to be an efficient tool to minimise the blind spots of the classic ideal model of the professionals' provision of service.\n5. New participatory spaces as negotiable arenas: For a long period, there has been interest in how professionals are being increasingly \"managed\", and in the context of \"performativity\" (Lyotard, 1984), which emphasises accountability, the issue of \"[...] how far the established professions can retain their exclusive access to and control over abstract, formalised knowledge and the operational skills and routines it facilitates and legitimates\" (Lyotard, 1984, p. 12) is one of keen debate (Cohen et al., 2002).\n6. Conclusion: Digitisation creates a new language and point of engagement and, as Oswick et al. (1997, p. 6) assert, \"language does not merely 'name' or passively describe reality, but frames it, and in so doing promotes particular attitudes and discourages others\". Management is not just technical but social (Wilkinson et al., 2017). And the managerial task becomes one that involves establishing control over the meaning of work, as much as the execution of tasks. It involves \"becoming aware, attending to, sorting out, and prioritizing an inherently messy, fluxing, chaotic world of competing demands that are placed on a manager's attention\" (Chia, 2005, p. 1092). Accordingly, big data is likely to be the subject of debate as to the meaning of it and how it should be operationalised. The issue is not whether big data but how big data. Writers such as Engestrom (1987) suggest that meaning is not constrained by design but actually forged out of usage so this is consistent with our argument of a negotiated sphere but also noting that big data and its link with evidence-based practice carries a powerful discourse which makes it difficult to reject although it is open to interpretation. Equally tension which is at the heart of new ideas can propel progress and what Engestrom terms expansive learning. Our proposition is that there will be a symbiotic co-evolution and a new relationship between professionals and (middle) managers in service organisations leading to a blend of the classic ideal model of the service professionals' provision of services and a digital society's model of the provision of services.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to: first, explain why a new model of the provision of welfare services to citizens arises from the digital society; second explore some core elements of the competition between the new model of the provision of welfare services and the classic ideal model of the professionals' provision of welfare services; third, suggest why it is most likely that the two models of the provision of services are combined into a symbiotic co-evolution scenario; and fourth, examine why and how this symbiotic co-evolution scenario results in new participatory spaces for the main actors associated with the provision of welfare services.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The review of the literature examines how the new model for the provision of welfare services facilitated by big data challenges the traditional professional model for the provision of welfare services. The authors use the Danish case to illustrate a number of themes related to this looking at the hospital sector as an example.\nFindings: The proposition is that a symbiotic co-evolution scenario will emerge. A mix of the classic ideal model and practice of the service professionals' provision of services and the digital society's model of the provision of services is the most likely scenario in the years to come. Furthermore, Data-driven management (DDM) as an integrated key element in a symbiotic co-evolution creates (opens up) participatory environments and spaces for the main actors and agents associated with the provision of welfare services to the citizens.\nResearch limitations/implications: DDM's impact on the provision of welfare services is still being realised and worked out, and more empirical research is needed before it is possible to point at the most likely scenario. However, according to the authors' analytical framework, the institutional logics perspective, as presented in Section 2, a symbiotic co-evolution is most likely such that DDM will constitute a new logic within the provision of welfare services on the basis of which citizens as end-users could be provided with welfare services, but it is not likely that the new logic of DDM can displace the classic service professionals' model of the provision of welfare services. Therefore, the new logic of DDM will be combined with and integrated into the existing logics within service provision, such as the Weberian bureaucracy, the Street-Level Bureaucracy, the New Public Governance and the Market. In spite of this, DDM can successfully be promoted by international management consulting firms, as a management concept which can remedy all the problems of the classic service professionals' model of the provision of welfare services to citizens.\nPractical implications: As a consequence of this, new relationships among professionals, data analytics, (middle) managers and citizens will be created regarding the provision of welfare services. Considering the new participatory environments and spaces and the new relationships among the classic service professionals, the data analytics, the (middle) managers and the citizens as end-users, the provision of welfare services may become an arena for negotiation of a new future model of the provision of welfare services to citizens.\nOriginality/value: The digital society has emerged from and developed further via: digitising, online information in almost real time, algorithms, data-informed decision-making processes, DDM and, ultimately, big data. The authors expect to see further digitising, more sophisticated algorithms and more big data. The authors suggest that a new model of the provision of welfare services to citizens will emerge from the development of the digital society. The authors also suggest that this new model will compete with the classic model of the provision of welfare services.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of enabling factors on social innovation in Russian non-profit organisations	[ "Russia", "Non-profit organizations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social innovations (SIs) are often the response to a crisis, or the inadequacy of current options provided by government, industry or civil society in satisfying citizens' social needs (Moulaert et al., 2005). SIs are examined from the normative perspective and are deemed to result in positive changes in the social sphere. It has enormous political and financial support in EU, several public policy instruments supporting innovations for addressing social disadvantage have been introduced (Edmiston, 2015; Von Jacobi et al., 2017; Sabato et al., 2015).\n2. Social innovations and non-profits: The current literature on SI is quite diverse and characterized by inconsistent empirical data (Nicholls and Murdock, 2012). This fact exemplifies the complex and multidimensional nature of the phenomenon, rather than indicating scarce theoretical development. SI research has roots in broadly defined economic and sociological theoretical perspectives. The concept is placed on various axes due to dominant theoretical streams of thought, which can be clustered in two basic divisions.\n3. Expectations: what might lead to a non-profit being innovative?: Innovativeness of non-profits, defined as experience in SIs to external beneficiaries in a social services field, is facilitated by framework enabling conditions for SIs. Perspective on enabling conditions provides grounds to examine SIs in a wide ecosystem. After Krlev et al. (2014), we distinguish four frameworks for innovation facilitation, which are political, resources, societal climate and institutional ones. The political framework includes incentives \"that are intended to foster social innovations directly or indirectly\" (Krlev et al., 2014, p. 205). Not all non-profits are a subject to these incentives, as they are of selective nature, determined by political discourse and dominant perspective on innovations. Similarly, non-profits differ in the resource framework, meaning their access to monetary, informational, voluntary and other types of resources, which are potentially relevant for the innovation process. Institutional and societal climate frameworks, on the contrary, are of basic uniform nature or at least they are much more alike for the sector than political or resource frameworks and equally refer to all NPOs in a taken national context being both as controls and as constants (for a certain period). In an attempt to grasp what is associated with innovativeness of non-profits we focus on political and resource frameworks as broadly defined independent variables. We assume that NPOs with different positions in political and resource frameworks will also differ in their capacity to innovate.\n4. Russian political framework for social innovations: As was briefly mentioned earlier, SIs are sensitive to local routines and structures prevailing in a given (welfare) system or setting (Evers et al., 2014). Unlike the EU policy field (Sabato et al., 2015), SIs are hardly visible construct in the Russian political discourse. Despite that, the Russian Government follows an approach of welfare and social stability and NPOs are perceived and engaged as social policy implementers. From the one side, this approach creates a broad field for SI development in the non-profit sector. From the other, non-profit capacity to innovate is significantly framed by the overall governmental ambiguous course toward the sector.\n5. Methods and procedures: The methodology employed in the research concerns determinants of innovativeness of NPOs. The approach taken in this paper differs from that which is usually employed in SI studies (for an overview see Gault, 2013; Mulgan et al., 2013), a reverse sampling approach which studies SIs not as individual cases or occurrences, but as characteristics of NPOs. Despite certain limitations and the narrowness of the results obtained, the quantitative survey method was chosen in order to generate new knowledge that cannot be delivered by qualitative methods, which are typically used in SI research.\n6. Results: what contributes to innovativeness of NPOs?: We start by commenting on the results of our survey and identifying the factors that are associated with the capacity of NPOs to produce SI.\n7. Discussion: This study examines relative importance of predictors of SI experience in the Russian non-profit sector. The results confirmed three out of our four hypotheses concerning factors being associated with the SI capacity of non-profits.\n8. Conclusion: Research results provide empirical verification and deepened knowledge on theoretically driven determinants of capacity of an NPO to produce SIs. Cross-boundary collaboration, volunteer engagement and resource diversity proved to be crucial elements associated with an NPO's innovativeness. Governmental funding is not necessarily associated with social innovativeness of an NPO.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper explores the factors that are associated with a capacity of non-profits to develop social innovations (SIs). The purpose of this paper is to examine factors in the Russian national context with weak non-profit sector with an ambiguous governmental policy toward the sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is based on survey data (n=850 NPOs, 2015, Russia). The paper analyses the likelihood of a non-profit to introduce SIs due to external framework and organizational factors. Regression analysis was applied in the study. The study is based on a new sampling approach and examines non-profits as producers of SIs, but not cases of SIs per se.\nFindings: The results demonstrate that the capacity of an NPO to develop SIs is explained by the following enabling factors: cross-boundary collaborative relations, volunteer involvement and diversity of the revenue structure. Composition of innovative sub-sector, opportunities and chances of getting into this group are explicitly determined and regulated by the current governmental policy toward the sector. That is that large and established non-profits are more likely to be innovative in Russia, unlike expected grass-roots.\nOriginality/value: The paper applies a theoretical framework to analyze the SI concept in a non-western context with weak civil society and an influential government. From this perspective, the results present empirical quantitative verification of the determinants of SI capacity of NPOs. The paper is among the first to apply a reverse sampling principle and examine SIs via NPOs as producers. The paper produced, for the first time, an empirical description of the nature of innovative activity by NPOs and an estimation of the extent of this activity in Russia.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enabling an effective knowledge and information flow between the phases of building construction and facilities management	[ "Facility management", "Operation and maintenance", "Information flow", "Building life cycles", "Data gap", "Project handover" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Facilities management (FM) requires multidisciplinary activities with extensive information about buildings (Becerik-Gerber et al., 2011). Building operators and facilities managers perform their functions based on data and information received from various teams of building contractors, consultants, subcontractors and suppliers. However, inadequate data interoperability exists because of the highly fragmented nature of the built environment industry and inconsistency in technology adoption among project stakeholders (Gallaher et al., 2004).\nInformation flow in project life-cycle phases: Generally, various data information flows among major project phases, i.e. project planning, design, construction, operation and decommission. Effective information flows among project teams during different life-cycle phases is very important in implementing quality assurance (Zeng et al., 2007).\nExisting information and knowledge sharing frameworks: FM is a knowledge-intensive discipline where the knowledge of facilities manager is exploited to ensure proper O&M of the facilities under their management (Pathirage et al., 2008). Therefore, concepts and frameworks leading to knowledge sharing (termed as knowledge sharing framework [KSF] in this paper) are very important in FM. The KSFs can be classified as either prescriptive, descriptive, or a combination of the two (Rubenstein-Montano et al., 2001). The knowledge management systems can be different depending upon the characteristics and typology. The KSFs attempt to address one or more of the following factors, acquire knowledge, transform information to knowledge, organise, share, evaluate, transfer and develop new knowledge-based services (Hahn and Subramani, 2000; Rubenstein-Montano et al., 2001).\nResearch methodology: The study applies a qualitative research approach (shown in Figure 1), as the study is an exploratory one, and it seeks a better understanding of knowledge and information gaps during the handover phase of a construction project. Qualitative research emphasises on exploring the experience and perceptions of respondents towards the research subject matter through ongoing contact with \"real-life\" industry situation (Amaratunga et al., 2002). Thus, it is considered suitable for this research to fully understand the contextual situation that gives way to the gaps in knowledge and information during handover. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among experts in FM in Western Australia (WA) including project participants of the studied cases. In addition, the study analysed three different commercial office buildings as case studies.\nFindings and discussion: Pre-handover phase\nThe potential way forward: a proposed model: The study found that the information is shared amongst various stakeholders in different formats. The proposed three KSFs can make it easier to collect relevant information from different stakeholders and store in a common platform to be used by different stakeholders simultaneously. However, the effectiveness of a particular KSF in addressing certain O&M issues would vary depending on the nature of the problem. Following a thorough analysis of the sources, emergence and impacts of issues occurred during the FM phase by studying the information flow between pre-completion and post completion phases of these projects, the study proposes an integration of the KSFs to effectively address O&M issues occurring in the studied cases of commercial buildings.\nConclusions: Information has been regarding the lifeblood of O&M, as O&M typically requires an extensive amount of building information. The literature review conducted in this research has revealed that the information facilities managers received during project handover does not always match all the information required to effectively carry out activities within the O&M phase (which was later verified and detailed in the studied cases of three commercial buildings). This has necessitated the formulation of this research to identify the information gap between handover and maintenance, and subsequently make recommendations aimed to bridge the information gap and improve practices in this field.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate ways of transferring knowledge and information during the life-cycle phases of construction projects, particularly between the construction and occupancy phases, and to find an approach to minimise knowledge and information gaps during the handover process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study applied a qualitative approach involving a literature review and an archival analysis of information flow in the studied cases of a construction project, followed by a cross-cases analysis and expert interviews. Data on information flow were collected from three cases of building construction projects in Perth, Western Australia. In addition, a total of 18 local facilities management experts were interviewed to identify the key reasons of knowledge and information gaps and to propose an effective knowledge flow model.\nFindings: The findings of this study indicated a significant knowledge and information gap, which exists during the handover process in construction projects in Western Australia. The findings of case analysis and expert interviews identified that the project handover guidelines were often ignored in construction projects in Western Australia, and the handover phase was not given the same priority as the design and construction phases by most of the project stakeholders, which led to information and knowledge gaps between the project construction and post-occupancy phases. The study conducted, integrated knowledge and information flow modelling to analyse the knowledge and information gaps followed by mapping the gaps against existing knowledge sharing frameworks (KSFs) before proposing an integrated knowledge sharing conceptual model to improve current practice and to enhance the information flow during the various phases of the construction project life cycle.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is based on three cases in Perth, Western Australia, and thus the findings and recommendations are contextual. Whilst laying a good foundation to do so, further research is needed to investigate more cases in Western Australia and beyond to fully generalise the findings from this study.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to improve the handover process and information flows in project life-cycle phases in Western Australia and develop an information flow model followed by bringing together existing KSFs, namely, the open communication channel (OCC), soft landing framework (SLF) and building information modelling (BIM), to propose an integrated knowledge sharing conceptual model. The methodology used here to analyse the information flow in a diagrammatic manner, the mapping of FM issues against the KSFs' capabilities and a conceptual model to facilitate change in the industry's silo mindset are the main contributions of this paper.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What restricts credit to women enterprises? Evidence from India's informal sector	[ "Credit access", "Informal enterprises", "Financial access", "Women entrepreneurs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The informal sector is of utmost importance particularly for the developing economies as they act as a major source of income and employment generation. They help in minimizing regional imbalances by industrialization of rural areas and providing employment at large scale with lower capital. Across the world, the terms \"unorganized\" and \"informal\" are used interchangeably. According to the International Labour Organization (2002), informal sector houses 50-75 percent employment of the non-agricultural sector. Unorganized sector contributed around 38.4 percent of the GDP in Sub-Saharan African countries during 1999-2007 (Schneider et al., 2010) and 13.5 percent of GDP on an average even among OECD countries with high income (Babbitt et al., 2015). Literature suggests that unorganized enterprises are generally low on productivity and constrained to finance; due to which they have limited growth opportunities (Rothenberg et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: Informal enterprises contribute significantly to the socio-economic development of any country. The relevance of informal sector is higher for developing economies as it is a source of income and employment generation for a large proportion of its populace. Informal sector constitutes 50-75 percent of all the non-agricultural employment in developing economies (ILO, 2002). Evidence in developing countries suggests that women entrepreneurs are found largely to be informal as it helps them to maintain work-life balance due to the flexibility of time and operations (Chant and Pedwell, 2008). These enterprises mostly have high-labor-intensive operations, small-scale, low technology and self-financed (Klapper and Parker, 2010). Such informal enterprises are generally low on productivity and constrained to finance due to which they have limited growth opportunities (Rothenberg et al., 2016). The informal sector in India is vast and is constantly growing. In contrast to the general assumption, Indian informal sector is not marginalized rather it is the mainstream economy since it employs 93 percent of the workforce (Gurtoo and Williams, 2009). Thus it is of utmost importance to study the needs and challenges of the Informal enterprises in India.\n3. Database: The data set used for this study is the latest unit-level survey data on the Unincorporated Non-Agricultural Enterprises excluding Construction (NSS 73rd Round) conducted by the NSSO during 2015-2016 under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Government of India. This survey is the most comprehensive and nationally representative data set available on the operational and economic characteristics of the unorganized enterprises in India. The scope of the survey was limited to those non-agricultural enterprises which have not been incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956. It also excludes those electricity units which are registered with the Central Electricity Authority, Government owned enterprises and cooperatives.\n4. Variable selection and model specification: We employed a probit model from the NSS 73rd round (2015-2016) after taking care of the sample selection bias and endogeneity bias in the process to identify the major determinants of financial access for the female-owned unorganized enterprises in India. When the dependent variable is binary, logistic regression or probit regression can be used depending on the distribution of the error term in the model. A logistic model assumes the error term to follow a standard logistic distribution, whereas the probit model is best suited when the dependent variable is binary and the error term is normally distributed (Figure 1, Kernel Density function). The descriptive and probit analyses have been done using the STATA 12 statistical package. The variables studied have been described in Table AI.\n5. Results and inferences: Following are certain characteristics of our sample that has been studied. Table III shows the comparative of growth status of male owned and FOIEs. Close to 74 percent of the female-owned enterprises are either contracting or remained stagnant over the last three years, while only 65 percent male owned remained stagnant. As, women-owned enterprises are low on productivity and growth, they face tighter constraints to formal credit.\n6. Conclusion and suggestions: The results of the probit estimation show that important factors which affect the access to credit for FOIEs include location of the firm in terms of geographical location, age and size of the firm, type and numbers of activities the firm is engaged in, formalization of these enterprises, ownership of bank account, ownership of assets and maintenance of accounting records, etc. Though the caste category does not turn out to be significant, but historically the ST and SC have been a marginalized fraction of the Indian population in terms of access to public goods and especially educational attainment (Desai and Dubey, 2012). Their representation in entrepreneurial spheres is also not very encouraging. They are heading a very small number of enterprises (Iyer et al., 2013). In line with the existing literature, the results of this study are also not favorable for this marginalized section, with only 3.33 percent of ST women entrepreneurs and 8.73 percent SC women entrepreneurs having access to formal credit (Table V).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors which affect the financial access of the female-owned informal enterprises (FOIEs) in India. There has been a dearth of studies particularly targeting determinants of credit access by the women-owned informal enterprises. Demand side factors affecting financial access have been studied. The study of major factors affecting access to credit by unorganized women enterprises will be useful for policy making perspectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study uses nationalized micro data set on the non-agricultural informal enterprises and probit estimation has been used to identify the factors which affect the probabilities of access to credit for the FOIEs.\nFindings: The study highlights what facilitates and hinders the financial access for the FOIEs particularly in India. These enterprises in rural areas have better chances to avail credit from formal sources. Firm size, measured by policy-making size of employment and gross profit, involvement in diversified activities, maintenance of accounting record, has positive and significant impact on access to formal credit. The younger firms and the firms operating in the southern states of the country have higher probabilities to avail credit from institutional sources.\nOriginality/value: The study used the latest data set available on Indian informal enterprises, thus provides important insights about the status of financing of enterprises in India. This study highlights the regional variations and gender disparities that are prevalent in the Indian economy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Service convergence and service integration in medical tourism	[ "Service innovation", "Service quality", "Service integration", "Medical tourism industry", "Service convergence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Innovation drives the evolution of products. One type of innovation is the combination or integration of previously separate products into a new and enhanced product (Gallouj and Weinstein, 1997). As the new, integrated product becomes increasingly popular, it replaces the previous products and thereby affects the related industries. For products that combine principles or technologies from different industries, industry boundaries can start to vanish and a convergence takes place.\n2. Foundations of service integration and service convergence: 2.1 Service integration and innovation\n3. Research setting: In this section, we provide background on the medical tourism industry in Thailand and on BIH.\n4. Methodology and findings: 4.1 Methodology\n5. Managerial implications and discussion: BIH has successfully adopted a twofold business model of low cost and differentiation. BIH's focus on the operational efficiency enabled it to lower costs while offering a wide range of high-quality medical services. The second aspect is differentiation, which was achieved by the adoption of a customer-centric model focussed on service quality that was achieved through service integration.\n6. Conclusion: We introduced the concepts of service convergence and service integration and provided definitions for these terms. Service integration was contrasted to related service concepts to identify its unique characteristics. We showed the relationship between service integration and service convergence. Service convergence is the emergent phenomenon of a firm's service integration activity at the product and industry level. Service convergence was defined and further discussed by analyzing its similarities and differences to technology convergence.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss the concepts of service convergence and service integration, illustrate them in the context of the medical tourism industry, and link them to factors that contributed to the success of a medical tourism firm.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The basis for the conceptual development of service convergence and service integration is an in-depth case study of Bumrungrad International Hospital (BIH) in Thailand. Based on semi-structured interviews and archival data, BIH's business model is analyzed and factors are identified that led to its success in the industry.\nFindings: BIH's success can be attributed to nine key initiatives that enhanced customer focus, operational efficiency, and service quality. These initiatives supported BIH's twofold business model of product differentiation and globally competitive prices. The firm's activities led to the integration of medical and hospitality services resulting in a new, enhanced product. Competitors adopted BIH's service integration approach, which started the service convergence trend in the medical tourism industry.\nResearch limitations/implications: The conceptual foundations for service convergence and service integration are laid in this paper and can serve as the basis for future research.\nPractical implications: Insights from BIH's business model can guide firms in medical tourism and related industries on how to innovate and how to successfully implement their service products.\nOriginality/value: This paper introduces the term service convergence and discusses its mechanisms. Furthermore, it identifies success factors of a leading firm in the medical tourism industry and links them to service integration.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enabling community-powered co-innovation by connecting rural stakeholders with global knowledge brokers: A case study from Nepal	[ "Innovation", "Triple Helix", "Rural development", "Agri-business", "Ethical business" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Innovation and rural development: The ongoing struggles of development projects to fight poverty, hunger and uncontrolled migration to cities and abroad (as we are facing now in Europe) may be also due to a wicked problem of rural development projects. Following the considerations of Rittel and Webber (1973) a \"wicked problem\" is defined by its complex, interdependent nature and a lack of explicit formulation. It resists resolution because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements, and the efforts to solve one issue creates or reveals other problems. These obstacles can be often seen in development projects due to different cultures, unexpected social and economic behavior, linguistic misunderstandings, and comparable problems. In particular, development projects with smallholder farmers guided by international NGOs from industrialized countries might fail because of these reasons (Zakaria, 2014; Sirolli, 1999; Sirolli, 2012). Smallholders, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), are those cultivating broadly less than 2 hectares of land (IFAD, 2013).\n2. Research questions and research objectives: The research objective of this study is to use a case study of community-powered co-innovation in an agricultural development context as a practical application of the Triple Helix concept (see Chapter 2). Normally the Triple Helix is applied with a focus on technology transfer and exchange of patents between industry and academia, with government as a controlling and enhancing institution. Because the majority of innovations in the agri-food sector are of a non-technical nature (Caiazza, 2015), the focus of our case is not on technology transfer, but on knowledge exchange in respect to product, marketing and organizational innovation.\n3. Theoretical background: Since Schumpeter (1975) argued in the 1940s, innovation is seen as creative destruction, recombining factors of production in a new way, leading to a replacement of old structures, systems, and institutions and finally destroying them. This prompts the question as to in which way existing production factors; agricultural commodities, finances and knowledge, to name a few, have to be recombined to stimulate sustainable rural enterprise innovation. This paper will present an approach, which mainly deals with recombination of the factor knowledge, a factor with significant importance as pointed out by James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank when he stated: \"We used to think of capital as the scarce factor in production and of the transfer of capital as the key instrument of growth. Knowledge is now as, if not more, important a factor in development, and this trend is set to intensify [...] in the next century, knowledge will drive development processes and will create opportunities for growth and poverty reduction\" (FAO, 2000).\n4. Improving market orientation: combining the Triple Helix concept with community-powered co-innovation: Market orientation is a key factor in the food value chain for successful innovation (Grunert et al., 2005; Galizzi and Venturini, 2008). The development of new food products demands insights into changing consumer habits, needs, preferences, and values. The aim of product innovation is to differentiate from the competition and to develop a unique selling proposition. The better a company can position its products with a unique selling proposition, the easier it is to achieve a quasi-monopolistic position in the mind of their consumers. As long as products are perceived as commodities they are vulnerable to price volatility because of global influences (e.g. disasters, financial markets, climate change, etc.). Improving market orientation of rural entrepreneurs is a necessity for them to be successful. But in most cases the wealthy potential consumers are located in cities (Yunus, 2015), living a different life style, having different values and preferences from those of the rural entrepreneur. Rural entrepreneurs need knowledge brokers who connect them with consumers and trade companies in cities, because only the markets in cities are big enough to achieve economies of scale.\n5. Case study: Nepali Gardens and OneWorld - A Learning Center (alc): Research methodology\n6. Discussion: One important aspect to be taken out of our case study refers to the involved products (or services): The products from Nepali Gardens are typical origin-linked products (Vandecandelaere et al., 2010). Origin-linked products emerge out of the interaction of products, territory and people. These products should have a specific quality and distinguished reputation. A territory represents specific natural and human resources such as soil, climate, autochthonous breeds and varieties, know-how, traditions, etc. And last but not least the people of a specific region have to be motivated and must have the capacity to engage in a collective value creation. So one of the innovation drivers is territorial capacity of the region (in our case we presented the outcome for one specific district in Nepal).\n7. Conclusions: From the \"modernization framework of development\" (Islam, 2009) the emergence of such networks is a bottom-up phenomenon, which is difficult or almost impossible to manage or control by a single institution (Bellu, 2011). As the described case study illustrates, the emergence of the Triple Helix happened by first establishing bilateral links between the actors of the university and the private sector. Once their collaboration was established, it was easier to bring in the governmental sector as financier.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the contribution the authors show how the concept of community-powered co-innovation can successfully be implemented in order to improve the situation of small-scale farmers. The purpose of this paper is to focus on developing countries in consideration of economic, social and ecological sustainability aspects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: All findings are based on an in-depth, detailed examination of one specific case. The case study approach allows analysis of innovation and cooperation within rural societies while considering their contextual conditions.\nFindings: The case study goes back to an initiative begun in 2011. Stakeholders from Nepal were connected to five Austrian distributors and nine German distributors selling their products in Austria and Germany. In total, about 600 Nepalese farmers are cultivating on average less than 1 ha of agricultural land each. A German entrepreneur founded the first Demeter farm in Nepal and founded an ethical business in Nepal to cooperate with the farmers there. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) acted as a knowledge broker. The whole initiative followed the Triple Helix concept.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study shows qualitative results out of an individual initiative. The findings are of a qualitative nature, they are not necessarily transferable to comparable cases. The outcome has to be interpreted as hypotheses, further research activities are required for broader application.\nOriginality/value: The case study shows how the authors can sustainably improve the economic and social situation of underprivileged market participants in the least developed countries by establishing a teaching-based cooperation between a university, an ethical business and farmers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
APML drives a culture of ownership and innovation: Open-door policy makes employees feel part of the family	[ "India", "Human-resource management", "Organizational culture", "Transport and logistics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Fixed Graphic\nSense of employee ownership: The sense of employee ownership is fostered through various systems and structures. Employee designations are unique. For example, a branch manager is named branch malik, the word malik meaning owner.\nContinuous open communication: The company encourages continuous open communication. A monthly meeting is held across all the office locations in APML, chaired by the respective office head. The day of the meeting is known as darbar day, with darbar referring to a grand meeting. Every employee is given the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback about any challenges and difficulties faced in delivering services to the customer. Employees can also raise personal issues such as salary discrepancies. Darbar day is a medium for communicating corporate strategy and guidelines across various levels of the organization.\nOpen-door policy: Another important aspect of APML's culture is its open-door policy, where the owners, the second-generation family members and top management are connected with, and are accessible to, all employees.\nCareer progression: Praveen Chauhan, Vice-President, HR, commented: \"There is no restriction on an employee's growth in the company. A person who joins at the lowest level can become a director in 12 years, provided he or she proves to be worthy of the position. There have been several instances where the person who has joined as a packer has become the branch malik head or the state malik\".\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Discusses the key dimensions of organizational culture at Agarwal Packers and Movers Ltd (APML), India.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Describes the role of human resource management (HRM) practices in building an organizational culture which enhances performance through innovation and a strong customer-service orientation.\nFindings: Discusses how field-level employees in APML are connected with the organization through the owners and top management. Through different HRM practices, APML has been successful in instilling a feeling of ownership among the employees and in harnessing their energy for fostering innovation, superior customer service and profitability.\nPractical implications: Highlights the positive aspects of employee involvement in the context of an Indian family business.\nSocial implications: Illustrates that emphasizing family values in the organizational culture can enable the organization to develop a sense of gratitude and reciprocity.\nOriginality/value: Stresses the importance of both the family orientation and related HRM practices of a large Indian organization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How entrepreneurial resilience generates resilient SMEs	[ "SME", "Entrepreneurship", "Organizational resilience", "Entrepreneurial resilience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is widely believed that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack resilience and that they are disproportionately impacted by a wide range of external shocks (Battisti and Deakins, 2012; Ingirige et al., 2008). This characteristic is worrying, given the social and economic significance of SMEs (Ates and Bititci, 2011; de Vries and Shields, 2006; Lewis and Cassells, 2010) and the recent scale and diversity of extreme events. Severe weather, terrorist attacks, ransomware, global pandemics, and geo-political instability create significant challenges to SME structure, success, and survival (Linnenluecke et al., 2012; May and Koski, 2013). It is thought that the ability of SMEs to exhibit resilience - the capacity to \"rebound or bounce back from adversity, conflict, and failure\" (Luthans, 2002, p. 702) - is reduced because of a lack of planning for crises (Paton et al., 2010), limited internal resources, narrow customer base, and low bargaining power (Smallbone et al., 2012).\nEntrepreneurs, entrepreneurial behaviors, and SME resilience: This study explores how organizational resilience is developed in the context of SMEs and investigates the role of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in shaping the resilience of small and medium-sized organizations. This is an inherently multi-level approach to understanding SME resilience because it focuses on the role of individual actors (entrepreneurial behaviors) in shaping a key organization-level outcome (resilience).\nResearch approach: As this paper aims to illuminate a nascent and little understood phenomenon, organizational resilience in the context of SMEs, and to theorize regarding the micro-processes at the individual level of analysis that encourage the development of resilient SMES, an exploratory research design that enhances the validity and reliability of findings is used (Creswell and Clark, 2007; Punch and Punch, 1998). To do this, the research focused upon SMEs operating in the UK, a context where SMEs make up approximately 99 percent of all private business (BIS, 2015).\nFindings: This sub-section reports the study's findings in two parts. First, data in relation to the fundamental nature of resilience in the context of SMEs are unpacked. This enabled the research to contrast how entrepreneurs conceive of resilience in this context with the wider literature on the micro-foundations of resilience in larger companies. This analysis encourages a more nuanced and informed discussion in relation to what constitutes SME resilience. Second, how entrepreneurial resilience unfolds in practice is examined; in doing so, new evidence on how entrepreneurs' behaviors shape SME resilience is provided. This analysis subsequently provides an alternative basis for understanding how resilience can be developed and sustained by SMEs.\nDiscussion: This paper has conceptually and empirically examined entrepreneurial resilience to explain how the attributes and behavior of entrepreneurs shape SME resilience. Findings show that the sources of resilience available to SMEs tend to be relational, contextual, attitudinal, and behavioral, rather than structural and resource intensive. The research highlights the critical role that individual entrepreneurs play in promoting these alternative sources of resilience through their attitudes and behaviors. The processes and mechanisms that participants associated with resilient SMEs are most commonly found in the literature associated with individual resilience (i.e. social connections and locus of control), entrepreneurial behavior (autonomy, comfort with uncertainty, opportunistic), and \"entrepreneurial bricolage\" (\"making do\" and \"muddling through\").\nConclusions: There are several significant implications of this study, with benefits reaching practice and policy. Findings draw into question traditional approaches to understanding and promoting SME resilience. Specifically, this research suggests that one-way communication, which emphasizes the sensitization of SMEs to the need for crisis planning, is unlikely to foster resilient SMEs. Instead, the research suggests several alternative strategies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entrepreneurial behaviors support small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) resilience, refine the concept of entrepreneurial resilience, and identify how SME resilience might be promoted.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Qualitative data were collected in the UK via 11 focus groups which provided a sub-sample of 19 SME participants.\nFindings: Because of their experience operating in uncertain environments, their direct experience of adversity, and the informal organizational settings they inhabit, entrepreneurs are often highly resilient and possess capabilities that enable SMEs to be resilient. Entrepreneurial resilience provides a basis for SME resilience that differs significantly from best practices as understood in larger firms.\nResearch limitations/implications: Exploratory qualitative research on a small sample (n=19) limits the generalizability of this work. Further research could quantitatively test the paper's findings and/or examine the link between entrepreneurial resilience and the resilience of larger firms.\nPractical implications: Rather than encouraging formal planning and redundancy, policy and practice designed to promote the resilience of SMEs should pay greater attention to building capacities to cope with uncertainty, generating and leveraging personal relationships, and activating the ability to experiment and think creatively in response to crises.\nOriginality/value: This paper draws on organizational psychology research to refine understanding of entrepreneurial resilience and to empirically examine and inductively theorize the multi-level relationships between entrepreneurial resilience and SME resilience.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Differences in service quality perceptions of stakeholders in the hotel industry	[ "Service quality", "Customer satisfaction", "Perception", "Stakeholders", "Hotels", "Hotel industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Service quality has many benefits, such as providing a competitive advantage to a business, establishing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and contributing to its image (Bloemer et al., 1998; Ghobadian et al., 1994; Gronroos, 1984). However, studies in the literature on hotel enterprises with regards to service quality, which is one of the most important areas of the service sector, are limited. In addition, the studies on service quality perceptions have been confined to certain groups (Ekinci and Riley, 1999; Ekinci et al., 2003; Ingram and Daskalakis, 1999; Wu and Ko, 2013). Caruana and Pitt (1997) have stated that the majority of studies in the related literature have focused on customers' perceptions and managers' duty to ensure the quality of the services delivered. Berry et al. (1988) confirmed that it is a manager's responsibility to anticipate customers' demands and expectations and convey them to employees.\nLiterature review and hypothesis: Service quality\nMethodology: Instrument\nFindings: Validity and reliability of the SERVQUAL scale\nDiscussions and implications: MANOVA results revealed that stakeholders had different perceptions of integrated service quality performance. Furthermore, in the examination of the post-hoc tests of the present research, no significant difference was found except between managers and employees in the empathy dimension (Table VI). Gowan et al. (2001) stated that the service quality perceptions of managers and employees are different, but this difference is not significant. Furthermore, the researchers found differences in customer-employee and customer-manager service quality perceptions to be statistically significant. Thus, it can be said that the results of the present research are similar to Gowan et al.'s (2001) research from the significantly different point of view. However, in Gowan et al.'s (2001) study, the levels of service quality perception of managers and employees were found to be lower than the customers' levels of service quality perception, which is contrary to the present research findings, indicating that the level of customers' service quality perceptions is above the level of managers' and employees' service quality perceptions. Tsang and Qu (2000) found a significant difference between managers' and the customers' levels of service quality perception in their study. In our study, the service quality perception of managers was above the level of customer's perceptions, except for a few statements. Thus, the findings of the present study support the findings of Tsang and Qu's (2000) study from the managers' and customers' points of view.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Studies in the service quality evaluation literature have generally attempted to determine the service quality perception level of customers by mainly focusing on customers' quality evaluations. However, the nature and characteristics of differences in service quality perceptions among customers, managers and employees are not sufficiently researched. In this study, the differences in service quality perceptions among the aforementioned stakeholders are examined.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the significant differences between stakeholder's perceptions of service quality, using a sample of 845 hotel stakeholders (customers, employees and managers).\nFindings: The findings showed that employees perceived service performance to be at a high level, while customers perceived it to be at a low level. According to the post-hoc test, even though managers' perception of service quality performance was lower than that of employees, no significant difference was found between them. In addition, it was determined by second-order confirmatory factor analysis that the lowest explanation ratio was the tangible dimension in SERVQUAL.\nOriginality/value: One major shortcoming in the concept of service quality is that stakeholders perceive service quality differently. In particular, a hotel business that lacks service quality may face issues such as negative customer satisfaction, lack of customer loyalty and lower competitive advantage. However, while most of the studies on the hotel sector in the literature focus mainly on the evaluation of customers for service quality, other stakeholders' (employees' and managers') perceptions have been ignored. Therefore, the current study's contribution to the literature explores the differences in stakeholders' perceptions of the hotel industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of trade and monetary policy indicators on the development of renewable energy in Latin America	[ "Latin America", "Renewable energy", "Monetary policy", "Economic indicators", "Energy mix" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The increase of clean and renewable energy investment in the past decade has changed the worldwide energy landscape. The term clean energy designates energy generated through non-polluting methods, or of low environmental impact in terms of carbon emissions. Renewable energy is any type of energy, which comes from renewable natural resources, such as wind, hydro, sunlight, geothermal heat and tides (Energy.gov, 2018; UK-Utilities-Ltd, 2017). However, in some countries, the term clean energy only encompasses renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower, whereas in others energy efficiency, nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) are included in the clean energy category (Georgeson et al., 2016).\nThe renewable energy landscape in Latin America: Each of the 16 Latin American countries included in this study faces different conditions and a different set of opportunities affecting their renewable energy development and energy mix. Various factors influence the energy production technology in the region. These factors range from historical and geographical factors in terms of the availability of resources, to economic factors, political priorities and policy mixes. A major determining factor in the development of the renewables sector is the existing structure of energy production in each country. In addition, the existing natural resources, productive capacity and path dependency of major investments in technologies have also determined the existing structure (Flavin et al., 2014). It is also pertinent to mention that Latin America is a net oil energy exporter. Furthermore, in countries with large oil sectors such as Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico, politically affiliated entities often have deep interests in the continuation of fossil fuel predominance. Strong lobbies usually ensure that such predominance prevails. Consequently, such countries tend to resist any policy framework that encourages renewables. In addition, countries with large oil sectors face important path dependency issues because oil exports and local production constitute a significant component of the economic structure of the country (Griffith-Jones et al., 2017). This can make the shift towards the production of renewables more difficult as compared to other countries with smaller oil sectors. Therefore, countries without large fossil fuel deposits can often more easily maintain or expand frameworks favorable to renewable energy development (Lutkenhorst et al., 2014; World Bank, 2017).\nPolicies and incentives that support renewable energy in Latin America: The governments of these Latin American countries have long recognized the importance of the appropriate policy mix for energy production and energy development for each country. The variety of instruments needed to overcome different barriers or to support different technologies at various stages of development makes finding a suitable policy mix even more compelling. This also makes the task of crafting a suitable policy mix increasingly more complex (Rosenow et al., 2016).\nRenewable energy development and monetary policy: Significant research has been devoted to understand the relationship between monetary policy, inflation and business cycles. Gali (2015) argues that a framework to understand the links between monetary policy and the aggregate performance of an economy is useful. Moreover, monetary policy, as conducted by central banks has an important role in shaping national and regional macroeconomic developments as changes in interest rates have a direct effect on the valuation of financial assets and their expected returns. Such decisions may have consequences for gross domestic product (GDP) growth and employment (Gali, 2015).\nData and methodology: The main goal of the study is to investigate how indicators related to monetary policy affect the development of renewable energy in the sample countries at a cross-country level. Thus, first we conduct a multiple regression to identify if monetary policy affects the development of renewable energy usage at all. Then, we investigate the singular effects of each macro-economic variable collected and obtained from the World Bank (2017) database.\nDiscussion of results: We first analyze the cross-correlations between all economic and energy variables in Figure 5.\nConclusions: In this study, we investigated the dependency of nine different economic indicators on renewable energy consumption, energy imports, alternative energy use as well as total energy usage in Latin America. Using principal component analysis, we extracted possible trade and monetary policy measures, which might affect the deployment of renewable energy in these countries. Our main findings are the relative independence of renewable energy and alternative energy use from total energy usage, the co-movement of final consumption expenditure and interest payments on external debt, and all energy variables. One conclusion we can draw from this insight is that Latin American energy imports financed in US$ can be heavily exposed to interest rate movements that affect the US$. This means that a tightening in the US monetary policy by way of increases in the interest rate could potentially affect the ability of Latin American countries to finance and implement renewables.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effect of monetary policy indicators on Latin America's renewable energy development. The authors conduct several regressions as well as a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to unveil relationships among possible driving factors among others the current account balance, interest rates, money flow and energy trade balance for Latin America's energy mix.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis was a two-part process. First, the authors used multiple regression to identify if monetary policy affects the development of renewable energy usage at all. To investigate the singular effects of each of the nine macro-economic variables and four energy indicators, collected from the World Bank (2017) database, several regressions were run where the authors regressed each economic indicator on each energy variable. Then, the authors conducted a principal component analysis with all 13 variables.\nFindings: The authors found a significant relationship between the clean energy share and governmental spending boosting GDP as well as a significant relationship between governmental spending and the amount of foreign exchange reserves. Declining net energy imports indicate that countries in Latin America are getting more and more energy autonomous for the price of building up huge amounts of foreign exchange reserves.\nResearch limitations/implications: Renewable energy indicators are not always available for all Latin American countries. Data tend to be scattered. However, sources such as the International Renewable Energy Agency and the World Bank database can be complementary.\nPractical implications: The understanding of the effects and impacts of some of the monetary policy related indicators can provide insights for improving renewable energy financing policies. In turn, such policies can have increased influence on renewable energy sustainability and potentially contribute to improving environmental policies.\nOriginality/value: The specific impact of the selected variables on renewable energy has not been studied. This study attempts to discern the impact of such variables to understand how they influence the renewable energy mix. The insights can in turn inform and modify existing policies and guidelines as well as advise new policy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Innovation in fit-outs - are Generation Y and technology firms heralding a new trend?	[ "Workplace", "Technology", "Generations", "TMT sectors", "Ways of working" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: How is the workplace changing with the age-range of its workforce? Why is happiness and wellness in the workplace being prioritised more than ever before? Will the workplace of the future be designed as a serviced experience rather than the office we know today? We examine these questions, and why the answer might be found in the influence of Generation Y and technology organisations.\nIntroduction: The way we work is changing, and with it, the spaces we work in. Leading the charge in new products and services are technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) organisations, fuelled by an in-flow of Generation Y talent, and promising to be the big spenders of tomorrow in terms of real estate.\nThe workplace is changing with the workforce: The nature of work is changing rapidly, so how do the providers and occupiers of office buildings respond?\nHappiness, wellness and productivity at work: Happiness is difficult to quantify or even qualify, but it is something that organisations are increasingly interested in understanding. Measuring productivity in the workplace is a fraught and complex issue that the workplace industry has yet to crack. It is partly due to how complex productivity measurement is that many are now talking about happiness at work instead. Happy people should, in theory, be more engaged and more productive.\nExperience design: In the fast-changing world of technology organisations, ways of working have adjusted to keep up with the pace needed to be ahead in the industry. Working lives are becoming faster-paced and more informal, partly as the younger generations leave behind some of the traditions of their forbears but also because the push for innovation encourages thinking beyond accepted norms. A structure that is less formal and hierarchical is also favoured by organisations wishing to encourage collaboration, as a way of creating more and stronger links between colleagues working together and speed up decision making. A manager in a TMT company is much less likely to sit in an office with the door closed, and more likely to be out amongst their team, engaging and communicating directly with them.\nThe workplace as a service: A big part of the reason an office needs to respond quickly to changes is \"Empty Building Syndrome\". On average, well over one third of workspaces are empty at any point during the core working day, and organisations are paying for this empty space. In total, 25 years of AECOM Time Utilisation Survey data will back this up, taken from nearly nine million observations across 400 offices in 27 countries, over the last ten years alone.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how is the workplace changing with the age-range of its workforce? Why is happiness and wellness in the workplace being prioritised more than ever before? Will the workplace of the future be designed as a serviced experience rather than the office that is known today? This paper aims to examine these questions, and why the answer might be found in the influence of Generation Y and technology organisations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach to this paper is to draw from a number of sources - AECOM's published paper for the BCO on how the TMT sectors are impacting office design - extensive AECOM project experience and research in practice. The presentation prepared for cutting edge was the starting point for the structure and content of this paper.\nFindings: The authors are designing for multiple generations at work, not just the youngest people. The authors can learn much, however, from the trends being set by the youngest sectors, such as technology organisations with their Generation X board members driving speed, informality and a work/life blend. The next generation workplace will be designed with more emphasis on diversity, choice, flexibility and sustainability. The office will be as much about the experience and service provision as the physical space supporting people holistically for a happier, healthier and more productive workforce.\nResearch limitations/implications: There are multiple topics addressed in this paper. Research and findings are drawn from other sources. New research is beyond the scope of this paper.\nPractical implications: Looking ahead, developers and architects will need to reuse empty office space in other ways. The city block of the future must be mixed-use, vertically and horizontally, and incorporate offices, residential, dining, leisure and co-working, with a permeable, linked-up ground floor. City blocks today are sometimes segregated, designed as separate buildings in one, with separate entrances breaking up the ground floor into separate domains. The city block of the future needs to be more joined up, more connected and open at ground floor level to allow a mix of people and functions, creating more public space.\nSocial implications: The opportunity is to create sustainable and highly utilised environments where people can work, live and socialise.\nOriginality/value: Drawing from the AECOM proprietary global occupancy database which contains 25 years of data of how buildings are actually used over time. This paper includes the data for the last ten years. Applying the reality of four generations in the workplace to the design of office buildings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Tangibilizing services through visual tangible cues in corporate Web sites: a six-country cross-cultural analysis	[ "Content analysis", "Corporate Web sites", "Services advertising", "Visual tangible cues" ]	[ { "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 issue.\nIntroduction: Service businesses have undergone dramatic growth over the past 40 years and now account for more than 70 per cent of the world's total output (World Bank, 2012). Nearly one-third of the world's top 500 companies are service companies (CNN, 2012). As the growth of service businesses continues to escalate, a body of research has examined numerous service marketing topics. While agreeing that services have distinct characteristics that differentiate from goods (Zeithaml et al., 1985; Stafford, 1996), researchers have recognized the importance of tangible cues in services advertising to overcome the intangibility and abstractness of most services (Zeithaml et al., 1985; Cutler and Javalgi, 1993). The basic advice is to make an intangible service more tangible for improving services advertising strategy (Berry and Clark, 1986; Clow et al., 1998). Although tangibilization strategies may not be equally effective across different types of services (e.g. experience vs credence services and business-to-business (B2B) vs business-to-consumer (B2C) services, Stafford, 1996; Stafford and Day, 1995; Turley and Kelley, 1997), the service literature suggests that visual tangible cues should be advantageous to services advertisers by providing an observable means of tangibilizing an intangible offering (Stafford, 1996).\nLiterature review: Tangibility in services advertising\nMethod: Sampling and unit of analysis\nResults: Literal vs symbolic visuals\nDiscussion and conclusion: In an effort to unravel the intricacy of the use of visual tangible cues in international services advertising, this study examined the practice of visual strategies crafted in services corporations' local Web sites. The local Web sites of global services corporations targeted toward the customers of six countries were examined with respect to the types of visual functions, the use of photographs vs illustrations and the use of interactive elements. As summarized in Table VI, this comparative study revealed a number of interesting findings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine cross-cultural differences in the use of visual tangible cues in local corporate Web sites of six nations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative content analysis was used to obtain a numerically based summary of visual tangible cues utilized in 207 Web sites of global service corporations.\nFindings: A clear pattern of differences was observed in the major visual functions (literal vs symbolic), the use of photographs vs illustrations and the utilization of interactive elements between two groups of nations. Eastern visuals tend to rely more on symbolic visuals performing association function, mixed use of photographs and illustrations and customer endorsement, whereas Western visuals are more likely to perform literal functions, use photographs and feature customer-employee interactions.\nPractical implications: International services marketers who are planning a global campaign on the Web can benefit by using differentiated visual strategies, which reflect unique cultural characteristics of a target market.\nOriginality/value: This study adds a new contribution to an international account of Web services advertising in maintaining a comprehensive understanding of contemporary use of visual tangibles cues. It could benefit global services advertisers with both practical and theoretical implications, for no systematic studies have ever touched the visualization strategies on the Web.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A CAD-based feature recognition system for escape route planning	[ "Pattern recognition", "Computer aided design", "Maps", "Computer software" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Disasters are unforeseen and often sudden events that cause great damage, destruction and human suffering. It may be either, a calamity caused by accident, fire, explosion, or technical failure, or by the forces of nature that result in serious harm to the health, safety or welfare of people, or in widespread damage to property. Thus it is necessary that the public is educated on the risks associated with disasters, and even further, steps should be taken to ensure that proper disaster planning follows the risk analysis.Paton (2003a) argues that despite considerable efforts and expenditure on public hazard education, levels of preparedness remain low. The further says that the public hazard education programs may actually reduce the perceived risk and levels of preparedness, due to people transferring responsibility for their safety from self to others. Paton (2003b) suggests that stress is a significant determining factor in the performance of emergency management. Thus it is important that risk management should be considered at the design phase of any emergency management system, as stress affects the decision making process. Malhotra (1985) also states that one of the primary causes of lack of escape from fires is poor design of routes for escape.There has been a significant number of research studies cited in the literature on the design of systems for escape route planning. Various methods have been employed for selecting the best escape route based on a given set of constraints. Comparatively, little attention has been given to the earlier stages of escape route planning, where feature recognition can be used to determine the location on routes and obstacles. In the previous route planning models some purely mathematical approaches have been used. These approaches can be seen in the works of Cathey (1974) and Gupta and Yadav (2004). Some studies have incorporated graphical methods, such as Thompson and Marchant (1995), where a specific purpose computer aided design (CAD) module is included for drawing the building plan. Although this method is well suited to small layouts, in larger buildings this drawing process may be inefficient if the CAD plans for the building pre-exist. Thus the escape route planning in this study relies on reusing data exchange format (DXF) based CAD building plans, which may then be scanned by the feature recognition module to determine where routes and obstacles exist.\n2. Methodology: In the design of the feature recognition system for escape route planning, it is assumed that straight horizontal and vertical lines represent the walls in the drawing. Applying this assumption enables the feature recognition process can be greatly simplified. The goal of this system is to locate the centroid of each corner, and thus generate alternate paths by connecting the corresponding points.Four distinct methods have been used for feature recognition in the past (Chung et al., 2002), interspersed with some variations. They are:1. the hint-based reasoning approach (Vandenbrande, 1990);2. the convex hull decomposition approach (Woo, 1982 and Kim, 1992);3. the cell-based decomposition approach (Sakurai and Chin, 1993); and4. the graph pattern matching approach (Little et al., 1997).These approaches all have their strengths and weaknesses. The convex hull method is better suited to curve recognition, since the foundation of the system is the ability of a convex hull to be formed around a Bezier curve, based on its control points and blending functions (Chung et al., 2002).The graph pattern matching approach has been the most prevalent among the various methods, since it allows for easy recognition of simple shapes and direct approach. In this paper, the use of a hybrid graph pattern matching and hint-based reasoning approach for feature recognition is proposed. Slicing the model of the walls, with a horizontal plane, will create a plan view of the walls. The nodes of this drawing will then be used as control points in determining the centroid of each corner. These points will then be compiled to approximate the shape of the actual features, which should be rectangles and triangles in all cases. This process itself is enough to identify the control points of the lines, and thus Bezier-spline recognition is not required. However to minimize the processing time, a parametric library of standard features will be created for the comparison of the boundary representation (B-rep) data to standard features. The number of corners on each route will also be recorded, since an appropriate effective cornering length will have to be added to compensate for the deceleration and the extra distance required in taking sharp corners.The mapping of the B-rep data to a standard feature may be a tedious process, with many constraints. Thus an evolutionary algorithm will be used, since they are effective for assisting in optimization problems where there are a large number of constraints. The goal of the problem will be the maximization of the number of matching nodes and constraints will be the matching point orientations. The robustness of the genetic algorithm (GA) will allow for the efficient point mapping system, and thus a suitable algorithm will be created for this purpose. This process can be explained by the following equations that are based on the study of Alam et al. (2003). At first the total number of solutions, (NT) must be determined based on the number of exits, (En) and number of pathways (Pn) to each exit. The total number of solutions is thus given by: Equation 1 However, constraints such as disaster zone proximity and time factors must be applied to accurately model the system. These factors will be weighted using a risk analysis matrix (RAM). The proposed system in this paper seeks to classify escape route fitness based on the risks associated with each route. Each hindrance to route fitness is weighted based on its significance to the situation, and then the total weighted value for each route is determined. The best route is the one with the lowest total weighted risk value.This is essentially a combinatorial problem and thus the GA has another important role in this paper. The GA will be used as the search algorithm for determining the best escape route derived from the feature recognition process. In essence, the GA will be designed to solve a maze with fire points and time factors as the constraints. The use of feature recognition system combined with GA approach for the escape route selection process will greatly reduce the time required for processing, since the walls are no longer constraints.However, there are some trade-offs required for the recognition process. Thus the algorithm should be robust enough to optimize the route selection process, while minimizing the time required for achieving the goal.Malhotra (1985) suggests that although the essential factors for escape route design are known, a rational approach to optimize the design is not available. Hence, for escape route planning, a generic procedure for determining the best escape route through the combined GA and feature recognition approach is proposed in this study and is presented in Figure 1. Visual Basic(r) programming language and Solidworks(r) mechanical design software are used for testing the proposed route planning through an illustrative example.\n3. Illustrative example: Figures 2 and 3 show 3D and 2D views of the section of the building to be analyzed. The section of the building contains nine rooms and three exits. All doors have been removed to assist in the feature recognition process, since the system is designed to recognize rectilinear paths only. In this example, it is assumed further that all walls are iso-thick, and doorways are of the same size. Solid blocks have been drawn in to represent obstructions that may be present in each room. Thus although the pathways are of various sizes, it is still possible to determine rectilinear paths based on the location of the centroid of each corner. It is also assumed that if there is a fire in any zone, it will be constrained to that zone. This assumption is made in order to avoid the complexity of the computational fluid dynamics involved in determining fire spread.On slicing the 3D object, a 2D sketch is produced, from which the endpoints of each line may be identified. Table I shows the data points recognized for the section of the building under consideration.The distance between each x-y point is used to determine whether a wall, doorway or pathway exists between the points. Thus it is necessary for the user to input either the doorway size or wall thickness to hint the feature recognition system. Once this preliminary analysis is done, the system generates a model of the building showing all the pathways, as shown in Figure 4.To determine the best escape route, the user must specify his/her location, and the disaster zone or zones, so that the system can assign a risk factor based on the number and length of the pathways in its vicinity, and its proximity to an exit point. Pathway length compensations are also made based on the number of corners encountered on the way to an exit. These data are then fed to the GA to determine the best escape route.For illustrative purposes, zone C is taken as the disaster area, and the escapee is in zone H. To determine the best route, the RAM for the selected situation is worked out and is shown in Table II.Based on the building size, the following ranges were used in deciding proximity to disaster zone: Equation 2 where:x =measured distance to disaster zone; andDd =weighted disaster distance.In the selected example, Exit 2 produces the lowest weighted risk, and is thus chosen by the system, which highlights the route to be taken to achieve this goal. It should be noted that some subjectivity exists in the determination of the weighting factors for this risk analysis. However, all attempts were made to keep the results objective by using actual measured values for distances and number of corners from the CAD drawings.\n4. Conclusion: The main objective of this paper is to introduce the development of a novel feature recognition system for escape route planning. The GA can be a useful tool in solving route planning problems. The CAD based recognition system to predict escape route was successfully designed and implemented through Visual Basic(r) programming language and Solidworks(r) mechanical design software. The proposed approach is illustrated through an example is based on a feature recognition process, which will scan a CAD drawing to determine the centroid points of corridors, and plan the escape route through the GA. The feature recognition system provides a quick method of determining the available pathways for use in escape route planning. Factors such as multiple story buildings, number of occupants, or fire spread are not considered. Thus the system will be useful in the initial stages of escape route planning. The system is limited to perpendicular walls, which should be of the same thickness. Doorways should also be a constant size. Thus the system will be useful in determining where escape routes exist, and attempt to determine the best route based on that information. This paper shows how legacy drawings from various CAD systems may be reused to plan escape routes, rather than creating new drawings for the same purpose. This is useful to those in escape route planning, since the redrawing of plans using custom software is inefficient. Although it has been designed with the intent of providing assistance as a simulation tool to the safety manager at the planning stage, it is important to note that further studies may be necessary to involve online monitoring issues.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The main objective of this paper is to introduce the development of a novel feature recognition system for escape route planning. The genetic algorithm (GA) can be a useful tool in solving route planning problems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A computer-aided design (CAD) system is proposed to help to predict the best escape route. The system is based on a feature recognition process, which will scan a CAD drawing to determine the centroid points of corridors, and determine the best escape route with the help of GA.\nFindings: - The feature recognition system provides a quick method of determining the available pathways for use in escape route planning.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Factors such as multiple story buildings, number of occupants, or fire spread are not considered. Thus the system will be useful in the initial stages of escape route planning.\nPractical implications: - The system is limited to perpendicular walls, which should be of the same thickness. Doorways should also be a constant size. Thus the system will be useful in determining where escape routes exist, and attempt to determine the best route based on that information.\nOriginality/value: - This paper shows how legacy drawings from various CAD systems may be reused to plan escape routes, rather than creating new drawings for the same purpose. This is useful to those in escape route planning, since the redrawing of plans using custom software is inefficient.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Structural mapping of public distribution system using multi-agent systems	[ "Public distribution system", "Food grain supply chain", "Multi agent system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Food security is an important agenda in government policies across all nations, because a prime objective of any society is to provide adequate and quality food to its citizens. When there are constraints on the production of food, an efficient distribution system becomes necessary in order to ensure that affordable food is available to the population. The distribution system should ensure minimum losses at all stages of product movement, minimise the cost incurred during the movement from farm to fork and make food available throughout the year. In other words, an efficient supply chain management is required for food.\n2. The PDS in India: The focus of the PDS is on the purchase and distribution of food grain, with a concentration on rice and wheat (Gulati et al., 2009). It is done either directly by government departments or through public sector enterprises. The objective of this system is social well-being rather than profit. This system has three major objectives:\n3. Food security measures across world: Similar programmes are implemented in other developing countries for providing food security through government intervention. These include programmes to increase food production, maintenance of national food stocks for food security, public food distribution, distribution of cash subsidies or food coupons. Table II gives the list of selected countries which uses these policies either partially or in total in short or long-term basis.\n4. Food supply chain: The food supply chain is a complex multi-echelon chain with four tiers, namely, producers, processors/distributors, retailers and customers (Lowe and Perckel, 2004; Kumar and Nigmatullin, 2011). This is a multi-disciplinary area that varies by product category, with a greater concentration on beef and potato chains. The studies are mainly based on developed countries such as Western Europe and North America. There are few studies in the agri-food supply chain in other parts of the world that have poor infrastructure and a localised food industry (Cunningham, 2001). Moreover, in developing countries, the main challenge for food supply chains is to integrate small and marginal farmers in terms of time and cost implications to the value adding supply chain (Ortmann, 2001).\n5. Methodology: MAS is suitable to map because of its properties which can able to handle the complexities present. Table IV describes the complexities involved and the corresponding property of MAS.\n6. Mapping the PDS: The PDS system needs to be mapped in two parts, namely, procurement and distribution activities. This is due to the huge delay between procurement and distribution activities, the management and control activities at the central and state levels, the size of the operation and the number of participants involved in the supply chain. In this context, the first stage would be built to design the procurement and storage processes of the PDS system, which are largely managed by the FCI. In the second stage, the distribution process would be modelled. The output of the first stage would be input for the second stage. This two-stage model requires information such as the number of cardholders, their previous off-take of entitlement, buffer stock levels decided by the central government, stock position at various storage depots and expected production of food grains from various organisations.\n7. Performance measures: A supply chain performance measurement system is required to be in place for understanding effectiveness of the supply chain towards achieving its objectives. The supply chain needs to define appropriate performance indicators on all the important parameters which impact the service delivery such as inventory levels, order size, capacity and locations of the facilities, lead times, flexibility, etc. These performance indicators are based on the process characteristic and are helpful to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the supply chain by comparing with the standards (Aramyan et al., 2007). To the best of our knowledge, the available literature only sites the performance of the PDS and other food security programmes in terms of food sufficiency, nutrient adequacy, cultural acceptability, safety, certainty and stability (Coates, 2013). It particularly measures income transfer to the poor (Jha and Ramaswami, 2010, 2011; Ramaswami, 2002), targeting errors (Ahluwalia, 1993; Khera, 2011; Mane, 2006; Ramaswami, 2002), price stabilizations effect (Cummings et al., 2006), pilferage control (Ahluwalia, 1993; Khera, 2011; Nagavarapuy and Sekhriz, 2011, 2012; Ramaswami and Balakrishnan, 2002), calorie intake and nutrition status (Jha et al., 2011), implications on fiscal performance (Ramaswami and Balakrishnan, 2002), waste reduction (Parfitt et al., 2010), hunger status (Kattumuri, 2011), etc. This kind of performance measures may not be appropriate for the supply chain.\n8. Conclusion and future research: This paper identifies the major themes in the research on food supply chains as well as the problems and functioning of the PDS through a review of the literature. It proposes a two-stage model for mapping the PDS using MAS. The first stage maps the purchasing and storage activities of the PDS, while the second stage maps the distribution process. The storage depots are the link between the two stages.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for mapping the Indian Public Distribution System (PDS) using multi-agent system (MAS). The entire PDS supply chain from purchase to the distribution is mapped in detail by integrating stages of PDS supply chain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Literature related to PDS, food grain supply chain (FGSC) and MAS is reviewed and critically assessed. Based on this a framework is proposed which will help in improving functioning of PDS.\nFindings: The PDS has many shortcomings arising from its complex structure and practices which are used to implement it. The authors propose an MAS to model it in which each entity will be modelled as an agent. The authors propose two stages of supply chain. First stage models the processes from procurement to storage of food grain and second stage model the distribution process.\nPractical implications: This paper will be of interest to the policy makers and decision makers involved in the PDS by providing the shortfalls in the system and also suggesting a method to model the PDS based on practices of food supply chains.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides the decision makers in the PDS, a framework to model and assess the entire supply chain. This will help them in effective implementation of the PDS and also improve in the areas of concerns which are pointed the study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of discrete positive emotions in consumer response to place-of-origin	[ "Brand management", "Emotion", "Water", "Wine", "Origin", "Purchase intention" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Whenever Walter thinks of Oregon he feels proud, as his eldest son received his first academic merits at the UofO. Thinking of Capoliveri, a small town in Italy where the family went vacationing for many years, makes Walter feel happy. Then, a photograph of a Monet-style water lilies scene in the Loire Valley evokes the emotion of enchantment. For his wife Claire, mentioning \"California\" is enough to elicit happy feelings as it conjures up mental imagery she associates with that state. A \"Black Forest\" painting makes her feel contented, as she recalls memories of long satisfying hikes in the southwestern German hills. Does experiencing these emotions make Claire more likely to buy a Black Forest brand of bottled water or wine from California? Will Walter be more inclined to purchase products originating from places in Oregon, Capoliveri or the Loire Valley?\nConceptual framework and hypotheses: Core affect, mood and prototypical emotional episodes\nMethods: Pilot study\nGeneral discussion, implications, limitations and future research: This research analyzes the effects of four discrete and positive place emotions. Adopting a functional perspective, focus-groups and three quantitative studies show that feelings of contentment, enchantment, happiness and pride that consumers associate with a place differentially influence their intention to purchase products from there. The findings contribute to existing research in at least four ways.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to adopt a functional perspective to integrate and extend three streams of research, the first distinguishing between global affect and discrete emotional episodes, the second highlighting the capability of places to elicit emotions and the third demonstrating the differential impact of discrete emotions on consumer response. Doing so shows that four positive place emotions have a significant and variable influence on consumer purchase intentions for brands originating there.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A focus group pilot corroborates that places relate to contentment, enchantment, happiness and pride, which impact consumer response. Study 1 uses landscape photographs to show the four place emotions influence purchase intention for bottled water. Study 2 retests the impact of place emotions, using short vignettes and establishes the moderating role of product hedonic nature. Study 3 replicates emotion effects, corroborating their non-conscious nature and establishing their impact in the presence of place cognitions.\nFindings: Together, the empirical studies provide evidence for effects of four discrete place emotions, especially with hedonic products and under conditions of cognitive load. Effects are robust when a person's mood, buying volume, category knowledge, impulse buying tendencies and place cognitions are included as controls.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study contributes to a better understanding of the emotional dimension of origin effects by adopting a novel, theory-based perspective on discrete positive place emotions impacting consumer response.\nPractical implications: Managers invest substantially in places to elicit positive feelings, gravitating toward the view that all they need to do is create a global positive effect with consumers. The study informs this perspective by demonstrating how discrete emotions influence consumer response.\nOriginality/value: This study is among the first to examine discrete positive place emotions as possible drivers of consumers' purchase intention.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Defining the content domain of intercultural competence for global leaders	[ "Leadership", "Human resource management", "Multinational companies", "Cross‐cultural management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Intercultural competence is increasingly necessary in today's global workplace as collaborative and coordinating demands increasingly stretch leaders' capacities to perceive, interpret and act in ways that achieve organizational goals. Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of scholars have been studying effective global leaders and attempting to delineate the competencies that are critical to their success. Reviews of this literature (Bird and Osland, 2004; Jokinen, 2005; Mendenhall, 2001; Mendenhall and Osland, 2002a, b; Osland, 2008; Osland et al., n.d., in press) find that social scientists have delineated over fifty competencies that influence global leadership effectiveness; however, many of these competencies overlap conceptually and are often separated only by semantic differences (Jokinen, 2005; Osland, 2008).\nDefining intercultural competence and global leadership: Perhaps because it has been widely addressed across a range of disciplines - from psychology to international management to education, to name a few - intercultural competency has been broadly defined as the ability to function effectively in another culture (see Dinges and Baldwin, 1996; Gertsen, 1990). As Deardorff (2004) notes, there is widespread disparity in delineating what specifically comprises intercultural competence. In their review of literature, Chen and Starosta (1996) point out that it is often described as involving affective, cognitive and behavioral perspectives. Leiba-O'Sullivan (1999) further distinguishes between stable and dynamic competencies, noting that the former are stable and enduring, while the latter are more susceptible to development through training. Dynamic competencies are also highly context- and task-dependent. Within this paper we retain the broad definition and define the relevant content domain in terms of stable competencies, which are also often defined in terms of personality traits or predispositions.The definition of global leadership is similarly challenging. As both Jokinen (2005) and Osland (2008) point out in their review of global leadership research, distinctions between domestic and global leadership and between global managers and global leaders consistently emerge as central issues. Osland (2008) suggests, and we adopt, a definition of global leadership as \"the process of influencing the thinking, attitudes, and behaviors of a global community to work together synergistically toward a common vision and common goal\". This definition applies not only to individuals in clearly identifiable leadership positions, but to anyone whose effective role involves this process.\nA review of the global leadership and expatriation literatures: Mendenhall and Osland (2002a, b) categorized the global leadership literature as exhibiting six core dimensions of competencies, with numerous facets within each dimension (see Table I).When they subsequently compared the dimensions of global leadership and attendant competencies to the literature of expatriate effectiveness, they found significant overlap between three of the competency domains of global leadership that relate specifically to intercultural effectiveness and competencies that are important to living and working in a foreign country as an expatriate (Jokinen, 2005; Mendenhall, 2001; Mendenhall and Osland, 2002a, b; Osland et al., 2006; Osland, 2008). The six dimensions can be conceptually divided between those that involve competencies directly related to intercultural interaction at the person and small group level (which are critical to expatriate effectiveness and global leadership), and those that involve the mastery of more macro, global business knowledge and skills. All the reviews agree that a major dimension of global leadership involves the mastery of intercultural competencies (Jokinen, 2005; Mendenhall, 2001; Mendenhall and Osland, 2002a, b; Osland et al., 2006; Osland, 2008). However, none of the reviews to date are able to definitively delineate which intercultural competencies form the nomological net in terms of their valence and cogence to manifestations of effective global leadership.Review of the expatriation literature\nDiscussion: Social scientists and practitioners working in the field of global leadership suffer from the lack of a common agreement regarding the domain of intercultural competencies that influence global leadership effectiveness. Working without such a framework exacerbates tendencies toward atheoretical, survey-oriented, conceptual mapping studies that often reproduce similar findings but couch them in new terminology. Such efforts are not entirely unproductive, however enough of these studies now exist in the field to warrant an integration of their findings into a working framework from which more refined empirical and theoretical research should ensue.The primary contribution of this paper is the delineation of the content domain of intercultural competence as it applies to the phenomenon of global leadership. A comprehensive review of the empirical literatures of global leadership and the closely related area of expatriate adjustment suggests that three broad factors that constitute intercultural competence in this particular context exist. The three factors that emerged are consistent with both the theoretical (Mendenhall and Oddou, 1985; Black et al., 1991) and empirical literatures (Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005; Hechanova et al., 2003; Mendenhall et al., 2002; Shaffer et al., 1999) and at the same time extend the field through the identification and categorization of dimensions for each faactor.We propose that these three factors - perception management, relationship management and self management - comprised 17 dimensions that have been shown to consistently emerge from the extant empirical literature (five each for perception management and relationship management and seven for self management). We reiterate that whether more competencies should be added to these dimensions is an empirical question for the field. The value of the framework provided in this paper is not as a final categorization of intercultural competencies associated with global leadership, but rather as a foundation upon which scholars can build a more sophisticated, nuanced understanding of intercultural competencies associated with global leadership and their interrelationships.Caution is warranted regarding the proposed framework, as no published empirical investigations have as yet examined the full set of dimensions embodied in this presentation of the intercultural competence construct. A test of the comprehensive framework, i.e. all three factors and 17 dimensions is called for, as well as the validation of an instrument that measures them. In this vein, of particular interest would be the examination of the internal consistency of the dimensions for each factor as well as the a more rigorous understanding of the nomological net of intercultural competence, including its antecedents and its impact on global leadership effectiveness, especially as that influences key organizational outcomes.A preliminary empirical investigation of the overall framework has yielded promising findings that suggest the framework has rich potential. In a study of Japanese expatriate managers, Furuya and associates (Furuya et al., 2009) found the framework had predictive value with regard to several positive outcomes related to global leadership. Specifically, they found that intercultural competency as defined and measured using this framework positively influenced several global leadership-related variables, including global business acumen (Black et al., 1999), interpersonal skills (Bird and Osland, 2004) and systems management skills (Bird and Osland, 2004). Because these variables fall under Leiba-O'Sullivan's (1999) definition of dynamic skills, these findings suggest that the three factors encompass intercultural competencies that serve as \"building blocks\" in the development of other global leadership capabilities. Moreover, the set of intercultural competencies was associated with higher levels of competency transfer as well as higher levels of job performance.The findings by Furuya and associates points to an important issue - how does this set of intercultural competency factors with their attendant dimensions relate to the larger set of global leadership competencies? One established model of global leadership competencies is the global leadership pyramid (see Figure 1), developed by Bird and Osland (2004) and subsequently refined by Osland (2008). The perception management and self-management factors match up well with the threshold trait and attitudes and orientations levels of the pyramid. Additionally, the relationship management factor aligns with the interpersonal skills level of the pyramid. The 17 intercultural competency dimensions flesh out in detail the foundational layers of Bird and Osland's, 2004 model, allowing for more concrete hypothesis development and subsequent empirical testing of the hypotheses. More specifically, it can be argued that relationship interest, interpersonal engagement, emotional sensitivity, self-awareness and social flexibility provide foundational competencies that allow for and support mindful communication in intercultural contexts, contribute to the creation and maintenance of trust relationships and facilitate the effective participation and leadership of multicultural teams.For practitioners, the lack of an integrative framework that provides direction regarding intercultural competencies that are important for inclusion in global leadership development and assessment initiatives has been a hindrance to organizations. This lack of guidance from social science forces practitioners to continually wonder, \"What competencies should we build our global leadership programs upon?\" Similarly, the intense need to develop and retain global talent requires that global leadership competencies be measurable so that firms can assess and develop those competencies within their human capital. Knowing that you can develop global skills has the potential to enhance ambition and allow managers to see themselves as growing in their skill set, thus producing loyalty and productivity within a firm's talent base (see Capelli, 2008). Indeed, the findings of Furuya et al. (2009) appear to support Capelli's thesis.Without a foundational framework they are forced to traverse the entire field in search of which competencies to include and which to exclude in their program designing efforts. Or, conversely, often the idea of scouring through the research literature proves daunting, and instead decision making regarding competency inclusion in global leadership programs relies upon intuition, copying what other companies have done, armchair theorizing, guesswork, or abandonment of the effort altogether. The outcome is idiosyncratic leadership development programs that vary widely in terms of competencies addressed both within industries and across industries, and the lack of successful development of actual global leaders within firms. The value-added of the proposed framework for organizations is that it can serve as a ready template upon which practitioners can operate from in their global leadership development design efforts. Operating in tandem with social scientists, assessment of their development efforts would serve to refine the framework incrementally over time, and allow for more focused training and assessment refinements to ensue within organizational development programs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Research on expatriation and global leadership has been characterized by wide variations in defining what constitutes intercultural competence. Greater progress can be achieved if a comprehensive definition of the intercultural competence domain can be established, particularly with regard to the specific context of global leadership. This paper aims to focus on the issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors conduct an extensive review of the global leadership and expatriation literatures, integrating and synthesizing prior theoretical and empirical efforts to develop a comprehensive domain definition for intercultural competence in the context of global leadership.\nFindings: - The domain of intercultural competence in the context of global leadership comprised three dimensions - perception management, relationship management and self management. Each dimension is characterized by facets that further delineate aspects of intercultural competence.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The domain definition of intercultural competence for global leadership appears to be well supported in prior theoretical and empirical work focusing on expatriation and global leadership; however that work was fragmented in nature. A test of the comprehensive model, i.e. all three dimensions and 17 facets, is called for, as well as the validation of an instrument that measures them.\nOriginality/value: - The paper integrates and synthesizes the extensive body of theoretical and empirical work related to intercultural competence and clearly establishes the content domain, thereby enhancing the efficacy of future theoretical and empirical efforts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is auditing the new evaluation? Can it be? Should it be?	[ "Evaluation", "Auditing", "Public sector efficiency", "Supreme auditing institutions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nAuditing, evaluation and public management reform: This paper reflects on the developments in the scope, role and impact strategy of auditing in the public sector over the past several decades and how this development has reshaped some elements of the policy process. It argues that the increasing value and significance associated with auditing from the 1980s onwards has placed it in a position in the policy process previously held by evaluation as an integral stage of that process, possibly to the detriment of both auditing and evaluation (see Roberts and Pollitt, 1994). The evidence used will be drawn primarily from advanced western democracies such as the Scandinavian countries, the USA and the antipodes with which we have the greatest familiarity. That said, the trends discussed here appear more universal and could be identified in a number of settings, and we have included some evidence from other settings.\nRevisiting evaluation - what was so good about the good old days?: The heyday of policy evaluation was in the 1960s and 1970s. The increased concern with evaluation at the time represented the confluence of several factors in politics and in the social sciences. Perhaps the most important factor was the continued expansion of public programs and the then unbridled faith that, given enough resources and authority, the public sector could solve social problems. Even in countries with a history of extreme skepticism about the capacity of government to solve problems, there were significant investments in public policies; the \"Great Society\" in the USA is the most obvious example (for an overview, see Pattyn et al., 2018).\nFrom performance auditing toward evaluation: Auditing in general and performance auditing in particular has developed considerably since the early 1980s. While always relevant to public finance and governance, it has become a more noticeable component of government. The new discourse of auditing from the 1980s and 1990s and onwards has contributed to defining auditing as a key component of public management and increasing the centrality of auditing in management and administrative reform (Power, 1999).\nConsequences of the growth of auditing: Today, auditing fulfills many of the functions in the policy process that were previously associated with evaluation. There has been a significant decline in the number and staffing of formal evaluation organizations within the public sector. The evaluation function is now being performed by auditing organizations, consultancies, as well as by institutionalized versions of performance management.\nConcluding discussion: Against the backdrop of these changes in evaluation and in performance auditing, we can assess whether auditing is becoming \"the new evaluation\" and, if so, what the consequences of that development are. The title of this paper provides three questions: Is auditing the new evaluation? Can it be? Should it be? These questions are all relevant, but they are also difficult to answer in any definitive manner.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the changing relationship between auditing and evaluation. Over the past several years, supreme auditing institutions (SAIs) in a number of advanced democracies have evolved from conventional auditing institutions to becoming increasingly concerned with assisting policy change and administrative reform in the public sector; tasks that are traditionally associated with evaluation. The paper discusses the potential consequences of this development for the SAIs themselves as well as for the audited and reforming institutions and for policy-making.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses qualitative method and draws on the extensive literature on auditing and evaluation. The analysis has also benefitted from the authors' recent comparative research on SAIs.\nFindings: The findings, summarized in six points, are that the growth of auditing in areas previously assigned to evaluators, has led to a shortened time perspective; stronger emphasis on the administration of policies; increased focus on efficiency of the audited entity; greater independence from the evaluated organizations; a shift in receiver of information toward the legislature and/or the public; and improved communication.\nPractical implications: Evaluation as a professional and scholarly field has developed theories and advanced methods to assess the effectiveness of public programs. The growth of auditing may thus change the focus and quality of policy evaluation.\nOriginality/value: The paper speaks to both scholars and practitioners. To the best of the knowledge a similar analysis has not been done before.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Security monitoring and information security assurance behaviour among employees: An empirical analysis	[ "Information security", "Telecommunications", "Employee monitoring", "Security assurance behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Information security is a prevalent issue among security experts and organisations. As much as a technological issue, information security is also a behavioural one. Past studies have reported that almost half of security incidents occurred from within the organisation, rather than caused by external hackers (Crossler et al., 2013; D'Arcy and Greene, 2014). PricewaterhouseCoopers (2017) reported that current employees remain as the top source of security incidents with 30 per cent of such incidents were caused by current employees. Another report revealed that 64 per cent of data breaches were due to employees' behaviour and system glitches (Kennedy, 2016). A survey by Kaspersky Lab (2017) showed that 59 per cent of information security incidents were caused by careless or uninformed employee actions. These findings indicate that the behavioural aspect of information security should be given more attention by organisations and researchers.\n2. Literature review: Information security monitoring is implemented primarily to protect information, guard against theft, and maintain corporate records (Hoffman et al., 2003; Samaranayake and Gamage, 2012). Such monitoring is also employed by organisations for compliance purposes, and to detect information system misuse (D'Arcy et al., 2009). Examples of information security monitoring include logging network activities, tracing employees' internet use, performing security audit and reviewing employees' email contents. Although the management felt that monitoring employees was their right, advocates of civil rights and labour leaders argued that the practice impaired employees' dignity and privacy (Oz et al., 1999) and hence may discourage positive behaviours.\n3. Theoretical framework and hypothesis formulation: The main interest of this study is SAB, a desired behaviour whereby employees consciously take the necessary efforts to protect information systems (Guo, 2013). We posited that SAB is a learned behaviour, conditioned by the workplace environment. This environment is shaped by various factors, including information security monitoring. The learning process that takes place in organisations is well explained by the SCT. SCT suggests that individuals' behaviour is influenced by environmental conditions as well as personal attributes (Bandura, 1977; Manz and Sims, 1980; Bandura, 1986; Holtbrugge et al., 2015). According to the theory, learning occurs as individuals directly experience association and reinforcement with the environment. Behaviour is influenced by the interaction between three main determinants, namely, behavioural factor, cognition factor and environment factor. The theory has been widely accepted for predicting behaviour and identifying methods of modifying or changing behaviours, even within the information system research (Qin et al., 2011). Wang and Lin (2012) opined that SCT has proven helpful for understanding people's use of computer technologies, other than explaining academic and work performance.\n4. Research methods: This study adopted a quantitative approach using an online questionnaire survey as the main research instrument. The questionnaire elicited information on the seven constructs tested in this study. The following subsections deliberate on the sample, measurements and data analysis.\n5. Results of hypothesis and model testing: The SEM results, as presented in Table IV, show support for all hypotheses, except H1. Eight of the nine hypothesised paths were significant at p <= 0.01 level. We concluded that H2-H9 are supported by the data.\n6. Discussion and conclusion: Information security monitoring is crucially important in organisations, mainly to ensure compliance and to avoid negligence. In this study, we examined the influence of information security monitoring and other social learning factors on employees' SAB. Empirical findings of this study lend further support to the SCT as the underlying theory. According to SCT, learning is the result of observation. Role models are thus important in supporting the learning process. Although capabilities are often thought to be enhanced through training, lack of repeated practice will soon lose gains in knowledge and competence of the required behaviour. Therefore, both champions and monitoring mechanisms need to be in place which reinforce the required behaviour through encouragement, in addition to curbing misbehaviour via penalties and sanctions. Learning comes at a cost, whereby the ability to learn varies from one individual to another. Individuals who are already at a stable point in their career would find it more difficult to respond to change (Ellefsen, 2013). Thus any changes must be supported and rewarded for it to be feasible in practice.\n7. Limitations and future studies: In general, the present research provides a number of significant insights and valuable information related to SAB among employees. The major findings could assist security experts and organisations to develop better strategies and policies for information security protection. However, there are some limitations in the existing work that could be addressed in future studies. One of them is the possible social desirability bias due to the self-reported measure adopted in the study. Even though we have made every effort possible to collect representative responses via anonymous survey, it is still possible that the respondents may not reveal true behaviour as good conduct is generally desired. This may lead to a bias towards favourable behaviour. In addition, the current study is confined to the telecommunication industry which limits the generalisability of the findings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explain the influence of information security monitoring and other social learning factors on employees' security assurance behaviour. Security assurance behaviour represents employees' intentional and effortful actions aimed towards protecting information systems. The behaviour is highly desired as it tackles the human factor within the information security framework. The authors posited that security assurance behaviour is a learned behaviour that can be enhanced by the implementation of information security monitoring.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Theoretical framework underlying this study with six constructs, namely, subjective norm, outcome expectation, information security monitoring, information security policy, self-efficacy and perceived inconvenience, were identified as significant in determining employees' security assurance behaviour (SAB). The influence of these constructs on SAB could be explained by social cognitive theory and is empirically supported by past studies. An online questionnaire survey as the main research instrument is adopted to elicit information on the six constructs tested in this study. Opinion from industry and academic expert panels on the relevance and face validity of the questionnaire were obtained prior to the survey administration.\nFindings: Findings from this research indicate that organisations will benefit from information security monitoring by encouraging security behaviours that extend beyond the security policy. This study also demonstrates that employees tend to abandon security behaviour when the behaviour is perceived as inconvenient. Hence, organisations must find ways to reduce the perceived inconvenience using various security automation methods and specialised security training. Reducing perceived inconvenience is a challenge to information security practitioners.\nResearch limitations/implications: There are some limitations in the existing work that could be addressed in future studies. One of them is the possible social desirability bias due to the self-reported measure adopted in the study. Even though the authors have made every effort possible to collect representative responses via anonymous survey, it is still possible that the respondents may not reveal true behaviour as good conduct is generally desired. This may lead to a bias towards favourable behaviour.\nPractical implications: In general, the present research provides a number of significant insights and valuable information related to security assurance behaviour among employees. The major findings could assist security experts and organisations to develop better strategies and policies for information security protection. Findings of this research also indicate that organisations will benefit from information security monitoring by encouraging security behaviours that extend beyond the security policy.\nSocial implications: In this research, the social cognitive learning theory is used to explain the influence of information security monitoring and other social learning factors on employees' security assurance behaviour; the finding implies that monitoring emphases expected behaviours and helps to reinforce organisational norms. Monitoring may also accelerate learning when employees become strongly mindful of their behaviours. Hence, it is important for organisations to communicate the monitoring practices implemented, even more imperative whenever security monitoring employed is unobtrusive in nature. Nonetheless, care must be taken in this communication to avoid resentment and mistrust among employees.\nOriginality/value: This study is significant in a number of ways. First, this study highlights significant antecedents of security assurance behaviour, which helps organisations to assess their current practices, which may nurture or suppress information security. Second, using users' perspective, this study provides recommendations pertaining to monitoring as a form of information security measure. Third, this study provides theoretical contribution to the existing information security literature via the application of the social cognitive learning theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leveraging expert systems technology to improve service industry	[ "Service industries", "Technology‐led strategy", "Services" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years the growing competition of service companies and the need for higher service quality, better financial performance, efficiency, greater flexibility, greater customer satisfaction and productivity have changed the face of service industry. A great challenge for today's service companies is not only how to adapt to this changing and demanding business environment but also how to draw a competitive advantage from the way in which they choose to do so.Management literature is almost unanimous in suggesting to product manufacturers to integrate services into their core product offerings (Potts, 1988; Gadiesh and Gilbert, 1998; Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Oliva and Kallenberg, 2002). Three main reasons justify this suggestion; first, services have higher margins than products (Anderson et al., 1997). Second, services provide a more stable source of revenue as they are resistant to the economic cycles that drive investment and equipment purchases (Quinn, 1992). And finally, services, by being less visible and more labor dependent, are much more difficult to imitate, thus becoming a sustainable source of competitive advantage (Heskett et al., 1997).In parallel, considerable attention has been given to the notion of leveraging information technology (IT) to create and sustain a competitive advantage. IT can be used by management to permit faster response to customer enquiries and problems, to improve internal efficiency and productivity, to reduce labor costs and to gain a number of distinctive competitive advantages (Walker and Craig-Lees, 2000; Walker et al., 2002; Zhu et al., 2002). Studying the relative literature, it becomes clear that there has been a strong focus on e-everything from training (e-learning) to the entire business (e-business) and services (Newell, 2000; Croom and Johnston, 2003), however little research has concerned the adoption and use of advanced IT - like expert systems (ES) - in service industry. And it is truly very surprising that, although nowadays the use of ES is being proliferated to many sectors of our social life (Liebowitz, 1997; Metaxiotis and Samouilidis, 2000; Metaxiotis et al., 2001), the role of ES in the improvement of service industry has not yet been studied in the research community.This silence in the literature prompted our research. The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the important role that ES can play in the improvement of service industry. Based on the diplomacy, preparedness and engagement responsibilities with the aid of technology (DPEAT) model proposed by Agnihothri et al. (2002) we present how ES can be used in order to create an effective service organization. Carrying out ES-based DPEAT can result in superior service outcomes.The remaining part of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a literature review of the role of IT in service industry in general. For the benefit of the readers who may be unfamiliar with ES, the key concepts of ES are briefly explored first and a systematic methodology for their development is then introduced in Section 3. The use of ES technology in service industry is discussed and analyzed in Section 4, based on the DPEAT model. Finally, conclusions and directions for future research are presented.\n2. The role of IT in service industry: A review of the literature indicates that the use of IT for improving customer service and customer satisfaction has attracted some attention recently (Dabholkar, 1996; Pease, 1998, Bitner et al., 2000; Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2001). In 1991, Furey (1991) suggested that IT could help enhance service quality by increasing convenience, providing extra services and collecting service performance information for management use. Berkley and Gupta (1994) developed a model to describe how IT can be used to improve service performance. Through case studies, they discussed in detail where IT had been used or could be used to improve specific service quality dimensions including reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, communications, security and quality control.Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (2001) suggested several competitive roles of IT in services such as the creation of entry barriers, enhancement of productivity and increase of revenue generation from new services. According to Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1998), the benefits of IT seem to be realized when firms couple their investments in technology with changes in their strategy and organizational processes to leverage the value of IT. Recognizing that technology has a multi-faceted impact on services marketing, Parasuraman (2000) modified the traditional \"services marketing triangle\" that includes company, employees and customers to form a pyramid with technology as a new dimension.According to Mick and Fournier (1998), the impact of information technology on services is potentially something of a double-edged sword: it can be both beneficial and detrimental. Forcing technologies on customers, particularly complex technologies that do not enhance the exchange process, may create hostile customers. Walker et al. (2002) investigated the reasons affecting customer adoption and rejection of technology-enabled service delivery. Their study indicated that adoption or rejection of technologically facilitated services is moderated by the personal capacity and willingness of individuals. Very recently, the literature has been filled with articles dealing with the e-service issue and on how companies make use of internet to sell their products and services (Ruyter et al., 2001; Santos, 2003; Zhang et al., 2003).While considerable work has been done in the field of services marketing, services delivery and e-service, very little has been done to investigate the role of advanced information technologies like expert systems in service industry. Such systems are increasingly important as organizations flatten their management structure, and the need for a knowledge base resource continues to grow more quickly that the supply. In the following section we briefly present the key concepts of ES; after that, we discuss and analyze the role of ES technology in service industry, based on the DPEAT model.\n3. The expert systems technology: a brief overview: 3.1 Basic components of expert systems\n4. The role of ES in service industry: a DPEAT-based analysis: 4.1 The DPEAT model\n5. Conclusions: Over the last decade expert systems have reached into a wide range of business related applications. This situation has been reflected in previous reviews. This paper is focused on the analysis of the role of expert systems in service industry. Based on the DPEAT model the author presented how ES can be used in order to create an effective service organization. By effectively managing customer expectations, having a well-trained work force and successfully engaging each service encounter, organizations can achieve superior service productivity and customer satisfaction. What emerges from this discussion is that leveraging ES in these components can shift organizations to a new, extended service productivity-customer satisfaction frontier.ES are becoming more and more common decision-making tools in many organizations. The benefits reported from the use of ESs in business include more accurate decisions, time gains, flexibility, improved quality, effective training, minimization of human inconsistencies and more efficient use of resources. It is the author's belief that the usefulness of ESs in service industry will gain recognition, if they are properly integrated with other advanced technologies, especially internet.In terms of future research, the ground is very fertile; considerable work remains to be done on designing and implementing suitable hybrid ES to manage the relationships presented in the DPEAT model. Further research is also necessary to assess the experience and challenges of service companies which use ES. In conclusion, we should not forget that IT alone does not guarantee success. Organizational changes are also necessary for the sake of achieving a higher level of service quality and customer satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Intelligent solutions, based on expert systems (ES), to solve complicated practical problems in various sectors are becoming more and more widespread. However, the role of expert systems in the improvement of service industry has not yet been studied in the research community. The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the important role that ES can play in the improvement of service industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on the diplomacy, preparedness and engagement responsibilities with the aid of technology ((DPEAT) model proposed by Agnihothri et al. the article presents how ES can be used in order to create an effective service organization.\nFindings: - The key findings of the study show that carrying out ES-based DPEAT can result in superior service outcomes.\nOriginality/value: - Service industries are growing in importance in all over the world. These industries operate in a very competitive market where the need to differentiate a service from the competitor is analogous to survival. The effective use of information technology (IT) to help service companies improve service quality, financial performance, customer satisfaction and productivity is a very crucial issue nowadays. However, the role of expert systems in the improvement of service industry has not yet been studied in the research community. The value of this paper is that it describes how the DPEAT model can be used in order to create effective service organization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Radon emanation rates of common partition materials in Hong Kong	[ "Radon gas", "Partitions", "Hong Kong" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nNomenclature: Bq becquerel.\nIntroduction: Radon is emitted during the natural radioactive decay of radium and uranium in the soil. In an indoor environment, radon can be emitted from the building materials containing uranium and thorium series elements or transmitted from the surrounding soil (Marley, 2001). There are three natural radioactive decay chains, beginning with U-238, U-235, Th-232 and ending with Pb-206, Pb-207, Pb-208. The alpha particles emitted from radio nuclei during the disintegration process of these decay chains can damage body tissue. A human body exposed to excessive amounts of radon in the atmosphere is at risk from lung cancer (Field et al., 2003; Godish, 1989; Kenneth, 1990). In an indoor environment, building construction materials are a major emission source of radon. Therefore, selection of the building materials is one of the primary concerns regarding radon level control for the indoor environment (Al-Jarallah, 2001; Al-Jarallaha et al., 2001; Carrera et al., 1997; Chao et al., 1997; Gao et al., 2002; Jong et al., 1996; Keller et al., 2001; Stoulos et al., 2003; Yeung, 1996; Yu, 1994; Yu et al., 1995).The amount of radon in the building materials depends on complex soil chemistry that would vary from different countries. A number of measurements on radon emanation rates for the building materials have been reported in the literature. UNSCEAR reported a range of 0.52-2.86 Bq m-2 hr-1 for concrete used in the US and in other European countries (1 Bq means 1 disintegration per second on average of the unstable radon isotopes). Researchers also reported that a range of 0.08-0.21 Bq m-2 hr-1 for brick, a mean of 0.50 Bq m-2 hr-1 for sand product, a range of 1.51-6.2 Bq m-2 hr-1 for concrete and a mean of 0.29 Bq m-2 hr-1 for brick used in a number of European counties (Dijk and Jong, 1991; UNSCEAR, 1977).Figure 1 shows the typical construction details of some office partitions in Hong Kong. Table I shows the radon emanation rates of a list of typical construction materials in Hong Kong. The most common partition materials are wood, steel, glass, gypsum board, fiberglass, silicate, aluminum, lightweight concrete and brick. Many of them do not emit radon (such as wood, steel, glass, fiberglass and aluminum), and some of them emit only a relatively small amount (e.g. silicate board or plasterboard). Not many relevant measurements for these materials are reported in the literature (Chao et al., 1997). Until now, radon emanation rates from different partition materials have not been specified for many local building designs. Since earth-based partition materials are extensively used in new developments, radon emanation rates of indoor construction materials are becoming a main concern. Therefore, a good database of these rates for building materials is necessary for assessing exposure risk of indoor radon. In this study, the radon-222 (Rn-222) emanation rates of some commonly used partition materials were measured in a small impervious radon chamber. Specifically, the radon growth curves of calcium silicate board, gypsum board and lightweight concrete were measured and their radon emanation rates were determined with a mass balance analysis. The measurement results would be useful in determining the construction materials for partitions.\nExperimental study: Figure 2 shows the experimental set-up for measuring the radon emanation rate of a test sample of the partition material placed in an impervious radon chamber. Air sampled from the chamber was dehydrated with a desiccant column to prevent condensation inside the radon detector for accurate measurement. The radon concentration of the moisture-free air sample was then measured by a two-solid-state real time radon detector (RAD 7) as follows:* the air sample decayed in the RAD 7 produced detectable alpha (a) emitting progeny, particularly the polonium isotopes; and* the solid-state detector converted the a radiation directly to an electrical signal using an a spectrometry technique which distinguished radon from thoron and signal from noise (Chao et al., 1997; Niton Corporation, 2001).The chamber had a volume of 14,900 cc, was equipped with temperature and humidity sensors, and a small circulation fan (7 cm diameter, with four blades and powered by a 12V DC motor) for mixing purpose. The inlet and outlet of the chamber were diagonally located on top of the chamber lid, with the inlet tube extending to the bottom of the chamber for better circulation and mixing. In order to minimize air leakage, the both tubes were sealed with Vaseline at the intersections (Chao et al., 1997). A gasket was wrapped around the rim of the chamber and was inserted between the lid and the main body of the chamber. Power cable conjunctions were sealed by silicone. The chamber was purged by pure nitrogen (free from radon) for 30 minutes at a flow rate of 4L min-1 prior to any measurement. After a sample was placed in it, the chamber was purged with nitrogen again for another 30 minutes.Taking the mass balance of the radon gas in the chamber, the radon activity can be expressed by: Equation 1 A finite leakage would be associated with practical chamber design. In equation (1), the term -lC represents the radon decay and the last term represents the radon exchange rate between the chamber and the ambient laboratory due to chamber leakage. By solving equation (1) for the chamber purged by nitrogen before the experiment, the radon concentration inside the chamber is given by: Equation 2 Chamber leakage rate\nResults and discussions: Radon background level and chamber leakage rate\nConclusion: The emission control of building materials is a major concern for maintaining a healthy indoor environment. In this study radon emanation rates of different partition materials have been examined in the laboratory condition. The radon concentration in a small chamber was monitored for more than 1,200 hours. The rates were obtained from the initial slope of the radon chamber growth curve and the mass balance analysis. It was found that the radon emanation rate of calcium silicate board was 2.43 Bq m-2 hr-1; of gypsum board was 0.37 Bq m-2 hr-1; and of lightweight concrete was 0.46 Bq m-2 hr-1. When compared to the documented data, these partition materials can be classified as low radon emitting ones as their rates are much smaller than those of the concrete materials and some high radium content granite slabs. By examining the quantities and the radon emanation rates of all the common building materials contained in buildings, a hazard map is proposed in order to identify the relative hazard to building occupants due to radon exposure. With a well-designed ventilation system in an indoor environment, the risk of a human body exposed to common partition materials with radon is low.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To determine the radon emanation rates of common partition materials in Hong Kong.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An initial slope of radon gas growth against time and a mass balance analysis can be used to quantify the magnitude of these rates from different types of partition materials. In particular, the radon-222 emanations from boards of calcium silicate, gypsum and lightweight concrete were measured experimentally in a small impervious radon chamber.\nFindings: - The radon-222 emanations from boards of calcium silicate, gypsum and lightweight concrete were measured experimentally in a small impervious radon chamber, and expressed as becquerels per square meter per hour of air (Bq m-2 hr-1). The rates found were 2.43, 0.22 and 0.46 Bq m-2 hr(1 respectively. Comparing with the emanation rate and the quantities of radon emitting construction materials in Hong Kong, these three partition materials have a low radon emitting level.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The model parameters used in the study were not exhaustive and were determined from samples of materials used in Hong Kong.\nPractical implications: - A useful source of reference for determining the radon emanation rates of common partition materials used in building developments. The results can be used to identify the exposure risk of radon in buildings.\nOriginality/value: - This paper proposes a mathematical model of radon emanation rates of common partition materials. The model offers practical helps to professionals planning, designing and managing the selection of building materials in buildings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A Five-R analysis for sustainable fashion supply chain management in Hong Kong: a case analysis	[ "Hong Kong", "Fashion industry", "Textile industry", "Supply chain management", "Five‐R analysis", "Green supply chain", "Sustainable", "Case analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Green supply chain management (GSCM) can be defined as traditional supply chain management (SCM) practices which integrate environmental criteria, or concerns, into organizational purchasing decision and long-term relationships with suppliers (Yang et al., 2010). Many companies endeavor moving toward sustainability in the supply chain, such as reducing procured resources and waste generation and discouraging one-time use and disposal (Vachon and Klassen, 2008), in order to obtain competitive advantage or reap economical benefits, for example. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, now known as the Brundtland Commission) definition from 1987 assumes that for development to be sustainable, the needs of the present must be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Shedroff, 2009). There are a multitude of other direct and indirect benefits and challenges in creating green and sustainable supply chains (Choi and Chiu, 2012), many of which will be further explored in the subsequent discourse in a fashion and textiles industry context.There are plentiful strategies, techniques, standards and regulations from which companies can derive global fashion supply chain management savvy. For instance, to achieve sustainability, some companies may employ reverse logistics (Abraham, 2011), facilitating an inverse product flow which caters to managing a product's end-of-life processes, such as its subsequent disposal or re-integration back into the system from which it came. Moreover, there is a tendency for green supply chains to become more cyclical in nature, by abandoning a more linear format in their efforts to keep waste within the industrial system. This transition from a one-way, integrated supply chain to an extended, closed loop supply chain is an ideal which many companies seek to achieve in the long term.However, \"re-routing\" a supply chain is a daunting and monumental task. In order to successfully design and manage a green fashion supply chain, there are myriad tradeoffs and factors to take into consideration. The ever-lengthening supply chains of today's global economy present growing risks for retailers and manufacturers, who often rely on dozens or even hundreds of suppliers to produce a finished product. Furthermore, the trend toward more complex and faster apparel supply chains are doing little good for the ecological footprint of the industry: fashion and textiles - with the exception of the luxury market - is considered a low-value manufacturing industry. The billion-dollar question is: can it become a low-impact industry? Businesses today are defined by their performance throughout the supply chain: SCM consists of internal practices, those that are contained within a firm, and external practices, those that cross organizational boundaries, integrating a firm with its customers and suppliers. Therefore, firms should ideally work upstream with their suppliers and manufacturers in addition to downstream with their customers to ensure an all-encompassing \"green alignment.\" The above-mentioned methods of GSCM and others and their respective pros and cons are analyzed in this paper in order to complement the GSCM frameworks and research findings.In this paper, we will first review and explore the reasons why fashion companies would \"go green\" and evaluate existing business models and sustainable supply chains. Following the background analysis, a Five-R framework is reviewed and proposed. As we will discuss in more details in Section 3, the Five-R framework refers to the conceptual model which contains five critical processes, namely \"recycle, reuse, reduce, re-design and re-imagine\" (Etsy and Winston, 2009). This Five-R framework will be used to evaluate the initiation, implementation and institutionalization journey of a Hong Kong-based fashion company[1]. The discoveries within the Five-R model will enable a measurement of the strengths and weaknesses of the local case study as well as offer managerial insight and significance. Before we conclude, we will propose \"what's next\" by investigating what would \"go beyond the Five-R.\" We believe that this paper provides good reference value to both the academicians and practitioners for implementation and development of sustainability measures. This not only applies to Hong Kong but may also apply to other markets where sustainability is also a critical issue.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Keen for green: why do companies go green and sustainable?\n3. Five-R analysis framework: 3.1 From Three-R to Five-R\n4. Local case study: Fashion Company D: 4.1 Company overview\n5. Discussions: beyond Five-R: 5.1 Discussions and insights\n6. Conclusion: The fashion and textiles industry competition is undeniably cutthroat. With the rising complexity and increasing speed demanded from global and local fashion and textile supply chains, the \"race to the bottom\" in a traditionally low-value manufacturing industry is now losing momentum to one of the most opportune issues: GSCM and SSCM in order to create an ideal low-impact industry and reap the multi-disciplinary benefits. There are myriad approaches, frameworks, standards and regulations for companies to adopt and develop in their quest for competitive advantage and sustainability through \"greening\" their supply chains. A selection of these aforementioned strategies is evaluated to complement the discussion of the relatively recent reality and imperative of green and sustainable fashion supply chain practices.In this paper, we review and propose the Five-R framework to examine GSCM challenges. By applying it to explore a fashion company which has its headquarters located in Hong Kong (China), we generate important insights related to SSCM. We also discuss future research direction by going \"beyond these Five Rs.\"\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explain why fashion companies would \"go green\" and to evaluate business models and sustainable supply chains. By applying the Five-R framework, the authors further evaluate the initiation, implementation and institutionalization journey of a local fashion company and generate important insights and findings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - It is an exploratory qualitative study. The Five-R conceptual framework is reviewed, proposed, and applied for a real case analysis.\nFindings: - From the studies, data and literature gathered and analyzed hitherto, it is evident that fashion companies can seize competitive advantage through strategic management of environmental challenges. In their greening initiatives, fashion companies should strongly consider the product development process and extend stewardship across the multiple life-cycles of products. The Five-R framework, together with its future extensions, can offer an opportunity to clearly display what has been achieved by the company at present and also succinctly demonstrate what area the company is lacking in or where there is room for further beneficial development.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This research focuses on examining the scenario of one real company. The findings need not be generalized and applicable to all companies: this is a major research limitation of this study.\nPractical implications: - The research findings can help explain and conceptualize fashion companies' journal of going-green. Some specific recommendations are given and managerial insights are generated.\nOriginality/value: - This paper undertakes a qualitative real case analysis to study green supply chain management (SCM) challenges by applying the Five-R framework. The authors believe that this study belongs to the first group of research works which specifically examine this area in the domain of fashion marketing and management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Think before you act: organizing structures of action in technology-induced change	[ "Case study", "Organizational change", "Technology use", "E-government implementation", "Human agency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Electronic or e-government initiatives have long been the focus of public sector transformation as governments introduce information technology (IT) into work practices to improve service delivery to citizens (Von Haldenwang, 2004), regulate public service networks (Jaeger and Thompson, 2003), and extend global reach (West, 2004). \"E-government\" has been conceptualized as an IT-related approach to facilitating organizational change (Irani et al., 2007; Nasim and Sushil, 2010), increasing work efficiency and effectiveness (Akman et al., 2005; Deng, 2008), establishing governance, and maintaining a civil society (Beynon-Davies, 2005; Steyaert, 2004). In view of the different definitions, we offer an integrated perspective which suggests that e-government implementation is the utilization of technology to create structural and symbolic changes in organizational actors' cognition and behavior thereby affecting organizational outcomes.\nPreliminary conceptual framework: The relationship between technology use and organizational change particularly in an e-government context has not been sufficiently explored in the literature (e.g. Deng, 2008; Nasim and Sushil, 2010; Steyaert, 2004). In addition, it would be useful to understand how technology use could shape organizational change and consequently influence e-government implementation (e.g. Jaeger and Thompson, 2003; Tung and Rieck, 2005; Von Haldenwang, 2004). Some studies have found that an abrupt introduction of technology could vastly affect institutional arrangements such as formal organizational processes including human actions and social relations (Fountain, 2001; Liker et al., 1999). In particular, how technology is enacted could also influence the subsequent configuration of hardware, software, and social networks, modifying organizational forms such as formalization, centralization, and communication channels (Orlikowski, 2007). In e-government implementation, the relationship between the way technology is designed, selected, implemented, and used becomes of importance. This perspective echoes Orlikowski's (1991, 2007) reference to technology as both objective and interpretive tool which she termed the duality of technology and subsequently sociomateriality, the latter suggesting that when technology is socialized through human \"inter-action\", it loses its objective characteristics leading to unintended consequences (Boudreau and Robey, 2005). This is supported by the structuration view where technology is situated in both organizing and organization, suggesting that human action could structure technology (organizing) by creating regularized patterns of technology enactment (organization) (Orlikowski, 1991, 2000).\nMethods: Research context\nAnalysis of findings: Findings indicate that individual interpretations of technology affected the subsequent use which in turn affected how change processes ultimately played out. These processes were enacted through the interplay of disruption and innovation of technology use when individuals combined stabilized patterns of enactment (technology acceptance as sustaining work practice) with emerging patterns of enactment (technology improvisation as facilitating change). Such enactment patterns further influenced organizational structure, strategy, and performance.\nIntegrative framework of technology-induced change: Our data further helped us to develop an integrative framework (see Figure 3) which focusses on the centrality of human agency as a precipitator for change where organizational actors interact with technology to develop interpretive schemes that ultimately shape organizational structure, strategy, and performance. The human agency perspective holds that technology induces temporal orientations between actors during socialization affecting the restructuring of actions and human relations (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). Such temporality gives rise to situated practice where actions are enacted at a particular point in context to serve a specific purpose (Brown et al., 1989). These actions often trigger the intended and unintended use of technology (Yates, Orlikowski and Okamura, 1999). The entrance of technology into INFunity initially led to a state of punctuated equilibrium where deep structures of bureaucracy were disrupted based on the dramatic shift in decision making and work practice (Balogun and Johnson, 2005; Nasim and Sushil, 2010). However, these disruptions surfaced as innovative alterations in social and task structures creating coherence in interdependent work practices (Mellahi and Wilkinson, 2010). This is where human agency plays an active role in modifying institutional properties through centralized and systematized processes (cf. Orlikowski, 2007).\nImplications, limitations, and future studies: This study offers a human agency perspective of how organizational change plays out as a result of technology introduction. Unlike similar research, this study extends current understanding of technology use by exploring how technology is interpreted and enacted in work practice through a change perspective. It further extends the structuration perspective of technology in work organizations by exploring how technology enables and constrains organizational change through intended and unintended use (Orlikowski, 1991; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008). This study illuminates the power of human agency to innovate and organize structures of action that modify social relations and organizational strategy influencing organizational performance (cf. Thomas et al., 2011; Yoo et al., 2012).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of technology on organizational change during an electronic government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia. It also examines the interpretation and enactment of technology as affecting organizational performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research utilized a case study approach involving semi-structured interviewing with 18 employees representing department heads, middle managers, and technical officers. The data were triangulated by unobtrusive observations of meetings and work processes as well as archival records.\nFindings: Technology could either constrain or enable change based on the interplay of intended and unintended use. The way actors interpret the role of technology during change also affects their enactment of technology, leading to both innovation and disruption in work practices. In turn, their enactment patterns shape organizational structure, strategy, and performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper contributes to the organizational change literature by exploring how individual-level change has led to organizational outcomes as a result of technology. It extends the technology enactment and sociomateriality literature by considering technology use as an organizing process to facilitate change in order to understand the interplay of the social and material aspect of technology.\nPractical implications: Employees should be made aware of and accountable for the consequences of unintended use or avoidance of technology in order to enable positive change. Collective sensemaking of technology-induced change should be encouraged to transform work practices so as to shape organizational structure, strategy, and performance.\nOriginality/value: Unlike similar research, this study extends the structuration perspective of technology in work organizations by exploring how technology enables and constrains organizational change through intended and unintended use. It further illuminates the power of human agency to innovate and organize structures of action that modify social relations and organizational strategy influencing organizational performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A troubled relationship: corruption and reform of the public sector in development	[ "Public sector organizations", "Public sector reform", "Corruption" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recent decades have seen \"managerialism\" in public administration progress from a fad to a fundamental basis of government in many countries in the developed world. The \"managerialism\" or \"new public management\" (NPM) movement has a relatively specific and limited number of core principles and recommendations.While the widespread recognition of NPM might be thought to reflect its superiority to alternative approaches to public administration, it appears to be relatively untested. As Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000, p. 132) state, \"the international management movement has not needed results to fuel its onward march\". This was at least in part due to its relationship with the political and economic changes of the time. The 1980s saw the rise of a new type of government that aimed to shrink the systems of state support developed under the post-war consensus, and introduce more flexible ways of operating in a competitive environment. In this sense, any poor performance in terms of economic benefits would still be potentially tolerable to those pushing through the reforms. In particular, the new public management appears to have produced only limited savings that are hard to quantify, and definite costs to the public administration of many developing countries (Andrews and Shah, 2003).Typical public administration reform elements for Commonwealth countries have summarised by Miller (2005):* redefinition of the political and administrative interface;* selection of appropriate reform options from both private sector and international experience;* raising accountability, government or donor-led initiative;* initiating public-private sector partnerships;* emphasis on efficiency;* audit of staff cost and skills;* anti-corruption initiatives, and;* changing, fundamentally, public sector values (Miller, 2005, p. 22).The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Governance Project (United Nations Development Programme, 2004) has encouraged the reform of public sectors to pursue both political and economic/administrative aims for many years. In reviewing the best practice in the field of public sector administration, two strong conclusions were reached:1. the nature of the developing economy makes a significant difference to the nature of appropriate policies, with a powerful and \"over-large\" state being a necessity rather than a burden;2. nature of the state is not simple, and it appears unlikely that a clear separation of duties can be effective, with administrators performing specific goal-oriented processes and politicians setting strategy.Overall, it is still unclear whether the new public management approach was effective or not in helping to achieve its goals.This paper attempts to examine one particular aspect that constituted a weakness in the reforms, that of corruption and its control. It examines the connections between different sets of reform and corruption using corruption theory and criminology theory to analyse the likely outcomes of such programmes. In reviewing the evidence of \"completed\" reform programmes executed in the former Socialist states in particular in Central and Eastern Europe, it demonstrates the long-term changes in levels of corruption that follow economic and public administrative reform.\n2. Theoretical approaches: The theoretical underpinnings of the NPM approach are slim, perhaps based more on consensus view rather than the outcome of a long process of intellectual debate. The NPM approach is based on broad-stroke economic theory such as the theory of perfect competition and developments in public choice economics in the period immediately preceding its adoption. These types of economics vary enormously in their realism. They assume that competitive markets with large numbers of service providers and customers working together to produce bargains are commonplace, which they are not, and that individuals will act rationally and selfishly to maximise their benefits from a given situation, which is unlikely. On the basis of this theory, and on \"principal agent\" theory regarding the nature of delegated authority in organisations, the NPM approach believed that incentives could be created through processes of separating out dedicated administrative units from general state administration, and contractual structures defining service provision and rewards if achieved. In practice, reforms are as likely to create problems as to solve them, and in particular the risk of disaffection and reactive failures of performance are high in the introduction of \"NPM\"-style initiatives. In particular, there exists a risk of increased corruption, the reduction of which is one of the central aims of NPM reforms in developing countries.2.1 Corruption theory\n3. Problem of interpreting data: Both corruption and public sector efficiency are difficult concepts to measure, at least in part because they are difficult to define and interpret clearly and thoroughly. At first glance, governments that manage to reduce the size of state budgets may appear to be successful in increasing \"efficiency\" in the sense that they reduce spending on services, but the search for efficiency should not be conflated with the desire to reduce the power or extent of the state. Often the NPM countries appeared to do just this. Data from Afonso et al. (2003) reveals how public sector performance actually declined in many of the key reform countries over the period between 1990 and 2000, using a measure of public sector performance across a range of government policy objectives.One strong result was that the connection between income levels and public sector performance is not as significant as that between the size of the state and public sector performance - suggesting that it is a small state, rather than any particular organisational feature, that produces benefits for economies (see Figure 2).\n4. Making sense of corruption: Turning to the causes of corruption, a different set of factors appears to be dominant. Whilst many models of corruption exist, a strong and significant correlation exists between levels of income and corruption. Relating this to the fraud model, higher income is likely to reduce the dissatisfaction of individuals and so reduce the potential \"rationalisation\" of the act. Accordingly, this can be seen as evidence consistent with the fraud approach. This may then account for the distinct and prolonged worsening of corruption scores for transition countries for whom historical data exists (see Figure 3), as the process of economic reform entails inevitably deflationary policies. The idea of \"reactive corruption\" therefore appears relatively appropriate, on general principles.This correlation is a partial explanation for the phenomenon of corruption. While income is a strong determinant of corruption, the evidence from non-OECD countries is much less conclusive, showing a wide variation that is not explained by income levels. Is it the case, however, that a small state, such as pursued under the NPM, might improve corruption? Potentially the reduced opportunities for rent-seeking may reduce it. Unfortunately, the statistical analysis of such phenomena is massively complicated by the confounding effect of related variables. Arguably, richer countries can afford better anti-corruption strategies, richer individuals need not resort to corruption, and institutions such as social capital networks may both favour growth and discourage corruption (although this remains debatable on the basis of the existing literature on negative social capital). Thus, there is a need to examine the trends that actually occurred in relation to data for the transition countries.Typically, transitional states experience a \"corruption J-curve\" effect, with a sharp and prolonged decline in the control of corruption over the post-transition period. The persistence of the problem is particularly concerning, as it suggests that corruption is resistant to the new institutions typically introduced in the process of reform. From the reasoning above, this may well be due to the increasing pressure on corruption created by the reforms. This characteristic behaviour, in terms of the corruption performance, of post-Socialist reformers is potentially of significant concern for those considering the implementation of public administration reform. The evidence suggests that corruption both deteriorates and then stagnates for a significant period, with many of these countries experiencing a decline for the best part of the following decade.In order to examine whether the prolonged persistence of corruption is due to the income fluctuations experienced in transition, a final comparison is made between various transitional countries using World Bank data on control of corruption (see Figure 4). In this diagram, the transition countries are first ranked on the basis of the extent of their recession following the implementation of reforms. In this case it is clear that those suffering the smallest recessions post-transition have a generally better control of corruption, although the relationship demonstrates only a relatively poor R2 score (0.316), suggesting a great deal of variation within the sample. Typically, two types of country suffered small recessions - those with already strong economies, and those that \"pulled their punches\" and implemented only half-hearted reforms. The less enthusiastic reformers may therefore experience relatively better performance in the control of corruption. This relationship may also help explain recent work on transition economies, which suggests that corruption is actually lower in countries with large governments, contrary to the suggestions of the NPM (Goel and Budak, 2006).\n5. Conclusion: There exists a strong relationship between the theory of corruption and public sector reform. While many areas of public policy proceed without necessary reference to corruption, the reform of the public sector appears inextricably linked to the problem of corruption. Economic bases for public sector reform now emphasise the need for transparent governance structure, and \"checks and balances\" that may prevent abuse of any individual's position. Reform packages will now typically recognise some issues of corruption - the nature of the relationship between the two concepts, however, is less straightforward than is normally suggested.Overall, the outcome of a \"new public management\" style reform programme is, on the basis of the evidence presented above, impossible to judge. This stems from differences in the nature of the economic or political system in which reform takes place, the differences in social and cultural institutions, and the varying levels of development of necessary supporting institutions that might support the effectiveness of the reform programme. However, it is likely that reform may actually create incentives to corruption that, unless checked, can cause significant and prolonged problems with corruption that may undermine the benefits of the administrative reform. While new public management appears to demonstrate only limited benefits, the consequential corruption appears likely, on the basis of statistical evidence, to have significant negative economic impacts. The surprising conclusion is that unenthusiastic reformers may have better control of corruption than those who diligently pursue the recommended policies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to present an analysis of the nature and determinants of corruption, using recent data to clarify the nature of the corruption phenomenon and answer the question of whether corruption can categorically be said to be a problem requiring public sector reform, or is a consequence of it.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper analyses data on corruption in relation to the timing of the introduction of public sector reform in recent economic transitions, and examines the persistence of increased corruption following the introduction of reforms.\nFindings: - The theoretical model suggests that events that negatively affect administrators in positions of trust create some reactive tendency towards corruption, and this is supported by the evidence from transition economies. There is a significant increase in corruption following transitional economies' public sector reform, and this demonstrates an unusual degree of persistence even after general institutional reforms have been completed.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Further research could try alternative measures of corruption, instead of \"perceptions\" data analysed here, and examine the strength of persistence across a larger set of countries to test the confounding effect of other institutional reforms in the transition countries examined.\nPractical implications: - The costs of new public management reform programmes are broader than is currently suggested, and significant short- to medium-term deterioration might be expected in the aftermath of reform.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides a new approach to corruption research examining the importance of the corruption \"tipping points\" of individual administrators and how these are significant in modelling corruption.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Blowing the whistle on workplace sexual harassment : Examining the role of harasser status and types of sexual harassment	[ "Sexual harassment", "Intention", "Hostile environment", "Quid pro quo", "Service worker" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Researchers have pointed out that the legal definition of sexual harassment contains quid pro quo and hostile work environment types of harassment. Quid pro quo sexual harassment occurs when a harasser makes unwelcome sexual advances toward the victim in exchange for workplace benefits (Fineran, 2002; Buchanan and Fitzgerald, 2008). Hostile environment sexual harassment, on the other hand, consists of unwelcome sexual advances that create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment for the victim (Cortina and Wasti, 2005). Both quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment create serious workplace problems (Schiff and Kramer, 2000; Kimmel and Aronson, 2004; Cortina and Berdahl, 2008; Gill and Febbraro, 2013; Spector et al., 2014). However, the literature on quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment in the service industry has focussed mainly on organizational insiders (e.g. managers and colleagues) as the source of the misconduct, while sexual harassment problems involving customers have received less attention (Gettman and Gelfand, 2007; Yagil, 2008). In addition, prior work has found that working people may be unwilling to expose the sexual harassment committed by peers (Gill and Febbraro, 2013), but little of this has discussed working people's intention to perform whistle blowing of the \"colleague harasses customer\" problems. The current research hopes to begin to fill these gaps in the literature. Thus, this paper investigates how service workers would react to the \"customer harasses colleague\" problems and \"colleague harasses customer\" problems.\nLiterature: Harasser's status and service workers' intentions to report the sexual harassment\nMethodology: Questionnaires are used in the studies of sexual harassment problems at work (e.g. Butler and Chung-Yan, 2011). Using questionnaires could also promise the anonymity of the respondents when investigating sensitive issues (such as service workers' attitudes toward customer sexual harassment). For these reasons, the questionnaire could be a suitable methodology for the research topic at hand.\nResults: The data were analyzed utilizing non-parametric statistics due to the items being measured in an ordinal scale. Spearman's r test, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test (MWW), a Kruskal-Wallis test (KW), and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used.\nDiscussions: This study investigated how service workers would react to quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment when the harasser is a customer or a colleague. The results showed that: some of the respondents appeared more tolerant of the \"colleague harasses customer\" problems as opposed to the \"customer harasses colleague\" problems. Some of the respondents exhibited higher intention to report the hostile environment sexual harassment as opposed to quid pro quo sexual harassment. Perceived conflict in helping the victim to report the sexual harassment was correlated with the respondents' whistle-blowing intention, while the respondents' perceived conflict was correlated with the respondents' attitudes toward powerful people and respondents' belief in the company's integrity in dealing with the sexual harassment. When asking respondents to expose sexual harassment, the results showed that their whistle-blowing intention was significantly lower when the victim of the sexual harassment was another person rather than themselves. The existence of criminal evidence affects respondents' whistle-blowing intentions significantly.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate service workers' intention to report the \"customer harasses colleague\" and \"colleague harasses customer\" problems, and how the intention is influenced by the service workers' perception of conflict, company integrity and criminal evidence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Questionnaires were used as the research instrument, and full-time life insurance salespeople were taken as a research sample. The research design helps us to see to what extent the respondents rely on the harasser's status and the types of sexual harassment to form their whistle-blowing intention.\nFindings: The main findings showed that: sexual harassment problems are likely to be evaluated from a \"who is the harasser\" perspective. The respondents appeared more tolerant of the \"colleague harasses customer\" problems as opposed to the \"customer harasses colleague\" problems. The respondents exhibited higher intention to report the hostile environment sexual harassment as opposed to quid pro quo sexual harassment.\nOriginality/value: Sexual harassment has been described as an extremely harmful behavior in organizations. However, relevant discussions about the \"customer harasses colleague\" problems and \"colleague harasses customer\" problems are rare. The research provided an examination of these issues.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Characteristics of knowledge, people engaged in knowledge transfer and knowledge stickiness: evidence from Chinese R&D team	[ "Absorption capability", "Knowledge articulability", "Knowledge residence", "Knowledge stickiness", "Knowledge transfer willingness", "Transfer ability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In 1996, the concept \"knowledge economy\" (OECD, Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) has been put forward, which indicates that the economy of a country compete on its unique knowledge. The arrival of knowledge economy has challenged ways of competition. Market competition, especially in the high-tech industry, is fierce. As suggested by Drucker (1993), unlike the resources, such as the capital, labor and natural resources, knowledge plays a special role in firms, industries and even in the development of national economy. The increasing awareness of the importance of knowledge advances a transformation in thinking and actions of firms (Fransen et al., 2011). In addition, it has been regarded as an asset that needed to effectively manage (Hamel, 1991). Apart from the transformation in thinking and actions, practically more and more knowledge-intensive firms and R&D teams have emerged. Also, even the survivals of firms are depended on the successful management of their technique know-hows.\n2. Theoretical framework and research model: 2.1 The concept of knowledge stickiness\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Internal consistency reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity\n5. Conclusions and implications: 5.1 Summary of findings\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this study is to provide some important insights for knowledge stickiness from the perspective of the characteristic of knowledge and the people engaged in the knowledge transfer. It proposes an empirical model about factors that influence knowledge stickiness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on knowledge-based view (KBV), this paper systematically elaborated the research model, and then conducted a survey to test the hypotheses. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews in R&D team of knowledge-intensive firms in China. The empirical results generally support the proposed hypotheses.\nFindings: The paper provides empirical insights about how the knowledge transfer willingness, transfer ability, knowledge residence, knowledge articulability and absorption ability affect the knowledge stickiness in the process of knowledge transfer in R&D team.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper provides guidelines about how firms should optimally respond to knowledge stickiness in knowledge transfer process practically.\nPractical implications: The proposed framework helps to understand what factors impact knowledge stickiness in R&D teams. Furthermore, the research also provides guidelines about how firms should optimally respond to knowledge stickiness in knowledge transfer process practically from both aspects of characteristics of knowledge itself and people involved in knowledge transfer.\nOriginality/value: This study, grounded on KBV, constructs a countermeasure model of weakening knowledge stickiness, which contributes to an understanding of factors leading to the success or failure of knowledge transfer. It eventually theoretically extends the KBV of the firm and commits to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge transfer practically.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cultural adaptation of the Strengthening Families Programme to a Swedish setting	[ "Family roles", "Alcoholism", "Adolescents", "Cultural studies", "Sweden", "Drug counselling" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Underage drinking is a cause of great concern in Sweden as well as many other countries. The problems of underage alcohol use are associated with increased risks of alcohol-related injuries in adolescence (Hingson et al., 2000; Bonomo et al., 2001; Swahn et al., 2004; Mattila et al., 2005; Shepherd et al., 2006), with frequent heavy drinking later in life and with alcohol dependence (Hawkins et al., 1997; Grant et al., 2001; Bonomo et al., 2004; Hingson et al., 2006; Young et al., 2006).The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) has conducted school surveys in three waves: 1995, 1999 and 2003. The purpose has been to collect comparable data on alcohol, tobacco and other drug use among 15-16 year old students in Europe. According to the results from the latest ESPAD, which covers 35 European countries, the proportion of Swedish 15-16 year old students reporting drinking any alcohol during the last 12 months was a little below the average (77 per cent versus 83 per cent). On the other hand, the proportion of students who had reported being intoxicated during the same period was 55 per cent compared to the average of 53 per cent. Furthermore, the frequency of binge drinking, i.e. having five or more drinks in a row, was high in Sweden. Twenty-seven per cent of the boys and 22 per cent of the girls reported binge drinking three times or more during the last 30 days. In comparison with the United States the prevalence of underage drinking is more frequent in Sweden while the use of cannabis is lower. The prevalence of cannabis during the last 30 days was 17 per cent in the US compared to one per cent in Sweden (Hibell et al., 2004).The prevailing ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs) prevention programmes have, for the most part, been carried out in school settings with limited evidence of effectiveness. A more effective way seems to be by involvement of the parents and by programmes that increase social skills. In a Cochrane Collaboration Systematic Review, Foxcroft et al. (2003) points out the Iowa Strengthening Families Programme (ISFP) as one of the few that has demonstrated positive longer-term outcomes. The ISFP has been evaluated in a large-scale randomised controlled trial. Data from a six-year follow-up indicated significant differences in growth rates for lifetime use of alcohol, cigarette use and marijuana use between the intervention group and the controls (Spoth et al., 2004).The Strengthening Families Programme 10-14 years\nMethod: Cultural adaptation and programme development\nResults: Cultural adaptation and programme development\nDiscussion: In this paper a culturally adapted version of the SFP 10-14 to Swedish conditions has been described. The complexity of transporting an evidence-based prevention programme from one country to another has been illustrated here by the programme development process and the pilot study.The Swedish version of the SFP 10-14 is similar to the US version in contents but differs in programme format. The programme format was altered after discussions with our reference group of teachers. The setting would be in school, but with different hours for youth and parent sessions. The youth sessions would be held earlier during the daytime and the parent sessions in the evening. This resulted in a compromise of having only two family sessions instead of one at every meeting as in the original programme. One reason for this was the cost of facilitators and that teachers would not be able to work in the evenings. In our version we added an extra session in part 2. We further extended the material in part 2 concerning alcohol and other drugs.The major portion of the programme contents of the SFP 10-14 was translated and used in the Swedish version except for parts of the family sessions. In the two family sessions utilised in our version, a selection of activities obtained from several family sessions in the US version were used. This included \"How well do we know each other?\", \"Using family meetings\", \"Sharing refusal skills\", \"Listening to each other\" and \"Building our family strength\". Other family session activities from the SFP 10-14 were added as links between the youth and parent sessions in the Swedish version, e.g. the discussion about the Treasure Maps was used as homework.The making of videos was the most extensive and expensive part in the development of the Swedish adaptation of the programme. The videos were shot in real-life settings in contrast to the US videos, which were shot in a studio. All actors were professionals. Care was taken to include different types of family situations: a single father, a single mother, one family not born in Sweden and one nuclear family.The Swedish version of the SFP was aimed at reaching all students in grade six and their parents. Consequently, the youth groups became rather large: 25-30 students per class, thus some of the activities could not be carried out. It became clear in the training of the teachers and the leaders that some space-demanding activities like, e.g. \"The driving game\" were not feasible. Instead, another activity was performed with the same pedagogical message. The new activity included discussions about different rules at home, in school, and in the community, and why they are needed.In the pilot study the videos and the materials were tested on children and parents in two sixth-year classes in Stockholm. It was important to get information from leaders, children and parents on how the materials were working and how the activities were perceived. In order to obtain this data, course evaluation forms were distributed to parents and children. Teachers and group leaders filled in checklists after each session, and a focus group interview with parents was conducted. In addition, recurrent meetings were held with the research team, teachers and group leaders.Leaders for the pilot study were recruited with the intention of having the same leader both in the daytime and in the evening. In this study the choice was to recruit retired school teachers and headmasters. For the youth sessions, the classroom teacher was also engaged as a leader. Since there were not so many family sessions in the Swedish version of the SFP, the leader would serve as a link between the children and their parents. For example, the group leader would start the parent session with a reflection on what had happened in the youth session earlier that day.The advantage of having retired schoolteachers as group leaders for the parents was that they were all experienced, they were accustomed to the school environment, but they were independent of the particular school and they were not engaged in daily work. One disadvantage of incorporating the youth sessions in the ordinary curriculum was that the teachers had to eliminate another lesson to find time for the programme activities. This was also reflected in some negative responses from the adolescents in the course evaluations.In the pilot study a relatively high recruitment rate in the parents' session was observed. In part 1 of the programme more than half of the students (53 per cent) were represented by at least one parent in the programme. This is more than for some other programmes. Cohen and Linton (1995) reported only a 16 per cent parental participation in a drug abuse prevention programme and in Spain, 1 per cent of parents attended at least one session in a Life Skills Training Programme (Al-Halabi Diaz et al., 2006). However, in part 2 of the Swedish version of the SFP, there was a decline in parental participation, only 33 per cent of students had parents joining the programme. The reason for this could be that part 1 took place in the sixth year and part 2 in the seventh year. Changes in the composition of the classes had occurred; some students had moved to other schools and some new students had arrived. In course evaluations derived from the parents following part 1 of the programme, 91 per cent reported that they would like to continue in part 2; hence, a negative view of the programme was probably not the cause of the drop-out.The Swedish version of the SFP was received with a great deal of responsiveness by the participating families. Parents in the Western world have similar needs and are faced with the same kinds of problems. Adolescence is an age characterized by striving for autonomy; it is a stressful period for both teenagers and parents. One concern is how to meet risk factors on a family level, and how to best apply necessarily means. Family programs which gives the parents training in family management practices, how to handle conflicts and how to better bond to their children is one way of preventing well known risk factors for adolescent alcohol and other drug problems (Hawkins et al., 1992).The cultural adaptation of the SFP 10-14 to a Swedish setting resulted in a programme with a different format, but with the key elements intact. Core elements like communication, reflection, peer-pressure resistance skills, positive reinforcement and clear rules and expectations regarding alcohol and other drugs were all included in our adaptation of the programme.Is it the quantity of sessions that is the determining factor for a successful prevention programme? In our study we had two family sessions instead of seven as in the SFP 10-14. The reason for this involved both economic and logistic considerations. In adapting a programme from one country to another, it is essential to make an adjustment to local conditions and to find a compromise between the theoretically desirable and the practically possible.It appears to be possible to disseminate the fundamental components in prevention programmes between cultures. The full answer to the question of whether the Swedish version of the SFP 10-14 has an effect on adolescents' alcohol behaviour has been the object of a randomised controlled trial, which we have conducted and which will be reported elsewhere.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe the adaptation and programme development of the Strengthening Families Programme to a Swedish setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A descriptive approach was employed with a focus on the cultural adaptation and programme development. This included meetings with two reference groups, a telephone interview with parents, translation of materials and production of videos and manuals. A pilot study was conducted which included course evaluations by students and parents, meetings with teachers and group leaders and a focus group interview with parents.\nFindings: - The programme format was altered in the Swedish version so that the youth sessions were held earlier during the day and the parent sessions later in the evening. Instead of having one family session at every meeting, the Swedish version included two family sessions in all. In the Swedish version, the booster sessions were incorporated as a regular part of the programme. In addition, more emphasis on alcohol and other drugs was added as well as an extra session. Following the evaluation of the pilot study, the materials were revised, with the inclusion of a \"milder\" vocabulary concerning disciplinary matters.\nPractical implications: - It seems to be possible to disseminate the core elements in family programmes between different cultures, especially if care is taken to make adjustments to local conditions.\nOriginality/value: - This paper makes a contribution to the research on how to culturally adapt prevention programmes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An exploratory study of groupware use in the knowledge management process	[ "Communication technology", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The recent theoretical and practical interest in the knowledge management process has led many business managers to rethink the role of technologies and people in their firms. The advances in computers and communication technologies have enabled many companies to leverage knowledge (Boudreau et al., 1998). The emerging powerful systems such as internet, intranet, Lotus Notes, and conferencing systems allow people to collaborate and share their complementary knowledge, without overly constraining them to geographic location and time (Coombs and Hull, 1998). Since the effectiveness of supply chain and logistics management depends on the collaboration of different players in the chain, above powerful technologies can be quite useful. The flexibility of these systems enables people to create networks of communities, by allowing them to express and share common interests, idiosyncrasies, and personal feelings. This fosters an environment of effective and timely communication to integrate and leverage knowledge in various phases of supply chain and logistics management.Researchers have generally focused on two kinds of knowledge. One deals with managing people. The other deals with managing technology. Even though a socio-technological perspective of organizations considers people and technology closely interconnected, some firms employ either a people-centered or technology-centered strategy to manage knowledge (Hansen et al., 1999). The common thread that runs across both views is the concept of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is that which can be easily codified, stored, and distributed; it is managed with the use of a technology-centered strategy of knowledge management. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, is difficult to capture, codify and share. It therefore requires a people-centered strategy of knowledge management (Polanyi, 1966). Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argue that knowledge management process is a cyclical process consisting of technology-centered strategy to manage explicit knowledge and people-centered strategy to manage tacit knowledge.Researchers have recently studied the knowledge life-cycle within an organization; knowledge generation, propagation, and retirement. In order to remain competitive, an organization needs to address these issues (Siemieniuch and Sinclair, 1999). It therefore becomes important to know the type of activity associated with various knowledge management tools, and to know which tools are available to the employees. While the knowledge management and development issues have been discussed extensively in the literature (Garud et al., 1999; Lethbridge, 2000; Milton et al., 1999), there are no empirical studies that examine the effectiveness of using various technologies in specific knowledge management processes.In this paper, we empirically explore the relationship between groupware use and the knowledge management process. Since groupware use can be more accurately defined and measured than the use of information technology (IT) as a whole, our exploratory study focuses on groupware adoption. Because many groupware tools claim to affect the knowledge management process (Boudreau et al., 1998), our objective in this study is to enhance understanding of the roles of emerging technologies in knowledge work.The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the activities comprising the knowledge management process. Groupware pertaining to the knowledge management process is discussed in Section 3. Our research methodology, data collection, and the results are discussed in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper with some limitations of the study and suggestions for future research.\n2. Knowledge management process: One of the critical goals of the knowledge management process is to achieve a balance between knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation. Exploitation of past knowledge can be useful as long as environments remain stable. If environments start changing, exploitation of existing rules and technologies can be quite overwhelming to the human minds and the organization. To deal with a dynamic environment, learning new sets of capabilities becomes essential for firms.The four intertwined steps of knowledge management are knowledge creation, maintenance, distribution, and review and revision. They offer a succinct understanding of the manner in which organizations create new knowledge, maintain existing knowledge, and discard \"old\" knowledge. While knowledge creation (e.g. knowledge exploration) and knowledge maintenance are two distinct and highly related steps in knowledge management, knowledge distribution and knowledge review and revision processes are two complementary processes that directly interact with knowledge creation and knowledge maintenance.2.1 Knowledge creation process\n3. Groupware framework in knowledge management: We now describe the relationship between groupware use and the knowledge management process. For this purpose, it is useful to first review the nature and definition of groupware.Groupware tools are technology-based tools that support geographically dispersed groups of people sharing knowledge through the use of computing resources (Dennis et al., 1996). These tools enhance human abilities to collaborate on projects where participants allow members to contribute directly and sometime anonymously (Nunamaker et al., 1991). The nature of collaboration could be as simple as two people sharing alternating drafts of a word- processed document, or adding information to a spreadsheet or database. Groupware includes the ability to send and receive e-mail, share personal calendars, hold computer conferencing, and workflow management (Kilmer, 1999). The products that fit this category are Lotus Notes, e-mail, intranet, internet, electronic conferencing tools and many others (Kilmer, 1999). A somewhat similar definition is given by Reinig et al. (1998). They state that a groupware is a software designed to structure the efforts of a team or people toward a goal.Groupware may be used to communicate, cooperate and coordinate. The communication and coordination activities of team members are facilitated by technologies that bridge the timespan, space, and level of group support (DeSanctis and Gallupe, 1987). Teams may communicate synchronously as well as asynchronously; they may be located together or remotely, and technology can be used for individual support or group support (Warkentin et al., 1997). Since coordination mechanisms facilitate knowledge management and decision making (Bensaou and Vankatraman, 1995; Daft and Lengel, 1986), use of groupware can enhance collaborative decision making in organizations (Baldwin et al., 2002).A considerable amount of research has dealt with the choice, use, and consequences of communication media. This research has been dominated by a rational choice perspective that focuses on media-task interaction. In this perspective, it is considered that media choice is objectively determined by the compatibility between the characteristics of media and the requirements of the tasks. Media differ in the extent to which they are able to make an issue less ambiguous or provide opportunities for learning (Daft and Lengel, 1986). Along these dimensions, media are ranked from the richest to the leanest: face-to-face being the richest medium, followed by telephone, e-mail, written documents, and finally unaddressed documents (Daft et al., 1987). A number of traditional technologies, like the telephone, therefore, qualify as groupware since groupware, like computer-based communication tools, can be used to support face-face meetings or substitute face-to-face meetings. The term groupware is now being used to refer to the use of computer networks, such as e-mail, newsgroups, videophones, or chat.Coleman (1997) posits that groupware describes the electronic technologies that support person-to-person collaboration that include e-mail, electronic meeting systems (EMS), desktop video conferencing (DVC), and workflow systems. He argues that groupware offers advantages as it facilitates communication, brings together multiple perspectives and expertise, saves time and cost in coordinating group work, facilitates group problem-solving, and enables new modes of communication, such as anonymous interchanges or structured interactions. For example, newsgroups and mailing lists are similar in spirit to e-mail systems except that they are intended for messages among large groups of people instead of one-to-one communication. Similarly, workflow systems allow documents to be routed through organizations through a predefined fixed process (Johansen, 1988).Three features of groupware technology that form the basic framework to link groupware tools with the knowledge management process are as follows:1. It helps to capture, store, and manipulate information (Keen, 1995).2. It allows people to distribute, share, and acquire information with greater freedom and through informal channels (Keen, 1995).3. It enables geographically dispersed people to work in teams and provides them opportunities to critique, modify, and revise each other's knowledge premise and assumptions, for the coordination of the organizational tasks (Boudreau et al., 1998).The advantages of groupware in the knowledge management process encompass generation, storage, and transmission of information that offers opportunities to critique and share information in light of the existing organization-wide core competencies and expertise (Badii and Sharif, 2003). By allowing participants to share and distribute information quickly around the world, groupware is likely to regress participants' activities to a common set of norms, thus facilitating the process of social relationships and knowledge management activities.The basis of a firm's capability for information manipulation and sharing is in knowledge; we therefore argue that groupware use enables firms to manage knowledge by increasing communication between organizational members. The iterative and reciprocal communication in the organization is likely to converge organizational members on a shared and mutual understanding. That also means, by increasing information processing and sharing, organizational members develop and validate meanings of the information in their contexts, which finally become embedded into the organization. Embedded meanings in an organization, according to Nonaka (1994), set the ground for \"justified beliefs.\" That means that knowledge is more than information. It includes the process of \"knowing\", developed through shared communication and debating.In essence, groupware technologies offer the advantages of reach and range collaboration, and rich communication (Keen, 1995). Thus, the use of groupware can move organizations beyond rigid supply chain models to more dynamic collaboration between business partners and their customers (Mason-Jones and Towill, 1998). By providing quick access to information and by using collaboration for product and service development, organizations become leaner and proficient in using their knowledge in the market place. Even though tacit knowledge is difficult to capture, groupware can still capture, store, retrieve, and distribute a part of tacit knowledge in forms of rituals, histories, and organizational stories. Research has shown that the use of rituals, stories, and organizational histories can provide a basis of \"collective memories\" among organizational members (Weick, 1995).3.1 Groupware and knowledge creation\n4. Exploratory study description and results: This section describes the exploratory study, its contents, data collection, results of the statistical analysis and the summary of major findings.The intent of this exploratory study was to reveal the relationships between groupware use and the knowledge management process. Therefore, as stated earlier, we chose to include groupware tools related to communication networks that speed up the communication processes among the group members. While the academicians are in some disagreement as to what is and what is not categorized specifically as groupware, practitioners care less about the classification (or even its name) and more about its usefulness in their organizations (Boudreau et al., 1998; Keen, 1995). To avoid confusion among the practitioners, some of the items in the final survey instrument are referred to by titles or classifications familiar to and approved by managers in our instrument construction process.The list of groupware tools presented in presented in the Appendix, therefore, is not exhaustive; rather, it is a list related to communication networks that speed up the communication processes among the group members. Our list of groupware items in the Appendix therefore includes some tools that might not otherwise be included. It reflects the commonly adopted groupware tools generated through interviews with several business managers. The extensive process used to generate and select this list is detailed by Sethi and King (1991) and Straub (1989).4.1 Instrument construction and data collection\n5. Conclusions and future research directions: As an exploratory study, this research highlights some interesting trends in the knowledge management process, and suggests multiple lines of future research. One would be challenged to think of an organization at any time in history that did not both depend to a great extent on knowledge and a method to manage that knowledge. In recent years, a plethora of options has become available through information technology to help organizations manage their knowledge - everything from the fax machine to video conferencing. Yet, the tools that are apparently being used most often are those that enhance the traditional aural forms of communication. This begs the question, \"Why aural?\" Future research may consider the various features of aural communication including the ease of use, the speed, the interactive nature, and the richness of the medium.Conspicuous for its lack of correlation to any form of knowledge management in this study, is the fax. Popular in the recent past for its ability to deliver documents over long distances very rapidly, it was expected to make an important contribution to the knowledge management process. Future research may reveal interesting trends in the evolution of knowledge management. As a tool used for knowledge distribution, is the fax an \"outdated\" tool, having been replaced by e-mail? If this is the case, perhaps other groupware such as inter-organizational information systems, or web sites will one day replace e-mail.An alternate possibility that should be considered is that the fax has been relegated to a fifth category in the knowledge management process, that of documentation and storage. While it is currently possible, but not popular, to sign a document such as a contract electronically, the fax is able to efficiently handle paper-based knowledge management functions such as documentation and verification.Being exploratory in nature, this study has some limitations. First, new communications technology is quickly being developed, but slowly adopted by in business practice. New technology-based tools may work well in theory; but communication is a two-way process. Thus, the technology supporting communication must be present at both ends. In addition, not only must the technology exist, it must often be the same brand and version. For example, instant messaging software, telephony, and video-phone systems all have certain compatibility issues which must be worked out before the two parties can communicate. Because the data collection did not pair the receiver with the sender, the above features may not exist. This may cause some error in the perceived utility of certain groupware tools in some specific knowledge management activities.The second limitation is the fact that as new technology is developed, it frequently becomes known by several names. For example - the world wide web, www, w3, the internet, and the information superhighway. While some differences may exist on a technical level in these terms, the general public, including the business people surveyed, not only regard them as the same, but may have a preference as to which name is used, or even a preconceived notion that certain names are right or wrong. The authors have endeavored to use the most appropriate and most recognized names wherever appropriate, but the opportunity of misconception or misunderstanding still exists.In order to further validate the results of this study and to remove some of the above-mentioned limitations of this study, data collection for future research purposes should consider evolving technology and include any new groupware tools. As technology evolves, the uses may evolve, creating an opportunity for longitudinal studies. In addition, the use of evolving technology should be considered as a means of analyzing future research. If a sufficient number of observations are collected, an artificial neural network may reveal interesting insight to the use of specific groupware technology in the knowledge management process.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Aims to explore the relationships between groupware use and the knowledge management process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The activities comprising the knowledge management process are conceptualized as: knowledge creation, knowledge maintenance, knowledge distribution, and knowledge review and revision. The data for this exploratory study were gathered through a telephone survey of managers at Fortune 1000 firm divisions. Based on the prior literature, it was expected that use of certain types of groupware and certain aspects of the knowledge management process would be significantly associated with each other.\nFindings: - The results of this exploratory study show that the groupware tools which enhance or support traditional aural media were significantly associated with most of the knowledge management processes we identified. However, e-mail is the sole groupware tool that is significantly associated with knowledge distribution.\nOriginality/value: - As an exploratory study, this research highlights some interesting trends in the knowledge management process, and suggests multiple lines of future research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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