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A comparison of statistical and decision-making techniques in marketing mix evaluation	[ "Multi-attribute decision making", "Customer satisfaction", "Structural equation model", "Services marketing mix" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Nowadays, most firms and organizations around the world have been trying to retain their customers in the globalization and competitive world. In fact, they aim to assure the quality of services and satisfy the customers. In this regard, a large number of organizations are competing together to improve their customer satisfaction (CS) and loyalty as they apply new effective network strategies (Caiazza, 2016) since service quality and CS have been recognized as the heart of organization development. Actually, the firm's services should primarily meet the customers' needs. The firms even oblige to consider diversities of customers' cultures to retain them with respect to their differences (Caiazza and Volpe, 2015). The philosophy of modern management sciences considers CS as a baseline standard of performance and a possible standard of excellence for any business organization. Oliver Richard (1997) explained that CS is a full meeting of customer expectations of products and services. In fact, the customers are satisfied when the perceived performance matches the customer's expectations of services. Otherwise, they are dissatisfied. Accordingly, they return to the company and talk favorably to others about their satisfaction. Thus, satisfied customers are more likely to repurchase, are lower sensitive to their price, are engaged in positive word-of-mouth recommendations and become loyal customers (Picon et al., 2014). In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the marketing mix, which aims to achieve the maximum level of CS and retention, allowing firms to be competitive over the time. Based on a simple time series analysis of the Scopus data from 1968 to the end of 2017 (Figure 1), the number of studies related to services marketing mix has been increasing as the number of documents at the end of 2017 (908 documents) was tripled, compared to the number in the year 2000 (290 documents).\n2. Methodology: 2.1 Measurement instrument\n3. Data analysis and findings: 3.1 SEM results\n4. Discussion: In this section, the results related to both criteria and sub-criteria are first provided, along with presenting some challenging arguments to all researchers. Then, some practical recommendations are suggested for the bank managers.\n5. Conclusion: Regarding the question whether the results of the statistical tests or multi-criteria decision-making techniques are separately satisfactory as a ranking tool for marketing mix elements in CS or not, the present study compared three methods including SEM and FT as statistical methods and AHP as an MCDM method. To this aim, 159 special customers of an anonymous bank in Bojnurd were selected as a case study. The SEM was first used for evaluating the effect of the elements in services marketing mix on CS. The results indicated that all hypotheses except the two last ones were rejected. In other words, only process and physical evidence were confirmed. Then, the marketing mix elements were prioritized by using FT and AHP methods and subsequently a completely identical rankings such as people, process, product, physical evidence, place, price and promotion, respectively, as well as an absolutely equal relative weight were achieved. Based on the results, it is proposed that none of the methods could be applied separately for ranking objectives and it should be supported at least by another method. In the present paper, it cannot be declared that the results of one method are interesting separately; however, since the two methods out of three methods had the same results, thus their ranking is more persuading. As a future research direction, it is suggested that further consideration of combined statistical and MADM techniques might be helpful. As well, other variants of MADM should also be tested.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Although customer satisfaction (CS) has been evaluated through using statistical and decision-making techniques so far, no research, to the best of the authors' knowledge, has been conducted for implementing both groups simultaneously and clarifying the different or similar aspects of the results given by these techniques. The purpose of this paper is to compare the techniques and clarify these unknown aspects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: First, the effect of the elements related to service marketing mix on CS was examined by using structural equation model (SEM). Then, the statistical methods such as Friedman test (FT) and SEM, and decision-making technique such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were systematically compared for prioritizing the elements of service marketing mix. The sample included 159 special customers of an anonymous bank in Bojnurd, Iran. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by using Cronbach's a (r=0.934). In addition, SPSS, Expert Choice and Smart PLS software were used.\nFindings: Based on the results, FT and AHP method had exactly the same ranking for the elements of the marketing mix, as well as almost identical relative weights. The ranking included people, process, product, physical evidence, place, price and promotion, respectively, while the SEM technique had very different outcomes. Finally, none of the methods could assure the marketer to come to a reliable decision separately.\nOriginality/value: In this study, the authors' contribution is the understanding of the role of an effective marketing mix evaluation technique selection on marketing strategy. Different techniques had different and in some cases even contradicting outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Measuring the benefits of tracking medical treatment through RFId	[ "Healthcare", "ICT", "Method", "Medical treatment", "Benefit evaluation", "RFId" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Nowadays, healthcare systems are facing the challenge of improving their overall performance, thereby attempting to deliver better care services in a more efficient way (Angst et al., 2011). As a matter of fact, health expenditures have risen in all European countries, often increasing at a faster rate than economic growth (OECD, 2011). Increased life expectancy, new medical technologies and increased patient awareness are only some of the factors that are leading to significant growth in health expenditures (Agarwal et al., 2010). In this scenario, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have proved to be one of the most appealing tools that can improve the quality of healthcare services and at the same time reduce, or at least control, their costs (Locatelli et al., 2010; Gastaldi et al., 2012).\n2. Literature review: Since RFId technologies are receiving more and more attention from both academics and practitioners, the number of papers addressing the evaluation of RFId projects is growing. Whereas early papers in this field mainly dealt with technological issues, e.g. tags and reader performance, attention subsequently turned to the value (i.e. cost, benefits) of RFId-based solutions (Fosso Wamba, 2011; Ngai et al., 2008). Using the classification framework presented by Miragliotta et al. (2009), Table I lists the available papers in the literature that deal with the topic of RFId enabled benefits in the healthcare industry:\n3. Objectives and research methodologies: This paper presents a general method that aims to increase knowledge about the potential benefits of using RFId technologies within the healthcare domain, in particular for medical treatment support, which has still received limited attention (cf. Section 2). Specifically, the approach proposed in this paper is intended to help managers identify the whole range of achievable benefits, and to understand the main drivers explaining the origin of the benefits themselves, thus helping them to conduct a quantitative evaluation. The research programme was carried out as part of the activities conducted by the RFId Solution Center, the research centre at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, devoted to applied research on RFId (www.rfidsolutioncenter.it).\n4. The proposed method: 4.1. Method overview\n5. Application of the method: an Italian case study: 5.1. Case study introduction\n6. Conclusions: This paper presents a method for investigating the impact of RFId-based solutions on medical treatment support in the healthcare context. A structured method was developed, which furthers the scientific research effort invested in this topic to-date, and which fully supports the management team in the decision-making process. The purpose of this work was to remedy the existing lack of structured approaches concerning the evaluation of the potential benefits of using RFId technology for medical treatment support within a healthcare facility. In order to do so, the existing literature was reviewed and analysed, a complete set of causal maps was developed, and a six-step procedure was defined to support the decision-making process. The method proved to be a useful tool that can be used by managers to identify the performance indicators affected by the introduction of RFId, and to choose which ones to analyse more closely, based on their relative importance and the potential magnitude of their impact.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Radio frequency identification (RFId) technology has a great potential to improve process efficiency and effectiveness. However, because of the variety of application areas and achievable benefits, structured assessment models are needed to support managers in the adoption decision. The purpose of this paper is to describe a structured method to support the evaluation of the benefits enabled by RFId technology in medical treatment support in the healthcare industry. The method, and its application to an Italian case study, are deeply illustrated so as to increase the knowledge available to decision makers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research underlying this paper has modelled the relationship between the technology and the performance driver of the target process, and then between the performance driver and the measurable key performance indicators of that process. This knowledge, focused on the healthcare industry but still quite general, has been formalised into 12 causal maps. Starting from these maps, a six-step procedure to prioritise the analysis, tailor the maps and adapt (or develop) analytical models to estimate the benefits is presented. The overall method and its application to an Italian case study are deeply illustrated so as to increase the open available knowledge to decision makers.\nFindings: The findings are twofold: first, the knowledge represented by the causal maps; and second, the findings of the case study, which shows that efficiency benefits can cover the operative expenses of RFId adoption, but need to be integrated with effectiveness benefits in order to fully justify the investment costs.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a contribution for both researchers and practitioners. As the former are concerned, the paper is a first attempt to fill the existing lack of structured approaches concerning the evaluation of potential benefits of RFId for product traceability within a healthcare facility. As for the latter, the presented method has been developed to practically support all those managers who are evaluating whether to adopt RFId technology in their organisation or not. This contribution has a relevant practicality, as it helps decision makers to address their decisions relying on a sound conceptual baseline, and on objective evaluations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Determinants of patient satisfaction survey in a gastrointestinal endoscopy service	[ "Endoscopic instruments", "Patients", "Customer satisfaction", "Surveys" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The term \"customer satisfaction\" is widely used to denote satisfaction with commercial products and services. Nowadays, customer satisfaction is the core of business practices and systems, and leads to quality improvement of the organisation (Gotlieb et al., 1994). Modern management is customer-oriented (Maciejewski et al., 1997).Customer satisfaction in health care services is called patient satisfaction, which represents patients' perception and evaluation of health care procedures (Sitia and Wood, 1997; Baker, 1995). It is necessary to assess and measure patient satisfaction in order to organise each distinct dimension of health services, so that patient experience exceeds his or her own expectations (Fitzpatrick, 1991a, b).The primary purpose of a patient satisfaction study is to focus on patients' subjective evaluation of a health care structure. A standardised questionnaire is the quantitative instrument used to measure patient satisfaction with the health organisation (Baker, 1990; Fitzpatrick, 1991a, b; Grogan et al., 1995). A satisfaction questionnaire may be either self-reported or interviewer-administered. The questionnaire content is aimed at identifying the characteristics of the organisation that need to be improved in order to produce a better impression of the health service on the patient (Sanchez del Rio et al., 2005; Johanson, 2002; Larsen et al., 2002; Salmon et al., 1994; Schutz et al., 1994; Raymond et al., 1996).The principal aim of this study is to assess the determinants of patient satisfaction in a GI endoscopy service by a standardised questionnaire.\nPatients and methods: The GI Endoscopy Service, as well as the National Cancer Institute in Bari, is part of the Italian National Health Service. The patient satisfaction of its customers was assessed using a questionnaire from an ad hoc pilot study of the Research Hospital for Digestive Diseases in Castellana (Bari), that had a good reliability (test-retest reliability, on 20 subjects after one week=0.83, Pearson r) and face validity (Recchia et al., 2003).In the standardised questionnaire there were few open questions and many closed questions, with predetermined response options precoded with numerical values.The satisfaction questionnaire construction was characterised by question wording, response format structuring, and creation of multi-item scales. Questions were designed by reviewing literature studies, by focus group method, false patient method and open questionnaire (Salant and Dillman, 1994; Gavin and Turner, 1997; Grogan et al., 2000). They were grouped by topic into the following sections:* service choice;* access;* approach to the service;* endoscopic procedures;* staff caring;* endoscopy facilities;* histological biopsies;* ticket payment;* communication and information;* therapeutical advice; and* demographic information.Each of these sections was composed of specific subjective and objective questions. The sections and each question were chosen to be the most informative, simple and clear, without ambiguity and redundancy. The patient satisfaction questionnaire is shown in the Appendix. The answer format for the subjective questions was generated using a Likert-type scale with five points, in which there is an assumption of equal intervals among the response options. The Likert format presents a statement which a patient may strongly agree with (1 point), agree (2 points), neither agree nor disagree (3 points), disagree (4 points), strongly disagree with (5 points) (Loewental, 2001). Then, partial scores and a total score were calculated, summing up the scores of each section and of the complete questionnaire, respectively. The questionnaire was administered by the same interviewer to 200 consecutive GI endoscopy patients of National Cancer Institute in Bari (93 males and 107 females), before (only the demographic part) and after endoscopic examinations.The patient satisfaction outcome was obtained from questions about the utility of endoscopy and the willingness to come back to the service again.The outcome was positive for patient satisfaction if the answer to both questions was strongly agree or agree, negative if the answer to even one of the questions was strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree. The identification of satisfaction was carried out through the statistical technique of logistic regression. The confounding variables were sex, age, education, distance between patients' home and the hospital. The explanatory variables were selected by backward regression. The software package used for statistical analysis was STATA, Release 8 (Stata Corporation, College Station, Texas, USA).\nResults: The statistical analysis explores three main aspects:1. The frequency distribution of the subjects in the objective variables of the questionnaire and in the satisfaction outcome (Table I).2. The percentage of patients with a positive satisfaction outcome in each item of the questionnaire (Table II). In Table II subjects were aggregated in two or three categories to increase the precision of the satisfaction estimation.3. The determinants of the satisfaction outcome using a multiple logistic regression.Table I shows the distribution of patients in the categories of sex, age, education, the distance between patients' home and the hospital, endoscopy procedure, and patient satisfaction outcome. The highest frequency of patients was noticed for females, age under 50, low education, residence not far from the hospital, for the gastroscopy procedure, and for positive satisfaction outcome.Table II shows the percentage of satisfied patients for each item category and the p-value of percentage difference (kh2 test, significance level p<0.05). Satisfaction was associated with internal hospital cleanliness, information during endoscopic procedure booking, endoscopy room cleanliness, short waiting time for endoscopy diagnosis, complete endoscopy diagnosis explanation, training and caring of medical and nursing staff.A multiple logistic regression was used to select the statistically significant explanatory variables independently associated with satisfaction. The explanatory variables were selected using the backward method. The final most parsimonious regression model is shown in Table III, with sex, age, education and distance forced in the model. The explanatory variables associated with satisfaction were: hospital cleanliness, comfortable endoscopy areas, complete explanation of endoscopic diagnosis, training and caring of physicians staff. The variable \"information about endoscopic procedure booking\" was confounded by other variables, so it was not considered.\nDiscussion: Patient satisfaction is now of primary concern for the health care service and leads to better health and business outcomes. It is highly interrelated with patients' emotional and rational evaluation of different health service dimensions, and also with his or her own expectations (Baker, 1991). The principal tool to measure the variables of interest in a patient satisfaction survey is a structured interview based on a standardised questionnaire. This was the method used to evaluate the satisfaction of our GI endoscopy patients, which allows us to study the whole customer path through our health care structure.The statistical analysis of the survey 200 questionnaires highlights that patient satisfaction was essentially due to hospital cleanliness, information about endoscopic procedures, endoscopy room comfortableness, caring of medical staff and complete explanation of endoscopic diagnosis.Unfortunately, the critical point of the study is the patients' understanding of the survey questions, and consequently the possibility of biased answers. Another critical point of the study is the patients' fear to express judgements on the service that can compromise the relationship with his or her physician. Anyway, according to our survey, patients are not always satisfied.In the Mayo Clinic experience, a questionnaire composed of 15 questions was administered to 559 patients, 78 per cent of whom answered the questionnaire (Yacavone et al., 2001). The highest satisfaction level was associated with the ability of the endoscopy medical staff. Other important satisfaction aspects were:* endoscopy discomfort control;* pain control;* medical and nursing staff attitude; and* information adequacy to patients' questions.In our questionnaire the discomfort of the endoscopic procedure is represented by the last item of the endoscopy section, which shows 80.4 per cent agreement and 18.9 per cent strong agreement with satisfaction.Medical and nursing staff caring gets one of the highest scores of satisfaction in our endoscopy survey. However, caring has an odds ratio equal to 1.3 with satisfaction, which is also not statistically significant, perhaps because it is confounded by other variables in the multiple logistical regression model.In Tarazi's study the operating staff caring attitude was the main satisfaction feature in their surgery treatment survey on 200 patients (Tarazi and Philip, 1998).Warm behaviour at reception is another important satisfaction determinant. In Cohen's study, facility cleanliness, privacy and nurse attention were more strongly associated with global patient satisfaction (Cohen et al., 1994).In our survey, internal hospital and endoscopy room cleanliness was significantly and independently associated with patient satisfaction in the multiple logistical regression model.Patient satisfaction measurement surveys, as emphasised by studies of the specific literature, help develop performance standards, increase the efficacy of physician work, improve clinical risk management and quality of care (Williams, 1994).Finally, satisfied patients come back to the same health service and are more confident about treatment indications.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The principal aim of this study is to assess the determinants of patient satisfaction in a gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy service.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A standardised questionnaire is the tool used to measure the perception of patient satisfaction. Questions were grouped by topic into the following sections: service choice, access, approach to the service, endoscopic procedures, staff caring, endoscopy facilities, histological biopsies, ticket payment, communication and information, therapeutical advice and demographic information. The answer format for subjective questions was generated using a Likert-type scale. The patient satisfaction outcome was obtained from questions about the utility of endoscopy and the willingness to come back to the service again. The determinants of satisfaction identification were evaluated using a multiple logistic regression.\nFindings: - The questionnaire was administered by the same interviewer to 200 consecutive patients of the Endoscopy Service of the National Cancer Institute in Bari (93 males and 107 females). The variables associated with satisfaction in the most parsimonious logistic model were: hospital cleanliness, comfortable endoscopy area, adequate explanation of endoscopic diagnosis, training and caring of medical staff.\nOriginality/value: - In the survey patient satisfaction with the GI Endoscopy Service is associated with both good structure quality and physician-patient communication.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of autonomy, competence and relatedness: Applying self-determination theory to the integrated resort setting	[ "Brand attachment", "Integrated resort", "Brand compatibility", "Needs satisfaction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Companies use brands to create and express their identities (Fugate and Phillips, 2010). In addition, in the tourism industry, many countries have developed integrated resorts which refer to the facilities include casinos, hotels, restaurants, convention centers and theme parks (Ahn and Back, 2018). A number of international and domestic integrated resorts attempt to capture the positive response of customers toward the brands. Consequently, competition among integrated resort service providers has been increasing, leading to the need to consider brand perspective. In the tourism and hospitality industry, brand perspective integrates a broad range of marketing strategies with the process of creating and delivering brand value (Konecnik and Gartner, 2007; Pike, 2005). Thus, brand perspective is useful because it provides the opportunity to examine how integrated resort companies develop marketing and promotion programs to enhance emotional bonds with customers.\nTheoretical framework: Self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) suggests that customers have three basic psychological needs that influence their self-motivation, self-integration, and self-regulation. According to Deci and Ryan (1991), basic psychological needs are defined as essential elements of the growth, integrity and health of a living entity and have three types, namely, autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy needs are involved with one's possibility of choosing to perform a task, competence needs are related to one's perception of effectively bringing about desired effects and outcomes; and relatedness needs are connected to one's feeling of closeness and connectedness to others (Reis et al., 2000). Fulfillment of basic needs is necessary because it is related to intrinsic motivation, psychological growth process (Deci and Ryan, 1991) and personality integration (Conway et al., 2015; Desrumaux et al., 2015; Ryan, 1995).\nLiterature review: Integrated resort experience and customers' needs satisfaction\nMethods: Study population\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to apply the perspective of self-determination theory to investigate the effects of needs satisfaction on customers' emotional bond and perceived fit with the integrated resort brand.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To provide empirical evidence, this study uses an online survey analyzed with structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The results suggest how integrated resort experiences enhance the needs satisfaction for autonomy, competence and relatedness, and that customers are likely to have an attachment and compatibility with the brand. This study also documents that strong attachments and compatibility are predictive of behavioral intention.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study provides a theoretical perspective through self-determination theory for explaining how needs satisfaction impacts customers' brand-related attitude, which can be used to guide future studies. Insights from this research will be used to design and evaluate customers' experience in tourism and hospitality industry.\nOriginality/value: Although the concept of needs satisfaction has studied on the employees' behavior, a scarcity of research has been offered to explain customers' behavior. Thus, this study makes a significant contribution to the hospitality and tourism research by testing the needs satisfaction as an antecedent of customers' brand-related behavior.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Meeting career expectation: can it enhance job satisfaction of Generation Y?	[ "Careers", "China", "Generation Y", "Generational differences", "Job satisfaction", "Human resources management", "Hospitality management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The hospitality industry is a service-oriented business, and hotel employees play an important role in serving customers. The work attitude and service quality of employees are important in the success of a hotel - because they comprise the main assets of a company. When employees are satisfied with their job and career, they tend to be more enthusiastic in their work and have a greater sense of responsibility, which enable them to provide better service to their customers (Kong et al., 2010). At present, the majority of the workforces in the hospitality industry are from Generation Y, who were born between 1981 and 2000 (Gursoy et al., 2013). Their generational characteristics may lead to distinctive values (Chen and Choi, 2008; Park and Gursoy, 2012), and may also pose a great challenge for hotel human resources management. Both understanding Generation Y's characteristics and enhancing their work performance present a meaningful topic for both researchers and practitioners.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Relationship between HCM and career expectations of employees\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Research design\n4. Results: The collected data were screened to ensure that the dataset met the requirements for SEM analysis. The dataset was examined for missing data because the processing of non-random missing data could produce biased statistical results (Hair et al., 2009). The outliers were then identified and omitted because they could lead to a biased mean and could affect the normal distribution (Field and Hole, 2003). The multivariate normal distribution of the data was eventually confirmed, which made them usable for further analysis.\n5. Theoretical and practical implications: 5.1 Overall model performance\n6. Limitations and suggestions for future study: One limitation of this study is the use of self-reported data in the cross-sectional design. The participants filled out the questionnaires themselves, which might give way to untruthful responses. Future studies can enhance the reliability of the data by exploring the career expectations of employees and the effects of such expectations from other perspectives, such as those of managers and supervisors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore the influence of career expectations on job satisfaction of Generation Y, as well as the mediating effect of career expectations on the relationship between hotel career management (HCM) and job satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from the main tourist cities in China with Generation Y employees working in the hospitality industry as the target population. A total of 442 valid questionnaires were obtained, and structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships among the constructs.\nFindings: HCM contributed positively to employees' career expectation and job satisfaction. Career expectation was positively related to job satisfaction, as well as mediated the relationship between HCM and job satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study is limited by the use of self-reported data in the cross-sectional design because all participants filled out the questionnaires by themselves. The use of convenience sampling method presents another limitation for this study.\nPractical implications: This study may serve as a guide for managers and policymakers. First, this study highlights the importance of effective career management activities. Second, this study may help hotels retain the qualified staff members. Third, this study may help hotel managers respond to the career expectation of their young employees.\nSocial implications: The meditating effect of career expectation highlights its importance in the career management system. The main force of market labor is Generation Y, who are known for their high career expectation and their emphasis on their career development. The findings indicate that both extrinsic and intrinsic value factors provide greater contributions to job satisfaction than prestige and stability factors. Therefore, hotels must provide a stable working environment, and care more on employees' intrinsic value. Aside from providing high compensation, employers should also provide career growth opportunities and challenging job to their employees, as they are important motivational factors. By providing tailor-made career activities, hotel managers may satisfy the career expectations and enhance the job satisfaction of young employees, which, in turn, leads to a mutually beneficial situation for both managers and employees.\nOriginality/value: This study explores the predictors and outcomes of career expectations of Generation Y employees. It highlights the importance of meeting the career expectations and also shows initial evidence on the mediating effect of career expectation. The findings of this study may provide useful guidance to both hotel operators and employees.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Preventive maintenance scheduling for multi-cogeneration plants with production constraints	[ "Preventive maintenance", "Desalination", "Kuwait" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Cogeneration for power generation and fresh water production has been used by utility companies for many years as a reliable, efficient and economic means of generating power and simultaneously desalting sea water. An important problem in a cogeneration plant is the long term Maintenance Scheduling (MS) of the generation and desalination units. MS outages have a great effect on the plant and unit availability and production cost. Past experiences have shown that effective scheduling can save considerable operational costs that help electric and water utilities to be more competitive in terms of the energy and water price while increasing system reliability (El-Sharh et al., 1998; El-Nashar and Khan, 1991).Zurn and Quintana (1975) define the maintenance scheduling (MS) problem as \"one in which the maintenance outages of each unit have to be scheduled in some optimal way, satisfying a number of constraints, over a planning interval of m periods.\" According to Yamayee (1982), the MS problem is \"specifying dates at which manpower is to be allocated to an overhaul of a major functional element or group of elements in a single power plant such that overall system availability is acceptable\". Therefore the cogeneration plant maintenance scheduling problem is concerned with, when and in what sequence elements should be taken down for maintenance to maximize the unit utilization level (minimize unit outage time) and make the best use of available manpower and maintenance equipment (El-Sharh et al., 1998, Munoz Moro and Ramos, 1999, Rong-Ceng and Shih-An, 2000). Maintenance scheduling is an optimization problem subject to maintenance and system constraints such as the crew constraint, maintenance window constraint, time limitation constraint and the output load constraints of water and electric power demanded (Ben-Daya et al., 2000).Problems with similarities to cogeneration maintenance have been treated by Bos et al. (1996); Baughman et al. (1989); Puttgen and MacGregor (1989). Authors treating desalination include Kent Coleman (1971); Moslehi et al. (1991); El-Nashar and Khan (1991).Several methods have been proposed in the literature to solve thermal unit MS; this has similarities with cogeneration units. The solution methods can be categorized as follows: integer programming (Dopazo and Merrill, 1975; Edwin and Curtius, 1990), decomposition methods (Yellen et al., 1992), dynamic programming (Zurn and Quintana, 1975), Tabu search (El-Amin et al., 2000) and simulated annealing methods (Satoh and Nara, 1991). The binary nature of the MS problem makes it a very reasonable problem for integer optimisation, e.g. the branch and bound approach can be applied to solving integer and mixed integer problem. This paper presents a zero-one integer programming method and model designed to produce an optimal maintenance schedule for cogeneration plants in terms of maximizing the available number of units in each plants for a 12 month demand cycle.The structure of the paper is as follows: problem background and definition are given in the next section, followed by a section presenting the mathematical formulation of the model. An illustrative example follows which is also used to test the model. This is followed by the conclusion.\nProblem background and definition: Desalting/desalination/desalinisation means the same thing, i.e. the removal of salts from seawater or brackish water. Over three-quarters of the earth's surface are covered with salt water which is too salty to sustain human life, farming or industry. The importance of salt removal from ocean water or other saline water resources reaches far beyond its mere technological aspects, because the availability of fresh water has a decisive effect on the pattern of human development. The growth in world population and increased industrialization has intensified the quest for pure water. Recent fresh water shortages in Kuwait and in other parts of the world have cast a spotlight on the problem and led to a greatly increased interest in it. Cogeneration plants (combining power generation and desalination) are the main source of fresh water in many regions of the world and are now used in about 120 countries (see Figure 1). Of this total, approximately 50 per cent of is used to desalt seawater, mainly in the Middle East (Wangnick, 1990).In Kuwait, the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) is responsible for supplying power and water to the population. The MEW has met the 700 per cent growth in demand for electricity and water in the last 25 years by the construction of a system of cogeneration plants, now totalling 9.0 GW and 320 MIGD (Million Imperial Gallons per Day) (MEW, 2003). These plants are identical in layout but different in size and installed capacity. The Kuwait plants are typical in that each plant has a boiler, a turbo-generator, and a distiller as shown in Figure 2. The boilers produce high pressure steam from fuel; the turbo-generators produce electric power from high pressure steam and the distillers produce desalinated water from salt water using low pressure steam. A common steam header connects the boilers of a plant so that steam from a boiler in one unit can be used by a distiller in another unit. The water produced is stored in a reservoir. The water in the reservoir is used to meet the predicted demand at each time step of the planning horizon. The plant should also satisfy the demand for electric power at each time step. Thus scheduling of preventive maintenance is very important.\nMathematical formulation: The mathematical model of the cogeneration plant maintenance planning and scheduling is introduced in this section using the concepts of zero-one integer programming. It is an extension of previous work (Alardhi and Labib, 2005). In any integer programming formation, the three most important elements are the decision variables, the constraints and the objective function. The objective function of this problem is formulated so as to maximize the units' utilization, which minimizing the units' idle time and to satisfy all the other constraints. The results of the model are the values of the decision variables. A zero-one value of a decision variable for a boiler, turbo-generator or distiller indicates if the particular equipment should start its maintenance during the period or not, for all equipment in the plant for all periods within the maintenance planning horizon typically one year of 52 weeks. The goal is to schedule the preventive maintenance tasks for number of Plants (r) which consist of units i=1,.....,m and equipment j,j=b for boiler, j=t for turbine, j=d for distiller in order to maximize the number of available units over the operational planning period (k), subject to the unit maintenance constraints which are described in section 3.1.2.Problem formulation\nModel validation: To test the model described, a representative example is used to compare two Kuwaiti cogeneration plants, each having seven units. Each unit consist of three equipment, boiler, turbine (capacity 150 MW), and distiller (capacity 10 MGID), so the total number of equipments in the two plant is 42. The planning horizon is 52 weeks. The objective of this model is to maximize the available number of operational units in each plant.The input data for the model is as following: maintenance window, it is assumed that the earliest starting time for maintenance is in week 1(Erij=1) and the latest time for maintenance is in week 52 (Lrij=52). The maintenance duration has been taken to be 2 weeks for all equipments. Maintenance crew and resource constraints are kept constant. The system constraint includes a demand constraint. In this example the demand is taken from the Statistical Year Book, Ministry of Energy. Figure 4 shows two input demands, the first demand is the electrical power consumption in megawatts (MW), and the second demand is the water consumption in million imperial gallons per day (MIGD). The maximum total generator capacity is 2100 MW, and the maximum total distiller capacity is 140 MIGD.The model has been implemented using LINGO model and optimization package (Schrage, 2002). The results are shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6 where the shaded bars represent the weeks in which equipments are scheduled for maintenance. Figure 5 shows the available MW and MGID in each period of the planning horizon, the electricity and water demand for each week and the generator and distiller capacity being maintained. Examining Figure 6 reveals that all constraints have been satisfied because: all the preventive maintenance tasks take place between week 1 and week 52; examination of unit one in plant one, shows that the preventive maintenance of the boiler and the turbine occur in the same period and hence logical constraints 11 and 12 are satisfied; the table also shows that when any preventive maintenance task has started it continues until it completes its duration, hence satisfying the maintenance completion duration constraints (6-9). The resource and crew constraints were kept constant. If these two constraints had been tightened, the final schedule of the preventive maintenance tasks will change. The efficiency constraints are satisfied in that all the turbines and boilers from the same units are scheduled to be maintained in the same period. By examining Figure 6 and Figure 4, we can see that when there is increasing demand, there are fewer units taken for maintenance and also the demand constraints shown in 17,18,19,20 are satisfied. Figure 5 also shows that when a generator or a distiller is on maintenance, there is a decline in the total generator capacity and in the total distiller capacity.Sensitivity analysis was performed on the example model to assess its robustness and to see what the impact is if the maintenance duration is extended, if the resources are reduced, and also if the demand is increased. The model was run again, firstly with the electricity demand and the water demand increased by 10 per cent, the resources reduced by 10 per cent and the maintenance duration changed to three weeks. Figure 7 shows the output results. A second model was run using the following parameters: the electricity demand and the water demand increased by 20 per cent, the resources reduced by 20 per cent and the maintenance duration changed to four weeks. The output of the model is summarized in Figure 8. It shows that when the maintenance duration is extended, it will add to the amount of generator and distiller capacity on maintenance and thus decreases the total available generator capacity and the total distiller capacity. It also shows that when the demand for water and electricity increases, the gap between the total available capacity and the demand curve reduces. When the resources are reduced, the final output of the scheduling will be more tight.\nConclusion: This paper presents a method for solving the maintenance scheduling (MS) problem for cogeneration plants. The method used is to model the problem as a zero-one integer problem. The objective function of the model is to maximize the available number of operational units in each plant. This objective function can be extended to include the cost for maintenance and the production of the units. The illustrative example shows the applicability of the method, making it appealing for use in the cogeneration plants. The model has demonstrated that zero-one integer programming is a powerful technique for modelling the cogeneration plants preventive maintenance scheduling.Benefits of the model are that it will help the people working in maintenance to have an estimated scheduling for their process and will also aid people who work in OR to understand the relationship between different processes in order to work with these kinds of issues.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper describes a method developed to schedule the preventive maintenance tasks in separate and linked cogeneration plants while satisfying the maintenance and production constraints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The proposed methodology is based on a mixed integer programming model which finds the maximum number of available power and desalting units in separate and linked cogeneration plants. To verify that the model can be implemented for a real system, a case study of scheduling the preventive maintenance tasks of a cogeneration plant in Kuwait is illustrated.\nFindings: - An efficient solution can be achieved for scheduling the preventive maintenance tasks and production in cogeneration plants.\nPractical implications: - The paper offers a practical model that can be used to schedule preventive maintenance for expensive equipment in cogeneration plans.\nOriginality/value: - The model presented is an effective decision tool that optimises the solution of the maintenance scheduling problem for cogeneration plants under maintenance and production constraints.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A strategic framework to achieve stellar results	[ "Corporate strategy", "Management effectiveness", "Leadership" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Great leaders are distinguished by their ability to achieve results. Accomplished leaders know this intuitively. Aspiring leaders frequently stumble by making several mistakes in reaching for leadership excellence. However, the cost of learning through mistakes has become too high and often threatens organizational survival. A strategic framework to guide them is critical.\nBalancing needs of constituents: Leaders must balance the unique and competing needs of employees, customers, partners, and other stakeholders. To do so, they must make decisions based on reality, not fashion or fad. Countless dot-coms focused on new \"killer applications,\" relegating the mundane issues of profit and debt to the back burner.Since the tech implosion, profitability surfaced as the paramount concern, and organizations rushed to outsourcing and lean staffing to reduce operating costs. Yet, fast action and the right strategy are not synonymous. Few firms have been able to cut or reduce their way to greatness. What will happen if the market rebounds quickly and the firm cannot gear up for renewed competition or changing customer requirements? How does cost-cutting impact the firm's ability to attract and retain key talent?Leaders must anticipate and adjust to changing conditions, but they do not have a crystal ball to consult. However, information abounds. Knowing the organization life cycle as well as the business cycle helps leaders gauge what is needed and avoid spinning out of control. A framework to help leaders balance short and long term realities, competing needs, limited resources, and business, requires an assessment of six key business priorities to ensure the development of a viable and effective strategy. The cost of overlooking a priority includes blindspots, surprise, and drastic change stemming from tunnel vision thinking. Selecting a focus and being able to select the right one are as different as doing things right and doing the right things.\nLaser-like mind set: Yet, in our study of 2,000 leaders, 45 percent focused on one priority (Lippitt, 2002). The leadership's drive for \"bottom-line\" may seem to support this laser like mind set, yet there are multiple definitions for bottom line. Profit at the continued cost of market share or reputation cannot long succeed any more than market share growth without profit.Relying on a product without a new product pipeline is a recipe for failure, just as plunging vigorously ahead with a new vision without careful consideration of execution mistakes movement for judgment. These \"leaders\" may think they target the bulls-eye, but with an organizational survival at stake, the risk of such narrow priorities is foolhardy. Tunnel vision fails the test of leadership just as fully as trying to be all things to all people, or to all customers.Strategy must align with an organization's short and long term needs. Leaders walk a tightrope, they cannot write their strategy in granite and they cannot whimsically change it to accommodate changing winds. Tempting as it may be to make things simple or rely on sound bites, we live in a complex and rapidly changing world. A leader's strategy must reflect reality.It must be customized to the organization and understood by the organization enabling them to make sound strategy decisions and execute them. To decipher the single most driving priority, read the goal outlined in an annual report, ask a leader what are his/her priorities, or follow where new funds go. Consider the items shown in Table I.\nOrganization life cycle and strategy: A priority is a choice of what is most critical for organization success. No leader can address every issue or resolve every problem. The consciously driven or intuitively aware leaders employ leverage or the principle of the vital few and trivial many, also known as the 80/20 rule, when setting their strategy and goals. Leaders must focus on what matters most, sustainable results.What helps a leader identify the vital few is a willingness to tap every viewpoint to understand the breadth and depth of an issue. It may neither look \"decisive\" nor be as quick as a pronouncement, but it produces. Knee-jerk response or jumping to conclusions based on past victory is not judgment. A wise leader collects information and selects the critical few or the key priorities based on organizational and environmental realities. Just as individual needs shift as a person ages or when a crises erupts, leader's can recognize the six organizational stages (Table II).The traditional entrepreneur or the Horatio Alger legacy in the USA address the birth and rapid growth business cycle. The fact that so many new businesses fail can be attributed to the failure to see the need for change as the organization situation changes (Tannenbaum and Schmidt, 1973; Lippitt and Schmidt, 1967; Lippitt, 2002).The founder relies on what has been done to create and grow the business and is reluctant to shift gears. As staff increases, confusion spreads. There is a need for clearer structure and roles to clarify expectations. The organizational systems that are needed to attain excellence can also be viewed as violating the entrepreneurial spirit's reliance on initiative and risk taking.There is another familiar and difficult transition in the organizational life cycle and that is at the culmination of the mature phase. At this juncture the brand is well established, key talent is on board, and the organization has a strong track record. This may seem like the time to sit back and relax with the rewards of hard work. However, one cannot become too comfortable or the \"tried and true\" stifles initiative. The ability to respond to competition and the firm will suffer and vitality saps.Bureaucracy becomes entrenched into the way we have always done things and the downward spiral gains momentum. This organization stuck in the mature phase frequently tries an acquisition or is acquired in an attempt to re-invigorate itself.Yet, moving forward from the mature stage can be done. IBM was able to re-invigorate itself after it stalled in the mature cycle by re-positioning itself around services. Yet, many firms get to maturity and lose their momentum and their profitability by not re-examining their business assumptions and losing sight of the business cycle.\nSix life cycle stages at once: Before the technology revolution and global competition, a leader could focus on one organizational life cycle or one priority at a time. In the information age, that is not possible. All six life cycle stages have to be addressed giving the dominate life cycle stage greater emphasis, support, resources, and attention.Like a juggler who manages multiple objects simultaneously, the leader must keep multiple priorities flowing and shifting as the environment changes. Talented leaders as well as talented jugglers are those that can successfully handle diverse items (plates, bottles or balls) and handle more of them concurrently. Leadership in today's world requires mental agility.Considering and weighing six priorities is not easy. The desire to \"boil\" them down to one or two key ones is tempting. Like all of us, leaders prefer uncomplicated and clear options. However, solutions have to fit into today's complicated environment. Just as one law of physics cannot sufficiently capture the operation of the universe, relying on one priority cannot drive the operation of a successful organization.Leaders who focus on a single priority to form their vision are frequently disappointed when they look for results. Hoopla, hyperbole, and repetition fail the outcomes test. In fact, the success rate of change initiatives ranges from 11 percent to 30 percent. Not great odds, but they can be improved using the priority framework. A concentration on \"streamlining operations and maximizing profit\" may not be persuasive throughout the workforce, even though convinces shareholders, analysts, and long-term strategists.Yet, execution requires \"buy-in\" from all implementers. It can be attained by expanding the message to include the expected benefits from new workforce competencies, opportunities for career advancement, improved customer satisfaction, or keeping jobs at the site. The expanded message would receive a warmer reception, spur execution, and produce results. Priorities also impact everyday decisions. For example, what competencies should be stressed in a staffing search - customer relations savvy or technical experience (Priorities 2 versus 4)? How should customer complaints be handled should front line staff be given discretion to resolve a problem or should supervisory managers execute a standard practice (Priorities 5 versus 3)? How should budget be allocated - to strategic analysis (Priority 6) or six sigma (Priority 4). Of course, sound decisions encompass all of the priorities, but some are chosen to be \"more equal\" than others after weighing the organization's unique features, traditions, and opportunities.Two executives on a team reached an impasse stemming from different assessments of how to introduce a new information system. Divided over whether to implement rapidly in light of glaring glitches with legacy software or gradually rollout the change to permit staff training developed into a heated confrontation, until priorities were explored.\nDifferent business perspectives: What they discovered was the difference in tactics was not based on personality or skill, but rather different business perspectives. One was focusing on improving customer satisfaction, while the other was dealing with retaining key staff and ensuring quality. Both were \"right\" in their position as far as it went. However, when both understood the other's vantage point and how it added value, a mutually satisfying solution emerged.\nStrategy, leadership and organizational size: Leadership and strategy naturally correlate with the executive level. However, assuming strategic leadership must independent of organizational size is ludicrous. The dichotomy between management and leadership or the focus on \"style\" fails to consider how leadership varies by organizational size. With style as a gauge for leadership, a large established horizontally integrated company and the fast growing service firm require the same behaviors. Size is immaterial. The leader does elicit participation, delegate differently, or motivate differently. The definition remains impervious to scope or size. Yet, the fallacy is evident.\"Strategy\" comprises multiple methods, measures, and resource allocations. Any leadership framework that ignores organizational size or complexity fails a reality test.The priority framework explains how organizational size, product complexity, market scope, and financial resources impact leadership actions. Founders of a \"mom and pop\" corner grocery differs substantially from leadership in an international food conglomerate, but the variation in scope does not impact the priorities in use. Consider what is shown in Table III.Priorities cover the same spectrum of issues, despite the differences scope and complexity or the differences in organizational size. Leaders who concentrate on only one facet are like a monochromatic artist. The beauty of painting and leadership comes in how the contrasts are handled - both between colors and between business priorities. There are infinite variations on the path to achieving results or being recognized as an outstanding artist. What we do know is that a paint-by-number approach fails to win accolades just as a leader whose strategy merely imitates a past master.Effective leadership requires a comprehensive understanding of the organizational life cycle and the six key business priorities. It means that when issues are addressed early, the opportunity for successful execution increased. It prevents jumping from crisis to crisis or having a strategy without the commitment to execute it. Leaders who understand their business, their workforce, and their environment, adjust their priorities to make better quality decisions. They improve their odds for achieving meaningful strategic results.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Present the selection of strategy as a new filter for examining leadership effectiveness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper relies on the ability to discern business priorities and the ability to integrate them into a sound strategy. Data collection from 2,000 leaders was collected via assessment to determine how many priorities were in use at one point in time.\nFindings: - The study found that 45 percent of the leaders used one priority to set their goals/visions/actions and 31 percent used two of the six priorities associated with the organizational life cycle framework. Research limitations/implications - This research suggests that the priority framework should be used in conjunction with a competency analysis and style assessment to develop an understanding of leadership effectiveness\nPractical implications: - The practical implications are that leaders can identify the priority mindset that others are using to evaluate the level of their commitment to a strategy. Unlike other frameworks which have to use an inventory or assessment, this framework enables a leader to ask questions to deduce the driving priorities and use it to achieve results.\nOriginality/value: - This research applies to leaders in various size organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Delivering the mail: General Physics (UK) Ltd	[ "Training", "Maintenance", "Operations management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre (HWDC) - a new, state of the art facility, with the capacity to handle millions of mail items per day. There is no other site in the world that at the present time comes close in terms of automated mail sorting.\n1. Operations training - design, development and delivery: The job task analysis for operations and maintenance positions formed the basis for the training programs that GP is developing to support the training needs of Royal Mail operators and maintenance staff.GP provides a training integrator role within the overall project, capturing information on site by accessing raw data from the shop floor or subject matter experts from Royal Mail (operational expertise) and Siemens Dematic (technical expertise).GP provides three technical trainers to train in Arrivals and Despatch operations at the HWDC site. On a day-to-day basis, Royal Mail's nominated manager/on-site coordinator, in consultation with the appropriate GP project manager, coordinates the workload of the GP supplied personnel according to the priorities of Royal Mail's operations training programme. This includes supporting knowledge transfer, coaching and train the trainer programmes where requested.The on-site GP team of technical trainers/consultants and project managers have an extensive background in engineering and training, with considerable experience on mechanical, electrical/electronic, automation and communication systems. Some of the technical trainers have been on site for over two years and others have been involved in this project for almost a year now. GP has ensured the continuity of personnel involved in this project; consequently between the three teams on-site, GP has significantly contributed to the success of the operations training roll out.\n2. Maintenance engineering training - design development and delivery: GP provides experienced training development professionals at the HWDC to help Royal Mail's maintenance department with their own in-house engineering training activities.GP technical training consultants are primarily employed in the design, development and delivery of maintenance training material, working alongside and as an integral part of the engineering training group. Their primary role is the assimilation of technical manual information to incorporate into training material supporting the maintenance of all equipments and support interfaces within the HWDC. Areas focused on include equipment sub-systems, theory of operations, corrective and preventive maintenance, troubleshooting and power distribution.As part of this process, GP technical training consultants are required to gather a large volume of technical information from Siemens Dematic, Royal Mail and equipment suppliers/vendors and process in parallel with each other to produce high quality fit-for-purpose training documentation. To support this, training lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and practical training exercises have been developed and implemented within relatively short timescales to the requirements of the customer. Training material is delivered in association with Royal Mail trainers where applicable.\n3. PCS training - design, development and delivery: PCS is a distributive processing system controlling all automated operations within HWDC, providing the man-machine interface to allow shift managers, supervisors and operators to interact with the automated equipment.GP technical training consultants are primarily employed in the design, development and delivery of PCS training material. Areas focused on include supervisory and management functions that the shop floor management personnel require to control and monitor operations. Further to the operational side of PCS control there is a distinct and separate database management toolset which allows the analysis team to monitor, adjust and control resource allocation to provide dynamic solutions to facility throughput.As part of this process, GP technical training consultants are required to gather a large volume of technical and operational procedural information to process in parallel with each other to produce high quality fit-for-purpose training documentation. To support this training, Instructor Guides, PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans, handouts/workbooks, instructor-led exercises/practical labs, workshops, qualification cards are provided for each identified job position. Additionally a detailed training plan for the ongoing implementation and administration of training is developed and implemented within relatively short timescales to requirements of the customer.In order to achieve the training objectives, GP compared actual system functionality against the latest PCS Job Task Analysis. The information gained allowed for the development of training objectives based on actual tasks and allowed Royal Mail to make robust decisions on the tasks that can be applied to developing job titles. Objectives were then combined to form training modules, which in turn were organised into training courses by job titles. At this point any training synergies between job roles were identified and course profiles adjusted accordingly. Finally the existing PCS overview course was reviewed to ensure the content was appropriate for each course group.Training delivery\nAbout General Physics (UK) Ltd: Founded in 1966, with a world-wide staff of 1300 professionals, including over 140 in the UK, General Physics Corporation (GPC), the parent company of General Physics (UK) Ltd, is one of the largest training providers in the world and has provided training support in over 70 countries. GP has been trading in the UK since 1998.GP believes in acting with integrity, delivering quality services, communicating directly and honestly, developing innovative solutions, striving for continuous improvement and demonstrating teamwork.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To show how training can be delivered effectively in situations where the priorities are constantly changing in response to numerous constraints or developments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - General Physics (GP) adopts a standard ISD methodology for all of our projects that allows a large degree of flexibility throughout the project lifecycle and enables us to react to client requirements quickly and efficiently.\nFindings: - Flexibility has been a key issue in this project, where technical issues and client priorities often forced changes particularly in the early days. Because this training is mission critical to Royal Mail it has been imperative that GP can be reactive to customer demands and creative in terms of outputs. The mixture of on-the-job, classroom based training and coaching combined with regular competency assessment has enabled GP to make continuous improvements throughout the project and proven to be the most effective delivery for this client.\nPractical implications: - GP are becoming perceived as the training provider for bespoke materials handling equipment. Many equipment manufacturers would prefer to concentrate on their core business and therefore seek a quality training partner to support their client. This necessitates a good degree of trust and high level communication skills and ultimately leads to long term partnerships.\nOriginality/value: - This project has been, and still is, a model example of GP's approach to training and performance improvement. Each project we undertake is designed, delivered and managed to meet the client's exact requirements; it is what we do best.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizing ERP research: a knowledge-centric approach	[ "Literature review", "Enterprise resource planning (ERP)", "Intellectual contributions", "MacInnis framework" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are highly complex information systems (IS) that enable achievement of integration of information flow and business processes. These systems support business operations and functions by providing real time data which have been collected, processed, updated, and stored in an integrated database. There are many benefits that companies realize through transforming their old un-integrated systems to ERP systems; including reduction of cycle time, faster processing of information, enablement of e-commerce, better information and knowledge management (KM), improved reporting, (Davenport, 2000; Ross and Vitale, 2000), providing a unified view of business enterprise by combining all functions and departments together with integrated and unified database for data collection, processing, monitoring, and reporting (Al-Mudimigh et al., 2001; Dillon, 1999; Davenport, 2000; Murray and Coffin, 2001), reliable information access (Murray and Coffin, 2001), avoidance of data and operation redundancy, cost reduction (Mandal and Gunasekaran, 2003; Wu and Wang, 2007) through improved control by enterprise-wide analysis of organizational decisions, easy adaptability to changes in business processes, improvement in scalability and maintenance, global outreach via extended modules such as customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM), and e-business (Hossain et al., 2002).\n2. Literature review: In this section, we focus on previous literature review papers. Many researchers attempted to organize the intellectual contributions of ERP research. An early such attempt is that of Esteves and Pastor (2001), who provided an annotated bibliography of ERP publications in the main IS journals and conferences during the period (1997-2000). They surveyed and categorized 189 papers (including only 21 journal articles) based on the ERP lifecycle phases. This early attempt of classification has the drawback of being restricted to only IS journals and it covered only a short three-year period and a limited number of journal articles.\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Analysis and discussion: 4.1 Overall research findings\n5. Conclusions, limitation, and future directions: ERP systems are so far the most comprehensive business ISs that have come into existence, and consequently are the most researched type of enterprise ISs. This paper attempts to classify ERP intellectual contributions using MacInnis framework that was originally developed to classify conceptual contributions in marketing. The framework provides four generic types of conceptual contributions, each of which has two specific sub-types. Using MacInnis framework provides a systematic and knowledge-centric approach to classifying ERP intellectual contributions. The analysis highlighted ERP themes that are well researched, and identified themes that received little attention from researchers. Specifically (Figure 2):\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into enterprise resource planning (ERP) research by framing ERP intellectual contributions using a knowledge-centric taxonomy that was originally proposed as an organizing framework for classifying conceptual contributions in marketing. Thus the paper provides a better understanding of existing gaps and future opportunities in ERP research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using MacInnis framework, the authors classified a sample of 300 ERP articles published during the period 2000-2014 into a topology of four generic contributions types and eight sub-types.\nFindings: The findings indicate that whereas the explicating type received the most attention by researches, the debating type received the least. It also seems that there is a temporal dimension to the different types of conceptual contributions. Identification of usefulness of the ERP systems to business was not addressed as would have been predicted by the build-evaluate lens of March and Smith framework.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation of this research is that only used articles from scholarly journals, and did not include conference proceedings, books, and other outlets. Another limitation is that the search criteria was title-based, which may have missed some relevant papers. Research implications include highlighting the importance of a knowledge-centric view of ERP research, and practical implications include the call for robust measurement criteria for ERP benefits and rigorous ERP comparison schemes.\nOriginality/value: The main contribution is providing an alternative approach to framing the ERP intellectual contributions. The proposed taxonomy revealed major areas of focus and opportunities for future ERP research emphasis. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first instantiation of MacInnis framework into ERP research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Colleagues turn counsellors in BBC's pioneering program: CareerLink Plus supports employees threatened with redundancy	[ "Redundancy", "Career guidance", "Training", "Human resource management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: When the BBC announced the first round of 2,000 redundancies in late 2004, it decided to train a large number of its own employees - both within the HR department and outside it - to support their own colleagues during the period of upheaval.\nThe training in detail: One-to-one career coaching was the most crucial part of the new BBC CareerLink Plus service. CCS designed skills-based training with a focus on practicing and receiving feedback using the most relevant career-development tools.The training concentrated on helping people to:* manage the expectations of BBC employees;* take them through a process of exploring, clarifying and visioning appropriate actions;* manage time (limited to two sessions);* become \"active\" listeners; and* respond non-judgmentally.The training also sought to: develop confidence to adapt and apply the tools; enable people to see what kind of support to give; keep their own issues away from the coaching, so they would not give avoid inappropriate advice; and commit to offering an ethical service, characterized by strict confidentiality.The initial training took two days, covering the essential tools and skills. A half-day training session followed, several weeks after the core training, to review case experience, reinforce good practice and continue the learning.The methods of learning used included:* preparation by participants of self-assessment exercises;* demonstration by tutors of skills and ways to use exercises;* practice of skills and exercises by participants;* experience of being a career coach and a client (to increase empathy); and* feedback on the use of skills.CCS trained the BBC staff using a tried-and-tested five-stage framework of career coaching, together with selected self-assessment exercises to be used in consecutive stages:1. Contracting: managing expectations.2. Exploring:* building rapport through a tool named \"My world as it is now\";* drawing out a person's motivations, through the occupational interests explorer tool; and* identifying career drivers through a tool named career anchors.1. Clarifying:* using a summary chart, which pulls together a person's key assets; and* helping the person to specify what is wanted and suitable in a job, through a tool named job satisfiers.1. Visioning: brainstorming to identify work options.2. Action:* identifying resources and gaps for achieving objectives; and* setting objectives and action planning.For optimum learning, CCS wanted an even number of participants, which meant that last-minute replacements were often required. This was achieved on every single occasion, because of high demand and waiting lists for the training.The participants who completed the two and a half days' training and became BBC career coaches had access to ongoing support from CCS and through working alongside colleagues. These \"shared learning groups\" provided a place where participants could discuss current challenges with clients, learn from each others' experiences and gain energy for this demanding work.\nFeedback on the program: Participants found the course valuable both personally and professionally.\"All I have learned from the training has been invaluable. I have applied it so I am more useful to clients, and the insights have enabled me to make significant progress in my own career\", one training participant said.Clients of the new BBC's CareerLink Plus service also gained significantly. One commented: \"My hour's counseling session was unique. It is not often you are enthralled by careers advisers and leave feeling eager and refreshed, but I did. I am now on my career campaign and look forward to achieving my goals.\"The learning transfer was maximized by giving participants the opportunity to practice and give and receive feedback in shared learning groups, with follow-up coaching. The training enabled staff to develop new career-relevant skills while building confidence in their abilities and use their knowledge of the broadcasting industry to help their colleagues.BBC staff leaving the organization gained more clarity about their future, skills to market themselves for work as well as increased morale and motivation.\nNote: Rob Nathan is managing director, trainer and founder of CCS.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This article describes how, when the BBC announced a round of 2,000 redundancies in late 2004, it decided to train a large number of its own employees - both within the HR department and outside it - to support their own colleagues during the period of upheaval.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Details the author's experiences as he trained BBC managers how to guide employees through the process of redundancy and finding new jobs.\nFindings: - Reveals that, by bringing career support in-house, as opposed to using external outplacement, the BBC devised a cost-effective solution that delivered considerable return on investment and helped to preserve the reputation of the organization at a time of difficulty.\nPractical implications: - Demonstrates that, by employing outside consultants to train BBC employees to become internal career coaches to work with people leaving the organization, it used the wide array of talent available within the corporation.\nOriginality/value: - Describes an unusual method of boosting HR resources when an organization makes a large number of people redundant.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Effect of precipitating events on information system adoption and use behaviour	[ "Information technology", "Adoption", "Propensity to act", "Intention", "UTAUT", "Precipitating event" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Information technology is considered a common denominator in the growth and the competitive stance of today's organisations (Alshawi et al., 2003). However, the issue of information system (IS) adoption and usage has matured into a long-standing research question (Venkatesh et al., 2007). Researchers illustrated the adoption of IS as an organisational decision in order to acquire a technology and make it available to users (Mantzana et al., 2007). However, other finding considers IT adoption as a traditional research stream (Chuang et al., 2009). Numerous models have been constructed in an effort to explain and predict IS adoption behaviour(s), especially in individuals, via the effect of personal, technological, and environmental factors. As a result, many researchers proposed and tested quite a variety of these IS adoption models in order to understand and measure the individual and organisational intention towards IS adoption (Tornatzky and Fleischer, 1990; Thong, 1999; Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981; Ebrahim and Irani, 2005; Kamal, 2006; Kannabiran, 2012; Khalifa and Ning Shen, 2008; Ramdani et al., 2009). Despite significant progress in confirming the salient determinants contributing to IS adoption and use, one confounding issue that most IS researchers stumble upon is the fact that most of these models are unable to measure the effect of environmental or organisational limits, unforeseen events, and the time or the ability inhibiting the act from intention to use and the use of IS (e.g. Chan et al., 2010; Venkatesh et al., 2008). One of the most recent models that were developed to predict technology acceptance is the Unified Theory of Acceptance (UTAUT) model. Although the UTAUT model proves to be a robust model, there are some concerns vis-a-vis this theory that were brought up by certain IS researchers. One of the concerns pointed out is that the behaviour intention possesses a weak predictive and explanatory ability within the context of an individual volitional control, and also with uncertain and unforeseen events between the time the intention to use is formed, and the use behaviour is performed, which is referred to as the \"intention-use behaviour gap\" (Moghavvemi and Mohd Salleh, 2011). Many IS adoption studies attempted to improve these IS adoption models by integrating new factors in order to better explain the IS adoption behaviours (Leach et al., 1994; Compeau and Hinggins, 1995; Venkatesh et al., 2003; Taylor and Todd, 1995). However, most of these models are criticised as being fragmented and not cohesive (Straub, 2009).\n2. Background of the study: 2.1 The entrepreneurship literature\n3. Research framework and hypotheses development: Figure 1 presents the conceptual research framework of the IS adoption behaviour by entrepreneurs, within which the proposed model is formulated based on the UTAUT model (Venkatesh et al., 2003), with some aspect of entrepreneurship literature (Krueger and Brazeal, 1994).\n4. Research method: 4.1 Research setting and participants\n5. Results: 5.1 Measurement model\n6. Discussion: The objective of this study is to develop and perform an initial test of a theoretical model of the behavioural intention towards IS innovation by entrepreneurs, with the inclusion of the propensity to act and precipitating events to the model. The model is successful in explaining the effect of the propensity to act, performance expectancy, social influence, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions on behavioural intention and use behaviour, and the moderating effect of individual characteristics (i.e. gender, age, and experience with IS) on the relationship between the determinants of intention and use. As theorised, the performance expectancy and the propensity to act were significant predictors of behavioural intention, but effort expectancy and social influence were insignificant. The reason why effort expectancy was insignificant might be due to the fact that entrepreneurs are willing to invest their time to learn IS innovation if they perceive it as useful and beneficial. Another possible explanation might be due to the unique perception of entrepreneurs, who see themselves as primarily responsible for ideas and overviews. They may prefer to employ IT experts, rather than expend effort in mastering IT innovations themselves. Also, the study found that entrepreneurs have a high propensity to act in using IS innovation, thus making them attempt to acquire the capability to use IS. On the other hand, the propensity to act was the strongest determinant of behavioural intention. The result indicates that entrepreneurs may identify and internalise the usefulness and benefit of adopting IS innovation, and thus, they act strongly to the use of IS innovation (Krueger et al., 2000; Krueger and Brazeal, 1994).\n7. Conclusion, limitations, and future research: The findings of this study suggest that performance expectancy and the propensity to act are the determinants of behavioural intention to adopt and use IS innovation by entrepreneurs. These findings clarify the distinct and important roles these two factors play as mechanisms for enhancing behavioural intention towards IS innovation by entrepreneurs. It also suggests that entrepreneurs, with higher level of performance expectancy and the propensity to act, are prone to higher intentions to adopt IS innovation. In this context, these factors are influenced by gender, age, and experience with IS.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: There were numerous models that were developed with the explicit purpose of predicting the information system (IS) adoption behaviour. However, these models are criticized for the fact that they do not accurately capture the effect of external factors (unforeseen events) on individual intention, which may inhibit the act of adopting and using IS. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these external factors among entrepreneur(s) and measure how the individual's propensity to use affects the adoption and use of IS innovation. This paper will also attempt to investigate the key determinants of the adoption of IT innovation among entrepreneurs in Klang Valley, Malaysia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the research model, a questionnaire was developed, and data collected from entrepreneurs based in Klang Valley Malaysia. In all, 326 responses were collected, and the research model was applied using the structural equation modelling technique.\nFindings: The performance expectancy and the propensity to act are salient determinants of behavioural intention to adopt and use IS innovation. An individual's pervasive decision to use IS innovations are strong factor that influences individual intention and behaviour prediction. Furthermore, precipitating events were determined to be the underlying factor that influences the behavioural intention for an adopter to actually adopt IS innovation(s). The finding(s) demonstrates that the probability of an intention actually translating into actual usage is higher if the precipitating events occur in their respective businesses.\nResearch limitations/implications: It is important to evaluate this study's results and contributions in light of its limitations. This is an initial test for this model, and it should be subjected to further testing and refinement, particularly with regards to the precipitating events construct. One should be aware that an entrepreneur is exposed to various events and challenges that could involve their personal, family, career, and business life. Certain events related to these factors would impact the entrepreneurs differently, which might require different coping mechanisms. Future research should focus on the precipitating events related to their personal, family, career and business life, and which of these precipitating events are most prominently affecting their decision to actively use IS innovation.\nPractical implications: End-users, particularly, as this study reveals, do prefer new IS innovation, but they may not use it as often. Thus, developers and or inventors of IS innovation need to understand factors that can influence users' decision to adopt and use IS innovation. As for entrepreneurs, understanding factors that influence them to use IS innovation would enhance their sense on the relative importance of using the system. Furthermore, this study provides evidence concerning the role of precipitating events, which encourages or inhibits entrepreneurs towards IS related innovation adoption behaviour. This study makes clear that government policy and environmental factors, as well as work situation significantly influences an entrepreneur's intention in using IS innovation.\nOriginality/value: This study extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Some aspects of the Entrepreneurial Potential Model are incorporated into UTAUT, with the express purposes of capturing external variables. Additionally, the role of the volitional aspect of an entrepreneur's intention towards IS innovation are also taken into due consideration. This model assist the researchers in measuring the effect of pervasive decision and external factors on technology acceptance, and will provide essential information that explains the promotion of IS innovation adoption, usage and hindrance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Functional and dysfunctional conflicts in retailer-supplier relationships	[ "Conflict", "Retailers", "Supplier relations", "France" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Retailer-supplier relationships have long been of keen interest to marketing academics and practitioners, most particularly within the domain of business-to-business markets.Retailer-supplier relationships have been modelled from a purely transactional perspective. Early textbooks, such as Alexander et al. (1967), while alluding to longer-term relationships, treated buying and selling as a short-term transactional phenomenon. More recently, this academic literature has emphasized channel member adoption of long-term orientation and cultivation of trust, factors that can reduce transaction costs and be an important source of competitive advantage (Chung et al., 2006).While the channel literature has focused on the nature of retailer-supplier relationships and the relationship development process (Bradford et al., 2004; Dant and Schul, 1992; Hagel and Brown, 2005), little research has been done on specific conflict management behaviors used by retailers that lead to effective retailer-supplier relationships (Bradford et al., 2004; Koza and Dant, 2007; Ganesan, 1993).The research presented here has developed and tested a framework that examines a key aspect of relationship building - the management of conflict. Prior research on conflict management in retailer-supplier and channel relationships describes how factors such as power, dependency, the depth and breadth of conflict, and relational norms are related to the use of different conflict management approaches and negotiation strategies (Ganesan, 1993). In contrast, we have examined how the use of different conflict management approaches when dealing with different types of conflict can improve retailer-supplier relationships. The focus of this research is the appropriate use of conflict management behavior in response to different conflict types, should improve retailer-supplier relations, particularly relationship quality and the moderating effects of conflict management approaches on the relationships between functional and dysfunctional conflict and relationship quality used by the retailer.Conflict in retailer-supplier relationships\nConceptual framework: A conceptual framework specifying the relationships between the constructs discussed in the previous section is shown in Figure 2. Hypotheses related to the principal contribution of this research, the moderating effects of conflict management approaches, are outlined following the discussion of potential direct effects of the types of conflict and conflict management behaviors.\nPotential effects of conflict type on the quality of the relationship: Dysfunctional conflict\nEffects of conflict management approaches on relationship quality: If conflictive situations are to be resolved in a positive manner, retailers must manage conflict with their suppliers to achieve positive results (Koza and Dant, 2007). As shown in Figure 1, the conflict management approaches examined in this research are collaboration, confrontation, accommodation, and compromise (there is not the avoiding because there is not interaction between retailers and suppliers).Confrontation and accommodation\nManaging different types of conflict: The framework in Figure 2 proposes that conflict management approaches moderate the relationships between dysfunctional and functional conflict and relationship quality. The outcome construct in the framework shown in Figure 2 is relationship quality. There is no consensus on what relationship quality is. Researchers have pointed to the manifestation of several distinct, though related constructs: trust, commitment, conflict, satisfaction, disengagement, willingness to invest, and expectations of continuity (Crosby et al., 1990; Dwyer et al., 1987; Kumar et al., 1995). A useful way for organizing these constructs into a higher order concept of relationship quality is to view relationship quality as consisting of evaluations of the present relationship and future expectations of the relationship. Descriptions of these hypothesized interaction effects are presented below.Managing dysfunctional conflict\nMethod: Research setting and sample\nResults: Descriptive results\nDiscussion: Conflict in retailer-supplier relationships\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present and test a conceptual framework, where relationship quality is: directly affected by both the conflict management approach used and the type of conflict found within the relationship, and enhanced or diminished by conflict management approach's moderating affect on the impact of type of conflict on relationship quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The unit of analysis for this study was purchasing retailers who interact with industrial salespeople. Data used for this research were collected through interview questionnaire surveys aimed at the French retailers association during February 2009. A total of 320 French retailers were sampled to fill out the questionnaire. A total of 131 retailers completed and returned the survey for a response rate of 41 percent. The measures were developed and analyzed using the two-step approach recommended by Gerbing and Anderson with LISREL 8.3.\nFindings: - This study finds that functional conflict positively affects the quality of the retailer-supplier relationship and this effect is amplified when retailers use a collaboration conflict management approach. However, the positive effects of functional conflict are mitigated by retailers engaging in accommodating and compromising approaches. Dysfunctional conflict did not positively or negatively affect the overall relationship quality in this study. Its management determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect on relationship quality.\nResearch limitations/implications: - While the results presented here in general support the basic premises of the research, several limitations must be noted and there are several areas of future research that could be conducted using the current data set. First, an identical instrument could be administered to a sample of suppliers. This change might give some indication of the differences in suppliers' and retailers' perceptions of conflict management strategies and their effects on relationship quality. Another relevant addition to the understanding in the retailer/supplier arena might include the effect of teams instead of individual retailers on manifest conflict and relationship quality.\nOriginality/value: - The survey results provide new insights on how retailers can use conflict management behaviors to cope better with functional and dysfunctional conflict and improve relationship quality with suppliers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Aligning product variety with supply chain and business strategy	[ "Supply chain", "Business performance", "Structural equation modelling", "Product variety" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Globalisation promotes the need to customise products and services according to the target market or country, and provision of product scope is an issue in deciding if globalisation raises marginal variety's profit (Qiu and Zhou, 2013). Deregulation of trade with supporting technologies has promoted global markets, so manufacturers are required to appropriate strategies in order to provide product variety to different markets. In addition, a noticeable movement for manufacturers is to extend the variety of their products to provide more options for customers in today's challenging global markets. Consumers can match their needs and preferences with the product variety provided by manufacturers (Lancaster, 1990). For example, mega-stores such as Tesco and Wal-Mart provide wide product variety in their quest to provide value to consumers, enabling the stores to improve market share and revenue. Some researchers stress the advantages of product variety based on long-tail theory (Anderson, 2006; Zhou and Duan, 2012), that product variety can improve sales, while others criticise high levels of variety provision mainly due to cost increase. Also, an excess of product information and provision can result in selection confusion for customers and lead to forecasting difficulty for manufacturers (Wan et al., 2012). For example, the market share of Aldi keeps growing, focusing on cost leadership with low product variety, while Tesco have lost their market share to an increasing number of low-cost providers. From the operations perspective, an increase in product variety incurs a cost burden due to diseconomies of scale in the supply chain (SC). The emergence of a global SC has detonated the trade-off between provision of product variety and SC performance. Increases in product variety in the global SC incur both production costs and market mediation costs (Randall and Ulrich, 2001). Also, global purchasing and logistic costs increase with product variety provision. High-variety ambitions need to be profitably achieved without severe deterioration of SC performance, especially considering the cost profile.\n2. Research background and development of hypotheses: 2.1 Product variety and SC performance\n3. Research methodology: A questionnaire considering the product variety issues was sent to companies identified as manufacturers, based on their standard industrial classification (SIC) code. The data were collected from two countries with the intention of conducting a cross-examination and comparison. The survey was conducted by post with a package including a covering letter and return stamped envelope for the UK companies. In Korea, in order to obtain an acceptable level of response, e-mail and direct interview surveys were chosen. In total, 212 companies responded to the survey from the UK and 152 from Korea (total =364), yielding an acceptable 18 per cent overall response rate (see Frohlich, 2002; Anseel et al., 2010). As a whole, 84.1 per cent of the participants had positions above assistant manager and sales representative. In total, 59.1 per cent of the firms were small or medium sized and the remaining 40.9 per cent were large firms. Table II presents the industry types of the survey respondents. The demographic analysis of the responses indicated that the participating firms spanned a diverse group of manufacturing industries, which allowed for generalisation of the findings (Gatignon and Xuereb, 1997). Product variety was measured as fundamental, intermediate and peripheral using a five-point scale (1= 1-5, 2= 6-10, 3= 11-15, 4= 16-20, 5= above 20) based on the core product family (MacDuffie et al., 1996). Also, strategies including differentiation, cost leadership, cost efficiency, SC agility and business performance were measured using a five-point Likert scale (1=poor, 5=excellent). Questions of cost leadership, differentiation and business performance compared to the company's competitors were asked.\n4. Results: 4.1 Reliability and validity\n5. Discussion: The study demonstrated the alignment of business strategy between product variety and SC through SEM analysis. The test justifies the appropriate business strategy according to companies' level of product variety and matching SC focus. A high product-variety policy is matched with agile SC as a differentiation strategy, while a low product-variety policy matches lean SC as a cost leadership strategy. High product variety with efficient SC can follow a \"mass customisation\" strategy (e.g. automobile and computer industries such as BMW and Dell) while low product variety with an agile SC can be regarded as a \"hybrid\" strategy (e.g. perishable food and electronic components industries such as Aldi and Intel). Therefore, the survey results support the concept that companies employing differentiation strategies by providing different product variety focus more on SC agility, customer service and relationship, which results in a high margin. Companies employing a cost leadership strategy with low product variety ensure SC efficiency through economy of scale, which leads to cost reduction.\n6. Conclusions: The study investigated the relationships between product variety, SC and business strategies to improve business performance. First, the study demonstrated the importance of strategic alignment between product variety and SC focus, and suggested a theoretical justification for the choice of business strategies through the proposed model. A high level of product variety matches agile SC, while low product variety is aligned with SC cost efficiency. However, the level of product variety improves business performance only through matching business strategies such as cost leadership and differentiation. Therefore, an appropriate business strategy, considering the level of product variety and matching SC strategy, achieves the better business performance. Second, the overall comparison between the two countries found manufacturers in the UK demonstrating higher levels of product variety and differentiation (see Stavrulaki and Davis, 2010) than manufacturers in Korea. Instead, Korea displayed higher cost leadership attributes and cost efficiency than the UK. However, Korea shows better agile SC performance than the UK, which indicates the potential to increase product variety without incurring a significant cost burden.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the strategic alignment between product variety and supply chain (SC) focus through cost leadership or differentiation to improve business performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research investigated product variety-related capabilities and strategies in SCs including level of variety, SC agility, SC cost efficiency, cost leadership, differentiation and business performance, and aimed to justify the theory by testing structural equation modelling using survey data from the UK and South Korea.\nFindings: Differentiation links high product variety and agile SC while cost leadership is aligned with low product variety and SC efficiency. High product variety negatively impacts on cost leadership strategy. Also, product variety should be mediated by cost leadership or differentiation strategy to improve business performance. Companies in South Korea display higher SC agility, cost leadership and cost efficiency than companies in the UK, while the UK companies exhibit a higher level of product variety and differentiation than those in South Korea.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings contribute to theoretical development of variety issues at the alignment of business strategy and SC management according to the level of product variety.\nOriginality/value: The findings can help international companies set up specific variety-related strategies to achieve global competitiveness.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A model of idiosyncratic deal-making and attitudinal outcomes	[ "Human capital", "Social capital", "Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals)", "Leader-member exchange", "I-deals receipt", "I-deals request" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are voluntary, personalized agreements of a nonstandard nature, negotiated between employees and employers regarding terms that benefit each party (Rousseau et al., 2006). I-deals are increasingly used by employers to hire and retain valued individuals (Rousseau, 2005). In turn, these employees report greater organizational commitment (Ng and Feldman, 2010), work engagement (Hornung et al., 2010), and citizenship behavior (Anand et al., 2010). Moreover, research has investigated the predictors of i-deals, including organizations' work structures, employees' personal initiative, and the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) (e.g. Hornung et al., 2010).\nTheory development and hypotheses: Moderators in the i-deals request and receipt relationship: a social exchange and power perspective\nMethod: Sample\nResults: Assessing CMV\nDiscussion: Research in i-deals has primarily focussed on attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of successful i-deal-making, with fewer studies investigating factors contributing to successful i-deal-making. Further, prior research has not explicitly acknowledged that asking for i-deals may not always translate into receiving such i-deals, nor examined contingent factors that enhance employees' success in getting requests fulfilled. Our study addresses this gap by isolating request from receipt, and showing that not all requests are responded to positively; in fact, i-deals request explained as little as 1 percent (developmental i-deals) and as much as 11 percent (financial i-deals) in i-deals receipt. These results raise two significant issues. First, underscoring the complexities in the i-deals negotiation process, the findings show that prior research capturing i-deals that employees \"asked for and successfully negotiated\" may, in fact, provide only a partial picture of i-deal-making. Second, the findings emphasize the need to explore factors that explain why some (but not other) employees receive i-deals. Building on the capital-based perspective and social exchange theory, we examined two explanatory factors relating to human capital and social capital.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the relationship between the request of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) and the receipt of such deals, and investigate the moderating roles of human capital (gender and industry experience) and social capital (leader-member exchange (LMX)) in this relationship. Attitudinal outcomes of i-deals receipt are also examined.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 244 alumni of a Midwestern public university.\nFindings: The positive relationship between i-deals request and receipt was stronger at higher than at lower levels of LMX. Receiving i-deals was related positively to job satisfaction and affective commitment, and negatively to turnover intention.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors provide a nuanced perspective of i-deals by separating employees' request from their receipt of i-deals, and identifying contingent factors that determine whether i-deal requests are successful.\nPractical implications: For employees, cultivating a strong relationship with one's supervisor can yield benefits that extend to i-deals negotiation. Providing i-deals to deserving workers can boost employees' work attitudes.\nOriginality/value: Previous studies have operationalized the i-deals construct as requesting and receiving the deal, thereby excluding the possibility that employees may have requested but did not receive the i-deal. This is one of the first studies to disentangle these two concepts, thereby providing a more balanced and representative view of i-deal-making in organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaborative supply chain network using embedded genetic algorithms	[ "Programming and algorithm theory", "Supply chain management", "Production management", "Corporate strategy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In this ever-changing global market, collaborative and cohesive relationships among the entities in the supply chain network are essential for maintaining the competitiveness of the supply chain network. In addition, customers are always looking for diversified products of high quality, low cost, and short lead-time, etc. This poses challenges to the supply chain network, as every entity in the network needs to react and respond efficiently and effectively. For this reason, an efficient and effective collaborative supply chain network is essential for achieving better network management. All entities are expected to collaborate and coordinate with each other to maintain the responsiveness and performance of the network, and total integration may be required within the supply chain. However, it has been a challenge for entities to develop a \"suitable\" collaborative network for their supply chain in terms of how they efficiently and effectively connect and interact.Genetic algorithms (GA) have been applied to different aspects of supply chain operation and management, such as determining order quantity and inventory shortage level for improving the inventory system (Pourakbar et al., 2007), the bullwhip effect on the supply chain (Lee et al., 1997), optimizing sourcing decisions in the supply chain (Gokce et al., 2002), etc. However, GA application has rarely focused on the collaborative network aspect of a supply chain. Further, the development of a collaborative supply chain network is generally a Non-deterministic Polynominal-time (NP-Hard) problem; as a result of this present research, entities can take advantage of our proposed genetic algorithms approach to develop an efficient and effective collaborative network in a supply chain, i.e. a supply chain network with genetic algorithms embedded (GA-SCN), which is illustrated in this paper by a case study with performance evaluation.This paper is arranged as follows: in Section 2, the literature on collaborative supply chain networks is reviewed. The proposed genetic algorithms approach for the development of a collaborative supply chain network, i.e. GA-SCN, is illustrated through a case study in Section 3, in which the performance results of the proposed GA-SCN are then discussed. The structural analysis of the GA-SCN by network analysis is discussed in Section 4. Finally, a brief conclusion and suggestions for further work are presented in Section 5.\nSupply chain collaborative networks: A supply chain collaborative network refers to an integrated network of entities that associate with each other in a business environment, where the entities can be suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and customers. Many efforts from the academic as well as from the commercial side have been directed towards seeking ways to increase the competitiveness of the supply chain network as a whole, rather than simply reducing the costs or increasing the profits of the network (Romano and Vinelli, 2001).In a supply chain network, entities function in different ways but all need to coordinate and collaborate with each other in order to maintain the unity of the supply chain. Better collaboration among entities in the supply chain network has a significant positive result on the performance of the supply chain network. Business units that exchange resources with other units tend to produce a higher number of innovative products (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998); strong ties between business units facilitate the transfer of complex knowledge (Hansen, 1999); and business unit performance can be positively affected by the business unit leader's network of ties with the dominant coalition of people who run the overall firm (Mehra et al., 2002).An entity in the supply chain network can be regarded as a single business operating unit, and according to the Graphs and Network Theory (Gross and Yellen, 2004), the collaborative network (CN) for the degree of relationship or interaction between entities in the supply chain network can then be constructed and represented as: Collaborative Network (CN)=(V, E), where V is the vertex set of the collaborative network, which indicates all the entities in the supply chain network; E is the edge set of the collaborative network, which indicates all the asymmetric or symmetric relationships or interactions of entities in the supply chain network; and V>1 and E>=1 so that a collaborative network can exist. The data set V can simply be the status of an individual entity in the supply chain network, while the data set E, for the entities' relationship, can be collected and coded in the form of a survey or investigation, and the data such as the ways and number of transactions between entities, the degree of resources sharing, etc. can be collected. Based on the collected and coded data, a network diagram can then be simulated and constructed to represent the relationships and interactions of the supply chain network, such as the level of integration, strength of collaboration, occurrence of subgroups, centrality of the supply chain, etc. Examples of some simple collaborative network diagrams of supply chain networks are shown in Figure 1.In a collaborative supply chain network, performance measurement is essential for management. Performance measurement is the stage of monitoring and evaluation. It is also a specific representation of a capacity, process, or outcome deemed relevant to the assessment of performance (Kittelson and Associates, 2003). Neely et al. (1995) also described performance measurement as a process of quantifying both the efficiency and effectiveness of actions. An appropriate performance measurement can help to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a supply chain (Beamont, 1996), and the analysis of the performance can help the enterprise to further improve the supply chain management of the network (Shah and Singh, 2001). In addition, a supply chain performance measurement can also help to monitor performance, enhance entities' motivation, improve collaboration, solve management problems, provide necessary information and feedback, etc. (Beamont, 1999; Brewer and Speh, 2000; Bullinger et al., 2002; Gunasekaran et al., 2004; Holmberg, 2000; Morash, 2001; Otto and Kotzab, 2003; Tan et al., 2002). A performance measurement can help to quantitatively measure the performance of the network. A credible performance measurement is helpful in evaluating the effectiveness of the supply chain network for the purpose of effecting improvement (Beamont, 1996; Shah and Singh, 2001). With a good performance measurement, entities can easily understand the current performance status of the supply chain network in order to effectively identify the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of the supply chain in which they are participating, so that the competitive advantage can be sustained. The importance of a suitable collaborative network and the importance of performance measurement in a supply chain network are obvious. However, it has been a challenge to establish a \"suitable\" collaborative network for the supply chain network in terms of how entities efficiently and effectively connect and interact. Therefore, a collaborative supply chain network using embedded genetic algorithms (GA-SCN) is proposed to enable a \"suitable\" collaborative supply chain network to develop.\nCollaborative supply chain network with genetic algorithms embedded (GA-SCN)-case study: A case study is carried out to use the genetic algorithms approach to develop an efficient and effective collaborative supply chain network, i.e. supply chain network with genetic algorithms embedded (GA-SCN).The case study examines a supply chain network of a Hong Kong lamp manufacturing company involving ten entities, whose roles range from suppliers, purchasers, designers and manufacturers, to sales, and distributors. The lamp manufacturing company has manufactured miniature and subminiature lamps for over 40 years; its main product can be classified by the shape and technology of the light bulbs produced. The manufacturer produces three different shapes of bulbs: pear-shaped, round, and conical. The basic raw materials used are boron lead wire, glass rods, glass tubing, electrical wiring, and caps. The manufacturer produces more than 100 types of products according to different customer specifications such as lamp power and safety standards. The products include bicycle lamps, energy-saving lamps, radio panel lamps, toy lamps, pen torch lamps, flashing lamps, and pre-focusing radio panel lamps among others.Since the invention of the incandescent lamp by Edison, many improvements have been made in the material and manufacturing processes. In the manufacturing of a lamp, a glass tube is preheated and blown to form a glass bulb. A glass bead, a filament, and a lead wire are joined to form a core. Then, an aluminum sheet is drawn out to form a base. Finally, the glass bulb, the core, and the base are assembled to form a light bulb.The ten entities of the supply chain network are involved in the daily operation and manufacturing processes of the lamp manufacturing company. The existing collaborative supply chain network of the ten entities and some of their interactions in the manufacturing processes are shown in Figures 2 and 3, respectively.In the existing collaborative supply chain network, customer satisfaction is low, with internal complaints mainly arising from high operating costs and external complaints mainly arising from the long processing time. In order to increase customer satisfaction and the competitiveness of the supply chain network, the network is restructured; however, the development of a collaborative supply chain network is generally a Non-deterministic Polynominal-time (NP-Hard) problem, thus it is proposed to use a genetic algorithms approach for the development of the collaborative supply chain network, i.e. a supply chain network with genetic algorithms embedded (GA-SCN). With the GA-SCN, the collaborative supply chain network is an efficient and effective network in terms of cutting costs and shortening processing times.Genetic algorithms\nCentrality network analysis: Centrality network analysis is widely used in the research domains of the humanities and social science to determine the degree of centrality of a network. Researchers have proved that the less centralized a social working network around one or few individuals, the greater the equivalent work load among individuals (Putnam, 1993; Mehra et al., 2001). Therefore, by introducing the centrality network analysis to analyze the intrinsic structure of GA-SCN, the degree of centrality of the proposed GA-SCN can then be determined. The degree of entities' equivalence in the work load can then be implied, where the less the degree of centrality, the greater the equivalence in the work load weighting among entities.A supply chain network comprises many business operating units as entities. Centrality network analysis is then the analysis of any particular entity or entities in the data set V as more central than others. A centrality index c can be used to describe the centrality of the entity in the data set of the network, such that the centrality of an individual entity can be represented as c=SE>1. The centrality of the collaborative network can then be determined by analyzing the distribution of the degree of centrality index c of the data set V among the entities.In conducting the centrality network analysis for the GA-SCN in the case study, it is assumed that some underlying systems of relationships exist within the network, and the results of analysis are shown in Table III.After carrying out the centrality network analysis using UCINET (Borgatti et al., 1999) to analyze the distribution of the degree of centrality index c of the data set V among entities, the result as depicted in Table III shows that the degrees of centrality fall within a small range of 14.29 to 19.05, which means the interaction of entities is not centralized to particular entities in the network. This implies that the work loads are equally distributed among entities, and the phenomenon of bottlenecking may not appear in the GA-SCN.\nConclusion and further work: In this study, a genetic algorithms approach is proposed to develop a collaborative supply chain network, i.e. GA-SCN, so as to achieve better collaboration and better collaborative performance. The development of GA-SCN is illustrated through a case study of a Hong Kong manufacturing company involving ten entities, and the results of the case study show that the genetic algorithms approach is suitable for developing an efficient and effective supply chain network in terms of shortening the processing time and reducing the operating time in the network. It can thus benefit the company by increasing its competitiveness. In addition, centrality network analysis is used to measure the intrinsic structure of the GA-SCN, and the results show that the collaborative supply chain network developed by genetic algorithms is more equivalent in the workload among entities, therefore bottlenecking may not appear. Apart from the satisfactory statistical performance results of GA-SCN, the case study company also achieved some performance improvement, such as enhancing information sharing, standardizing and simplifying the information and document flow, streamlining the business operations, improving customer services, reinforcing cost control, etc. Therefore, GA-SCN can benefit the company in its general operations.As for further development, since genetic algorithms are mainly used for solving stationary problems and may not be capable of handling dynamic changes, a dynamic genetic algorithms approach for the development of collaborative networks may further be studied and proposed. In addition, there are other network analysis methods, such as balance, betweenness, blocks, cliques, closeness, density, etc. which can be used for further analysis of the network structure of GA-SCN.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to propose a genetic algorithms approach to develop a collaborative supply chain network, i.e. a supply chain network with genetic algorithms embedded (GA-SCN), so as to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a supply chain network.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The methodologies of the GA-SCN are illustrated through a case study of a supply chain network of a Hong Kong lamp manufacturing company involving 10 entities, whose roles range from suppliers, purchasers, designers and manufacturers, to sales and distributors. A GA-SCN is developed according to the information provided by the company, the performance results in the case study are discussed, and the concepts of network analysis are then introduced to analyze the equivalence structure of the developed GA-SCN.\nFindings: - The genetic algorithms approach is a suitable approach for developing an efficient and effective supply chain network in terms of shortening the processing time and reducing operating time in the network: the processing time and operating cost are reduced by around 45 percent and 35 percent per order, respectively, in the case study.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is the first known study to apply genetic algorithms for the development of a collaborative supply chain network to increase the competitiveness of a supply chain.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What makes employees engaged with their work? The role of self-efficacy and employee's perceptions of social context over time	[ "Work engagement", "Self-efficacy", "Perceptions of social context", "Two-wave study" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The need for an inspired and motivated workforce able to go \"the extra mile\" is an issue of increasing importance in contemporary organizations (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). For this reason, the study of work engagement (and its antecedents) has become extremely relevant, among both researchers and practitioners. Work engagement refers to a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterizing employees who work hard and persist despite difficulties, are strongly involved in what they do and feel happily absorbed in their work (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2010).\nMethod: Participants and procedures\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: Our findings confirmed the hypothesized relationships among the study variables. First of all, a significant relationship was found between self-efficacy and work engagement even three years later. This result corroborates previous findings that considered a shorter period of time (Salanova et al., 2010, 2011) supporting the notion that self-efficacy \"fuels work engagement\" (Schaufeli and Salanova, 2008, p. 386) and its beneficial effect seems long-lasting. Consistent with SCT (Bandura, 2012), self-efficacy activates a motivational process that leads people to approach their job with effort and persistence, also in the face of obstacles and difficulties, and consequently, to be more engaged with their work (Llorens et al., 2007; Salanova et al., 2010, 2011).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Work engagement represents an important aspect of employee well-being and performance and has been related to both job and personal resources. The purpose of this paper, based on Social Cognitive Theory, is to emphasize the proactive role of self-efficacy which is hypothesized to predict work engagement, not only directly, but also indirectly through positive changes in employee's perceptions of social context (PoSC); namely, perceptions of one's immediate supervisor, colleagues and top management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A sample of 741 employees of a communication service company completed two questionnaires, with a time interval of three years. Structural equation modeling was performed in order to test the hypothesized model.\nFindings: Results revealed that, as expected: first, initial self-efficacy predicts work engagement three years later; and second, positive changes in employee's perceptions of the social work context across the three year period, mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement.\nResearch limitations/implications: Results relied only upon self-report data. Moreover, each variable was only measured at the time in which it was hypothesized by the conceptual model.\nPractical implications: The significant role of self-efficacy as a direct and indirect predictor of work engagement suggests the development of training programs centered on the main sources of self-efficacy, specifically focussed on the social work domain.\nOriginality/value: This research provides evidence of the substantial contribution of self-efficacy to work engagement over time. Moreover, the results also support the beneficial effects of self-efficacy through its influence on the improvements in the individuals' perceptions of their social context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A road for achieving an international measure and understanding on leaders' behaviors	[ "Leaders", "Behaviour", "Transformational leadership", "United States of America", "Spain", "Costa Rica" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nI. Introduction and literature review: There have been a number of studies conducted in the USA on behavioral factors associated with transformational leadership. These studies have attempted to identify the behaviors that comprise what Burns (1978) described as \"Transforming Leadership\". It is important to emphasize that this paper will focus on transformational leadership theory as opposed to strategic leadership theory. Transformational leadership refers to leaders at any level in the organization, whereas strategic leadership refers only to leaders at the top level in the organization (Vera and Crossan (2004)). Transformational leadership has been defined as influencing followers by \"broadening and elevating followers' goals and providing them with confidence to perform beyond the expectations specified in the implicit or explicit exchange agreement\" (Dvir et al. (2002)). Transformational leadership adopts a symbolic emphasis on commitment to a team vision, emotional engagement, and fulfillment of higher-order needs such as meaningful professional impact or desires to engage in breakthrough achievements (Pearce (2004)). However, despite these theoretical definitions, there have been few attempts in the leadership theory to measure leader behavior using structural equation modeling. Even less is the number of empirical studies trying to achieve a global measure for leader behavior. One of the goals of the present study is to address this important yet relatively unstudied issue.The earliest attempts to identify factors that measured leader behaviors were made by Bass and his associates (Bass, 1985, 1988, 1994); Bass and Yammarino (1990). They were also concerned with the cross-cultural issues in leadership. They went on to develop a questionnaire (called the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire or MLQ) that purported to measure and define transformational leadership (Avolio et al. (1999)). In their studies Bass and his associates found four factors related to transformational leadership. They were: Idealized Influence - related to trust and faith in the leader (Burke et al. (2007)); Individualized Consideration - related to the personal attention the leader gives an individual; Intellectual Stimulation - related to engendering creativity and innovation within followers (Wu et al. (2008)); and Inspirational Leadership - related to creating vision. Later, Bass and Yammarino (1990), in a study of military officers, changed Idealized Influence to Charisma (Naidoo and Lord (2008), Murphy and Ensher (2008)). MLQ is used by several literatures that attempt to measure leader behavior, and further modifications have been suggested (Bruch and Walter (2007)).Kouzes and Posner (1993) factor analyzed behaviorally based statements based on leaders' experiences of their performance. They found five factors: Challenging the Process - related to experimenting and taking risks; Inspiring a Shared Vision - related to creating a vision and enlisting support of it; Enabling Others to Act - related to fostering collaboration among others; Modeling the Way - related to setting an example; and Encouraging the Heart - related to recognizing performance of others.Similarly, Kent et al. (2001), using SPSS, factor analyzed behavioral descriptions of leaders' performance and developed four factors. A reanalysis of the data using LISREL confirmed the original four factors plus a fifth factor (Kent (2005)). These factors were: Visualizing Greatness - which is related to creating an inspiring vision; Empowering the \"We\" - which is related to strengthening, and identifying with, a unit (such as a team or an organization); Communicating for Meaning - which describes deep level transactions between follower and leader; Managing One's Self - pertaining to the leader's skill at self-direction and self-control; and Care and Recognition - which is related to giving attention to followers' effort and success.There appears to be, at least, some overlap among the four to five factors described by each of these authors. Bass' \"Charisma\" and Kent's \"Communicating for Meaning\" appear to be the only factors that do not have similar counterparts in either of the other studies. Table I displays those factors based on their similarities to factors in the other studies. This paper will use the factors validated by Kent (2005) described in the following paragraphs.Visualizing Greatness (VG) - which is related to creating an inspiring vision. Transformational leaders state future goals, develop plans to achieve those goals, and innovate, even when their organization is generally successful (Eagly and Carli (2003)). As stated by Hofmann and Jones (2005), transformational leaders communicate a clear vision while inspiring commitment to that vision.Empowering the \"We\" (WE) - which is related to strengthening, and identifying with, a unit (such as a team or an organization). When leaders show individualized consideration, they focus on developing followers' capabilities, provide information and resources, and give followers discretion to act (Avolio et al. (1999)). Today's employees desire more from work than just a salary; they want to make a meaningful impact (Lawler and Finegold (2000)), which is increasingly achieved through team-based knowledge work and shared leadership (Pearce (2004)).Communicating for Meaning (CM) - which describes deep level transactions between follower and leader. Amabile et al. (2004) used items to measure communicating for meaning from the Managerial Practices Survey developed by Yukl (2002). In this survey, they measure how leaders disseminate relevant information to people who need it to do their work, providing written materials and documents, and answering requests for technical information. Also, they consider how leaders motivate and inspire by using influence techniques that appeal to emotion or logic to generate enthusiasm for the work, commitment to task objectives, and compliance with requests for cooperation, assistance, support, or resources, and setting an example of appropriate behavior. Literature and practice should give attention to the processes of communicating (Simpson (2007)).Managing Oneself (MOS) - pertaining to the leader's skill at self-direction and self-control. Leaders must set an example through their own behavior (Dansey-Smith (2004)). They should have a sense of self-determination and self-confidence. They should keep their own level of energy up high and have a \"can do\" attitude. They must be a model of persistence and perseverance for their followers.Care and Recognition (CR) - which is related to giving attention to followers' effort and success (Damen et al. (2008)). When leaders practice individualized consideration, they pay attention to their followers' needs and wants, show support and empathy, and encourage personal development and expression (Shin and Zhou (2003)), which encourages followers to be interested in and focus on their tasks. Some researchers know this construct as \"relationship-oriented behaviors\" that focus on the socioemotional: showing consideration for subordinates' feelings, acting friendly and personally supportive to them, and being concerned for their welfare (Amabile et al., 2004).Cross-cultural research would suggest that different cultural entities would probably have different views regarding what effective leadership entails and would likely support different types of behaviors from leaders within those cultures (Fukushige and Spicer (2008); Wasti et al. (2007)). The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program tested this hypothesis in 62 cultures (Den Hartog et al. (1999)) and it is considered the primary example of the large research endeavors on cross-cultural issues in leadership (Dickson et al. (2003)). This massive study, which involved 170 researchers, attempted to investigate the relationships between societal cultures, organizational cultures, and leadership. While they found many culturally specific leadership behaviors (behaviors which facilitated effective leadership in one culture but not in others) their primary finding was that behaviors normally associated with transformational behavior are strongly and universally endorsed across cultures. Javidan and Carl (2004) concluded that despite major cultural differences between Canadian and Iranian executives, there are core similarities in leaders' profiles that may be due to universal intrinsic human desire for morality, autonomy and achievement. On the other hand, Dorfman et al. (1997) only found partial support for universality of leadership behaviors. Dickson et al. (2003) present a complete literature review on the advances in cross-cultural research on leadership. Littrell and Valentin (2004) found different leader behaviors in a cross-cultural exploratory research involving samples from Romania, Germany and UK. The researchers expect to clear the discrepancies found earlier about whether or not there could be a universal measure for transformational leader behaviors.In this paper, the objectives are:* to validate a measurement model for leader behavior using data from American, Costa Rican and Spanish managers;* to identify commonalities in measuring leadership behaviors in the three countries in order to achieve an international measure; and* to compare the actual leader behaviors among the three different countries.The contribution of this study is to further extend the current research on leader behavior measures and to understand differences in measuring leader behavior in different countries and cultures. Results are presented from an international study in the USA, Spain and Costa Rica.\nII. Research questions: The researchers propose the following research questions:1. Are there differences in the measurement of leader behavior in the three countries under study (USA, Spain and Costa Rica)?2. Do followers from different countries perceive their leaders' behaviors different?\nIII. Research methods: The measurement models were tested in each of the countries separately to be absolutely sure the same variables were been measured. Reliability and validity was tested in each country.Large-scale survey\nIV. Results: Results of this study include the leader behavior measurement model for each country and a comparison among the three countries in leader behavior.Leader behavior measurement model for USA\nV. Discussion of results and managerial implications: International management and relations are more important in current business markets. Globalization, the new information technology era and many more managerial approaches that make the world flat (Friedman (2005)), are creating the need for understanding different leader behaviors in an international context. This research aimed to study if there are differences in the measurement models for leader behavior among the USA, Spain and Costa Rica. While small differences were found in the three measurement models, the researchers discovered more commonalities. Therefore, an international measurement model for leader behavior was achieved. This is an important finding. Current researchers are using the same instruments in different countries, but this should be done cautiously. International studies must make sure that what they are measuring in one country is applicable to another country. This research found that when measuring leader behavior, researchers could use a standardized, universal instrument.It should be pointed out that the primary difference between the individual country findings and the international measurement model is the absence of the factor \"Managing One's Self\" from the international model. Therefore, the international model contains four behavioral factors while the original model contained five factors. This factor was dropped primarily because it did not hold up in the data from Spain. \"Managing One's Self\" does not seem to be a necessary part of Spanish leadership. Apparently, a Spanish leader concerns himself or herself with the team as a unit, has a vision, communicates effectively, and cares about and recognizes people's efforts. However, it appears that managing or controlling one's self is not as important among Spanish leaders. It may be that leaders who control themselves may be viewed with suspicion within Spanish cultures. They may be seen as hiding something; they may not be deemed spontaneous enough to be a good leader. It may be that there is a different level of \"appropriate\" emotionality among Spanish leaders vs the US and Costa Rican leaders. It is suggested that the research in Spain be replicated to assess the findings of this study regarding the data from Spain.Further, the individual country data from Costa Rica and the USA measurement models are similar enough that one might conclude that we are seeing an American vs European difference (as opposed to a Costa Rica vs. Spain difference, for example) in leadership behavior measurements. Further research must be done to look at leadership behaviors in other European and American (North, South, and Central) countries.Another aspect of the data that cannot be ignored is the higher values of the scores from US leaders vs the scores from leaders of the other countries. There must be some explanation for these differences. It may be that subordinates of leaders in the US simply rate their leaders with greater \"leniency\". Another explanation may be that US leaders are more concerned with leadership development and, therefore, have developed these behaviors to a greater extent than their Costa Rican and Spanish counterparts. Additionally, individual leadership may be more sought after by US leaders than leaders from other countries. For example, in Spanish-speaking countries, collective work is more promoted than individual leadership. We can see this trend in the number of entrepreneurial individuals in the USA vs Spain or Costa Rica. This trend may impact the level of individual leadership (hence the difference in the absolute value levels between US leaders and the other leaders in this study).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This research aims to report the findings of an exploratory survey administered in the USA, Spain and Costa Rica on leaders' behavior. The purpose of the survey is to understand any differences in transformational leader behavior in three different countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research used a survey instrument applied to USA (113 responses, 35.5 percent response rate), Spain (168 responses, 66 percent response rate) and Costa Rica (100 responses, 40.0 percent response rate). The researchers used different statistical analyses such as structural equation modeling (using AMOS), and ANOVA.\nFindings: - The findings suggest that there is an international measure of leader behavior. When comparing measurement models of leader behaviors in the three countries, differences were found to be more notorious between Spain and both Costa Rica and the USA. However, the individual geographies, histories and vantage points of the Anglo-Saxon country (USA) versus the Spanish-Speaking countries (Costa Rica and Spain) seem to have created some differences in leader behaviors.\nOriginality/value: - The research provides insights into the growing body of knowledge on leader behavior. It first shows an international measure of leader behavior and then compares the three countries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Older adults' household cooking: card sort analyses	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Older people", "Human capital", "Cooking", "Card sort", "Kitchen equipment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Adults frequently engage in household food preparation. Older American adults spend slightly more time cooking and cook dinner at home more often than younger adults (Hamrick et al., 2011), with 60 percent of adults age 65+ preparing dinner at home six or seven nights per week, compared to 49 percent of all adults (Virudachalam et al., 2014). Older Americans also prepare about half of their meals from raw or fresh ingredients rather than convenience foods (Sloan, 2015). In Australia, 78 percent of adults report preparing dinner at home five or six nights per week (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2012). Household food preparation practices are an important influence upon food characteristics like taste, time, convenience, cost, and health qualities.\nMethods: Participants\nResults: Participant characteristics\nDiscussion: This study provides novel insights about the fundamental human and material capital used to make routine meals, from the cultural domains individuals use to mentally organize food preparation methods to the everyday use and valuation of basic kitchen implements. The older adults who participated in this study had a multidimensional understanding of food preparation methods and they frequently used a wide variety of food preparation methods and kitchen equipment items.\nConclusion: Human capital, in the form of the knowledge and skills of how to use a wide range of food preparation methods, and material capital, in the form of kitchen equipment, are integral to routine household food preparation. Older adults, even those who describe themselves as preparing less food and less complex meals than they did earlier in life, reported using an extensive set of food preparation methods and equipment often. They described a complex understanding of cooking techniques, categorized cooking procedures in multiple dimensions, and linked food preparation practices to the material capital they use in cooking.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine food preparation practices of US older adults by assessing their conceptualization of food preparation methods and their routine use of food preparation methods and kitchen equipment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 17 community-dwelling older adults used cards with names of food preparation methods and cooking equipment items to do one open sort and three closed sorts about: food preparation method classifications; food preparation method use frequency; kitchen equipment use frequency; and essential vs non-essential kitchen equipment. Descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, and qualitative thematic analysis were performed.\nFindings: Participants classified food preparation methods using multiple dimensions: ways to alter food, inputs, location, timing, and personal behavior. They used a wide range of food preparation methods and kitchen equipment items in routine cooking. The mean number of the 38 preparation methods sorted as used \"often\" was 16.5+-5.0. In total, 15 of the 17 participants reported using more than 20 of the 40 equipment items \"often.\" The mean number of equipment items identified as \"essential\" was 21.5+-9.3.\nPractical implications: Food professionals should consider access to equipment and food preparation skills and preferences when designing products and working with consumers. Addressing gaps in human and material capital may support adoption of food preparation practices.\nOriginality/value: Food preparation method and equipment use frequency has rarely been examined from the household cook's perspective. Using card sorts is a novel approach to examining consumer classification of an extensive list of preparation methods and kitchen equipment.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Are personal innovativeness and social influence critical to continue with mobile commerce?	[ "Perceptions", "Continuance intention", "Mobile commerce", "Acceptance", "Personal innovativeness", "Social influence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Almost a decade ago, studies forecasted the adoption of wireless internet services via mobile technology and the possible impact of technology characteristics (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), personal characteristics (i.e. personal innovativeness), and context variables (i.e. social influences) (i.e. Lu et al., 2003, 2005; Yang et al., 2004). With the continuous improvement and expansion of wireless networks and especially the increasing popularity of mobile devices and apps, mobile commerce (m-commerce) is currently the hottest trend in the USA. This trend makes researching the continuous use of m-commerce very important.\n2. M-commerce development in the USA: The proliferation of m-commerce in the USA, to a great extent, relies on the development of its wireless infrastructure (Zhang and Prybutok, 2005), emergence of touch-screen mobile devices and mobile apps, as well as the guidance and coordination of regulatory bodies. The USA has been leading the world with its well-developed wired internet and mature telecommunication networks which strongly support e-commerce transactions popular in this country. However, countries weak in telecommunication infrastructures and computing networks jumped onto the wireless wagon to take advantage of cost-effective mobile networks. This has created a situation where the USA is lagging behind Japan, Korea, and Europe in mobile penetration and deployment of relevant data services despite the invention of CDMA, the popular 3G mobile standard. Realizing the critical importance of mobile technologies to consumers and to the connectivity of the nation, the implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and later amendments show a critical change in universal-service concepts in the USA toward mobile communications and broadband internet connections (Parsons and Bixby, 2010).\n3. Theory background: The research model is rooted in TAM 2 (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000) and UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Technology acceptance theory is recognized as one of the most influential extensions of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975). Both TAM and TRA have strong behavioral elements and concur that behavior is primarily determined by behavioral intention, the extent to which an individual intends to perform a specific behavior. All forms of acceptance models suggest a strong tie between changes in human beliefs (perceptions) about the innovation characteristics and the changes in behavioral intentions regarding the innovation. Over the years, numerous studies have examined and confirmed the role of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in mediating the impacts on behavioral intentions from other factors. Once a model becomes well-established within a given domain, it often serves as a basis for studies in other areas (Venkatesh et al., 2007). Because of its root in TRA, which is powerful in explaining volitional behaviors (Hale et al., 2003), TAM has been widely used in studies concerning acceptance of innovative services such as online shopping (Chen, 2012), m-commerce (Chong et al., 2012), and mobile services (Kim et al., 2011; Zarmpou et al., 2012; Zhou, 2011a), to name a few.\n4. Model and hypothesis development: This paper argues that both external and internal motivations impact user continuance intention toward m-commerce. Social influence constitutes a major external impact on m-commerce users. Personal innovativeness in information technology (PIIT) makes a primary source of internal motivation. Such impacts work on intentions directly and indirectly through user perceptions.\n5. Methodology: M-commerce in this study is a multi-dimensional activity of using mobile apps carried on a smartphone to accomplish a business transaction. A survey study design was adopted to collect data for testing the research model. Most constructs in the model had been validated in previous studies. The four-item ease of use and the four-item usefulness scales were adapted from the work of Davis (1989) and that of Moore and Benbasat (1991). Survey items of social influence were adapted from the work of Venkatesh et al. (2003) and used in the study of Lu et al. (2005). The four-item PIIT scale was from the work of Agarwal and Prasad (1998). The three-item continuance intention scale was from the study of Lee et al. (2007) (please see Appendix). All the survey items were modified to serve the current study objective; whether social influence and personal innovativeness affect continuance intention toward m-commerce as they affected adoption of wireless Internet mobile services. A seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7, with \"1\" for strongly disagree and \"7\" for strongly agree was employed for all the model-related survey items. The study was piloted in a graduate MIS class to examine whether the content, style, and format were correctly understood by the survey participants.\n6. Results: Internal consistency of each construct in the model was examined using IBM SPSS 19. The scale-wide Cronbach a values ran from 0.85 to 0.99, clearly exceeding the threshold of 0.70 (Hair et al., 2010) and, thus, indicating good scale reliability.\n7. Discussions: 7.1 Findings\n8. Conclusions: Since m-commerce makes up a part of mobile data services, the study findings seem to support the notion that, with all the constructs remaining the same, the nomological net of continuance intention differs from that for initial adoption (Lu et al., 2005). Specifically we can draw the following conclusions: among well-educated m-commerce users, perceived usefulness and user personal innovativeness as measured by PIIT serve as primary determinants of their continuance intention. Personal innovativeness also strongly affects user perceived ease of using m-commerce, which exerts a strong influence on their perceptions. Social influence is much less influential in comparison with personal innovativeness, but still dynamic within specific groups.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report a study investigating the impact of personal innovativeness in information technology (PIIT) and social influence on user continuance intention toward mobile commerce (m-commerce) in the USA.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among undergraduate and graduate mobile users in a regional university. Structural equation modeling procedures were deployed to analyse 323 valid data points.\nFindings: The study found that among well-educated m-commerce users, user personal innovativeness as measured by PIIT and perceived usefulness, the determinants of initial adoption, remain as strong determinants of user continuance intention. PIIT also remains as the antecedent of perceived ease of use. Social influence has changed the pattern of influence on continuance intention.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study is unable to investigate m-commerce user expectations and satisfaction levels. The small and convenient sample does not offer guarantee of the findings.\nPractical implications: M-commerce providers should pay adequate attention to personal innovativeness, since it affects mobile user willingness and capability to welcome and adapt to new services and features. They should always utilize social channels to gather feedback, to distribute new changes or features, and to exert positive influence.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the few examining the effect of PIIT in a post-adoption context and confirms its long-term psychological influence on continuance intention toward m-commerce. This study is also one of the initial to use discursive power perspective to study social influence on continuance intention in the mobile context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of leadership orientation on innovation and its relationship with competitive advantages of small and medium enterprises in Indonesia	[ "Competitive advantages", "Innovation", "Leadership orientation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: From a global perspective, it is accepted that a small business plays a very important role in development and economic growth, in both developing and developed countries. In many developed countries, small businesses are very important to absorb most labors and contribute to the formation or growth of the gross domestic product (Tambunan, 2008).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Leadership orientation\n3. Material and method: Quantitative methods (Creswell, 2010) have been used. The present study is an explanatory research with the purpose of explaining the phenomenon or pattern of correlation between concepts (Kothary, 2004). SMEs (small and medium entrepreneurs) of typical food products of Riau domiciled in Kepulauan Meranti Regency are the focus of this study. The sample size was 258 respondents. The conceptual framework of this research is shown in Figure 1.\n4. Analysis result: 4.1 Descriptive analysis\n5. Discussion: Based on the analysis and testing that have been conducted on the influence of leadership orientation on innovation in SMEs of Riau's food products in the district of Meranti Islands, it can be concluded that leadership orientation has an effect on innovation in SMEs of Riau's food products in the district of Meranti Islands. The results of this study state that leadership orientation increases workers' ability and supports the implementation of innovation and leadership in the company's policy. This has been proven by the respondents, resulting in the average value of the three indicators with good results. From the three indicators, the indicator which has the lowest value is to improve the ability of workers. This means that the leaders of SMEs of Riau's food products in the district of Meranti Islands give insufficient attention to the ability of his work. This means that the research leaders still less give training to employees so that employees do not end up giving a lot of innovations to the company. The results are consistent with the research conducted by Lena (2006) which says that leadership orientation has a positive effect on innovation strategy, product innovation, process innovation and innovation performance of employees because the company is leadership-oriented, innovates products and processes, improves the use of resources, innovates internally (improves the ability of research and development) and invests in technology that will enable achievement of better performance than enterprises that have lower innovation strategy implementation or do not have an innovation strategy. Seen from the results of the research, leadership orientation increases workers' ability and supports the implementation of innovation and policy implemented by the leadership. Moreover, decisive leadership and support of SMEs lead leadership orientation to run in accordance with the implemented innovation.\n6. Conclusions and recommendations: Based on the result and discussion, the conclusions of this research are as follows: first, there is a significant effect of leadership orientation on innovation. The higher leadership orientation will result in higher innovation. Second, there is a significant effect of innovation on competitive advantage. Higher innovation will result in higher competitive advantage. Third, innovation as a mediation variable in the relationship between leadership orientation and competitive advantage indicates that higher leadership orientation will cause higher competitive advantage, if mediated innovation is also higher.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of leadership orientation on competitive advantage with innovation as a mediating (intervening) variable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Quantitative methods (Creswell, 2010) are used as the study design. It is an explanatory research with the purpose of explaining the phenomenon or pattern of correlation between concepts (Kothary, 2004). SMEs (small and medium entrepreneurs) of typical food products of Riau domiciled in Kepulauan Meranti Regency are the focus of this study; the sample size included 258 respondents.\nFindings: There is a significant effect of leadership orientation on innovation. Higher leadership orientation will result in higher innovation. There is a significant effect of innovation on competitive advantage. Higher innovation will result in higher competitive advantage. Innovation as a mediation variable in the relationship between leadership orientation and competitive advantage indicates that higher leadership orientation will cause a higher competitive advantage, if the mediated innovation is also higher.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this research lies in innovation as a mediating (intervening) variable and a complement of a previous study by including the indicator that measures the variables of the research so that research results can be completed and detailed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
PAHS: a Nepali project with international implications	[ "Clinical medicine", "Education", "Rural areas", "Nepal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Few healthcare systems face challenges as severe as those to be found in rural Nepal. With huge logistical, economic and educational barriers, Nepal can be seen as a bellwether for initiatives in rural medicine: with apologies to Frank Sinatra, if they can make it there, they'll make it anywhere.\nBarriers to health care delivery in rural Nepal: Nepal ranks 144th out of 177 countries on the UN Human Development Index (HDI) (UN Human Development Report, 2007-2008), which combines normalized measures of literacy, education, life expectancy, and GDP per capita. Nepal is the lowest ranked country on the Indian subcontinent and closer to sub-Saharan nations than to its South Asian neighbors (Table I).Nepal is the poorest country in Asia, with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of roughly $1,000 (CIA Factbook, 2007). It has a stagnant economy and few accessible natural resources, limited infrastructure for communication or transportation, low levels of literacy and health education, persistent shortages of the basics of life and, until recently, armed conflict.The low HDI and GDP standings of the Nepal speak of its difficult living conditions and have dire implications for the delivery of health care. Life expectancy at birth is 61 years. About half of all children under five are malnourished and infant mortality is 56 per 1,000 births (UN Human Development Report, 2007-2008). Remarkably, these figures represent significant improvements over time, and are a testament to the dedicated work of both the Nepali authorities and international organizations.Over 85 per cent of the Nepalese population lives in rural areas, the poorest areas being in the mid-West and far Western regions. The distribution of physicians in Nepal is hardly equitable. In the Kathmandu Valley, for example, a physician's average patient load is about 1,200, while in the mountainous regions the patient load can be over 30,000 per physician (see Table II). In remote districts the ratio is 1:150,000 (Journal Kathmandu Medical College, 1999; cited in Woollard, 2005). In addition, Nepal's rural areas are distributed across some of the most difficult terrain in the world.The specific challenges faced by health care practitioners in rural Nepal include the following:Rugged terrain - Nepal contains eight of the world's ten highest peaks, and the entire country, with the exception of the Terai in the South, is mountainous. This, combined with poor and ever shifting infrastructure (due to annual mud slides, flooding and avalanches), makes travel difficult and often dangerous. Health care practitioners find it immensely difficult to serve multiple communities at a time.Poverty - As a result of extreme poverty, few resources are available for health care from either the private or public sector. Thirty per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, a figure that rises to 45 per cent in the mid-Western region and 41 per cent in the far Western region (International Fund for Agricultural Development, 2008).Low education - More than half of adults aged 15 or older are illiterate. Health education levels are low and many in the rural population are unaware of the basics of good nutrition, sanitation and disease control. Shamanistic beliefs and home remedies often take the place of medical knowledge.Poor nutrition - Only 16 per cent of Nepal's land is arable, and most of this is in the lower altitudes of the Southern plains, a region that is becoming overtaxed due to internal migration. At high altitudes, few crops grow and the diet is severely limited. A total of 17 per cent of the total population is undernourished, 48 per cent of children under five are underweight and 57 per cent are under-height (UN Human Development Report, 2007-2008).Poor sanitation - While some progress has been made in providing rural populations with improved water sources, utilization of improved sanitation remains low at 35 per cent.Political instability - Before a cease-fire in April 2006 and the subsequent election of a new government in 2008, Nepal was in the grip of a decade-long civil war. More than 14,000 were killed and about 600,000 displaced; in addition, more than two million people were believed to have fled to India. Violence devastated many rural areas and isolated remote regions.Poor infrastructure - Less than one-third of the rural population has access to an all-season road. There is just one rail line of 57 km in length, of which only 32 km is currently operational (World Bank, 2008a, b). Where electrical power is available, it is unreliable and power outages are frequent. Fuel shortages and rationing are also common, with periodic queues at petrol stations stretching several kilometers. Although telephone access has improved, it remains low at 17 main lines per 1,000 people; in the more urban centers only four people per 1,000 have access to the internet, and there is virtually no access in rural areas.Inequality - There are more than 50 ethnic and caste groups in Nepal, and discrimination is a significant issue. Disadvantaged groups include smallholder farmers, landless laborers, lower castes, indigenous peoples and women (International Fund for Agricultural Development, 2008). Caste-based discrimination is officially illegal but is in fact widespread, especially in rural areas. Members of the Dalit, or untouchable, caste work as low-wage laborers for higher-caste farmers. Girls have much higher infant mortality, and women's economic prospects and education levels are lower than those of men.In spite of these obstacles, rural Nepal has some mitigating circumstances: the recent election of a new government and the subsequent adoption of a new constitution have given Nepalis hope that the civil war has ended and a period of stability is about to begin. If this is indeed the case, businesses and funding agencies are expected to reconsider Nepal as an area for investment. Nepalis are, in addition, highly motivated to see living conditions in their country improve and prepared to invest immense energy and effort.\nRequirements of a solution: Given the above barriers, developing solutions to Nepal's deficit in rural health care is unquestionably a daunting task.While some of these issues, such as poverty and political instability, are not controllable, a solution to this issue is more likely to be successful if it desirable to rural users, viable from an economic and political perspective and feasible from logistical and technical points of view (Paradis and McGaw, 2007) The major considerations under each of these headings are outlined in the following.User desirability\nThe Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS): The plan to develop the Patan Academy of Health Sciences was initiated in 2003, by a small group of Nepali physicians. The Academy's overall objective is to educate physicians who will go beyond diagnosis and treatment of immediate complaints to design and manage health programs in rural communities - in short, who will become community health leaders. With the curriculum and faculty in place, the Academy is developing infrastructure to accept its first students in 2009.PAHS stands out amongst a host of privately funded/for-profit medical schools, as well as three government medical colleges in Nepal, for three reasons:1. recruitment strategy;2. community involvement; and3. its choice of teaching hospital.An overview of the PAHS model is given in Figure 1.Recruitment strategy\nParallels with North America: At first glance, there would seem to be few parallels between Nepal and North America. Looking deeper, however, and if one directs one's gaze at rural pockets of either Canada or the USA, one finds some of the same health care challenges that face Nepal: rugged terrain, poverty, illiteracy, poor sanitation.While the enormously rugged terrain in Nepal is in a class of its own, in terms of isolating communities from mainstream health services, parts of Northern Canada are only serviced by small aircraft, and only during limited times of the year on account of treacherous weather conditions. In the USA, one only needs to peruse the headlines during hurricane season to realize that natural disasters are capable of isolating already poor and underserved communities, thus escalating health care needs to epic proportions.Like Nepal, some parts of North America suffer from low rates of literacy. Many small rural communities in both Canada and the USA have literacy rates below the international average of 20 percent. As one example among many, according to the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), over 40 percent of New Brunswick adults score below the minimally acceptable score of 3, which corresponds to the ability to reliably read and write simple sentences in a single language (Brink, 2006). Lack of literacy complicates medical self-care processes by making reading prescriptions or adhering to complicated medical regimes difficult.There is poor or limited nutrition in many remote far Northern communities in North America due to a complex set of causes, including limited access to healthy food choices, high prices, and limited education about nutrition. Climate change and global warming are shifting the availability of arable lands. Lands in the USA and Canada that were once the \"bread basket\" are now diminished as a result of unprecedented droughts or flooding, raising the cost of food and thus putting a nutritional strain on the poor (Fischer et al., 2001).Conditions on First Nations reserves in Canada and the USA lack adequate sanitation, and have poor water quality, with many people having to boil tap water for drinking. Low levels of literacy in Aboriginal communities, combined with shamanistic beliefs, are often at odds with adherence to a Western medicine model.These challenges in North America exist alongside a similar imbalance between urban and rural distribution of health services. In rural Canada the doctor/patient ratio is 1:1,201 as compared to the ratio of 1:981 for Canada as a whole (Rourke, 2005). Few freshly trained doctors are starting their careers in remote communities, preferring to practice in urban multi-doctor clinics, with reduced call schedules in spite of increasing financial incentives levied by smaller towns (Kazanjian et al., 1991). There is also a shift away from family practice to higher-paying medical specialties, most of which require long residencies in close proximity to urban tertiary care institutions (Rourke, 2005).On many levels, therefore, there are parallels between the situation in Nepal and that in North America. While there remain many barriers to overcome, the PAHS project, if successful, could offer an important two-way conduit of learning between Nepal and North America. A summary of the major areas of learning follows.Community health leadership\nConclusion: The Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Nepal is an innovative approach to rural health care. With a curriculum that emphasizes rural health care, rural rotations and focus on community health, the PAHS project holds the promise of making a difference in extraordinarily difficult conditions. If successful, it could provide a model for rural medicine internationally and in North America.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe the Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS), an initiative for rural medical education in Nepal, and show its implications for rural medical education in other contexts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper employs a methodology from the field of design to identify solution requirements based on an understanding of the operational context and evaluates how the initiative meets these requirements.\nFindings: - The PAHS model meets the extremely challenging requirements of the Nepali context for rural medical education by providing a model of education that is closely integrated with rural communities and working to develop leaders in community health. It faces important future challenges in obtaining sustainable funding and implementation of tele-health.\nPractical implications: - On several levels, the project offers potential lessons for similar initiatives in North America: community health leadership; early and sustained community engagement; a pre-medical course to bring students to a common standard; and role modeling by faculty. The approach will be of interest to those responsible for rural medical education in the developed and developing worlds.\nOriginality/value: - The paper shows how the local context in rural medical education can be understood by evaluating desirability for users, viability and feasibility.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Deploying Six Sigma practices to General Electric subsidiaries in a developing economy: An empirical analysis	[ "Six Sigma", "Brazil", "Developing countries", "Quality management", "General Electric" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Modern organizations are striving to apply appropriate strategies in order to improve their overall performance due to the increasing competition (Srinivasan et al., 2016). Six Sigma has been recognized as a powerful strategy to speed up improvements in product, service, and all types of processes quality (Antony and Banuelas, 2002), and to enhance competitiveness (Cauchick Miguel et al., 2012).\n2. Six Sigma program: Six Sigma is one of the last additions in the field of quality improvement and business process improvements methods (Ismyrlis and Moschidis, 2013). Many definitions for Six Sigma have been pointed out in the literature. Tjahjono et al. (2010) identified four streams of thought of Six Sigma from the literature. The first stream defines Six Sigma as a set of statistical tools adopted within the quality management to construct a framework for process improvement. The second one defines Six Sigma as a philosophy of management. The third stream considers Six Sigma as a business culture, a top-down methodology in which the success of Six Sigma does not rely only on statistical tools and techniques but also on the commitment of the top management to ensure the involvement of organization staff. The fourth definition refers to Six Sigma as an analysis methodology that uses scientific knowledge.\n3. Research design: An exploratory survey was conducted in this study (see Cauchick Miguel and Andrietta, 2010). This kind of survey is valuable when the purpose is to gain preliminary insight on a topic and to provide preliminary evidence of association among concepts, as established by Forza (2002). This paper analyzed the implementation of Six Sigma in subsidiaries of a world-class company, considering how the quality culture of the headquarters would be valuable to overcome common obstacles faced by local companies when implementing Six Sigma, as already reported in the literature.\n4. Findings and discussion: The main findings are presented in this section according to the questions of the survey instrument. It starts with the general profile of the companies, followed by Six Sigma program implementation, main results, and metrics. As requested by the company managers, the subsidiaries are not nominated.\n5. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that Six Sigma program at GE subsidiaries achieved superior results in comparison with other companies that operate in Brazil and also in other developing countries, based on previous publications. The findings confirmed that there are differences in relation to strategic integration, knowledge, and support when comparing a multinational company like GE and local companies cited by other surveys carried out in the country. GE quality culture aspects such as top management commitment, high investment in training, recognition schemes, and development of a well-planned infrastructure were identified as valuable to overcome common barriers to Six Sigma implementation reported by other studies in the country under analysis as well as in other developing countries. Moreover, the findings showed a strong alignment with the goals and practices of GE headquarters, which is an evidence of a high level of quality maturity that exist in GE and well-defined mechanisms of knowledge transfer and that allow all GE businesses around the world achieve benefits with Six Sigma.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate Six Sigma implementation in the subsidiaries of General Electric (GE) located in Brazil and to explore the role of the quality culture of headquarters in overcoming common obstacles to Six Sigma implementation reported by other studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An exploratory survey was the basis for gathering data for this study. A structured questionnaire was developed covering issues related to Six Sigma implementation, such as experienced benefits, main outcomes, and metrics adopted by companies. Data from eight GE subsidiaries were qualitatively analyzed. The findings were discussed in the light of other studies conducted in Brazil as well as in other developing countries in the context of the role of existing quality culture in overcoming barriers to Six Sigma implementation.\nFindings: The findings revealed that Six Sigma at GE subsidiaries achieved better results in comparison with the results obtained by other Brazilian companies reported in the literature. GE quality culture aspects such as top management commitment, high investment in training, recognition schemes, and development of a well-planned infrastructure were identified as valuable to overcome common barriers to Six Sigma implementation. Moreover, the findings showed a strong alignment with the goals and practices of GE headquarters, which is an evidence of the quality culture that exists in GE and that allows all GE businesses achieve benefits with Six Sigma.\nOriginality/value: Since limited empirical research has been conducted concerning Six Sigma implementation in developing countries, this paper aspires to contribute to Six Sigma body of knowledge by illustrating the practices of a world benchmark corporation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Benchmarking energy use of iron and steel industry: a data envelopment analysis	[ "Benchmarking", "Iron and steel industry", "DEA", "Energy efficiency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The environmental impacts of the industrial sector have become an increasingly important topic of public debate. World industry contributes about 37 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), of which over 80 per cent is from energy use (Price et al., 2006). Iron and steel industry, which is one of the most energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors, contributes about 7 per cent of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (Kim and Worrell, 2002). The energy intensity of industrial sector has steadily declined in most countries since the oil price shocks of the 1970s (Dasgupta and Roy, 2017). A wide range of technologies has the potential for reducing GHG emissions, of which energy efficiency is one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve it. Two different definitions of energy efficiency are found in the literature. First, according to an engineering point of view which measures lowest possible energy consumption through theoretical thermodynamic law or globally best available technology (BAT) and then compares with actual energy consumption. Second from an economic point of view, which measures energy efficiency from real-world best practice, through benchmarking with the current level of technology. Energy efficiency from an economic point of view is important because it is very difficult to realise whole energy efficiency measured theoretically from an engineering point of view. This is primarily due to factors beyond the control of the firm. There are in fact certain barriers that cause the non-realisation of full benefit from energy efficient technology. Although energy efficient technology outweighs the cost associated with it, the presence of economic and organisational barriers results in \"energy efficiency gap\" (Hochman and Timilsina, 2017). Therefore, an economic analysis of energy use efficiency and energy saving potential can help to quantify the magnitude of barriers.\n2. Current scenario of iron and steel industry in India: During post-liberalisation, with the help of the private sector, India emerged as the 3rd largest producer of crude steel in the world in 2015, as per the ranking released by the WSA (2015). The private sector accounted for 91 per cent of total production for the sale of pig iron in the country in 2014-2015. India is the world's largest producer of sponge iron with a host of coal-based units. Coal base system dominated this sector, accounting for around 90 per cent of total sponge iron in the country. The steel industry in India consists of relatively efficient private sector steel plants, alongside less efficient public steel plants and a significant number of mini blast furnaces that cannot reach the energy efficiency levels of larger plants due to their small scale.\n3. Literature review: Literature on energy efficiency analysis can be broadly classified into two parts, first, literature based on the partial factor framework (takes only energy consumption into account), while second, literature based on total factor productivity based on production frontier. The partial factor framework is used in the literature to find out the driving factor of the energy intensity changes at energy end-use or sub-sectoral level over the period of time and attempts to make an energy efficiency performance index. These literature works have analysed the contribution of scale, intensity and structural effect at the sub-sectoral level and end-use energy consumption (Paul and Bhattacharya, 2004; Das and Paul, 2014; Xu et al., 2014; Tandon and Ahmed, 2016). These scholars have mainly taken help of the structural and the index decomposition analysis (IDA)[3] to estimate the effect of these changes on energy or carbon emission changes over time. Structural and the IDA does not take all factors of production into consideration and lack a comprehensive analysis of energy efficiency. Countries, like New Zealand, Canada and USA, etc., have applied the IDA technique to track the energy use trend over the period of time.\n4. Methodology and data: In the non-parametric approach, Charnes et al. (1978) henceforth (CCR) were the first to propose DEA method to evaluate the efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs). CCR model assumes an input orientation and constant returns to scale. In this model, technical efficiency is obtained as the ratio of minimum (optimal) achievable input bundle to the actual input bundle in an input-oriented measure of efficiency[4]. Subsequently, Banker et al. (1984) henceforth (BCC) developed an efficiency measure based on variable returns to scale (VRS) called as BCC model. This method is actually based on linear programming which creates a piecewise linear best practice frontier based on the observed input-output data. Based on above two models, various modifications and refinements were made and a different version of DEA appeared in the literature.\n5. Results and discussion: DEA estimates production frontier and provides the underlying technical and energy efficiency of the states over the period of time. Our main focus is on energy efficiency which is derived from the technical efficiency model. The energy-saving targets for states lie below the benchmark level. Different sources of energy utilised in the production of iron and steel vary significantly across countries. Coal and electricity (purchased and generated) are major components of energy consumption in the Indian iron and steel sector. Due to the unavailability of data regarding different sources of energy and energy use in physical unit, the monetary measure of energy (fuel expenditure) is considered. Preliminary, we examine differences in energy intensity across the region, a simple measure of energy efficiency calculated as the ratio of fuel consumption to gross output. The average level of energy intensity at the national level is 0.08 over the period of study. This means that producing INR1 worth of iron and steel product requires INR0.08 worth of energy expenditure. Over the period of study, the industry experienced a meagre decline in energy intensity from 0.09 to 0.06 at the national level. Figure 4 shows the energy intensity trend of four major iron and steel producing states; Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Gujarat and Jharkhand. Gujarat and Jharkhand are most energy-intensive states. We also calculated energy intensity for all states, which is given in Table AI for all years.\n6. Concluding remarks: There is growing concern about global warming and GHG mitigation, addressing through international negotiation. Different policy options are being implemented like carbon trading and environmental regulation in order to move in desired and conductive directions. Adherence to the past trends of steady improvement in energy efficiency remains as the most cost-effective option. Therefore, this study estimates the energy efficiency level of Indian iron and steel sector by using regional level data over the period from 2004-2005 to 2013-2014. We employed the radial and non-radial variant of DEA to estimated energy-saving potential and identified the relative position of each state in term of the level of energy efficiency. We started by examining a simple indicator of energy efficiency that is energy to output ratio. It shows declined trends over the period of time but for some states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Uttarakhand; it does not decrease much. The main aim of the study is to estimate energy efficiency level in the total factor productivity framework and uncover energy saving potential for different states. SBM of energy efficiency is employed to get a more comprehensive measure of energy efficiency along with the radial measure (BCC model) of energy efficiency. SBM of energy efficiency shows overall average energy saving potential of 8 per cent without reducing output level. Further, we also calculated SE which shows the overall average level of SE was 0.91, which shows scale inefficiency also contributed to total energy inefficiency. Therefore, the optimal scale of operation should be devised to implement standard energy efficiency programme. Finally, this study recommends policy initiative to propagate energy efficiency programme through the market base and regulatory mechanism in order to tap vast energy saving potential.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the energy use of Indian iron and steel industry. For this purpose, the authors have estimated a production frontier to know the best performing states. Further, the energy-saving targets are estimated to lie below the benchmark level for those states. Panel data for this purpose are extracted from the Annual Survey of Industry (an official database from the government of India) for 19 major steel-producing states over the period from 2004-2005 to 2013-2014.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors employed a radial and non-radial (slack-based measure) variant of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate the production frontier. Particularly, slack-based measures (SBMs) developed by Tone (2001) are used to get a more comprehensive measure of energy efficiency along with technical efficiency. Variable returns to scale technology is specified to accommodate market imperfection and heterogeneity across states. Four inputs (capital, labour, energy and material) and a single output are conceptualised for the production process to accommodate input substitution. The relative position of each state in terms of the level of energy efficiency is then identified.\nFindings: The authors started by examining energy-output ratio. The average level of energy intensity shows declining trends over the period of time. States like Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Uttarakhand remain stagnant in the energy intensity level. SBM of energy efficiency shows an overall average energy saving potential of 8 per cent without reducing average output level. Considerable heterogeneity exists among states in terms of the energy efficiency scores. Further, the authors calculated scale efficiency (SE) which shows the overall average level of SE is 0.91; hence, the scale of operation is not optimal and needs to adjusted to enhance energy efficiency.\nOriginality/value: The authors demonstrate the empirical application of DEA with SBM to energy use performance. This is the first study that benchmarks Indian states in terms of the consumption of energy input to produce iron and steel by applying DEA.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Greening the campus of a Brazilian university: cultural challenges	[ "Higher education", "Sustainability", "Brazil", "Organizational culture", "Environmental management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Given the critical environmental dilemmas faced by mankind, such as climate change and the depletion of non-renewable sources of energy, the implementation of environmental management practices within organizations is gaining prominence. Recent studies indicate that an effective incorporation of environmental management requires an organizational culture that values environmental management, in which employees are conscious of environmentally appropriate products and processes (Harris and Crane, 2002; Linnenluecke and Griffiths, 2010).\n2 Environmental management and a systemic overview of organizations: The idea that organizations can be considered as systemic organisms that interact with and influence each other by certain means is one that has arisen in relatively recent studies on organizations. Based on this systemic view, environmental management can be seen as an improvement in environmental performance that is balanced and integrated with other measures of organizational performance and with financial and social measures (Holton et al., 2010).\n3 Methodology: The case study approach is appropriate for this research because of the scarcity of relevant literature on the subject and the emergent nature of the concepts involved in this study. In addition, Voss et al. (2002) commented that results of case study investigations can lead to creative and new ideas.\n4 Research results: The results are presented in two sections. In Section 4.1, the environmental management actions taken on the campus are presented as a whole; then, they are broken down as they were implemented in the individual campus units (faculties). In Section 4.2, cultural aspects of and barriers to change in the organizational culture are presented.\n5 Discussion: It is not possible to state whether the studied campus possesses a comprehensive planning and environmental management policy similar to those proposed by McCloskey and Maddock (1994) and Nahuz (1995). There is, however, a set of isolated actions aimed at reducing negative impacts on the environment. Among those practices brought to the campus was the recycling program, which appears to be close to an integrated management approach (although it is restricted in its treatment of the issue of waste). It is notable that many of these practices were created by the teaching departments and resulted from a voluntary, \"bottom-up\" process that is emergent and fragmented.\n6 Conclusions: This study analyzed whether organizational practices of environmental management are being incorporated into the organizational culture of the campus. Empirical questions were raised based on the environmental culture model of Harris and Crane (2002). The objective of the study was achieved through a case study performed in cooperation with the university and its various teaching units.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study examined the relationship between environmental management practices developed at a campus of a Brazilian university (University of Sao Paulo) and the greening of its organizational culture. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This article presents a theoretical background based on the concepts of environmental management, organizational culture and environmental management in higher education institutions. The main framework of this research is the model proposed by Harris and Crane.\nFindings: The studied university has an environmental management program that is sometimes constrained in the following ways: the university bureaucracy and hierarchy; the main performance indicators for lecturers and professors are based on scientific production and publication, giving them little time for complementary activities; and some units develop their own environmental management practices, but they are not disseminated as best practices for use by other units. Some academic units showcase the proactive actions of professors who incorporate environmental management into their daily activities. The general perception is that the phrase \"environmental management\" is almost synonymous with \"solid waste management\".\nOriginality/value: This research details the first Brazilian application of the Harris and Crane model. It contributes an original analysis of environmental management and \"green\" organizational culture of a Brazilian university, an organizational type that has seldom been studied to date.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Building customer loyalty in retail banking: a serial-mediation approach	[ "Brand equity", "Customer experience", "Retail banking", "Customer satisfaction", "Customer loyalty", "Serial-mediation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Customer loyalty is a function of brand equity-customer satisfaction relationship, which is expected to be associated with customer experience in the context of retail banking. Customer loyalty is defined as the \"strength of relationship between an individual's relative attitude and repeat patronage\" (Dick and Basu, 1994, p. 99). Customer experience is defined as \"a holistic and subjective response resulting from customer contact with the service provider that might involve a customer's cognition and affect\" (Ali et al., 2014, p. 2). In this connection, retail banks often face the challenges of maintaining customer loyalty and reducing customer churn (Alamgir and Uddin, 2017). Erosion of customers' trust, ever-changing customer expectations, the emergence of reliable alternative service providers, attraction strategies by competitors and unethical practices are pointed out to be the various reasons of diminishing customer loyalty and increasing customer switching behavior in the industry (Ernst and Young Global Limited, 2017). These changes have necessitated retail banks to build and enhance their customer loyalty before any further erosion of their customer base would come into being. Therefore, it has become important for retail banks to work on customer experience, brand equity, and customer satisfaction. In this context, brand equity is defined as the \"differential effect of brand knowledge on the consumer response to the marketing of the brand\" (Keller, 1993, p. 2). Scholars define customer satisfaction as \"a judgment that a product, or service feature, or the product or service itself, provides a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment including levels of under or over fulfillment\" (Oliver, 1997, p. 13). Accordingly, this research's objective is to investigate how the constructs of brand equity and customer satisfaction sequentially mediate the customer experience-customer loyalty relationship.\nLiterature review: The initial conceptualizations of customer loyalty that focused on merely the behavioral perspective made it difficult to differentiate true loyalty from spurious loyalty (Boateng, 2019). However, recent studies have argued that it is possible to effectively capture customer loyalty by adopting both the attitudinal and behavioral perspectives (Srivastava and Kaul, 2016; Boateng, 2019). In this connection, the scholarly research has noted that favorable attitude and repeat patronage are essential for the formation of customer loyalty, particularly in the retail banking industry (Makanyeza and Chikazhe, 2017; Boonlertvanich, 2019).\nHypotheses development: Impact of customer experience on customer loyalty\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: Data screening\nDiscussion: This research had three objectives. The first objective was to investigate the customer experience-customer loyalty relationship. The second objective was to examine the serial mediating effects of brand equity and customer satisfaction in the customer experience-customer loyalty relationship. The third objective of this research was to evaluate the moderating effects of the demographic variables in the interrelationships among the constructs of this study.\nConclusion: This research was carried out to address the problem of switching behavior among the customers of retail banking firms. To address this problem, this study conceptualized the model of customer loyalty in which customer experience was the antecedent, and brand equity and customer satisfaction were the mediators. This study has, accordingly, shown that customer loyalty increases consequent on the increase in customer satisfaction. However, the customer experience impacts substantially the satisfaction and loyalty of customers. Furthermore, the affective and behavioral dimensions of customer experience exercise maximum impact on customer loyalty. Moreover, this study has also provided empirical evidence for the customer experience-brand equity relationship as also the brand equity-customer satisfaction relationship. Therefore, this study shows that the human factor in the customer experience and the differential marketing advantage that the customers of retail banking firms experience would lead to their satisfaction and their eventual loyalty to their retail bank.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to advance research on the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty by exploring the serially mediating roles of brand equity and customer satisfaction and the moderating roles of age, gender, education and family income in the retail banking industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 500 responses of retail banking customers were used to test the model using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach. Advanced statistical techniques, such as importance-performance map analysis and a joint application of FIMIX-PLS and PLS-POS, were used to gain new insights.\nFindings: The study highlighted that the relationship between customer experience and loyalty is serially mediated by brand equity and customer satisfaction. Age, gender and education were found to be significant moderators in the customer experience-loyalty relationship. Age and gender were found to be significant moderators in the brand equity-loyalty relationship.\nPractical implications: The study strongly suggests that practitioners not only focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences but also on providing leverage brand equity and satisfaction to build customer loyalty. Practitioners should focus on training their front-line employees to improve the quality of their behavior and relations with customers and thereby build customer loyalty.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore the mediating role of several variables sequentially and the moderating role of customer demographics in the customer experience-customer loyalty relationship.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Generalist or specific studies for engineering entrepreneurs? Comparison of French engineering students' trajectories in two different curricula	[ "France", "Entrepreneurialism", "Higher education", "Careers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Developing the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students is important for the emergence of high-tech business in dynamic and innovative areas, thus promoting significant economic growth and increase in employment (Roberts, 1991; Shane, 2000). The problem is that it is not easy to develop this career aspiration among engineering students, especially in France. Although many researchers point out the emergence of new generations of engineers (Bouffartigue and Gadea, 1997; Duprez et al., 1990; Fayolle, 1996), the traditional model of the French engineer remains someone reluctant to envisage entrepreneurship. The more prestigious the engineering school is, the more reluctant the French engineer is in relation to entrepreneurship (Verzat et al., 2003). In fact, few engineers are moving towards entrepreneurial careers and they do so rather late in their career (Fayolle, 2001).Is it possible to reverse this trend? Can education guide more young engineering students towards entrepreneurship? Many empirical studies have indicated that entrepreneurship could be taught, or at least encouraged by entrepreneurship/business education (Chen et al., 1998; Gorman et al., 1997, Gibb, 2002a). A substantial amount of research has proved that education plays a positive role in many aspects: it can lead to the improvement of the level of knowledge about how to launch and manage a new business venture (Schaper, 2007), it can enable students to gain experience in a real business context, foster favorable attitudes towards entrepreneurship (Gorman et al., 1997; Kourilsky and Walstad, 1998; Johannisson, 1991; Autio et al., 1997), develop perception of self-efficacy of students (Noel, 2001), raise the level of students' entrepreneurial intentions (Noel, 2001; Kolvereid and Moen, 1997; Peterman and Kennedy, 2003) and stimulate students to choose an entrepreneurial career (Charney and Libecap, 2003). However, other studies have showed some weak or negative effects of education: Schaper (2007) indicates that education does not appear to change the overall proportion of students who want to run their own enterprise. Two studies reported a small percentage of business students having career aspirations towards entrepreneurship (Brenner et al., 1991; Kolvereid, 1996) and their interest in becoming self-employed decreases during their studies (Whitlock and Masters, 1996).Why are so many negative results of education on promoting entrepreneurship observed, even though its positive effects have been widely accepted and proven? Are these contradictory results linked to the different nature and characteristics of education and the place of teaching? The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of different training systems in a French context on students' entrepreneurial career orientation: Generalist Engineering Training in Ecole Centrale de Lille and specific ITEEM[1] training. We will also pinpoint the role that culture plays in this respect.Our paper is based on qualitative interviews carried out with 12 engineering students from two different schools at the end of their course and on longitudinal quantitative data obtained from a questionnaire administered each year to students from both institutions. We will first present the theoretical background and the research context which will lead to the research questions. The next section is devoted to the methodology. Finally, we will propose the analysis of the results, followed by a discussion and conclusions.Controversy about impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intentions and career choice\nMethods: We used two complementary methods (quantitative and qualitative) to understand the development process of entrepreneurial career aspirations and its link with perceived culture of institutions.We had already designed a questionnaire based on a model of entrepreneurial spirit (Verzat et al., 2003; Verzat and Bachelet, 2006), which was administrated annually to whole intakes of Ecole Centrale de Lille and to ITEEM students. The longitudinal analysis in this paper is based on answers to the questionnaire provided each year by the students in the same intake in both schools (Table II).Questions were extracted each year to figure out students' career orientation regarding three different potential outcomes of both schools (entrepreneur, manager and technical engineer), their intention to set up their own business and their perception of the school culture. We also extracted the question of students' entrepreneurial family background to test if the two schools enrol students with similar family backgrounds (Table III).Then semi-structured interviews lasting on average one hour were conducted from February to April 2008 for the purpose of explaining the findings in the quantitative study. A total of 12 final year students participated in the interviews: six students from Ecole Centrale de Lille and six students from ITEEM. They were chosen on the basis of two criteria:1. they agreed to be interviewed; and2. their relation to entrepreneurship varied: more or less strong intentions to set up a business, specialized training in the last year on business creation or not.In the interviews, they clarified the meaning they gave to the changes of identity experienced during the course. The points discussed during the interviews concerned the reasons for their choice of school, their professional project at the end of school and after a few years, their perception of school culture, other relevant experiences and encounters during the course and their meaning from the student' points of view (internships in France or abroad, associations, etc.); their current attitudes towards entrepreneurship and self-efficacy perceptions, and also previous experiences in their trajectories that led to their actual professional orientations and attitudes. Coding of interviews transcripts was performed by both researchers, and reliability (number of disagree/(number of disagree+agree)) reached 85 percent. About 671 qualitative data units were extracted out of 75 percent of the interview contents.\nFindings: Three main career orientations that develop differently over time in both schools\nDiscussion and conclusions: Our results show that the percentage of students in French engineering schools aspiring to entrepreneurial careers is quite low. Those with entrepreneurial intentions as well as a perceived professional identity as a future entrepreneur, remain in the minority. However, during the course, professional projections evolve significantly. School culture would appear to have an important impact on commitment to an entrepreneurial career. In schools like ITEEM, culture is clearly perceived by students. It comes about because of the culture cohesion that is ensured first through the size of the intakes. It is associated with dual education content (management and engineering) and with project management pedagogy. Education can thus have significant positive entrepreneurial outcomes: students' intentions towards self-employment rise; the percentage of entrepreneur profiles has grown by the end of program. On the other hand, in schools like Centrale where the perception of culture is unclear, is mainly associated with an elitist ranking and defined by generalist engineering education and student association experiences, the outcome in entrepreneurship education is poor: students have difficulties in defining their own professional projects; students' entrepreneurial intentions decline during the course, entrepreneur profiles cannot be fostered.The components and the strength of school culture perceived by students may then provide an explanation of the contradictory findings in the literature on effects of entrepreneurship education. This first result confirms Gibb's theoretical work on the cultural challenge in entrepreneurship education. However, we used here a rather crude measure of school culture. Characteristics of perceived school culture should be further explored through more interviews and operationalized in relevant questions so as to be checked on a quantitative basis. As already mentioned by many authors, it must be globally perceived as innovative and risk tolerant, but it should also include a clear perception of entrepreneurial educational goals, of supportive institutional structures (like incubators, technology transfer offices, research centres dedicated to entrepreneurship), innovative teaching methods and teachers and dynamic exchanges with alumni, public and business environment. Our research suggests that structural factors (reputation, newness of institution and its recruitment) but also relational factors like the size and atmosphere of intake and pedagogical factors, and the extensive use of project management pedagogy, do have an impact on students' perceptions. Perception of other structural factors could also be used to identify the main factors that drive entrepreneurial careers from students' points of view.The results of the analysis of the engineering student's entrepreneurial profile constitute a further finding. Qualitative analysis suggests that engineering students, who envisage entrepreneurial careers, differ from others in relation to a number of personal characteristics: their acute perception of market reality, the high degree of emotional involvement in a variety of different experiences, their propensity to intertwine private and professional life and their desire to learn more and more from each particular experience. While this specific set of attributes appears coherent, it differs somewhat to that established through existing studies of attributes and motivations portrayed by university students with regard to entrepreneur profiles: leadership and self-confidence, greater economic ambition and the search for status/prestige (Raposo et al., 2008). Among French engineering students, for whom elitist recruitment traditionally leads to managerial positions, Raposo's attributes do not specifically relate to entrepreneurs, but are found to be shared by future managers. Our research suggests that in the French educational context, two new entrepreneurial attributes can also play a significant role: emotional involvement and intense learning in relation to perception of market opportunities. Although this result is only based on the analysis of qualitative material, it corresponds to research findings on entrepreneurs'-specific learning processes. Entrepreneurs appear to call on exceptionally strong and permanent learning patterns so as to identify new or existing business opportunities (Franco and Haase, 2009). These specific entrepreneurial learning skills are dependent on personal motivation and self-esteem. But they also depend to a large extent on a dynamic learning environment where students are active learners. This implies designing a student-centred learning environment, where students are confronted with real and challenging problems and are given continuous formal and informal feedback by teachers, other students and external stakeholders (Jones, 2007). We can better understand why ITEEM, having chosen to systematically apply an active learning pedagogical approach, seems to foster entrepreneurial learning profiles.Practical implications of this research indicate that one effective way to foster professional orientation among future engineers is to provide a newer culture and different course input (more focus on management, internships, systematic project work, experience abroad). This gives rise to new questions. Will this new model remain sufficiently innovative over time, appearing challenging to students, so as to continue to generate an entrepreneurial culture? The data we used in this paper concerns the first ITEEM intake which might benefit from a Hawthorne effect: the first experimentation has to be successful, the second one does not have the same pressure. Moreover, routines as well as reputation concerns might change school management. So, longer term analysis is recommended to check the durability of this innovative experience. Is there any chance of changing the professional and educational culture of prestigious French engineering schools? It seems to us that French engineering students will remain reluctant to envisage entrepreneurship in the near future, because inherited professional models of technical engineers are still very pregnant in professional choices. Another reason is that the French engineering school identity is anchored in a prestigious tradition of elite education and lastly because their educational culture is still more transmissive than active. Implementing change towards entrepreneurial pedagogy remains, however, a crucial challenge.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - French engineering students are traditionally reluctant to envisage entrepreneurship. Can a new engineering school aimed at fostering entrepreneurship reverse this trend? The purpose of this paper is to compare the development of engineering students' entrepreneurial intentions and perceived career orientation of the prestigious engineering training schools (Ecole Centrale de Lille) and ITEEM, whose curriculum is dual (engineering+management), new and based on active pedagogies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study is based on qualitative analysis of 12 in-depth interviews and quantitative longitudinal analysis of data obtained from a questionnaire administered each year to all students from both schools.\nFindings: - Results show that ITEEM fosters students' entrepreneurial and project management careers, whereas Centrale promotes the traditional technical model of an engineer. Family background of students is close in both schools. Level of entrepreneurial intention at enrolling is higher at ITEEM than Centrale but cannot fully explain why entrepreneurial career orientations decrease at Centrale while they increase at ITEEM. On the other hand, perception of school culture is weak at Centrale and strong at ITEEM and this difference is significantly with regard to the development of students' career orientation. Qualitative interviews indicate that both cultures highlight different elements.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The cultural element can then be proposed as a new factor to take into account when studying the impact of entrepreneurship education. However, this result is based here on a simple measure of school culture perception and qualitative interviews. It should be confirmed by a more detailed quantitative analysis of cultural and organizational characteristics of educational institutions.\nPractical implications: - Engineering schools can foster entrepreneurial orientations if their educational culture is perceived as new and innovative by students. This can be achieved through a new curriculum based on a wider set of courses (management, entrepreneurship and engineering) and the systematic deployment of active pedagogies such as project work and internships. A new question arises: can such a perception of innovation be maintained over time?\nOriginality/value: - In the theoretical literature, culture is considered to be an essential element that can have an impact on entrepreneurial career aspirations and intentions. But as yet, no empirically based study had been carried out to prove it.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Auditing the identity of regional wine brands: the case of Swiss Merlot Ticino	[ "Switzerland", "Wines", "Brands", "Marketing communications", "Brand identity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Today's wine industry is enjoying growth in production, and consumption is increasing, especially in emerging economies[1]. This growth also means increased global competition, and several global brands developed by giant new world producers, as well as emerging small and medium-sized (SME) Australian and Chilean wineries, have begun challenging traditional small European productions.In the face of such competition, how wine brands are communicated to consumers has become more important than ever (Campbell and Guibert, 2006; Egan and Bell, 2002); however, thus far the majority of studies have focused on understanding consumers' perceptions and attitudes toward regional brands (Rasmussen and Lockshin, 1999; Hall et al., 2001; Thomas and Pickering, 2005), while research on how producers in a winemaking region cooperate, develop, and promote a common brand identity remains limited (Fensterseifer, 2007).This paper addresses the issue of collective branding for regional wines from a communication perspective. It provides a methodology with which to assess wineries' intentions and how they communicate their regional brands with an empirical application on the brand Merlot Ticino, a Swiss DOC wine produced in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The methodology, a communications audit, determines the intended identity of the brand - that is, what winemakers think and want to communicate - and assesses the projected identity of the brand - that is, what wineries' communications actually project to consumers - in order to find gaps between intended messages and projected messages. In addition to providing an overall picture of the emerging brand personality, the audit determines whether communications are consistent, as well as which target they are most likely to address, and it evaluates the collective result of multiple wineries' efforts to communicate a regional wine brand.The audit was designed by drawing upon corporate branding and communication literature. The regional wine brand conveys the common identities of all the wines produced in a region, despite differences among individual brands. As a result, referring to literature that focuses on how to develop and communicate a collective brand that comprises multiple products and units seems more appropriate than would drawing on studies that concentrate on single-product brands.The paper is structured as follows. The first part presents the conceptual framework and describes the design of the audit tool. The second part illustrates the empirical study on Merlot Ticino and provides some insights into the kinds of results the tool generates, as well as its usefulness in developing and managing the communication of the regional brand identity. Final remarks are made and implications are discussed in the conclusion.\n2. The audit model for regional wine brands: conceptual framework: Brands are inputs that contribute to the formation of a distinctive image of a product or company in consumers' minds. The brand promise projects core identity elements used by external audiences to draw inferences about a product and reduce the risk in purchasing it (de Chernatony and McDonald, 1998). Companies express themselves through brands; they communicate to their stakeholders what they provide in terms of products and services while simultaneously disclosing who they are; the more they reveal about their identity, the more they are likely to appeal to external audiences (Fombrun and van Riel, 2004). A favorable reputation is a source of a competitive advantage that triggers a series of tangible benefits, such as the ability to demand premium prices, lower cost transactions with suppliers, or increase turnover stability (Fombrun, 1996; Rindova and Fombrun, 1999). However, in order to build a solid reputation, companies must project an identity that matches their true nature (van Riel and Fombrun, 2007).Brands are multi-faceted entities, and the branding literature uses brand elements to classify them according to certain hierarchies (Keller, 1998; Aaker, 1996). Wine brands have a multitude of elements to rely on; beyond product brand and corporate brand, wines can be identified by family brands, retailer brands, and regional and national brands. According to Lockshin et al. (2000) all these elements, rather than pertaining to a hierarchy, form a cluster to be managed depending on the positioning and destination market of the wine brand. Regional brands should aim to express the identity of the winemaking region that is, by nature, encapsulated in the wine because of the strong link between the physical characteristics of the territory and the grapes (Carlsen and Dowling, 1998). On the consumer side, it has been demonstrated that the regional brand is an important cue for wine evaluation (Rasmussen and Lockshin, 1999; Thomas and Pickering, 2005; Johnson and Bruwer, 2007); the development of a regional wine brand has been particularly rewarding for red wines (Schamel, 2006) and for small winemaking regions that have the typical structure of a \"discovery market,\" as defined by Christy and Norris (1999, p. 806). Although the wines of individual producers have a high potential for differentiation, it is difficult for those brands to emerge from the fray, given the cost of broad-based marketing and communication. Creating critical interest through the communication of a collective brand identity and simplifying the task of information processing for wine consumers (Tirole, 1996) by providing a common identity is the key to increasing local consumption and exports of discovery markets.In some cases, regional wine brands are built and communicated with the support of governmental strategies that are often linked to state tourism promotional plans, such as occurred in Australia (Carlsen and Dowling, 1998). In other cases the communication of the regional brand is made by associations of producers that coordinate marketing strategies (Campbell and Guibert, 2006), a strategy especially common in Europe, where associations are in charge of the preservation and promotion of legal appellations of origin and quality. Exemplar cases are the Chianti Classico Consortium, a private association of producers, and the Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne, a semi-public organization, both of which have been able to attach a symbolic capital to their brands through external communication, promotion, public relations, lobbying, and commercial protection of their regional appellation (Brunori and Rossi, 2007; Sharp and Smith, 1990). Another example of regional collective branding coordinated by associations is that of Spanish winemaking regions, like La Rioja, that followed a two-step approach: first, the creation and communication of the collective regional brand, followed by company brands that exploited the halo of the regional brand's reputation (Gil and Sanchez, 1997). Australia has also seen a shift from national branding to regional branding (Johnson and Bruwer, 2007) in which, absent a system of appellations, the focus of associations is on coordination and marketing strategies to create awareness of the regional brand, especially in export markets (Phillips, 1992; Rasmussen and Lockshin, 1999; Turner and Creasy, 2003).The literature has explored the effect of regional branding on consumer perceptions, but less attention has been paid to the implementation of regional brands. The studies on regional brands have focused primarily on marketing strategies and promotional activities, often analyzing collaborative practices between the wine sector and tourism. However, as Chaney (2002) remarked, the identification of common themes for communicating the multitude of wineries and wines in a region is challenging, and the literature on wine branding is lacking in this respect.The difficulty encountered in identifying and communicating the core identity traits of a whole group across the peculiarities of each individual firm may be comparable to the issue of plural identities inside an organization, in which each unit projects its own identity within the comprehensive organizational identity (Albert and Whetten, 1985). A key issue for those who want to project a common brand identity is to convey their diversities under an umbrella of core common features projected through a common corporate identity (Cornelissen et al., 2007). Accordingly, the several branches or product lines of a corporation tend to communicate a common visual identity (van den Bosch et al., 2004) as well as the common traits of a longstanding collective personality (Davies et al., 2002).Organizations want to impress others favorably (van Riel and Fombrun, 2007), and what they intend to project includes a conception of themselves (Goffman, 1959). However, sometimes what they project is not what they intended, and a gap is created that prevents the formation of a good image in external audiences' minds. Consistency in communication is also a fundamental element for achieving a good reputation (Fombrun and van Riel, 2004) - ensuring that corporate communications are aligned across different types of media and different product lines or units. Consistency on brand messages is specifically recommended in the wine industry to reinforce brand equity within the framework of a larger integrated marketing approach (Reid, 2002).Drawing on corporate identity and corporate branding literature, this paper proposes an audit as a way to investigate regional wine brand identities. The audit includes two parts, the first of which aims to understand winemakers' intentions in regard to the brand personality of their regional wine, as well as the narrative themes that they use to communicate the wine's identity; the second part determines which projections actually emerge through the formal communications of wineries and provides a picture of all the emerging contents, or brand personality, communicated by the group of regional producers in order to detect gaps between intentions and projections ( Figure 1). Analysis of projections also helps to define the target that communications address and to check for consistency in communicated messages. Finally, the analysis of projections reveals the general level of expressiveness of the regional brand - that is, to what degree the regional wineries communicate collectively.Intention: auditing producers' intended brand identity\n3. Empirical case: audit of the Merlot Ticino brand identity: This empirical case demonstrates the application of the audit tool and it provides a concrete example of the feasibility of the audit and of the strategic potential of the results achieved for developing a collective communication of the regional wine brand. Ticino has been selected because the area has a winemaking industry structure typical of small old world winemaking regions (Campbell and Guibert, 2006) and because, as a winemaking region, Ticino is in the challenging position of the young wine producer next to old European giants like France and Italy.Methodology\n4. Discussion and conclusion: This paper has proposed an audit model for evaluating the collective communication of regional wine brands. The purpose of the audit is to determine the brand identity that emerges from communications by individual wineries in the region and to verify the effectiveness of those communications in projecting a consistent and coherent regional brand.The audit detected gaps between what was perceived or intended by producers in terms of their regional brand identity and what was actually projected to consumers by their communications. The content analysis portion of the audit assessed the emergent personality of the brand, the type of consumer that this kind of brand is likely to attract, the consistency of wineries' communications, and the overall level of expressiveness that the local producers achieve.These results show that the communication audit is a useful tool in verifying the effectiveness of communication efforts and providing a basis for strategic planning for the collective promotion of regional wine brands. The results align with previous findings on wine-branding practices in SME wineries. The fact that the wineries in Ticino project mainly the functional features of the brand - along with a few symbolic dimensions that focus principally on prestige - is in line with Mowle and Merrilees' (2005) definition of the product-branding strategy used in SME Australian wineries. Clearly, a communication audit of this kind can be a useful tool in supporting the development or adjustment of brand roles and strategies in the wine market.In the context of increasing global competition, the audit model illustrated in this paper could serve as an effective evaluation tool for comparing the intended and projected brand communications in other winemaking regions that seek to promote a regional wine brand. The overall audit structure can be usefully replicated in those regions where - as is the case in Ticino - production and communication is fragmented. Applying the whole audit model to a region's winemakers could lead to collective reflection on the identity of the regional wine and on the strategic promotion of those shared elements of the wine that make it unique compared to other wines and winemaking regions. In addition to practical implications, the audit model shows how research findings related to corporate identity and corporate branding can be adapted to wine-branding studies, which have traditionally been more influenced by consumer behavior and marketing research.Incorporating oral content - that is, what winemakers say directly to consumers - into the analysis of projections would represent a considerable improvement of the audit tool. In fact, the literature on wine marketing underscores the growing importance of face-to-face interactions in wine promotions; cellar-door activities and selling are fundamental for small wineries' survival (Mowle and Merrilees, 2005), and winery visits play a central role in the development of wine tourism (Chaney, 2000; Getz and Brown, 2006).This audit model may be perceived as incomplete because it focuses only on the projection side, without considering the receiver side - the effect that brand communications have on external audiences. However, this is a tool specifically aimed at enhancing producers' awareness of what they are communicating, especially in cases that involve multiple communications from numerous sources. Only after achieving this kind of awareness can producers strategically agree on a communication that is based on common values and that has the potential to project a consistent image of the regional wine brand. Of course, a subsequent evaluation of the impact of this communication - and of the image formed in consumers' minds - would also improve producers' projections.\nNote: 1. http://winemarketer.com/wine-consumption-to-exceed-262-billion-liters.htmlOpens in a new window.Figure 1\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to propose a method by which to audit winemakers' communication of regional wine brands and to illustrate the method's conceptual basis through its empirical application to the Swiss wine Merlot Ticino.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The audit is comprised of two parts: one captures producers' intentions regarding the communication of the regional wine brand while the other determines what wineries actually convey through their formal communications. Data about intentions were collected through qualitative interviews and a survey of producers, while data on what wineries convey was based on a content analysis of wineries' communication materials.\nFindings: - The application of the audit to the brand Merlot Ticino shows that the proposed method provides several insights into the brand's personality, possible gaps between producers' intentions and actual communications, the potential target of the communication, the level of consistency of communication content and style, and the expressiveness of wineries in communicating the regional wine brands.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The content analysis adopted in this research focuses on formal communications issued by wineries. Adding oral contents and consumer perceptions would considerably improve the audit tool.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides winemaking regions with a useful tool with which to determine the effectiveness of their brand projections in the collective promotion of their regional wine brands. The paper is of value for academic research because it illustrates that results may be obtained in the wine brand field using methods traditionally used in corporate communication research, like projective techniques and communications audits.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Drivers of trust and trustworthiness	[ "Trust", "Beliefs", "Punishment", "Trustworthiness", "Norms", "C72", "C91", "D63", "Z10" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, trust has been accepted as a central concept for understanding economic behavior and organization. Many activities, such as trade and cooperation, become much easier if people trust each other. Mistrust leads to control and precautions that are both costly and time consuming.\n2. Trust is difficult without trustworthiness: This paper follows Gunnthorsdottir et al. (2002) who define trust as the \"[...] voluntary transfer of a good or favor to someone else, with future reciprocation expected but not guaranteed\" (p. 50). This is a representative definition and can be further specified in the following way: if A (the trustor) trusts B (the trustee), it is often the case that A transfers something to B that will increase in value if B performs trustworthily. At the same time, A makes himself vulnerable by trusting. What A transfer to B is valuable to A. A therefore suffers a loss if B does not honor A's trust. The basic problem for a trustor is that he does not know if the trustee is trustworthy. If the trustor has this knowledge, there is no trust problem (Rousseau et al., 1998; Ashraf et al., 2006; Ben-Ner and Halldorsson, 2010; Reiersen, 2017).\n3. The foundation of trust and trustworthiness: When a trustor is unaware of the trustworthiness of the trustee, he must form a belief about this, and act on the basis of this belief. What forces contribute in forming these beliefs and what can explain that trustees are viewed as trustworthy by a trustor? It is possible to distinguish between two general classes of explanations of why trustees may perform trustworthily, and hence why trustors should trust them (Torsvik, 2000). The first highlights traits of the trustees (as in the study by Chaudhuri et al., 2003 commented on above), while the second explanation emphasizes the characteristics describing the interactive situation. It is the first explanation that is further explored in this paper, but the second explanation also deserves some comments.\n4. Trust, trustworthiness and norms: an experiment: The existence and importance of social norms cannot be doubted, or as Fehr and Fischbacher (2004) note: \"No human society exists without social norms [...]. In fact, the ability to develop and enforce social norms is probably one of the distinguishing characteristics of the human species\" (p. 64). Although \"norms\" is a fundamental concept in many of the social sciences, economists have traditionally given social norms little attention (although this is rapidly changing). One important reason for this is that norms are difficult to measure and quantify (Krupka and Weber, 2013). Another reason why economists find the concept of norms problematic is that there is no general agreement among scholars about how to define them. The literature about norms is highly complex and voluminous. However, a representative definition of norms is the following: norms are standards of behavior that are based on widely shared beliefs of how individuals ought to behave in a given situation and that are backed by social sanctions (Hechter and Opp, 2001; Elster, 2009; Horne 2009; Brennan et al., 2015; Bicchieri, 2017).\n5. Conclusion: There is now a large literature stressing the importance of trust for economic interaction and outcomes. However, an understanding of the importance of trust and its consequences requires an understanding of the related yet different concept of trustworthiness. As noted at the beginning of the paper, it makes little sense to trust others if they are untrustworthy. Trusting can even bring harm if others are untrustworthy. Therefore, trust is only sustainable in the presence of widespread trustworthiness. The goal of this paper is to explore the concept of trustworthiness and its main driver.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of why people act trustworthily in anonymous non-repeated meetings where trustworthiness benefits the trustor and runs against the trustee's material self-interest.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses a survey originally developed by Bicchieri et al. (2011). The survey makes it possible to explore whether trustworthiness has a normative element. Is there a norm of trustworthiness that inflicts punishment for disobedience?\nFindings: The participants in the experiment strongly believe that most people will punish untrustworthy behavior, lending support to the idea that trustworthiness is norm driven. The data provide little evidence for a parallel norm of trust.\nOriginality/value: The theory of repeated games explains how trust can emerge among players in ongoing interactions. But why do people choose to trust others who they do not know in non-ongoing interactions? The results offer an explanation. When trustors are aware that trustworthiness is rooted in norms, they have reason to expect trustees to act trustworthily. Then, it makes sense to trust since trustors will benefit from their trusting.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A triple bottom line construct and reasons for implementing sustainable business practices in companies and their business networks	[ "Networks", "Sustainability", "Business sustainable practices", "Triple bottom line", "Sustainability", "Business sustainable practices" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: When examining extant literature regarding sustainability, it is evident that sustainable business practices have come afore as a key topic in conversations about sustainability (Hogevold et al., 2014), as organisations are increasingly held responsible for the impact they exert on the environment in which they operate (White, 2009). Given that society is facing dual pressures of increased demand from an expanding population and declining natural resources of basic ecological stores, it is only natural that sustainable business strategies have become the paradigm from which consumption and production are now being mutually viewed.\nBusiness sustainability: With the advent of the sustainable development paradigm in the early 1980s, organisations began to move away from a narrow economic conception of responsibility, and started making profound strategic adjustments in response to environmental pressures and changing societal expectations (Robinson, 2000; Evans and Sawyer, 2010). The 1990s have witnessed new shifts in paradigms inspired, in part, by a growing appreciation of the need to evolve from an environmental management context to a broader focus on sustainability management (Schuftan, 2013). In the early 2000s, global sustainability was believed to be driven by an increase in \"industrial activity, consumption, pollution and waste generation\"; an increase in the number of, and interaction between, society-based stakeholders; the development of new technologies offering radical new resolutions to old problems; and, lastly, the increase in \"population, poverty and inequity associated with globalization\" (Hart and Milstein, 2003, pp. 58-59).\nTBL approach and sustainable business practices: Following the TBL approach, sustainable development embodies three inextricably connected pillars: environmental integrity, social equity and economic prosperity (Elkington, 1994; Norman and MacDonald, 2003, p. 243). Performance in one pillar impacts on the other two pillars and vice versa (Hockerts, 1999).\nMethodology: This section reports on a quantitative study that was preceded by case studies that served as foundation for the current study.\nEmpirical findings: The corporate sample characteristics of this study are summarised in Table I. The nature of business goes across industries and sectors of Norwegian companies. The companies in the sample range from medium-sized to large or very large ones, based upon the annual turnover and number of employees, deemed representative of a broad spectrum of Norwegian businesses.\nResearch implications: An essential implication from this study is the developed construct of TBL, which may be used to assess and develop a framework in relation to other relevant constructs in the field of sustainable business practices and business sustainability. It is an area of research that, so far, is mostly descriptive with rare empirically developed and tested constructs.\nManagerial implications: Clearly, organisations are at different stages in sustainable development and it is difficult to draw comparisons between them. Prescribing one single, all encompassing, formula for enhancing TBL integration in a diversity of organisations and sectors is thus impractical.\nConclusions: The notion of sustainable business practices has been evolving and is increasingly understood to encompass considerations of economic viability, as well as environmental sustainability and social responsibility. This study explored how linking these seemingly disparate pillars of sustainability may be facilitated through a contrast of TBL. It has contributed to a TBL-construct as shown in Table III that may be used and tested in relation to other constructs in measurement and structural models. It has also contributed to provide insights of priority as shown in Table II into the main reasons to implement the elements of TBL within companies and their business networks. Both of these issues have not been explored and tested in previous research making a relevant contribution to previous studies and existing theory.\nResearch limitations and suggestions for further research: The current study has explored the corporate reasons for implementing sustainable business practices in Norwegian companies, which limits the findings to a specific context. Further validations in other countries are necessary to verify the universal applicability. The TBL-construct developed and tested also needs further validations. Additional items may be developed and tested in conjunction with the one tested in the current study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to test a Triple Bottom Line (TBL)-construct as well as to describe the TBL-reasons for implementing sustainable business practices in companies and their business networks. This study explores how linking these seemingly disparate pillars of sustainability may be facilitated through a TBL construct. The notion of sustainable business practices has been evolving and is increasingly understood to encompass considerations of economic viability, as well as environmental sustainability and social responsibility.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is quantitative in nature, exploring and analysing how companies in different Norwegian industries implement and manage sustainable business practices based on TBL. The survey results are reported here.\nFindings: The relevance of TBL to different aspects of sustainable business practices is outlined. The study generally supports the view that a heightened propensity for sustainable business practices ensures that organisations are better equipped for meeting the challenge of integrating TBL in companies and their business networks.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study tested a construct of TBL in the context of sustainable business practices. It may be incorporated in further research in relation to other constructs. Suggestions for further research are proposed.\nPractical implications: Useful for practitioners to get insights into TBL-reasons for implementing business-sustainable practices in companies and their business networks. It may also be valuable to assess the general status of business-sustainable practices in a company and their business networks.\nOriginality/value: Linking two traditionally separate and encapsulated areas of research, namely, the area of business sustainable practices and the area of TBL. The current study has contributed to a TBL-construct in relation to other constructs in measurement and structural models. It has also contributed to provide insights of priority into the main reasons to implement the elements of TBL within companies and their business networks.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Farmers' markets as small business incubators and safety nets: Evidence from New Zealand	[ "Agriculture", "Markets", "Rural areas", "Entrepreneurialism", "Business development", "New Zealand" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Rural entrepreneurship is increasingly accepted as a special area of study (Deakins, 2004). The comparatively recent phenomenon of rural enterprise within the farmers' market movement is worthy of investigation on two counts. First, rurality in general can offer a milieu of innovation and entrepreneurship or backwardness and inhibition (Stathopoulou et al., 2004). Second, entrepreneurship research has been criticised for being overly concerned with urban businesses (Smith, 2004). However, the farmers' market is one type of enterprise where the very rurality of the product is a major part of the cachet of the \"brand\".In many developed countries rural small businesses have been adversely affected by changing global food production, distribution and retailing patterns, and New Zealand is no exception. In the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand underwent radical economic reforms, including the elimination of all agricultural subsidies, which often resulted in rural hardship (Cameron and Massey, 1999). Partly due to the \"tyranny of distance\" New Zealanders have had to become more entrepreneurial to survive (Frederick, 2005; McClelland et al., 2005). In the rural sector, when margins are squeezed farmers are exhorted to become more entrepreneurial through diversification of production and marketing techniques (Pyysiainen et al., 2006). One way of increasing profits is by direct marketing through farmers' markets. In New Zealand farmers' markets have grown from one in 1997 to 15 in 2005 (Cameron, 2005a) to over 30 in 2007. This follows similar growth patterns in the USA, with over 3,700 farmers' markets (Brown, 2002), the UK, with over 400 farmers' markets (Grant, 2005), and Australia, with over 80 farmers' markets (Coster, 2004a).Farmers' markets were the traditional method of exchange between rural producers and customers. In many countries such as France, Italy and Spain they have persisted continuously. Paris, for example, has 62 markets (Meyer and Smith, 2000). However, farmers' markets are making a reappearance in other countries where they had disappeared due to the advent of supermarkets. These are the \"new generation\" farmers' markets (Coster, 2004b). An authentic farmers' market is defined as a recurrent market at a fixed location where farm products are sold by farmers themselves. That is, some, if not all, of the vendors must be producers who sell their own products (Brown, 2001). The term \"farmer\" in farmers' market is used metaphorically to encompass not only agricultural and horticultural activities but also artisan-type occupations such as bread, cheese, jam and preserve making. Particularly at the start-up stage, farmers' markets will include almost any rural based food-producing enterprise that has some local input. Farmers' markets often have to balance the desire to be truly authentic with the temptation to include crafts and non-local foods to satisfy customer demands and be economically viable (Kirwan, 2004).\nReview of prior research: The growing power of supermarkets and industrial food processors has led to farmers' profit margins being squeezed. By selling directly to customers the middleman is cut out, leaving more profit for farmers. As a declining percentage of the food dollar goes to the farmer, this can make all the difference between survival and closure. Such markets fill a marketing void by allowing farmers to meet consumers directly. Customers are able to get fresher, better tasting food generally at reasonable prices. Farmers' markets provide an enjoyable, open-air shopping experience where customers can seek out specialist products such as organic vegetables and heritage varieties of fruit (Cameron, 2005b).One of the driving forces in the regeneration of farmers' markets is the increasing demand for higher quality food by more discriminating consumers. In recent years there has been a reassessment of the way that our food is grown, distributed and sold (Pollan, 2006). The first industrial revolution was about resource extraction and money, whereas the second industrial revolution is about resource conservation and values (Suzuki and Dressel, 2002). In affluent nations the emphasis is shifting from cheapness and quantity to quality, rarity, and esteem for artisan production methods (Fernandez-Armesto, 2001). The shift in emphasis from ersatz to authentic food has been called \"the real food revolution\"(Adams, 2002). This reflects a greater willingness to move from conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption (Hamilton, 2005). Like all break-points, this change represents an opportunity as well as a threat to entrepreneurial and innovative rural businesses. Farmers' markets are increasingly seen to be key institutions in the trend towards a less industrialised agriculture (Hinrichs et al., 2004).Incubator function\nResearch methodology: This aim of this exploratory research is to examine the role of New Zealand farmers' markets as:* business incubators where fledgling enterprises can grow to survival stage in a supporting and inexpensive environment; and* safety nets, i.e. as venues where businesses that have formerly supplied large retail outlets or processors can find a niche in which to survive.Using information gleaned from the literature, visits were made to selected farmers' markets to make initial contact. A database of farmers' markets in New Zealand was then compiled. This database was checked for accuracy against a similar one developed by a farmers' market chairperson, activist and writer.In addition to interviews, case studies were used as being the preferred methodology when the research focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context (Yin, 1994). A three-stage approach was adopted. First, managers from four North Island farmers' markets were contacted in order to gain a broad overview of the role of markets as business incubators. These markets were located in Whangerei, Hawkes Bay, Feilding and Bay of Islands. The Whangerei and Hawkes Bay farmers' markets are among the earliest established markets in New Zealand, while Feilding and Bay of Islands have been established more recently. Second, managers from these four markets were questioned about incubated businesses - that is, businesses that had started at the market and had gone on to expand their operations. It was found that the Hawkes Bay market had had the greatest success in incubating businesses. Four incubated businesses were therefore chosen from this market for case study research. These businesses were Woodburn Venison, Country Culinaire, European Gourmet, and Purely Free Range Eggs. The four market managers and four owners of the incubated businesses were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. The results were transcribed then referred back to interviewees for verification. Cross-case analysis was used to group together common responses to interviews as well as identifying different views on central issues (Patton, 2002). Third, at the Feilding farmers' market, 18 stall holders were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. The Feilding farmers' market was selected because, being in the economically least-favoured area of the four markets, it could be expected to have a greater safety net function. Standard good practice interview protocols were observed.\nResearch findings and discussion: After a brief overview of the origins of the selected markets, the views of market managers regarding farmers' markets as business incubators and safety nets will be considered. This will be followed by presentation of the four incubated business case studies from the Hawkes Bay farmers' market. Finally, the experiences and views of the Feilding farmers' market vendors will be examined in relation to the incubator and the safety net functions of the market.It was found that market start-up factors differed markedly. The Whangerei market was started by two growers who considered that they could get better prices by direct selling than by selling to supermarkets and wholesalers. The growers at this market are generally able to sell at below supermarket prices and have created a large customer support base. This market has a high proportion of fruit and vegetables and a low volume of value-added products. The Hawkes Bay market started as part of a strong initiative by an entrepreneur to maximise the food and wine potential of the region. The Feilding market was part of a wider strategy to revitalise a struggling rural town. The Bay of Islands market was initiated by a food writer who had moved into a growing affluent town and felt that it should have a farmers' market, having seen their benefits elsewhere.Findings - incubator function\nConclusions: This paper indicates that farmers' markets play two important roles in relation to small businesses. The first role is as a business incubator, test-bed or launching pad. The second role is a safety net or landing pad. In addition it was found that there is a noticeable difference in the way the market functions between primary produce and value-added products. The farmers' market was more likely to act as an incubator or launch pad for value-added products whereas for primary produce it was likely to function as a safety net. This is mainly due to the current trend in food retailing where fruit and vegetables are treated as commodities with little brand identification, which results in prices to growers being constantly driven down. When small-scale entrepreneurs develop differentiated, innovative products supermarkets are willing to stock them in order to maintain buying interest of customers. In such cases the small-scale supplier of new products is generally safe unless demand is great, thus tempting the supermarket to introduce its own, cheaper house brand, or attracting the attention of other copy-cat competitors. Farmers' market vendors and supermarkets therefore often have an ambivalent relationship. Growing small-scale businesses specialising in value-added products that start at farmers' markets invariably need supermarkets to gain wider exposure simply because supermarkets are the predominant modern day food retailers. On the other hand, those farmers, growers and other producers of primary products who have been squeezed out of the supermarket system have found a refuge, at least for a time, in the resurrected, \"new generation\" farmers' markets.Farmers' markets offer an easy entry at the start up stage and a useful fall-back marketing channel at the decline or downsizing stage. The role of farmers' markets as safety nets may be as important as that of their role as incubators or launching pads as this may stave off or slow down the decline stage in the business cycle. Both roles should help the survival and growth small-scale farmers, growers and producers, especially those in rural areas and in so doing helps respond in a positive way to concerns over the way our food is currently grown and marketed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper seeks to explore the importance of a sample of New Zealand farmers' markets in providing a supportive setting for the take-off as well as the decline stage of the small business life cycle, with a view to identifying factors that may enhance rural small business survivability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The task was achieved by use of a combination of interviews and case studies. A list of new generation farmers' markets was compiled. Managers from four of these markets were interviewed to identify the possible existence of businesses that had been fostered by, but had now outgrown, the market. Four incubated businesses were selected from one of the longer established markets. From a more recently established market, 18 stallholders were selected for examination of their attitudes towards the market as a nurturing environment in relation to the life-cycle stage of the business. Data were analysed using qualitative techniques of theme identification and analysis.\nFindings: - It was found that farmers' markets can have a role as small business incubators and safety nets, thus enhancing the survival chances of rural small businesses. This may be particularly useful where dwindling government subsidies and growing supermarket power result in declining incomes and reduced outlets for small-scale farmers and rural producers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research findings are limited by the non-random nature of the sampling procedure. In such an exploratory study, the main emphasis was on establishing the existence of the incubator and safety net functions. Further research is needed to establish the extent of these roles.\nOriginality/value: - The research investigates a relatively unique setting of an unsubsidised agricultural sector.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Linking loneliness to depression: a dynamic perspective	[ "Depression", "Loneliness", "Personality and depression", "Personality and loneliness" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Depression may lead to devastating effects on people's lives (Gotlib and Hammen, 1992). According to World Health Organization estimates, depression will be the second leading contributor to the global disease burden by 2020. In addition, depression is considered as a risk factor for suicide, one of the top ten causes of death globally (Murray and Lopez, 1996). The emotional state of persistent abjection ranging from relatively mild discouragement to feelings of extreme despondency and despair is conceptualized as depression (Goldenson, 1984, pp. 212-213). Though depression is argued to impact at all age groups, some age groups are prone to depression than others. In fact, studies reported that incidence of depression among the college students far exceeds that among the general population. This is because of the following reasons. One, college adults pursuing undergraduate education are argued to face stress-arousing and anxiety-provoking situations (Arnett, 2000; Meadows et al., 2006; Zirkel, 1992) which may lead to the experience of depression. Two, college years are characterized by unprecedented transitions (Arnett, 2000) such as moving away from family support (Kenyon and Koerner, 2009), for many may be the first time in life (Mahmoud et al., 2012). Three, at this age the need to create life goals and the search for personal existence triggers depression in young adulthood (Dezutter et al., 2013).\nTheory and hypotheses: Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional condition where a person feels estranged from others and lacks security and closeness in his or her social relationships (Cramer and Barry, 1999). Loneliness is considered as a state, thus, is similar to other human states such as hunger, thirst, and pain (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). We focus on loneliness as an antecedent of depression for two reasons. One, loneliness is agreed to be a prominent emotion leading to depression (Gotlib and Hammen, 1992). Second, experience of loneliness is a commonly occurring phenomenon prevalent among student population. For example, studies have highlighted that around 30 percent of the college students experience loneliness as a problem during their college years (McWhirter, 1990). However, the present literature suffers from two limitations. One, most of the studies on loneliness and depression are conducted in the western world and very less is known about the linkage in non-western populations, especially in the Asian context. Second, previous research studies have considered the static nature of loneliness and depression. In the present study, we aim to address these limitations by conceptualizing the dynamic nature of the relationship and testing it in a non-western context.\nNeuroticism: Neuroticism is considered similar to negative affectivity (Watson and Clark, 1992). High negative affectivity signifies impulsive behavior, anger, and use of ineffective coping techniques to stressful situations (O'Brien et al., 2008). Neuroticism thus is considered to be associated with increased stress vulnerability and the tendency to experience distress (Armstrong and Rimes, 2016). Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions such as sadness or anxiety, as well as mood swings (McCrae and Costa, 2006). Those scoring high on neuroticism tend to worry or ruminate a great deal and are prone to having their feelings easily hurt. Studies have shown that the effect of organizational constraints lead to negative work outcomes but the relationship is weaker for employees having low negative affectivity (Penney and Spector, 2005). In contrast, high neurotic individuals experience greater job dissatisfaction (Judge et al., 1998). In a longitudinal study spanning 50 years, Staw et al. (1986) found that neuroticism is a significant predictor of job dissatisfaction, even after controlling for other factors such as work conditions. In addition neurotic individuals are found to be prone to having their feelings easily hurt and poor emotional adjustment to stressors (Judge and Ilies, 2002) such as loneliness. As a result, individuals having high neurotic personality will experience more depression than others given the same level of change in loneliness. Hence, it is hypothesized that:\nExtraversion: Propensity to be sociable, gregarious, and assertive is called as extraversion (Barrick and Mount, 1991). Thus, extraversion concerns \"differences in preference for social interaction and lively activity\" (McCrae and Costa, 2006, p. 46). Individuals with high levels of extraversion are good at building effective interpersonal relations with people, and generating energy and cohesion (Tett and Burnett, 2003). Across 48 studies included in the meta-analyses, Borman et al. (2001) found that extraversion is positively related to teamwork. Extraversion has been conceptualized having two broad components: ambition and sociability (Hogan, 1982). Sociability component of extraversion indicates that extraverts seek support from colleagues when they encounter complex tasks (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 1996). They are effective in developing interpersonal contacts (King and Broyles, 1997) and hence it is easy for them to become an in-group member (Taylor and Moghaddam, 1994). To explain the moderation effect of extraversion, we drew from the need for attachment work of Bowlby (1973). Bowlby described that like kids, adults also have some need for intimate relationships or a confidant. People are anxious about breaking attachments and failure to achieve need for attachment will lead to loneliness (Murphy and Kupshik, 1992). Loneliness is considered as an absence of attachment figure and influences the quality of life negatively. Studies have found evidence of a negative relationship between extraversion and avoidance attachment (Carver, 1997). Since loneliness is the absence of attachment, we argue that the relationship between change in loneliness and change in depression will be stronger for individuals having high extraversion. This is because the impact of loneliness will be more as the need for attachment is high for individuals having higher extraversion. Hence, it is hypothesized that:\nMethods: The present study is part of a bigger study that employed a longitudinal survey design. Data were collected in two phases with a six-month time lag between the phases. Data were initially collected in July 2014, and again with all measures repeated in January, 2015. Data were collected from two sections from the undergraduate program participants at one of the reputed institutions in India. We used mean substitution to impute the missing values as the number of missing values were very less (less than 1 percent) and were randomly distributed.\nResults: The means, standard deviations, correlations, AVE scores, and scale reliabilities of the variables are reported in Table II. We conducted multicollinearity diagnosis for the sample. The respective variance inflation factor (VIF) scores were well below the commonly agreed threshold value (VIF<10).\nDiscussion: Both loneliness and depression represent important and interrelated problems (Allen and Sheeber, 2009). Previous empirical studies highlighted that people who say they are lonely also say they feel depressed (Perlman et al., 1978; Russell et al., 1978). Researchers also find a strong relationship between loneliness and depression (Weeks et al., 1980). The result of our study is also in line with the previous studies. However, based on the inputs borrowed from prospect theory, we argued that both the loneliness and depression are dynamic concepts. Hence unlike the extant literature which predominantly captured both loneliness and depression as static phenomena, we went one step forward and looked at the dynamic relationship between loneliness and depression.\nConclusion: Our study asserts that change in loneliness is important for the experience of depression. Same level of loneliness might have different effect on individuals depending on their personality, especially extraversion. Steps need to be taken as extraversion people are susceptible toward experience depression if they feel lonely.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of change in loneliness on the experience of depression among the students in a business school in India. Building on the literature, the authors argued the dynamic nature of loneliness and depression and subsequently explored the linkage between change in loneliness and associated change in the experience of depression. Further, the purpose is also to explore whether such linkage depends on individual personality factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The present study is part of a bigger study that employed a longitudinal survey design. Data were collected in two phases with a six-month time lag between the phases. Data were initially collected in July 2014, and again with all measures repeated in January, 2015. Data were collected from two sections from the undergraduate program participants at one of the reputed institutions in India. Demographic variables such as gender, number of siblings, and family type (nuclear family or joint family) were collected. The authors controlled for age and qualification as all the students have the same qualification and almost all of them were in the same age group. All these variables were controlled due to their probable interference with the proposed theoretical model.\nFindings: The findings reveal a significant role of loneliness on experience of depression and a moderating role of personality on the relationship. The linkage between change in loneliness and change in depression was found to be higher among those people who were high on extraversion. The findings clearly indicate that the impact of loneliness will be more as the need for attachment is high for individuals having higher extraversion.\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research may explore the role of neuroticism in the link between loneliness and depression.\nPractical implications: The findings of this longitudinal study are very relevant for all the professional groups in the college/university setting. It is important for students as well as college authorities to understand the dynamic nature and relationship of loneliness and depression, as well as the role of personality factors. Routine monitoring as well as various educational programs may be included as regular components of campus culture. Even curriculum can also be fine-tuned. Various programs can be designed to improve interpersonal skills, cognitive understanding, and resolution of aversive emotions, as these college going students or buddying managers are more receptive to intervention programs.\nOriginality/value: The paper clearly reflects its originality. It adds value in the form of contribution to theoretical development as well as to various college authorities to handle students emotions effectively.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From Anita Hill to Christine Blasey Ford: a reflection on lessons learned	[ "Feminism", "Racial discrimination", "Sexual discrimination", "Anita Hill", "Christine Blasey Ford" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroductory remarks: On October 11, 1991, Anita Hill, a young black Lawyer, sat alone in front of the looming all-male, all White Senate Judiciary Committee to tell her story of how the US Supreme Court nominee under question sexually harassed her when she worked for him under the Education Department and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). I was only a toddler when she testified but had grown up hearing bits and pieces about what had happened to her on that day. I knew, for instance, that a soda can was involved, that she wore a light blue suit, and that her harasser was now a Supreme Court justice. Twenty-seven years later, another woman, this time an older white woman, advanced in her career as a psychology professor, sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and testified about her alleged sexual assault by another male US Supreme Court nominee.\nA roundtable discussion: teachable moments: The event began with Roberts asking Hill and Crenshaw to reflect on what was similar and what has changed in the last two decades about the confirmation process. Hill began by reflecting on her most recent op-ed, published on September 18, 2018, in The New York Times five days before Ford was called to testify. In her op-ed Hill asked a crucial question: what would a fair process for Ford look like? Noting that three of the same senators still served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hill argued that the integrity of the court hung in the balance (Hill, 2018). Would the Senate Judiciary Committee take seriously sexual violence as a matter of public interest? Would there be a fair investigation, one led by a neutral investigative body, informed by experts in the field, where all possible witnesses are interviewed? Hill maintained that the excuses by white male senators on the 1991 committee, under the foil of \"not getting it,\" would not suffice today. \"It\" being sexual abuse, in which there is ample empirical evidence and rigorous research on the prevalence and harm of sexual violence in the workplace. Given that the roundtable discussion was held two weeks after Ford's testimony, the panelists were ready to answer the questions posed in Hill's op-ed.\nConcluding thoughts: building coalitions against workplace harassment: We can see the consequences of the failure to think with intersectionality in the present moment. Consider the origins of the #Metoo movement, started by Tarana Burke, a black woman working with youth to center the experiences of black girls and women who are victims of sexual assault. In 2017 surrounding the allegations against American film producer Harvey Weinstein, actress Alyssa Milano solicited tweets for the public to share their experiences of sexual abuse under the hashtag #MeToo (Cachero, 2018). While social media posts poured in under the hashtag demonstrating the ubiquity and pervasiveness of sexual harassment and abuse, many drew attention to the existence of Burke's MeToo campaign. Buke's MeToo campaign began in 2006 to raise awareness of sexual abuse and center practices of healing, an important piece of Burke's activism that is commonly overlooked (Harris, 2018). Although Milano was unaware of Burke's work and has since apologized, the failure of #MeToo to operationalize an intersectional framework means that the unique experiences and knowledge of women of color who are victims of sexual abuse is decentered and seen as additive; another set of stories to add to the cacophony of tweets describing sexual assault. One of the consequences, as Burke argues, is a narrow focus on condemning individuals who exhibit bad behavior at the expense of reckoning with the structures of power and privilege that continue to thwart transformational change (Cachero, 2018).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical reflection on congressional testimony in the #MeToo era from the standpoint of a millennial graduate student.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This essay is based on observational data from a roundtable discussion between Anita Hill and Kimberle Crenshaw moderated by Dr Dorothy Roberts and connects to themes in research on sex-based harassment.\nFindings: The findings of this essay suggest there is still much work to be done in operationalizing intersectionally in the #Metoo era.\nOriginality/value: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this essay are the author's own.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The denial of limits and interior aspects of descent	[ "Limits to growth", "Denialism", "Descent pathways", "Global emergency", "Human and cultural interiors", "Trajectory of development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The key question of our era is which complex system will tip first, the climate or the human response (Berners Lee & Clarke, The Burning Question, 2013).\nIntroduction: The emergence and success of denialism during the latter part of the 20th century has created a number of obstacles, or roadblocks, that seriously impede many of the \"adaptive changes\" that need to be made. For example, attempts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and rein in CO2 emissions. Denialism has thus made attempts to respond to the global emergency that much more difficult. It has also become clear that the Limits to Growth (LtG) narrative that developed over some four decades had a great deal more to offer humanity than the latter was ready or willing to receive. In essence, it provided opportunities to come to grips with some of the cascading consequences of its own actions. That is, to take responsibility for the dilemmas created by its over-rapid, and largely unchecked, expansion and growth. But, unfortunately, most of these opportunities, along with uncountable \"missed signals\" and \"paths not taken,\" were - and remain - overwhelmed by other, much more powerful, social and economic forces. As a result, it is no longer unthinkable to anticipate the collapse of the global economy and with it that of societies that have come to depend so heavily on it. Indeed, the weight of available evidence now points in exactly that direction (Ahmed, 2014; Watts and Viera, 2014; Ehrich and Ehrlich, 2013).\nPart two: global issues and developmental realities: In earlier work, I drew on concepts from an Integral perspective seeking to look with \"fresh eyes\" on global warming, peak oil and the transgression of global limits (Slaughter, 2010; 2012a). I then explored some of the ways forward that I felt held out greatest promise for resolving them and prefiguring more humanly desirable, liveable futures. During that process, I came to regard underlying issues of perception, understanding and value as among the primary impediments facing humanity.\nInterior development and descent pathways: There's little doubt that the present trajectory of development implies widespread disruptions in the near future, perhaps to be followed by a wider collapse of civilisation itself. To take one recent example, Emmott's book \"10 Billion\" reviews the evidence and concludes despairingly that \"I think we're f****d\" (Emmott, 2013, p. 196). Taken at face value, many more people will be tempted to adopt this conclusion, as the severity of the situation strikes home in a variety of concrete ways. On present evidence, this may well produce new waves of depression and avoidance (Riedy, 2013). On the other hand, it is possible to see this same outlook as providing new or renewed sources of motivation. After all, it is often forgotten that notions of a \"great crash\" are really little more than \"do nothing\" business-as-usual futures that greatly understate human and social capabilities. The whole point of moving from a collapse/crash/breakdown discourse to one characterised by notions of \"descent\" is that this recognises, and brings into play, a range of factors that are disregarded in more fatalistic or downbeat accounts.\nConclusion: When the first Russian and American rockets placed people and objects in orbit, and then later took men to the moon and back, the dominant response was an all-too-typical triumphalism - \"look at how powerful we are\"; \"look at how we have conquered space.\" How empty those vastly over-stated sentiments appear now. Few seem to have realised that those pillars of flame represented an orgy of overconsumption of scarce energy resources, a sign of the entropic trap towards which humanity is now sliding. Each such launch was, in fact, made possible not only by engineering skill and cultural hubris. It burned literally millions of years of stored solar energy in mere moments. This is the real tragedy and disaster of late industrialism: it simply did not allow us to know - or care to know - what was being done in our name or why. It promoted the view that humans - or rather a small segment of temporarily affluent humans - were able to venture way beyond cultural and environmental limits without penalty or cost. Brian Aldiss' witty observation that science fiction was basically about \"hubris clobbered by nemesis\" may well be the leitmotiv of our age.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purposes of this paper are as follows. Part one examines the role of denialism in the context of proposals advanced through the much-abused Limits to Growth (LtG) project. Part two uses three sets of criteria (domains of reality, worldviews and values) to characterise some of the interior human and social aspects of the \"denial machine.\" It uses these criteria to address some vital, but currently under-appreciated \"interior\" aspects of descent. (N.B. A succinct \"primer\" or overview of the concept and underpinning rationale for notions of \"descent pathways\" is provided in the introduction to this special issue.)\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on a number of authoritative sources that track the dimensions of global change and, specifically, the ways that humanity is tracking towards Dystopian overshoot-and-collapse futures. The significance of the LtG project is assessed in this context. Part two employs the criteria noted above to identify and open out the centrality of the human and cultural interiors.\nFindings: Responses to the LtG project are shown to have deprived humanity of the clarity and will to respond effectively to the emerging global emergency. The rise of climate change denialism has followed suit and made effective responses increasingly difficult. A new focus, however, on some of the dynamics of reality domains, worldviews and values, clarifies both the nature of the problem and prefigures a range of solutions, some of which are briefly outlined.\nResearch limitations/implications: This is primarily a conceptual paper that suggests a range of practical responses. For example, re-purposing parts of the current information technology (IT) infrastructure away from financial and economic indices to those tracking the health of the planet. Also translating the case put forward here for a new generation of Institutions of Foresight (IoFs) into real-world start-ups and examples. Further research is needed into the uses and limitations both of positive and negative views of futures. It is suggested that the latter have more value than is commonly realised.\nPractical implications: In addition to those stated above, the practical implications include new uses for IT infrastructure based on worldcentric - rather than financial and economic worldviews; designing and implementing a new generation of IoFs; and finding new ways to inform the public of impending Dystopian outcomes without exacerbating avoidance and depression.\nSocial implications: The social implications are profound. Currently, humanity has allowed itself to \"tune out\" and ignore many of the well-founded \"signals\" (from the global system) and warnings (from those who have observed and tracked real-world changes). As a result, it has outgrown the capacity of the planet to support the current population, let alone the 10 billion currently projected by the United Nations (UN). Something must give. Applied foresight can provide essential lead time to act before human actions are overwhelmed by forces beyond its control.\nOriginality/value: The paper draws together material from hitherto disparate sources to assess the LtG project. It also deploys key concepts from an integral perspective that shed new light on human and cultural forces that determine how people respond to the prospect of Dystopian futures. In so doing, it provides insight into why we are where we are and also into some of the means by which humanity can respond. Specifically, it suggests a shift from collapse narratives to those of descent.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Understanding the HR inbetweeners: The role of intermediaries in outsourcing	[ "HR outsourcing", "HR intermediaries", "Small- to medium-sized enterprises “SMEs”" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: It is perhaps unwise to equate the internal workings of political parties to corporations, but aside from sport and TV, there are a precious few bodies that we can publicly ogle at and discuss, aside from the organizations we ourselves work for. Poking our nose into what makes certain firms tick - and what makes them a disaster scene - is one of the vicarious pleasures we can all enjoy at other people's expense without feeling too guilty. And more importantly, there can be a lot to learn.\nOutsourcing problems: This is one of the questions that Wallo and Kock (2018) investigate in their article \"HR outsourcing in small and medium-sized enterprises: exploring the role of human resource intermediaries.\" With the context of the simple problem of a third party seeking to work with people in a small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), where they do not know what can be a close-knit group of people, the focus is on the twin challenges of understanding the characteristics of the relationship between SMEs and human resource intermediaries (HRIs) when it comes to outsourcing HR services and how such outsourcing is enabled.\nKey findings: There were a number of significant outcomes from the research that the authors undertook with both HRIs and the SMEs they were working with. First, all parties agreed that HR issues had become more important to them in recent years, and yet, the SMEs tended to have few if any people working full time in HR, with much of the responsibility for HR being laid at the door of senior management in the firms. The average number of employees working for the SMEs in the study was just under 100, so the fact that so few had invested in personnel to work in HR shows how far down the pecking order HR was for the firms, despite their stressing its increasing importance.\nBenefits and prerequisites: In addition to cost reduction and flexibility, firms reported other benefits occurring as a result of HR outsourcing, including the introduction of more professional support for HR activities to ease any workload on SME HR functions, which enabled increased focus on other parts of the business. Those questioned also reported that their firms benefited from the introduction of new competencies and facilitated any internal challenges with objectivity.\nComment: The article \"HR outsourcing in small and medium-sized enterprises: exploring the role of human resource intermediaries\" by Wallo and Kock (2018) is an essential pre-read for any SME that is concerned about its HR provision. As the study highlights all too clearly, HR can often be under-resourced or even overlooked in small firms, and as a result the peace of mind and strategic boost outsourcing can offer should be looked at, even if it is just an assessment of the pros and cons.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer, who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: It is perhaps unwise to equate the internal workings of political parties to corporations, but aside from sport and TV, there are a precious few bodies that we can publicly ogle at and discuss, aside from the organizations we ourselves work for. Poking our nose into what makes certain firms tick - and what makes them a disaster scene - is one of the vicarious pleasures we can all enjoy at other people's expense without feeling too guilty. And more importantly, there can be a lot to learn.\nPractical implications: This paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Complementarity effect of supply chain competencies on innovation capability	[ "Exploration", "Exploitation", "Supply chain flexibility" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As organizations face globalization, development in emerging markets, heightened customer expectations, the rise of new technologies and harsh economic conditions, they find innovation to be one of the must-have capabilities. Research reveals that innovative companies tend to demonstrate higher profitability, greater market value, superior credit ratings and higher survival probabilities (Volberda et al., 2010). Numerous studies have taken the knowledge-based view to examine organizational innovation. Organizations increasingly tap into knowledge sources to build their innovation capability (Laursen and Salter, 2006; Aboelmaged, 2010), and knowledge-based resources are socially complex and difficult for competitors to imitate. As it is widely accepted that critical knowledge is not always easily available and readily appropriate for immediate use, it becomes crucial for organizations to develop strong knowledge absorptive capacity (KAC) - the set of closely related organizational abilities to identify, assimilate and exploit new knowledge for competitive advantage (Revilla et al., 2013). Ali et al. (2016) contended that KAC \"plays a fundamental role in the development of firms' innovative capabilities.\" In the literature, KAC has been found not only to enable organizations to become more effective innovators through facilitating the actual activities and processes of innovation, but also to encourage organizations to be more likely to innovate, because firms with higher KAC level tend to be more proactive. KAC increases a firm's sensitivity to emerging opportunities in the environment and elevates its aspiration level for innovation (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990).\n2. Theoretical development: 2.1 The theory of complementarity\n3. Theoretical constructs and hypothesis development: 3.1 Innovation capability\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Measurement instrument\n5. Results: 5.1 Measurement validation and reliability\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Theoretical contribution\n7. Limitations and future research: The proposed framework and empirical study constitute a step forward in strengthening the theoretical foundations for research on linking exploration and exploitation in innovation. Despite our earnest efforts to design and execute the research as rigorously as possible, readers are advised to pay attention to the limitation that our data were collected only from the buyers. Considering a dyadic setting may be able to yield richer insights into the dynamics of exploration from external sources. For future research, this paper highlights the need for additional studies to identify other core theoretical paradigms to examine the governance structures that can be developed, implemented and leveraged to account for the disparate views and motivations of various entities within an organization and across a supply chain. For instance, in light of the complementary role of internal collaboration and external capabilities, would they still reap the desired innovation benefits when accompanied by each other or when dependence varies in the buyer-supplier relationship? Further inquiry could explore how forces of power, strategies and competition intensity would provide a difficult context for achieving the desired complementarity effect and could also further identify managerial control elements that might be employed to help better implement complementary initiatives. Additionally, it is worthwhile for future study to link other firm-specific or supply chain-specific investment to outcomes of exploration and exploitation in terms of efficiency, scope, flexibility and other innovation-related consequences. This might provide more in-depth insights into explaining innovation performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: From the perspective of the economic theory of complementarity, the purpose of this paper is to examine how internal collaboration and external competencies would provoke and strengthen each other, and subsequently enhance organizational innovation capability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The survey data were collected from 201 manufacturing firms and checked for common method variance, validity and reliability. Structural equation modeling was then used to test the hypothetical complementarity effect.\nFindings: The results suggest that internal collaboration (as a manifestation of exploitative learning) and external competencies, which include supply network flexibility and supplier operational capabilities (as manifestation of exploratory learning), do in fact compensate for each other's deficiencies. Complementary deployment of internal collaboration and external competencies enhances each other's contribution to innovation capability. Practically, the study indicates that organizations should consider making concerted efforts to develop internal collaboration, supply network flexibility and supplier operational capability as a bundle.\nOriginality/value: Extensive discussions exist in the literature on exploration and exploitation being essential components of innovation and their conflicting impact on innovation efficiency and effectiveness. But how an organization should operationally develop supply chain competencies in order to maximize overall innovation capability still remains largely an unanswered question. The current study advances the research on the inter-relationships between exploration and exploitation by empirically demonstrating the complementary nature of internal collaboration and external competencies in developing sustainable innovation capabilities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Potential effects of climate change on the habitat in Mexico	[ "Climate change", "Disasters", "Mexico", "Manmade Disaster", "Natural hazard", "Hydrometeorological hazards" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: uncertainty about phenomena observed in Mexico: This paper examines some of the potential effects of climate change such as floods, droughts and hurricanes, in an attempt to correlate the IPCC's global findings with the local reality in three regions in Mexico. We are seeking a method of interpreting events linked to climate variability, based on historical records of disasters, the environment and the habitat. We understand the concept of habitat as a set of geophysical conditions in which the life of a human community develops. The concept of habitat includes housing and the ecological environment.\n2. Methodology: The assessment methodology in this work seeks to measure society's capacity to adapt to disasters caused by weather events or by the effects of climate change. To meet this objective, we used socio-economic and historical/climatic data from the states in order to evaluate the situation in Oaxaca, Tabasco and Yucatan which are affected by intense hydrometeorological events. We also use some parallel procedures, obtained from field work, to add some specific and qualitative estimates in the case of impacts on the environment or on natural capital.\n3. Droughts and their impact on the habitat: According to SEMARNAT (2013), the drought of 2011-2012 has been considered one of the most intense in the past 50 years in Mexico. At the end of January 2012, over half of Mexico was affected by drought, triggering a major economic, social, and environmental crisis, mainly due to the loss of crops and livestock. Furthermore, the lack of water affected around more than 2,350 communities, two million people across the country. This phenomenon is not new and we can observe the same situation in previous years (1925, 1932, 1960, 1970).\n4. Impacts of hurricanes and floods: We base our analysis on the IPCC's macro or global findings, applying them at a local or regional level, in connection with our case studies: floods in Villahermosa, in the state of Tabasco, and hurricanes in Cacalchen and San Felipe, in the state of Yucatan. Although at the moment it is impossible to determine whether a particular climate event or its intensity were caused by global warming, we can define whether there is a greater or lesser frequency or intensity of such events in a given period compared to the recorded historical averages.\n5. Adaptation, mitigation and resilience: The question of adaptation is not new. As Garcia Acosta (2006) points out, \"societies all around the world, and throughout history, have devised social and cultural means of dealing with the risk and confronting real and potential risks. Societies are not, nor have been, passive subjects in the face of natural hazards.\" The IPCC refers to the same idea: \"Societies across the world have a long record of adapting and reducing their vulnerability to the impacts of weather- and climate-related events such as floods, droughts and storms\" (IPCC: 56).\n6. Conclusions: 6.1. Data uncertainty?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential effects of climate change on the habitat and human settlements in Mexico, through an analysis of three regions that are vulnerable to hydrometeorological hazards such as droughts, floods and hurricanes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research process included fieldwork in the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco and Yucatan, and a historical study of hydrometeorological events in each region. The authors sought to identify a means of interpreting these events linked to climate variability, on the basis of the history of disasters, the environment and the habitat. The local climatic indications were compared to the IPCC's global successes, to show that contradictions do not exist but that it is difficult to apply the IPCC's findings at a local level, given the considerable margin of uncertainty.\nFindings: The indications of the effects of climate change make it possible to foresee that the most vulnerable populations will be the ones facing the strongest impact in the future.\nPractical implications: The research has direct implications on urban and housing policies, offering a roadmap to design climate change adaptation strategies; adaptive capacity not only requires political commitment.\nSocial implications: It is also related to social and economic development and an \"integral risk management\" approach rather than a \"civil protection\" strategy.\nOriginality/value: The main interest of this research is to show that a multidisciplinary approach is essential in order to understand the local implications of climate change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Motivation and personal involvement leading to wine consumption	[ "Intrinsic motivation", "Extrinsic motivation", "Personal involvement", "Push-pull factors", "Wine consumption" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Wine sales are at the highest volumes ever, reaching $37.6bn in retail value in 2013, with US residents consuming on average 2.82 gallons per person per year, up from 2.34 gallons in 2005 (Statista, 2015). Thornton (2013) noted that there are over 100 million US wine consumers, generating a base-rate of approximately one-third of the USA given the population of approximately 319 million. Furthermore, approximately 11 million of those in the USA drink wine daily (Thornton, 2013). With such an amount of, and recent growth in, wine consumption, there is considerable interest in the drivers of this consumption.\nConceptual background: Intrinsic (push) and extrinsic (pull) motivational attributes have been widely studied to understand how product bundling affects consumer travel decisions (Crompton, 1979; De Guzman et al., 2006; McCabe, 2000; Tanford et al., 2012; Uysal and Hagan, 1993). The premise of such research is that consumers consider intrinsic and extrinsic attributes in their purchasing decisions. In the consumer behavior literature, researchers have identified motivational purchasing factors with respect to other products; however, there is limited research in the wine consumption literature examining intrinsic and extrinsic motivational attributes together with PI. Thus, here we examine various intrinsic and extrinsic attributes relevant to the motivations driving wine consumption behavior. We also investigate the role of PI in wine consumption using Zaichkowsky's (1994) personal involvement inventory (PII).\nHypotheses: Given the above literature, it seems likely that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations influence wine consumption via first influencing PI (Cox, 2009; Mittal, 1989), and therefore PI may mediate intrinsic and extrinsic motivational influences of wine consumption. Thus, we proposed the following hypotheses:\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: We first examined the construct validity of the scales using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) with a priori latent constructs for intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and PI. The wine consumption variable (glasses per day) was not included because it was measured with one item. With 40 items across these three scales and 235 participants, the subject-to-item ratio was 5.88, and below the preferred ratio of at least 10-to-1 for CFA/SEM analyses (Bentler and Chou, 1987; Jaccard and Wan, 1996). Therefore, we used the single-factor analytic (SFA) parceling technique recommended by Landis et al. (2000) for our CFA/SEM analyses.\nDiscussion: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Wine sales are at the highest volumes ever and warrant a robust understanding of consumption behavior. Consequently, this study aims to examine intrinsic motivational factors (e.g. personal attributes) - those that push the consumer toward wine products - and the extrinsic motivational product attributes (e.g. situational attributes) those that draw - or pull - the consumer toward wine products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A model has been tested in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivations interacted to predict personal involvement (PI) with wine, which in turn predicted wine consumption, forming a mediated moderation model.\nFindings: Support has been found for a mediated moderation model of wine consumption. Thus, this study improves the understanding of how interactive motivations are mediated by PI in their influence on wine consumption.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample is limited to participants in the National Restaurant Show, and thus the results may be limited to the sample investigated.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest using intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors and PI with wine to influence marketing strategies.\nSocial implications: This study has helped to expand the understanding of interactive and mediating forces that drive wine consumption.\nOriginality/value: Although previous research proposed that motivational factors interact to predict wine consumption, this interaction has not been tested empirically prior to the current study. Therefore, this study adds new insights into wine consumption by demonstrating that intrinsic and extrinsic motivators interact to predict PI with wine, which subsequently predicts wine consumption in a holistic, mediated moderation model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Critical success factors for Kaizen implementation in the Nigerian construction industry	[ "Continuous improvement", "Construction", "Implementation", "Kaizen", "Developing economies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Background of the study: Causalities of cost and time overruns have been studied without much impact on the construction industry. An introspective look at what is obtainable for the construction industry from the manufacturing and business management sectors provides new approaches in the form of kaizen (Kaur and Kaur, 2013; Khanna, 2009). Innovative management approaches stemming from lean production systems, such as just-in-time, total quality management and kaizen, may be applied in the organisational management of construction companies (Awad and Shanshal, 2017; Cheng, 2018). The concept of lean construction and kaizen has been a subject of intense debate in the construction industry, due to underlying application constraints. Kaizen is an innovative concept which is also known as continuous improvement in construction (Omotayo and Kulatunga, 2015; Vivan et al., 2015). Considering the prevailing concomitant drawbacks of ensuring project success within the construction industry, kaizen has a major role to play in terms of managing cost, time and quality (Kaur and Kaur, 2013; Junker, 2010). These drawbacks seem to transcend construction economies of developed and developing countries. Nonetheless, the circumstantial differences between the categories of construction economies in relation to studies on the aforementioned drawbacks have peculiarities which should be investigated when change and innovation are being discussed.\n2. The potential application of kaizen in the construction industry: Kaizen is concerned with reducing waste in a particular process by incrementally addressing the existing process before they occur or when they occur. The processes here may be in the project planning or construction phase. Although kaizen has not been used in most construction industries, a kaizen model was developed by Vivan et al. (2015) based on an action research strategy using 76 building projects in Brazil. The results showed that the overall cost of the building reduced drastically over the phase of the project. Kaizen was applied during construction to reduce cost. Kaizen costing is the cost reduction mechanism of kaizen during production. The model developed by Vivan et al. (2015) also eliminated the myth of standardisation for production in construction during the action research process.\n3. Scope of the study: Researchers in developing countries such as India, Brazil, Malaysia and China have been investigating the application of kaizen in the construction industry. Hence, this research will focus on Nigeria as part of the wider scope of construction countries which are developing. The CSF in this study will be based on managerial and building construction site applications in Nigeria. Construction cost management (CCM) has a major role to play in implementing kaizen. This is due to the enormous benefit of kaizen, which is centred on cost reduction, waste reduction and profitability. In addition to this, cost management in construction has a major influence on planning and executing construction activities in developing countries (Aibinu and Jagboro, 2002; Odeh and Battaineh, 2002). The CSF for kaizen implementation intricately advances the course of struggling construction organisations after application.\n4. Drivers for implementing kaizen in the construction industry: The strategies other researchers have suggested for implementing kaizen in countries around the world can be applied to the Nigerian construction industry. These strategies can be categorised as they relate to the various sections of the kaizen process within a construction industry for the company and construction process. Additionally, the CSF in this section are from third world countries (such as China, Brazil and India) similar to the Nigerian construction industry. Most third world construction industries have similar challenges, such as cost overruns, project financing and small and medium scale construction companies, which are facing stiff competition from multinational construction companies. The challenges faced in third world construction companies are, therefore, very similar (Ballesteros-Perez et al., 2015; Guo et al., 2016; Amoatey et al., 2015) and this allows for consideration of strategic transferability.\n5. Methodology: A survey research strategy was used with a large number of the population involved within the scope of this study. A survey research strategy provides an opportunity to explore and extract large data sets from the existing population (De Vaus, 2013).The CSF for the adoption of kaizen in Nigerian construction companies began with an extensive literature review. This culminated into the development of a Likert scale questionnaire for quantitative questionnaires, targeting building contractors, quantity surveyors and project managers. The research gaps identified in the literature review were modified to provide the focus on the main challenges of developing a good understanding of continuous improvement in Nigerian companies. The opinions and perceptions of key building contractors in the Nigerian construction industry were essential to gain a better understanding of construction industries in Nigeria.\n6. Findings: The categorised drivers were tested using the KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy to assess the adequacy of the data for factor analysis. This is based on the principal components. If the KMO is above 0.6, then the data is unreliable for the analysis. The first stage of the KMO test did not provide the required sampling adequacy. Four drivers were eliminated to give the KMO and Bartlett's test in Table I. The four factors eliminated from this table are employee empowerment, availability of software packages, procurement method adopted and updating cost information during construction.\n7. Discussion of findings: Implementation of kaizen in the Nigerian construction industry: This section deduces the exploratory factor analysis and asymptotic significance findings for the adoption of kaizen in the Nigerian construction industry. The discussion below is also expanded to other developing countries. A general perspective of the findings in this discussion provides more insight into how the CSFs in Table IV are justified.\n8. Conclusion: Several organisations may have been making use of kaizen in the form of continuous improvement, however, it is still very new to the construction industry. With the wider scope and complexity of construction projects around the world, a more holistic philosophy into managing construction projects for enhanced productivity is sacrosanct. In developing economies, the gross domestic product growth rate is high, but infrastructure delivery has remained the same. Hence, an economy depends on the construction industry for growth. Most construction companies in developing economies have productivity and other associated issues which limit their growth. Continuous improvement has been proven to provide major impact on the growth of constriction companies in developing countries. Implementing continuous improvement demands a lot of financial resources, cost and time. Nonetheless, certain CSFs need to be in place for construction organisations to adopt kaizen.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Kaizen in construction is a new paradigm stemming out of lean production systems. Construction companies in developing economies, such as Nigeria, have a task to innovate to liquidate in certain cases. With the aid of kaizen, which encompasses the benefit of stakeholder relationship improvement and management, profitability enhancement and delivery of projects to satisfied clients, construction companies can realise expected growth. An exploration of the critical success factors (CSF) and associated drivers within the limits of the scope is essential. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Exploratory factor analysis statistical tests categorised the CSF identified in the literature review section. A detailed sampling approach extracted 135 questionnaires under the five-point Likert scale format from a larger population in Nigeria. An exploration of important drivers and iteration of eigenvalues combined with asymptotic significance of the drivers provided the CSF and significant drivers.\nFindings: Construction management function, operational efficiency, construction business ethics and construction cost management were the CSF established from the exploratory factor analysis tests. It was confirmed that kaizen can be adopted in Nigerian construction companies with reflections on the principal drivers for the CSF.\nResearch limitations/implications: The exploration of the CSF and drivers associated with kaizen implementation can be applied to other developing countries with considerations of implementation in terms of cost and time.\nOriginality/value: The identification of CSF provides ample opportunity for consideration of kaizen in construction companies. The findings of this study are a basis for investigations into cost and time implications of kaizen adoption in construction companies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Crisis management as a critical perspective	[ "Business education", "MBA", "Crisis management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Private industry practices often exist in spite of evidence that shows they are harmful. Many managers are dedicated followers of fashion. They see other organizations doing something, and assume - quite irrationally - that they must have a good reason for doing so. They then copy it (Tourish, 2011, p. 26).\nBusiness education: a suitable case for treatment?: The MBA has a long history dating back to the mid-1950s, but it has seen substantial growth globally since the mid-1980s and is the flagship programme for the majority of business schools (Pfeffer and Fong, 2002; Currie and Knights, 2003; Schlegelmilch and Thomas, 2011). Unsurprisingly, therefore, MBA programmes have attracted a great deal of attention, with scrutiny of content, learning style and value to participants and their employers being the subject of much of that attention (Cunliffe et al., 2002; Neelankavil, 1994; Welsh and Dehler, 2007; Grey et al., 1996). This has been particularly marked in the aftermath of a series of organizational crises across a number of sectors. Widely cited critics of the MBA such as Leavitt (1989), Mintzberg (2004) and Pfeffer and Fong (2002) level much of their concern at the extent to which MBA programmes reflect real world problems and equip participants to be effective managers rather than strong analysts with functionally oriented mindsets. The teaching process is also inextricably linked to this criticism with Pfeffer and Fong considering that \"many programs operate on the basis of some incorrect assumptions about learning, thereby doing things that contribute to poorer learning outcomes\" (p. 8) and adopting inappropriate methods of instruction, often valuing theory and analysis over experience and observation. The lack of multidiciplinarity is also seen as a fundamental weakness of MBA programmes as this reinforces functional perspectives on real world problems rather than integrative perspectives on the major challenges that business face (Waddock and Lozano, 2013). Further concerns relate to the under-development of softer skills such as leadership or influencing skills, echoing aspects of Mintzberg's (2004) evaluation.\nCrisis management as critical management education: Crisis management can be seen as readily compatible with a critical approach to management education and so unsurprisingly, its place on the curriculum has been debated by a number of established scholars in the field (Shrivastava, 1994; Pearson and Clair, 1998; Mitroff et al., 1988; Kovoor-Misra et al., 2000). Crisis management focuses on how the core paradigmatic views on management and business can be flawed and ultimately fail (Fischbacher-Smith and Fischbacher-Smith, 2013), thus challenging notions of control, and questioning the validity of core organizational assumptions about performance. Avoidance of crises requires critical analysis of organizational cultures, the role of expertise in decision-making processes, and the adequacy of organizational controls (Smith, 2006). There are also strong links between corporate social responsibility and the various stages of a crisis (Tombs and Smith, 1995) aspects of management often identified as missing elements of the moral and ethical development of managers and leaders on many programmes (Waddock and Lozano, 2013; Schlegelmilch and Thomas, 2011). As Shrivastava et al. (2013) note, \"High moral awareness is necessary because crises prompt questions about the legal and ethical responsibilities of corporations and managers to their immediate stakeholders as well as to the larger social system, the natural environment, and even future generations\" (p. 11).\nTeaching crisis management: [...] educators have a special responsibility to help students develop the creative thinking skills required to imagine the unimaginable events that lead to crisis (Cirka and Corrigall, 2010).\nStructuring a crisis management course: The course approaches these issues through a systems perspective (Checkland and Scholes, 1990; Fortune and Peters, 1995; Jackson, 1994) to enable the holistic approach that we and others believe is essential (Lalonde and Roux-Dufort, 2013; Shrivastava et al., 2013). In contrast to the reactive approach to crises that was highlighted earlier, our course is designed around the well-established notion of phase transitions that an organization in crisis will experience.\nCritical pedagogy: Currie and Knights (2003) stress that simply adopting a critical approach to content, does not engender a fully critical approach to enquiry and learning and that the relationship between student and teacher must also be scrutinized. Student participation is essential, but alone, insufficient. Rather, the openness required to question and challenge is likely to require educators to \"move to an approach where they cannot so easily hide behind the 'authority' of their discipline and expertise'\" (p. 33). There are many challenges associated with a critical approach that Currie and Knights highlight, in particular international students' interpretations of such changes in the balance of power and expertise (see also Currie, 2007), but the value of dialogue between participants, the ability to draw on their own experience in the workplace, and the opportunity to debate differences in responses to case studies and theories, emerge as essential ingredients of a valuable MBA learning experience (Hay and Hodgkinson, 2008; Armstrong, 2005). It is precisely these interactions that we seek to engender from the outset on this course. By beginning with debates about definitions and disciplinary approaches to crisis management, we legitimize differences in perspectives and emphasize the learning that comes from understanding and integrating differing approaches to organizational problems. The use of case studies, aids us yet further. Cases are arguably essential in the teaching of crisis management given both the merits of the case study approach (Shrivastava et al., 2013) and the fact that few participants may have had any experience of managing a crisis such that they can reflect on their own practice. Case studies, if carefully selected, help illustrate the variation of approach taken in mitigating and managing crises. More specifically:\nConclusions and implications: The inclusion of crisis management within an MBA provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which organizations function, the nature of managerial decision making, and the ways in which uncertainty is incorporated into organizational control systems. It provides an effective critique of the rationalist approaches to decision making and offers alternative perspectives, often drawn from other academic disciplines, on the ways in which we incubate the potential for failure as a function of our normal ways of working.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw the authors experience of teaching a crisis management module within a range of MBA programmes in the UK, EU and USA. A key characteristic of the module was its development as a means of critiquing conventional approaches to management education. The paper details that experience.\nDesign/methodology/approach: It reviews the literature on management education that has been critical of prescriptive and \"toolkit-based\" approaches to MBA education.\nFindings: An approach to a crisis management course is shown to provide a means of challenging dominant theoretical and practical approaches to management.\nPractical implications: The paper identifies challenges and personal and academic benefits for educators and students when engaging with critical perspectives and critical pedagogies.\nOriginality/value: Through introducing the notion of crisis management, the paper discusses the importance of challenging theory and practice and creating within students, an appetite to challenge the dominant paradigms of conventional teaching and business practice.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modelling uncertain operational cash flows of real estate investments using simulations of stochastic processes	[ "Real estate", "Property investment", "Returns", "Cash flow", "Modelling", "Risk management", "Real estate returns", "Investment valuation", "Risk modelling", "Numeric simulation", "Operating costs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe issue: Uncertainty affecting future trends in the general conditions for real estate investments holds considerable risks for investors. In the appraisal of direct investments, which is the subject of this paper, obtaining the best possible forecast of the risks and opportunities for returns is of major importance. This is because it is reflected in numerous investment decisions over the whole life cycle of the individual property, from planning through project development and operation to refurbishment, as well as in portfolio connections. In investment appraisal, the risks and opportunities are quantified in financial plans by assigning the cash flow to specific periods. Empirical studies demonstrate that there is considerable inaccuracy in forecasts made by decision makers in relation to real-estate-related receipts and outgoings (expenses). For instance, according to European decision makers' own assessments, over a ten-year period there was an average discrepancy of 47 percent between the forecast rental income and that actually realised (standard deviation). Based on the decision makers' own assessments, the standard deviation for forecasts of operating costs (operating expenses (OPEX)) was 38, and 35 percent for expenditure on repairs (CAPEX) Pfnur and Armonat (2004). While, in the past, considerable importance has been attached to forecasting rental income, for purposes of simplification outgoings have been assumed to increase in a straight line over time. This simplification is significant as, according to the CREIS (2011) survey, property management, public charges, OPEX and CAPEX together account for 40 percent of the total costs of a real estate investment. The relatively small periodic surpluses from real estate investments, the associated long-payback periods and the frequently high proportion of borrowed capital naturally result in a high risk if net receipts turn out to be lower than anticipated. Where there is a high proportion of borrowed capital, periods of unexpectedly low liquidity, i.e. below the agreed cash flow covenant, in particular can put the success of the investment into a downward spiral. This causal relationship is discussed in a later section.The starting point for the issue dealt with by this paper is the empirical observation that, even where there is a margin of security on the income side, variations in operating costs and in CAPEX may present considerable risks to real estate investments. Hardly any attention has so far been paid to this in the literature (Schetter, 2010). Real estate investments that are comparatively secure on the income side include, for example, the public private partnership (PPP) and public finance initiative (PFI) structures that are common, primarily in Europe, South America and Australia. In these instances a very long-term lease to a public institution secures the income stream. In many real estate markets there is also a trend toward full-service leases, under which even private occupiers can purchase all property-related services, including utility consumption, against payment of a fixed usage fee to a real estate added-value provider. The risks for the promoters of the special purpose vehicle set up to achieve this are broadly limited to the operating costs and CAPEX. Ultimately, even full repairing and insuring (FRI: US triple net) leases can present indirect risks for the freeholder, if the tenant's willingness (and/or ability) to pay is reflected.End users also include payment risks, in view of increasing energy and water prices and stricter regulatory requirements for building standards, in their calculations for the procurement of accommodation. They then decide between alternative methods of providing the accommodation, on the basis of the total cost including ancillary costs. In the case of properties with high operating cost risks, ceteris paribus the tenants' willingness to pay the net rent is reduced. For the owners this diminishes the competitive position of their properties in the market, so that the property-related payment risk becomes an investment-related income risk in the medium term.Objective and significance of this research\nBrief summary of literature: Although stochastic processes have not so far been used to model uncertainties in outgoings from real estate investments, their uncertainty over time has been taken into account in less complex valuation models. In the simplest form, a percentage allowance for contingencies is added to the costs reflected in the investment appraisal. In a more comprehensive approach to modelling expenditure uncertainties, Hertz (1964) integrated probability distributions for outgoings in the valuation process, using simulation.Applications of Monte-Carlo simulations\nEmpirical relevance of outgoings and expenditure risks: Real estate investments usually have long-payback periods and low net cash flows. Uncertainty concerning outgoings is therefore highly relevant in the appraisal of investment alternatives. A breakdown of the structure of outgoings by cost headings elucidates the most important risk factors. The proportions of costs vary, sometimes considerably, depending on the size of the building, its quality, location and type of use. As an example, a building situated in the tropics will have much higher energy consumption, because of the need for air conditioning, than an equivalent building in temperate latitudes. CREIS (2011), for example, determined the following average distribution of costs (total 100 percent) for central Europe: public charges (8 percent); insurance (3 percent); maintenance (24 percent); energy (12 percent); air conditioning (11 percent); water (2 percent); cleaning (15 percent); security (9 percent); management (8 percent); and CAPEX (8 percent). With the exception of repair costs (CAPEX), all the cost headings can be brought together as OPEX. Any reference to operating costs in the remainder of this paper therefore includes all outgoings incurred in the operation of the real estate. Capital costs and depreciation are explicitly excluded. In this respect this assumption is generalised, as there is usually a close relationship between the amount of repair costs and the trend of value of the building, which influences the requirement for depreciation in the periods concerned. In principle, taking this interaction into account in the valuation model would not present any problems, however it has been omitted from the following for reasons of clarity of the model for didactic purposes.The uncertainty of the cash flow trend was extensively investigated by Pfnur and Armonat (2001) in an empirical survey of European investment managers. In this, the participants were asked to make their own estimates of how much, on average, their forecast cash flow items in a ten-year forecast varied from the actual figures. The standard deviation of the cash flow items in the financial plan for the property was also asked for. For all those surveyed, the average difference in OPEX was 38, and 35 percent for CAPEX. Taking into account that these two amounts together make up 40 percent of the total costs of a property, this discrepancy can be assessed as quite considerable. As the decision makers were asked to make their own estimates for the survey, it can be assumed that they tended to overestimate rather than underestimate their own forecasting abilities. In reality the discrepancies are probably much greater.The causation of costs in buildings varies considerably. For instance, empirical investigations for central Europe by CREIS (2011) resulted in the ranges of OPEX, CAPEX and energy consumption shown in Figure 1.The uncertainty relating to outgoings and therefore the investment risks are not unavoidable however. On the contrary, decision-makers can influence the amount of risk they take on by investment decisions, at least within certain limits. For example, the occurrence of costs and their spreads differ depending on the quality of the building (Figure 2).It can therefore be concluded that the uncertainties in outgoings are of major empirical significance for the risk of real estate investments. Particularly because this risk is still capable of being influenced by decisions, this observation contrasts with the poorly-developed state of the modelling of outgoings in the appraisal of real estate investments.\nModel: In this section, a model for determining the influence of uncertainty in outgoings on the value of real estate investments will be constructed. This model establishes the validity and relevance to practice of the modelling of uncertainty of outgoings. However, in order to limit complexity and to make the effect of uncertainty in outgoings as clear as possible in the result, modelling of other uncertainties that, based on assumptions, ceteris paribus in practice are included in the real estate investment calculation, has been intentionally omitted.Basic model\nApplication and results: In the following, the effects of a more exact reflection of the uncertainty of operating costs over time is more closely investigated by means of an application. The application uses a five-stage process that will first be summarised before the individual stages are discussed in more detail. In the first stage, the model of the financial planning is drawn up on the basis of certain (i.e. deterministic) data and the return on the real estate investment is calculated on the assumption of expected values. In the second stage, stochastic processes for the operating cash flow are defined. For this purpose, the individual cost headings are first subdivided into clusters according to cost drivers. Stochastic processes are then selected for each cluster and subsequently calibrated, using empirical data. In the third stage, using a stochastic simulation, a distribution of the results is generated. In the fourth stage, the results distribution is more closely analysed and interpreted. Finally, many real estate investment appraisal applications are used to aid the decision-making process in optimising investment structures. In a fifth stage for this application, genetic optimisation procedures are used to enable the determination of, e.g. optimal equity capital ratios in the financing structure, or limit prices for the acquisition of investment properties. The data used in the following application relates to the German real estate market, although the results would be transferable to other regional submarkets without difficulty.Financial planning using fixed (deterministic) data\nSummary: In summary it can be stated that the outgoings on real estate investments are generally uncertain. This uncertainty involves risks that, up to now, have frequently been underestimated but that should be taken into account in real estate investment appraisal (Pfnur and Armonat, 2001). Using the simulation of stochastic processes, a realistic representation of the risks can be integrated into the conventional cash flow based real estate investment management appraisal models. The application presented shows that these models and their solution, by means of heuristic simulation using genetic algorithms, can significantly improve the efficiency of many different investment decisions.In this paper we have placed considerable importance on the realistic modelling of uncertainty in the outgoings from real estate investments, without the need for an excessive increase in the time and effort required for such analyses. As real estate investments generate comparatively low cash flows in relation to their investment volumes, even slight variances in the outgoings from properties financed with borrowed capital could endanger the financial stability of the entire investment construct. Unexpected increases in outgoings could quickly trigger cascade-like processes, resulting in the failure of intrinsically sound - but imprudently financed - real estate investments. In a case study, the extent to which previous, static simulation methods can underestimate the risk of default of real estate investments was demonstrated. There are many indications that the actual investment risk in many investment situations, not just in the example taken here, is much higher than investors have so far taken into account. However, as yet this is only a presumption, which needs to be validated by subsequent investigations. If the investment risk should prove to be higher than assumed, a risk-averse investor's marginal price assessment might produce an excessively high value, the optimised financing structure might reflect an inadequate proportion of equity capital, and the risk management might underestimate the threat situation. In the above example it was shown that a more exact forecast of outgoings subject to uncertainty, using stochastic processes, can be adopted as a basis of information for more effective investment management. With the aid of heuristic simulations, investment alternatives and their financing structures can be optimised, compared with previous static simulation methods. As standard software, based on common spreadsheet programs, is available for practical implementation of the optimisation using genetic algorithms, only limited time and effort is required for the application of the method in commercial practice. This paper is intended to provide motivation for academics and practitioners in investment management to carry out not just precise planning of rents and interest rates but also to investigate the outgoings from the real estate investment more precisely, in the scope of planning, monitoring and controlling their effects on risk.In conclusion we would like to point out the limits of the model presented and its application. As already discussed, the complexity of investment decisions is affected by uncertainties concerning other variables such as rent, market prices and interest rates. With no methodological problems, these could also be modelled using stochastic processes and integrated into the investment model. What appears problematic, however, is gathering empirical information of the extent of the stochastic dependence of the input variables. In general terms, the available database for outgoings from real estate investments appears to us to be comparatively meagre. This may well be because, in the past, investors have underestimated the effect of outgoings on the return from real estate investments. Finally, in our modelling we have so far not taken into account the fact that the investor can dynamically influence the return on investment by making management decisions during the term of the investment. For example, right at the start, the outgoings and therefore also the investment risk resulting from uncertainty in the outgoings, can be influenced by the choice of a specific alternative investment. It is also possible to influence the outgoings specifically by deliberate asset management decisions, such as delaying maintenance work in the event of the occurrence of an unfavourable cash flow, in order to avert negative consequences for the financial structure. In practice such room for manoeuvre by the asset management is often kept within narrow limits by technical, legal and economic conditions, as well as the equity investor's inflexible expectations of dividend payouts. If there is significant room for manoeuvre, this can be incorporated in the model with the aid of systems-theory modelling using the system dynamics approach (Forrester, 1971). The results have made it clear that there is considerable need for further research, both for the further development of the appraisal model and its specific application, and for the compilation of the empirical information framework required. This paper represents a small first step that primarily demonstrates the potential of the methods and, it is hoped, will stimulate further investigation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to apply a numerical simulation of stochastic processes to the problem of real estate investment appraisal.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - These uncertain operating costs are integrated into an enhanced dynamic simulation. To model the dynamics in the uncertainty of the cost schedule, a range of different types of stochastic processes is used. The operating costs are classified by cost drivers and an appropriate stochastic process is determined for each of the derived cost clusters. To optimise the capital structure in this application, heuristic optimisation with genetic algorithms is used.\nFindings: - The application of the model to real world investment situations shows that linear and deterministic modelling underestimates the risk-generating effect of uncertain operating expenses, which often can lead to inefficient investment decisions.\nPractical implications: - In a further application of the model, the authors demonstrate the effect of uncertain operating costs on the optimal capital structure of real estate investments.\nOriginality/value: - In contrast to models in the literature that are usually focussed on the income side, here the focus is on the uncertain dynamics of real estate operating costs as a key factor affecting return.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Neural network cost estimating model for utility rehabilitation projects	[ "Pipework systems", "Water supply and waste systems", "Utility programmes", "Construction engineering works", "Costs", "Artificial neural network", "Cost estimate", "Utility projects", "Rehabilitation projects and water and sewer pipes", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Water and sewer pipes form a considerable part of the most capital intensive infrastructure systems in the USA. Many of these pipes have approached the end of their design life and their condition has deteriorated. In a recent report revealed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), water and sewer systems have been assigned a D-grade for their severely deteriorated conditions (ASCE, 2005). To bring these systems back to an acceptable condition, it is estimated that they will require about $500 billion to be spent over the next 20 years (ASCE, 2005). As a starting effort, the federal government allocated $41 billion to upgrade deteriorated water and sewer systems over the next five years (Copeland, 2005). To properly divide up this budget among various cities and to ensure maximum utilization of resources, cities are required to prepare conceptual cost estimates that highlight their needs. In doing so, most cities commonly use a limited number of parameters, such as diameter and length of pipes. Despite the fact that most cities were successful in developing cost figures that could be related to the diameter and length of pipes in many projects, interviews with many city officials revealed that this current practice might not produce accurate results. Many of these officials also revealed that this current cost estimating practice might lead to problems such as withholding projects for future fiscal years and/or constructing projects below optimum standards.Proper allocation of funds requires preparation of highly reliable conceptual cost estimates that guarantee the successful completion of planned projects. Reliable cost estimates will not only help to avoid problems that usually result from over and/or under estimating, such as wasting of resources and/or prohibiting completion of projects, but will also assure proper utilization of funds in a limited resource environment. Developing a highly reliable conceptual cost estimating system is considered a challenging task. Not only should it produce reasonably accurate results, but it should also perform its function using minimum input information that may exist at early stages of projects (Shehab et al., 2006; Shehab, 2009). It should also reflect on the lessons learned from previous projects and demonstrate positive experience.This paper presents a neural network (NN) model for estimating the repair and/or replacement cost of water and sewer network projects. To develop this model, a set of 54 projects that were built in the State of California was used. It should be noted that these projects were built during the period of 2000-2004, and their cost ranged from about $800,000 to $7 million. Although these projects included up 180 bid items, the model utilizes only a set of 23 bid items that positively contributes to the accuracy of the model (Shehab, 2009). The developed system saves time, improves the accuracy of the estimates and prevents problems that are usually associated with inaccurate estimates such as withholding projects for future fiscal years and/or constructing projects below optimum standards. The system will not only help funding authorities to ensure maximum utilization of resources, but will also help cities to manage their expenditures in a manner that assures satisfactory performance of their buried assets. Furthermore, the developed system is also believed to assist cities in comparing alternatives and the go/no-go decision-making process.\nModel development: In an effort to develop a budget estimating system for repair and/or replacement cost of sewer and water projects, a NN model was developed. The development process includes four major phases: data collection; data analysis; data preparation; and data processing and model development. The following sections explain these four phases in details.Data collection\nConclusion: A NN cost estimating system for repair and replacement of water and sewer projects was developed. The system utilizes a set of 23 bid items that positively contributes to the accuracy of the estimating process. The results of the developed system were compared to the owner's cost estimates and a considerable improvement was demonstrated. Although the system demonstrated satisfactory results, it is suggested that a larger set of training data is required to further improve its performance. The developed system will help cities to improve their cost estimating practices and moreover, will help funding authorities to manage their projects in a limited resource environment.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present an artificial intelligent (AI) system for estimating the construction cost of water and sewer rehabilitation projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To develop the proposed system, data pertaining to 54 sewer and water rehabilitation projects was collected. The collected data were analyzed using Pareto analysis technique to identify the most important factors that contribute positively to the cost estimation process. These factors were then utilized to develop a neural network (NN) model that estimates the construction cost of this class of projects.\nFindings: - The study reveals a set of 23 factors that highly impact the construction cost of water and sewer network rehabilitation projects and presents a NN model that predicts the cost of these projects with high accuracy.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The proposed system was developed using information obtained from the city of San Diego, California, USA. The cost of these projects ranged from $800,000 to $7 million. The diameter of pipes installed in these projects ranged from 1 in. to 36 in. and their length was up to about 2.7 miles.\nOriginality/value: - The developed system saves time, improves the accuracy of the estimates and prevents problems that are usually associated with inaccurate estimates. The system will not only help funding authorities to ensure maximum utilization of resources, but will also help cities to manage their expenditures in a manner that assures satisfactory performance of their buried assets. Furthermore, the developed system is also believed to assist cities in comparing alternatives and the go/no-go decision making process.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A stronger voice: Action research in mental health services using carers and people with experience as co-researchers	[ "User involvement", "Organizational learning", "Empowerment", "Organizational change" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper arises from an action research (AR) study set in a large health and social care English mental health trust. The study was designed to integrate service-user and carers views on implementing self-directed support (SDS), which describes how individuals and families can have informed choice and greater control about how support is provided to them (Scottish Government, 2010). The belief underpinning SDS is that it empowers people to design their own support plans and decide their nature (Carr, 2010). Here SDS included direct payments (DP) or managed personal budgets (PB) for those assessed as needing social care resources in their support plan. Implementing SDS using an AR study aimed to provide better outcomes for people through personalised support, flexibility, transparency and control over their support plans and was intended to bring authenticity and a more critical stance from local project voices. Barriers to service-user and carer involvement, as experienced by co-researchers in involvement roles, have already been revealed. These include: professionals not using plain English and not respecting service-user views (who might be perceived as challenging service culture) and organisational discourse that may devalue emotive service-user contributions. Provoking emotional responses in service-user or carer participant discussions is a risk (Rose et al., 2003; Carr, 2004; Steel, 2005; Connor and Wilson, 2006; Hitchen et al., 2011). We explore and discuss how user and carer involvement in this study afforded the co-researchers a more meaningful, powerful and effective voice in the change process. We argue that this approach could be considered in similar change projects when that involve carers and people receiving mental health services.\nBackground: There has been growing emphasis on patient-centred services from the UK Department of Health (DH). This is reflected in governmental guidance that aims to create a health service that genuinely responds to patients and carers by listening and learning from their experiences (Department of Health, 2001). This encompasses moving from a centrally led to a patient-led service through better systems for feedback and involvement (Department of Health, 2005b) with a focus on involving service-users and carers in research design, conduct, analysis and reporting (Department of Health, 2005a, 2006). There is a growing literature on involving service-users in research (Telford and Faulkner, 2004; Faulkner, 2004; SURGE, 2005). User involvement is defined by Abelson et al. (2010) as occurring where the following three attributes are evident: information provision to participants about the topic/issue being discussed, an opportunity for interactive discussion among participants and organisations, and explicit processes for collecting individual or collective input. It is clear that positive benefits for service-users and for research studies are maximised when there is participation from an early stage and where that participation is in-depth (Brett et al., 2014). Additionally, research activity itself can be subject to radically different imperatives where service-users are involved as researchers no longer solely arbitrate knowledge production, which becomes knowledge co-production (Gillard et al., 2012).\nParticipants and their participation: To understand service-user and carers' unique contribution in this study, we need to know who was involved, how they were recruited and how they contributed. This was an AR study and used a spiral method (Figure 1) to structure progress and negotiate change, based on planning, taking action and then reflecting on the results to plan further action (Coghlan and Brannick, 2010). Co-researchers (service-users and carers) worked alongside the lead researcher (SH) gathering data from focus groups, training sessions and other meetings and attending collaborative steering group meetings alongside professional workers. The study received ethical approval from the NHS Research Ethics Service, the University at which the lead author was studying and research governance approval from the NHS trust in which it took place. The full project design, methods and findings are reported elsewhere (Hitchen et al., 2014). Qualitative data from the focus groups and other meetings were transcribed and thematically analysed, and informed consent was secured from participants and continually re-negotiated throughout the project.\nImplications for research and practice: As communication, power relations and emotional impact were all important issues for our co-researchers, and these factors have not received sufficient focus in the PPI literature (Staniszewska, 2009), our study has implications about how individuals are engaged in involvement projects to lessen potential adverse emotional effects. In this study, debriefing meetings and preparatory sessions were utilised and more care, time and explanations were required to reduce communication problems and improve an individual's contributions when engaging in the project. Professionals must engage with service-users and carers with sensitivity and exemplary communication processes need to be practiced so that their involvement is empowering rather than a disempowering. If this is achieved then participation in a steering group can provide a fundamental role in bringing legitimacy and authority to co-researcher roles, which can also add authenticity to any data collection and analysis processes. The steering group was deliberately collaborative with an emphasis on equal contribution from professional, managerial and experiential viewpoints. The group provided a safe environment for the co-researchers to voice their opinions, share their experiences and display emotions. However, even with full preparation and agreement to underlying democratic principles, separate meetings with the co-researchers were needed where reflection took place, which was useful for identifying strategies and knowledge co-production (Gillard et al., 2012). These meetings were designed to minimise any potential adverse emotional consequences for service-users and carers. The meetings also ensured co-researcher understanding and enabled adverse aspects to be de-escalated including comments or discussion, thus re-enforcing their valuable contributions. In this sense, our view is that Staniszewska et al. (2011) calls for more PPI quantitative evaluation to provide objective data for measuring outcomes but will do little to ensure that mental health service-users' vulnerabilities are accommodated and safeguarded in research projects.\nConclusion: It is clear from the literature that involving participants in mental health research is a growing field and also that this requires further evaluation. There are many benefits to be gained from integrating service-users and carers in all mental health service change management aspects and this is likely to work best when they are equal participants and are involved from the beginning (Brett et al., 2014). These benefits can include empowering service-users, adding authenticity to the data, active contributions to the change direction and sharing learning between professionals and service-users (Tee et al., 2007; Gillard et al., 2012; Hutchinson and Lovell, 2013; Brett et al., 2014). It can give a voice to people whose views may otherwise be marginalised (Koch and Kralik, 2006) and is thus very powerful where the intention is to offer them better services. Indeed, as there is a legal requirement in the UK NHS to involve service-users (Staniszewska, 2009), it is imperative that research and service redesign project utilise effective mechanisms to do so. Whist PPI frameworks have this potential (Gaventa and Barrett, 2012), literature includes unclear definitions or evaluations and calls for a more quantitative focus to overcome this (Staniszewska et al., 2011). This may emerge in the future but we argue that AR can be more suited to change management because it can integrate and empower participants, can be loosely structured with imprecise aims and remain flexible and responsive to differing priorities as they emerge in the real world (Williamson et al., 2011).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss learning about service-user and carer involvement from an action research (AR) study into self-directed support implementation in one English mental health trust. The paper promotes appointing and supporting carers and people with experience as co-researchers to obtain authentic local perspectives when undertaking service implementation or redesign.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The researchers used an AR spiral method incorporating carers and people with mental health experience as co-researchers. The co-researchers worked alongside the lead researcher gathering data from focus groups, training sessions and other meetings over four years and attending collaborative steering group meetings alongside professional workers throughout the study.\nFindings: The authors suggest that participation gave co-researchers a powerful and effective voice in this service redesign. This approach revealed more authentic research data and required professionals to be more accountable for their perceptions and to make explicit their understandings throughout the study, which enabled more effective working. Steering group participation was central to securing this participation.\nOriginality/value: The paper illustrates how carer and service-user co-researchers can be supported to benefit both mental health organisations undergoing change and to co-researchers themselves. It also identifies AR's utility in uncovering learning as well as structuring change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Challenging patient safety culture: survey results	[ "Patient care", "Safety", "Health and safety", "Belgium" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Complexity on the road towards patient safety is well known. The Institute of Medicine's report \"To err is human\" catalysed the modern patient safety movement while Reason taught us about the error mechanisms, the importance of a system's approach and system barriers (Reason, 1990, 1997; Amalberti et al., 2005). Practices that will most improve patient safety were described by Leape et al. (2002) and Shojania et al. (2002). Although progress has been made in the highly complex context of healthcare, there is a sense of disappointment about patient safety movement results (Brennan et al., 2005). There is no doubt about system-based approaches; it must be accepted that people make errors and that processes and equipment will sometimes fail, but it seems that there is are important missing connections between professionals, systems, procedures and tools. Conviction is growing that hospital staffs' ability to avoid harm will be better realised when a safety culture can be created. The importance of a safety culture in healthcare is underlined in World Health Organization (2006), European Commission (2005) and the Council of Europe (2006) reports. Looking at a safety culture, a distinction can be made between professional and organisational culture, although they also have important interactions. Leape (1994) said that practitioners have a great deal of difficulty dealing with human error when it occurs as a result of clinical practice. It seems that physicians and nurses are trained and work in a sort of professional \"perfectibility model\". Freidson (2001) wrote a systematic account of professionalism as a method of organising work. The combination of complexity, professional fragmentation and a tradition of individualism forms, according to Leape and Berwick (2005), a daunting barrier to developing a safety culture. Beside professional culture, there is also an important role for organisational culture with safety as an important aspect. Westrum (2004) described a typology of organisational cultures, while according to Kizer (in: Aspden et al., 2004, p. 174) safety culture can be defined as:An integrated pattern of individual and organisational behaviour based upon shared beliefs and values that continuously seek to minimise patient harm that may occur from the process of care delivery.There are four critical components of a safety culture:1. Justice or fairness.2. Flexibility.3. Learning.4. Systematic reporting (Reason, 1997).Creating such a culture in a professional context, is an important challenge for hospital managers. It necessitates a clear view of aspects that need improvement and a great commitment at the top level of the organisation. Physician involvement in such processes is necessary. Following a Council of Europe (2006) recommendation, the first safety culture development stage is to define the organisation's existing safety culture. Consequently, this study reports the results of a patient safety culture study in five Belgian general hospitals.\nMethods: Hospital selection\nResults: A total of 3,940 individuals (77 per cent) met our response criteria. Overall, 42 questionnaires were excluded according to predefined exclusion criteria (see above). The response rate in the five participating hospitals ranged from 74 to 83 per cent. The number of respondents per hospital varied from 528 to 1,300. Among physicians, the response rate was 55 per cent (range: 51 to 59 per cent), compared to 82 per cent (range: 77 to 90 per cent) for non-physicians. The population characteristics are shown in Table I. Overall, 3,552 (92 per cent) had direct interaction or contact with patients. At the time of the survey, 2,752 (70 per cent) respondents had been working in that specific hospital for more than five years, 933 (24 per cent) between one and five years and 230 (6 per cent) were working there for less than one year. At unit level, 2,223 (57 per cent) had been working for more than five years, 1,258 (32 per cent) between one and five years, and 437 (11 per cent) for less than one year.The dimensional scores are shown in Figure 1. For all five participating hospitals, the dimensional positive scores were considered low to average. The lowest scores (those viewed negatively) were found on the dimensions:* \"Hospital management support for patient safety\" (overall score: 35 per cent, range between hospitals: 22-48 per cent).* \"Non-punitive response to error\" (36 per cent, range: 31-46 per cent).* \"Hospital transfers and transitions\" (36 per cent, range: 31-39 per cent).* \"Staffing\" (38 per cent, range: 32-41 per cent).* \"Teamwork across hospital units\" (40 per cent, range: 35-45 per cent).The dimension \"teamwork within hospital units\", on the other hand, received the highest score (70 per cent, range: 70-71 per cent). Items receiving the lowest positive scores were:* \"Hospital units do not coordinate well with each other\" (overall score 17 per cent, range between hospitals: 12-24 per cent).* \"Things fall between the cracks when transferring patients from one unit to another\" (24 per cent, range: 20-27 per cent).* \"Staff worry that mistakes they make are kept in their personnel file\" (26 per cent, range: 21-35 per cent).* \"We work in crisis mode, trying to do too much, too quickly\" (28 per cent, range: 22-31 per cent).* \"Hospital managers seem interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens\" (28 per cent, range: 20-39 per cent).The item receiving the highest positive score was \"when much work needs to be done quickly, we work together as a team to get the work done\" (74 per cent, range: 72-76 per cent). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted. The rotated component matrix is shown in Table II. The total variance explained by 12 factors was 59 per cent. A total of 11 factors had an eigenvalue higher than 1, the 12th was 0.95.\nDiscussion: Our survey response was higher than expected, which confirms hospital staffs' patient safety concerns. Our systematic approach and the growing attention to patient safety in these hospitals probably also contributed to the higher response. Belgian hospitals do not employ physicians; they are independent practitioners remunerated on a fee-for-service basis, which allows a substantial amount of freedom for both patient and practitioner and creates a specific relationship between medical staff and the hospital board. Consequently, we omitted the physician survey identifier codes because we wanted to be sure that confidentiality was not an issue for them. With this approach we realised a physician-response rate of 55 per cent (462 physicians). Nevertheless, our results show urgent and imperative attention to:* more supportive management towards patient safety;* developing a non-punitive culture;* stimulating organisational learning; and* focusing on hospital transfers and transitions through the different units in the hospital.These are important challenges for all hospital stakeholders. When we compared our results with HSOPC pilot survey data from 382 US hospitals (108,621 respondents), our dimensional scores were lower (i.e. our respondents' scores were more negative). Our \"management support for patient safety\" dimension data were the most divergent, so this will be an important challenge for Belgian hospital managers. Improving hospital safety culture is necessary and hospital managers are now fully aware. We should benchmark cautiously, however, because Belgian hospitals differ from US hospitals where the instrument was developed.Safety culture assessment has a corollary effect. Intended or not it raises awareness about the role of culture in promoting a safer patient environment (Nieva and Sorra, 2003). Pronovost and Sexton (2005) underline the importance of feedback about the results of the assessment to staff as well as senior managers. For each hospital, the dimensional scores that were found problematic were analysed and discussed in more depth. Every hospital received its results in an electronic data file that could be interrogated in detail. The different dimension scores vary between hospitals - providing an opportunity to learn from each other. Armed with results, hospital staff can embark on a comprehensive patient safety plan. Involving senior managers and physicians is crucial, and there is a great need for \"organisational trust\", defined as:The extent to which one is willing to ascribe good intentions to, and have confidence in, the words and actions of other people (Firth-Cozens, 2004, p. 56).When there is fear in the hospital, staff will do everything possible to hide errors and filter data (Van Camp, 1997). The creation of the hospital as a trustworthy organisation, described by Firth-Cozens (2004) as those with a \"just culture\", needs a supportive, fair and consistent leadership.The Belgian HSPOC instrument version seems robust. An exploratory factor analysis confirms the existence of multiple underlying dimensions and shows that most items group into the intended dimensions. \"Feedback and communication about error\" and \"communication openness\" group into the same factor, unsurprising since both deal with communication. \"Teamwork across hospital units\" and \"hospital transfers and transitions\" also share the same factor, although the latter also groups into a distinct factor. Since both are strongly related this does not surprise us either.Different instruments for measuring safety culture are available. In 2001, researchers used the \"safety climate survey\" at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (395 completed questionnaires) (Pronovost et al., 2003; Sexton and Thomas, 2006). Reliability in a multi-centre ICU study, using the safety climate survey, was investigated by Kho et al. (2005), while Singer et al. (2003) used the Stanford-PSCI Culture Survey, adapted from five existing surveys, in a sample of 6312 employees from 15 California hospitals; achieving a 47 per cent response rate. Pronovost and Sexton (2005) wrote guidelines and recommendations for assessing safety culture. Their safety climate survey analysis showed a test-retest reliability of 0.85-0.90 and Cronbach's alpha values of 0.75-0.88. These psychometrics are sound, but it is not clear which culture domains are most appropriate. So they advise that the \"safety attitudes questionnaire\" (SAQ) is used because the 30 items measure six domains:1. Safety climate.2. Teamwork climate.3. Management perceptions.4. Stress recognition.5. Job satisfaction.6. Working conditions (Sexton et al., 2006).Recently, Sexton et al. (2006) published the results from six cross-sectional surveys of health care providers (n=10,843). The SAQ was used in 203 clinical areas in three countries (USA, UK and New Zealand), demonstrating good psychometric properties. While patient safety climate or culture surveys may detect hospital staff's patient safety concerns, there is only limited evidence that survey scores are related to patient safety outcomes. Only the SAQ has been used to explore the relationship between safety climate scores and patient outcomes. Positive scores were associated with shorter lengths of stay, lesser medication errors, lower ventilator associated pneumonia rates and lower bloodstream infection rates (Colla et al., 2005). Therefore, it is a pity that the SAQ was not included in the Flin et al. (2006) review. To be effective as a tool for patient safety improvement, data require the development of a shared organisational understanding of underlying meanings and causes. Case reports, like the hospital-wide patient safety program for cultural change in the Missouri Baptist Medical Centre and the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, show what can be achieved (Cohen et al., 2004; Yates et al., 2004). There are likely to be many ways of achieving a positive safety culture, but further research in this field is necessary, especially within the broader and specific system in which health care is organised. Four safety climate dimensions were analysed in 47 medical units in three Israeli hospitals (Katz-Navon et al., 2005):1. Safety procedures.2. Safety information flow.3. Perceived management safety practices.4. Priority of safety and the interactions among them.Results demonstrated dimension complexity. When safety priority was low, there were more treatment errors when managerial safety practices where high than when managerial safety practices were low. When safety was a high priority, there was no significant difference between the numbers of treatment errors for high and low managerial safety practices. So adding formal procedures is not enough to reduce the number of treatment errors. Safety priority seems to be crucial - managers should be aware that the level of priority they give enables or disables the effects of safety assurance interventions. Research from Leiden University in The Netherlands, using the Leiden Operating Theatre and Intensive Care Safety (LOTICS) scale for assessing system failures in operating rooms and intensive care units, found significant and positive correlations between safety culture and subscale \"training\" (0.4) and between safety culture and subscale \"planning and coordination\" (0.43).Despite the widely disseminated message from the Institute of Medicine and the better understanding of Reasons' (1990) \"Human error\", that system failures cause most injuries, the majority individuals still believe that the major cause of bad care is poor clinical practice and that if weak practitioners were removed then everything would be all right (Blendon et al., 2002; Amalberti et al., 2005; Reason, 1990). According to Arah and Klazinga (2004), the medical practice environment remains prohibitively litigious. The \"perfectibility model\", still a dominant aspect of the medical culture and the strong commitment to individual, professional autonomy can create a barrier to achieving ultra-safe health care (Amalberti et al., 2005). The focus on systems as the problem does not mean that individuals do not have to maintain competence and practice ethically or be called to account when they act unprofessionally. We agree with other authors who believe there is a need to clarify where and how professional responsibility fits into the \"no blame culture\", because sometimes it is not a system problem. Finding the right balance in a just culture is a real challenge (Dracup and Bryan-Brown, 2005). The actual attention given to patient safety should not imply that we focus on safety as a culture in itself, separate from quality and the organisational culture as a whole (Firth-Cozens, 2003). Rather, we should remember to balance the \"doing no harm\" (safety) with \"doing good\" (effectiveness or quality health care) at both the individual patient and the health system levels (Arah and Klazinga, 2004). Hospitals in Belgium are only beginning to work with patient safety culture assessments. Although hospital managers did not participate, our results indicate that hospitals can and must focus on safety culture dimensions that need improvement. But this is an important challenge for all hospital stakeholders.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to measure patient safety culture in five Belgian general hospitals. Safety culture plays an important role in the approach towards greater patient safety in hospitals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The Patient Safety Culture Hospital questionnaire was distributed hospital-wide in five general hospitals. It evaluates ten patient safety culture dimensions and two outcomes. The scores were expressed as the percentage of positive answers towards patient safety for each dimension. The survey was conducted from March through November 2005. In total, 3,940 individuals responded (overall response rate = 77 per cent), including 2,813 nurses and assistants, 462 physicians, 397 physiotherapists, laboratory and radiology assistants, social workers and 64 pharmacists and pharmacy assistants.\nFindings: - The dimensional positive scores were found to be low to average in all the hospitals. The lowest scores were \"hospital management support for patient safety\" (35 per cent), \"non-punitive response to error\" (36 per cent), \"hospital transfers and transitions\" (36 per cent), \"staffing\" (38 per cent), and \"teamwork across hospital units\" (40 per cent). The dimension \"teamwork within hospital units\" generated the highest score (70 per cent). Although the same dimensions were considered problematic in the different hospitals, important variations between the five hospitals were observed.\nPractical implications: - A comprehensive and tailor-made plan to improve patient safety culture in these hospitals can now be developed.\nOriginality/value: - Results indicate that important aspects of the patient safety culture in these hospitals need improvement. This is an important challenge to all stakeholders wishing to improve patient safety.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From rumor to release: Does product release influence WOM in brand communities dedicated to technology products?	[ "Word of mouth", "Social media", "Content analysis", "Consumption community", "Product release", "Product rumors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Positive word of mouth (WOM) generated by consumers, both before and after product release, is a powerful marketing tool. While online WOM in general can drive sales outcomes, (Liu, 2006; Duan et al., 2008; Yang et al., 2012), factors such as WOM frequency (Liu, 2006) and valence (Yang et al., 2012) also play important roles. Research has also recently begun identifying means to enhance the effects of WOM across a brand's product mix, such as through preannouncements (Thorbjornsen et al., 2016) and brand communities (Kozinets et al., 2010; Schau et al., 2009). Generating positive WOM activity among consumers thus represents an important opportunity for managers looking to increase the probability of new product success. Online brand and product communities are home to frequent purchasers and the source of large scale WOM (Bordia et al., 1999; Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001; Schau et al., 2009; Thompson and Sinha, 2008). Thus, these communities are an especially important source of positive WOM considering the high degree of product knowledge and experience that their members typically possess, the heightened attachment that members have to the related products that they own (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995) and the potential interest these sites have to lurkers who visit these communities for product information (Thompson et al., 2014).\nConceptual framework: Is all word of mouth created equal? pre-release and post-release word of mouth\nStudy 1: Data collection and context\nStudy 2: Despite the considerable scale of this study, it relied on field data from a single product release. Therefore, it is unclear whether the results will generalize to other product categories. Second, while the results of Study 1 are consistent with the predictions of the rumors literature, it does not provide evidence of the process suggested by this literature. Specifically, the group problem solving perspective suggests that high ambiguity drives consumers to discuss the advantages of the rival (through pre-release WOM) versus their preferred brand to a greater extent than low ambiguity (through post-release WOM). Accordingly, this literature predicts that as information ambiguity increases, the intention to discuss a rival's advantages increases. This leads to the first hypothesis:\nConclusions: While it has long been known that gaining customer awareness is central to both consumer decision-making and marketing strategy, this work represents the first effort to understand how new product rumors evolve across the pre-release to post-release period, which has been identified as an important area for future research (Duan et al., 2008). Furthermore, the studies replicate the central findings in both online and offline environments as well as across a range of technology product contexts where the transition from rumor to release constitutes a frequent and re-occurring challenge.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the impact of product release on word of mouth (WOM) behavior within and across rival online brand communities for technology products and evaluate competing predictions made by social identity theory and the group problem solving perspective of rumors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In Study 1, 72,749 messages posted by 5,777 users over a 13-month period on two rival online brand forums were content analyzed using linguistic inquiry and word count, a linguistic content analysis program. In Study 2, two experiments were conducted to verify the theoretical explanation offered.\nFindings: Marked differences were found as WOM transitioned from pre-release rumor to post-release facts. Prior to release, brand loyalists show an increased willingness to spread positive WOM about rival brands' products. However, this willingness dissipated upon product release. This is in noted contrast to predictions made for experience goods.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study examines the uncertainty generated by a rival brand's upcoming new product within a brand community. While centered on a technologically oriented consumer group, this study addresses a longstanding theoretical conundrum and provides interesting areas for future research.\nPractical implications: Surprisingly, it is the most active and ostensibly loyal brand supporters who spread pre-release rumors about rival brands. Managers should not assume that \"loyalists\" will not seriously discuss the potential offerings of rival brands. Product rumors thus present rival marketers with a unique \"move it or lose it\" opportunity to spread positive buzz among rival brand loyalists. However, this window of opportunity closes rapidly upon product release.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper to examine the nature of new product rumors at this scale, including both pre- and post-release WOM.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The interactions of consumption characteristics on social norms	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Consumption", "Customer loyalty", "Youth" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: The theory of planned behaviour (TPB), well known for predicting social (Ajzen, 2002) and consumer (Bansal and Taylor, 2002; Lim and Dubinsky, 2005) behaviours, relies upon three factors:1. attitude towards a behaviour;2. perceived control over performing the behaviour; and3. subjective norm regarding the behaviour.Along with considerable support for the TPB's predictive ability, researchers have evolved TPB's concept of norm from the original subjective norm (Ajzen, 1991), to a descriptive norm (Schofield et al., 2001), and to both norms (Norman et al., 2005). Dual social norms have support in research with social behaviours such as volunteering (Warburton and Terry, 2000), binge drinking (Johnston and White, 2003), using condoms (Norman et al., 2005), and consuming healthful food (Berg et al., 2000).In contrast to the above TPB studies on dual norms and social behaviour, few TPB studies concern dual norms with consumer behaviour (for an exception, see Smith et al., 2006). Similar to their influence on social behaviour, subjective and descriptive norms could influence consumer behaviour, particularly customer loyalty. Furthermore, the relationship between social norms and customer loyalty should not be studied in isolation, but along with how consumption takes place. As people are likely to consume products differently, ignoring consumption characteristics may result in misleading academic outputs or misguided managerial initiatives. Research has found that product enjoyment (Nysveen et al., 2005) and importance (Amine, 1998) might relate to customer loyalty. Yet, no published studies have investigated how social norms relate to customer loyalty as consumption characteristics vary.To address this question, this research applies the TPB in two studies. Study 1 investigates whether augmenting the TPB with a descriptive norm improves the model's prediction of loyalty intentions. It examines the extent that consumers perceive subjective norm from social pressure, and descriptive norm from observing and adopting others' behaviours, when remaining with a brand. Study 2 replicates and extends the first study by investigating how norm-loyalty relationships vary depending on two consumption characteristics:1. perceived product enjoyment; and2. product importance.Figure 1 depicts the model for Study 1 along with the additional moderating variables from Study 2.The study extends TPB research in consumer behaviour by highlighting the roles of different social norms and considering consumption characteristics as moderators. Investigating the moderating influence of these consumption characteristics could shed light on the psychological underpinnings of subjective and descriptive norms with customer loyalty. Understanding how social norms differ could also help address confounding findings that subjective norm is often insignificant and the weakest among TPB's three predictors (Conner and Armitage, 1998). This study uses youth and their consumption of mobile services as the context. Youth are particularly susceptible to social influences, especially when consumption - as with mobile services - takes place in groups (Martin and Bush, 2000). For mobile service providers, this study helps managers understand the roles of social influences in customer loyalty. As youth are an important growth segment (Wilska, 2003), understanding how youth consume mobile services would help mobile service providers develop marketing strategies to target youth.\n2. Study 1 - augmenting TPB with descriptive norm: The TPB posits that behavioural intentions evolve from attitudes towards the behaviour, perceived control of performing the behaviour, and subjective norm. Attitude, or favourableness towards a behaviour, stems from beliefs about the behaviour. Acknowledging that perceived difficulties or impediments might inhibit behavioural intentions, perceived behavioural control reflects volitional control of a behaviour. Subjective norm is social pressure to perform a behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). This norm stems from seminal works on reference group influence, which surmise that one or more persons can influence another person's values, norms, or perspectives (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955; Kelley, 1947).Meta-analyses support TPB's three-variable model in predicting behavioural intentions and behaviours across domains (Armitage and Conner, 2001). To test Azjen's (2001) contention that TPB is non-domain specific, this study extends TPB to intended customer loyalty towards mobile service providers, yielding three hypotheses for the model's core variables:H1. Attitude relates positively to intended customer loyalty.H2. Perceived behavioural control relates positively to intended customer loyalty.H3. Subjective norm relates positively to intended customer loyalty.2.1 TPB's norm can be descriptive\n3. Study 2 - moderating influence of consumption characteristics: Having shown TPB's social norms as subjective and descriptive in Study 1, Study 2 proposes that as product enjoyment increases, subjective norm relates to intended customer loyalty more than descriptive norm does. Two arguments support this contention, particularly within this research's context of mobile services. First, youth often use mobile phones for hedonic purposes such as sharing jokes, chatting, and playing interactive games (Spero and Stone, 2004). As mobile service providers typically allow people within their networks to communicate at no or low cost (Nelson and Cooper, 2004), youth may worry about peers contacting them less should they use different networks, and hence feel pressure to choose the same networks as their peers. Second, youth may fear that making a wrong brand choice would lead to negative social and psychological consequences (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2002; Lachance et al., 2003). Therefore, they may prefer the same mobile service providers as their peers, knowing that the selection would be \"right\" and approved by their peers. Support for this premise also comes from studies suggesting that consuming products in groups intensifies social influences on behaviours (Dickinger et al., 2006; Schofield et al., 2001). When individuals share common activities, such as using mobile phones, they tend to conform to each other's behaviors. Therefore:H6a. When enjoyment is high (low), subjective norm relates to intended customer loyalty more (less) positively.H6b. When enjoyment is high (low), subjective norm relates to intended customer loyalty more (less) than descriptive norm does.Literature on product importance suggests that perceived importance relates positively to customer loyalty. As importance increases, consumers tend to exercise more care in selecting and staying with a chosen brand. Rather than a direct relationship with customer loyalty, this study posits that product importance moderates loyalty. Consumers who perceive products as important tend to associate high risks with purchasing the products (Bloch and Richins, 1983). As a result, they may be sensitive to product information. Extending this argument to norms, consumers who perceive products as important may rely on peers for information - descriptive influence - in order to mitigate risks when selecting a brand.Resonating with this argument, an experiment involving 60 US undergraduates found that search for product information increased with product importance (Jacoby et al., 1978). As products became more important, subjects were more likely to seek product information. This sensitivity to, and search for, information as product importance increase suggests that consumers should be more concerned learning about and selecting brands by observing others rather than adopting brands to comply with others' approvals.H7a. When importance is high (low), descriptive norm relates to intended customer loyalty more (less) positively.H7b. When importance is high (low), descriptive norm relates to intended customer loyalty more (less) than subjective norm does.3.1 Methodology\n4. Conclusions: Across both studies, the results aligned with research supporting the predictive ability of the theory of planned behaviour. Furthermore, in both studies descriptive norm showed a significant relationship with intended customer loyalty. However, augmenting the three-variable - i.e. attitude, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norm - TPB with descriptive norm made little improvement to overall predictive efficacy. This outcome supports the robustness of the original three-component TPB structure. The similar results across the two studies suggest generalisability beyond youth and customer loyalty.Accounting for the moderating influence of product enjoyment, however, revealed that subjective and descriptive norms behaved differently as product enjoyment varied. Subjective norm was strong with high product enjoyment, whereas descriptive norm was strong with low enjoyment. This suggests that rather than augmenting subjective norm with descriptive norm, as proposed by some researchers (Johnston and White, 2003; Sheeran and Orbell, 1999), descriptive norm should replace subjective norm depending on the context. This research proposes that subjective norm may suit contexts where social pressure is likely in consumer decisions, while descriptive norm is for contexts where information search is important. The former may suit hedonic applications, whereas the latter may suit utilitarian applications. Not accounting for the hedonic versus utilitarian nature of the context could help explain meta-analyses where subjective norm was the weakest of TPB's three predictors (Conner and Armitage, 1998; Farley et al., 1981).Another contribution of this study is the role of consumption characteristics with dual social norms and intended customer loyalty. As the significance of subjective versus descriptive norm varied with product importance and enjoyment, subjective and descriptive norms have different psychological underpinnings depending on consumption behaviours or contexts. Sweeping conclusions on norms without considering consumption characteristics would yield an incomplete picture, resulting in misleading conclusions and ineffective managerial applications.This research also has managerial benefits, as insights into how reference groups influence consumer behaviour will help marketers develop strategies for youth in different countries. Overall, the findings support the importance of social norms with youth's intended loyalty. Mobile service providers have peer-based initiatives such as incentives for calls between \"buddies\" on the same network (Nelson and Cooper, 2004) and tariff discounts around school hours (Pawsey and Mendez-Villamil, 2004). The providers should expand their peer-based services to cement social bonds and influence their mutual choice of mobile service providers.As the significance of subjective and descriptive norms differs with consumption characteristics, mobile service providers should segregate how they reach youth through their peers. For example, as subjective norm is strong with high enjoyment, marketing messages focusing on the fun aspects such as mobile games may help pressure youth into using the same provider. Likewise, as descriptive norm is strong with low enjoyment, mobile service providers could reach such youth by providing information on functional features.In summary, varying norm-loyalty relationships as consumption characteristics change implies that mobile service providers may find difficulties reaching youth via a blanket marketing strategy. They should tailor unique approaches in areas such as advertising media, pricing structures, or sub-brands for each youth segment.4.1 Future research\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Using an extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model to test how customer loyalty intentions may relate to subjective and descriptive norms, this study further seeks to determine whether consumption characteristics - product enjoyment and importance - moderate norms-loyalty relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using a two-study approach focusing on youth, an Australian study (n=244) first augmented TPB with descriptive norm. A Singapore study (n=415) followed up with how consumption characteristics might moderate norms-loyalty relationships. With both studies, linear regressions tested the relationships among the variables.\nFindings: - Extending TPB with descriptive norm improved TPB's predictive ability across studies. Further, product enjoyment and importance moderated the norms-loyalty relationships differently. Subjective norm related to loyalty intentions significantly with high enjoyment, whereas descriptive norm was significant with low enjoyment. Only subjective norm was significant with low importance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Single-item variables, self-reported questionnaires on intended rather than actual behaviour, and not controlling for cultural differences between the two samples limit generalisablity.\nPractical implications: - The significance of both norms suggests that mobile firms should reach youth through their peers. With youth social pressure may be influential, particularly with hedonic products. However, the different moderations of product enjoyment and importance imply that a blanket marketing strategy targeting youth may not work.\nOriginality/value: - The study extends academic knowledge on the relationships between norms and customer loyalty, particularly with consumption characteristics as moderators. The findings highlight the importance of considering different norms with consumer behaviour. The study should help mobile firms understand how social influences impact customer loyalty.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An OD approach to leadership development: questions and consequences	[ "Competences", "Power", "Context", "Congruence", "Organization development", "Health leadership development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 2009, the authors were working for an Organisation Development (OD) practice that was strongly informed by a view of organisations as complex, emergent and participative processes of interaction (Stacey, 2012) rather than mechanistic and stable (Morgan, 1986). The firm was part of, though culturally and organisationally distinct from, a Business School. X Consulting, and Y were awarded a tender by The Health Foundation to create a bespoke leadership programme to develop senior health leaders capable of leading quality improvement (QI). The tender unusually stipulated the curriculum must hold together, in possible tension, leadership informed by complexity thinking and the improvement sciences. Y provided input on the latter. The authors are primarily OD practitioners, so turned to this field of theory and practice to design a programme, not with the grand intent of being transformative but the far humbler hope of being useful to those leading in the challenging healthcare environment (McDermott et al., 2018). To date over 120 leaders who are senior doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, managers, health charity leaders and policy makers have participated in the programme which is marketed as GenerationQ.\nThe literature review: Leadership development\nOrganisation development: Like Leadership studies, OD has been experiencing something of a crisis. From its postwar origins as \"an exciting amalgam of systems theory, action research, and client-centred consultation\" (Mirvis, 2014, p. 3) much of the current OD discussion concerns how to define this practice and articulate its contribution (Bartunek and Woodman, 2011; Mirvis, 2014.) There is broad agreement that the theories informing OD are humanistic in orientation, based on the idea that reality and relationships are socially constructed and that understanding organisations involves thinking systemically and relationally (Bushe and Marshak, 2015). One of the reasons OD continues to live, suggest Bartunek and Woodman (2011), is precisely that it \"engages paradox more effectively than most other change approaches and philosophies\" (p. 733). This made an OD orientation seem highly relevant to supporting the development of leaders in the highly complex, politically fraught context of leading QI in healthcare (McDermott et al., 2018).\nMethodology: This paper is positioned as a case study because we have not found published accounts of similar endeavours. Congruent with our OD focus on context, we are also wary of overclaiming that the exact specifics of our experience will generalise neatly to others. Instead, our intention is to stimulate further theorizing and experimentation on developing leadership programmes, informed by OD theory and practice. In evaluating GenerationQ, we draw on action research (Ladkin, 2007; Reason and Bradbury, 2008) as well as a quantitative impact study commissioned by the programme's funder (Waller et al., 2015).\nThe choices we made: The overall GenerationQ programme architecture (see appendix) includes elements such as action learning sets, coaching and the teaching of interpersonal skills which are congruent with, but not particular to, an OD orientation and are well recognised in the literature (Iszatt-White and Saunders, 2014; Hind, 2015). Here we focus on three aspects shaped by an OD orientation:\nDiscussion: Before examining the implications of taking an OD informed approach to developing a leadership programme, evidence of the impact and effectiveness of the programme is offered, drawing on the client sponsored evaluation survey with the first four cohorts (Waller et al., 2015). The data demonstrate the impact of GenerationQ. However, this is not to position ourselves as expert leadership developers who have the answer.\nConclusion: In adopting an OD approach, we have endeavoured to embed context and the experience of leadership as a social and relational practice into the GenerationQ leadership development programme. In doing so we \"allow time and space for groups to discuss, contextualise and develop their own understanding of issues to do with leadership\" (Iszatt-White and Saunders, 2014, p. 263). This has resulted in the need to pay attention to the physical environment, teaching style and language and the significant consequences this has for the power relations between leaders and faculty.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of ideas and practice from Organisation Development to the creation of a leadership development programme, based in a UK Business School. When leadership development is constructed as a personal and relational endeavour, rather than using competences to create identikit heroes, faculty need to draw less on the espoused certainties of \"expert\" power and adapt their teaching style and language.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This case study of an ongoing Masters programme in health leadership, draws on external evaluation data and action research.\nFindings: The paper's prime contribution is as a conceptual stimulus to rethink leadership development programmes based on OD.\nPractical implications: The practical implications could be far reaching if business schools want to offer an alternative to perpetuating heroic, individualist models of leadership.\nSocial implications: As leaders take charge of their own learning, as much as their leading, faculty become powerful participants and draw on OD skills rather than those of expert knowledge.\nOriginality/value: The paper thus offers a practical example with evaluation of how leadership development can be redesigned congruent with seeing leadership as a socially constructed, relational, dynamic and context specific.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Experimental methods in entrepreneurship research: the status quo	[ "Experiment", "Literature review", "Entrepreneurship research", "Field experiment", "Laborartory experiment", "State of the art" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research in entrepreneurship mainly focusses on how and why individuals perceive opportunities, and evaluate and exploit them while others do not. It also examines how the ramifications of these processes of judgment and decision making affect outcome variables (Brush et al., 2003; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), and exactly how they are a crucial element of entrepreneurial behavior (Baron, 2006). Consequently, methods that investigate specific behavioral patterns are vital to entrepreneurship research. However, research in entrepreneurship has mainly made use of quantitative research and applied homogeneous methodologies (McDonald et al., 2015). With this in mind, some researchers are calling for more frequent application of qualitative research (Smith and McElwee, 2015) such as case studies (Henry and Foss, 2015). As another methodological stream, experiments are well suited to provide new answers to specific behavior of entrepreneurs and the related individuals. In contrast to other fields of research, e.g. economics, psychology, or sociology, experiments were for years the exception rather than the rule in entrepreneurship research. But now, experimental economics have become a mainstream field of scholarly inquiry (Croson and Gachter, 2010).\nMethodology: Aiming to consolidate the literature across entrepreneurship research, as well as following calls for strengthened methodological rigor of reviews (Denyer and Neely, 2004; Thorpe et al., 2005), a systematic, evidence-informed literature review was applied (Tranfield et al., 2003) similar to the approach by Pittaway and Cope (2007) in February 2016. Using the search terms \"experiment\" and (Boolean) \"entrepreneur\" in the respective titles, abstracts and keywords, the electronic databases and search engines ABI Inform/ProQuest, EBSCOhost/Business Source Premier, ingentaconnect, JSTOR, MENDELEY, ScienceDirect, Scopus, SpringerLink, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were systematically scanned for publications. The focus here was on peer-reviewed academic journals as the most important academic sources (Bouncken et al., 2015).\nLiterature review/general findings: Journals\nDiscussion: Experimental research on entrepreneurship appears to examine certain habits and areas of focus. The following will discuss the topics of manipulation and manipulation bias, as well as the topical gaps of the reviewed articles.\nConclusion: The aim of this paper was to critically review the entrepreneurship research that has made use of experimental methods. The research questions on the entrepreneurship research topics were developed and answered by identifying patterns in topics and the methodologies of experimental entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, the paper intends to identify trends, while highlighting the advantages and possibilities experimental research offers to the field of entrepreneurship. To summarize, this paper highlighted the potentials as well as the disadvantages of experimental methods in entrepreneurship research. Experimental research has clearly become more commonplace in the last 10-20 years, allowing a more valid and detailed look at questions of causality than cross-sectional survey methods. Very recently, more and more choice-based conjoint analysis designs have been applied to sub-fields of entrepreneurship, such as e.g. entrepreneurial branding (Eggers et al., 2016), internationalization of SMEs (Kraus et al., 2016a) or family firms (Mensching et al., 2016), or international marketing of SMEs (Kraus et al., 2016b). Advances in experimental methods, for example, vignette studies or adaptive conjoint analyses may help to sharpen the tools of entrepreneurship researchers and thus improve the advantages of experiments even further. Based on the classification framework by Busenitz et al. (2003), this paper was able to identify topics, theories, and trends in environments, financial perspectives, individuals and teams, modes of organization, as well as opportunities in experimental entrepreneurship research. Despite the limitation that this review can only be a snapshot of research to date, it hopefully provides a kind of stimulation for what entrepreneurship researchers have been attempting to find out and how these experiments could be improved or expanded in the near future. As usual, replication and aggregation of findings with meta-analyses would also improve the actual level of knowledge. This study highlights the barely considered area of environments (e.g. country- and domain-specific boundary conditions) as a possible focus for completing the research picture. Additional research topics in experimental entrepreneurship research might focus on areas where fundamental entrepreneurial issues can be manipulated and observed, for example, opportunity recognition and organizational innovativeness. As for opportunity recognition, possible research areas could apply a similar method such as that by Chen et al. (2009) to investigate how presentation and the individual's focal area and experiences influence opportunity recognition patterns that are observable per se, but that have so far not been investigated in an experimental setting. Second, entrepreneurial innovativeness as a related but distinct concept to entrepreneurial orientation (Ruvio et al., 2014) might be worth experimentation since the latter orientation is very well understood (from an experimental aspect as well). Conditional manipulation of innovativeness sources as well as entrepreneurial orientation may help to sharpen the conceptual borders between both.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the emerging field of experimental research on entrepreneurship to better understand its development and potential.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic, evidence-based literature review was applied, resulting in a sample of 47 articles having used experiments in entrepreneurship research so far. The papers are analyzed according to their topic, methods, and research design, revealing insight into their limitations and prospective contributions.\nFindings: The paper discusses the potential and disadvantages of experimental methods while arguing for experiments as the method of choice for answering causality questions. This study finds a persistent increase in experimental entrepreneurship research since its introduction in 1990.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study provides research from the field of entrepreneurship with future directions, with potential research areas and an orientation for those interested in conducting experiments.\nOriginality/value: Experiments are employed in a variety of research areas and have become more and more popular in the field of entrepreneurship. No study has analyzed the experimental studies in entrepreneurship. This paper contributes by providing an overview of the field, reflecting and discussing the outcomes while characterizing the methods employed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sustainable food procurement in British and Irish zoos	[ "Procurement", "Sustainable supply chain management", "Sustainable food", "Values-action gap", "Zoos" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Food procurement matters for sustainability. The scale of food production's socio-ecological impacts across the world necessitates an urgent engagement with sustainability issues in food supply chains (Maloni and Brown, 2006). This complements a growing body of research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in a range of private (e.g. Srivastava, 2007; Sarkis et al., 2011) and public sectors (e.g. Preuss, 2009; Walker and Brammer, 2012). The procurement phase in particular has the potential to strongly influence the sustainability of sourced products, as well as suppliers' practices (Thomson and Jackson, 2007; Goebel et al., 2012). However, there is less scholarship available on procurement and supply chains within values-based sectors, such as zoological collections (Pullman and Dillard, 2010).\n2. Sustainable food supply chains: 2.1 Sustainable supply chains\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Focus\n4. Results: Three respondents were not able to complete the online survey because of software problems, and another three collections stated that the survey was not relevant to them. Therefore, out of a total of 89 possible responses, 41 were received. This gave a response rate of 46 per cent. The total number of respondents was therefore similar to the 52 received by Townsend (2009). In all, 25 institutions completed both parts of the survey and the number of respondents answering each question varied between 19 and 35. The response rate was also affected by the timing of the study as it took place during the peak holiday season.\n5. Discussion: 5.1 SFP\n6. Conclusion: There was considerable variation amongst the 21 issues considered by zoos during the SFP process for their front- and back-of-house operations. Local expenditure, nutritional content and packaging reduction were some of the highest scoring indicators in practice and as priorities. Based on this analysis, the levels of SFP were found to be equal between the human and animal food supply chains. Significantly low degrees of inconsistency were found between these operational areas, practically and in terms of procurement aspirations. Within both supply chains, there was also very few significant gaps between procurement priorities and actions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the sustainable food procurement (SFP) of members of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). It also considered the inconsistencies between their animal and human food supply chains, as well as between their procurement priorities and practices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative, cross-sectional approach was employed, involving the use of a web-based questionnaire to gather data from 41 BIAZA members across 21 indicators of food sustainability. The results were considered within a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) framework.\nFindings: There was considerable variation amongst the issues considered by zoos during the SFP process for their animal and human food operations. For both, local expenditure, nutritional content and packaging reduction were some of the highest scoring indicators in practice and as priorities. The overall levels of SFP were found to be equal between the human and animal food supply chains. Significantly low levels of inconsistency were found between the two, practically and in terms of procurement aspirations. Within both supply chains, there was also very few significant gaps between procurement priorities and actions.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this study lies in its comparison of procurement practices and priorities for two contemporaneous but distinct food supply chains. It demonstrates that it is possible to have a high overall degree of consistency between two parallel, but contrasting, supply chains, as well as between procurement priorities and priorities. It will be of use in SSCM, particularly within values-led organisations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Trigger events and crucibles in authentic leaders' development	[ "Authentic leadership", "Critical incidents", "Leadership development", "Trigger events", "Leadership crucibles" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The purpose of this study is to follow up on Klenke's (2007) call for more research examining the role of trigger events in the development of authentic leaders. This study was based on two leadership concepts. First, authentic leadership theory promotes the idea that these leaders are characterized by self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing and an internalized moral perspective (Walumbwa et al., 2008). Second, this study was based on the idea that leaders are made and not born (Avolio, 2005). Trigger events and leadership crucibles can provide a rich source of leadership education for individuals (Thomas, 2008). Avolio wrote, \"Authentic leadership development takes into account that life and planned trigger events shape leadership development\" (p. 194). The present study used the qualitative research question \"How do trigger events and leadership crucibles impact the development of authentic leaders?\"This study was part of a larger research project with 14 interview questions, of which we include four of the interview questions here along with four participants' responses for each interview question. We believe the four interview questions address the research question sufficiently for this study. For more information about the larger study, please contact the corresponding author.\nTheoretical/conceptual support: According to Avolio et al. (2004), authentic leaders are defined as individuals who are (1) intensely aware of how they think and behave and how others perceive them as being conscious of their own and others' values and moral viewpoints, knowledge and strengths; (2) aware of the context in which they operate and (3) confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient and of high moral character. Walumbwa et al. (2008) defined authentic leadership asa pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and relation transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development. (p. 94)Authentic leaders demonstrate to others that they genuinely desire to understand their leadership in order to serve others more effectively (George, 2003).Michie and Gooty (2005) analyzed the effect of values and emotions on authenticity in leadership. In analyzing Michie and Gooty's perspective, Avolio and Gardner (2005) declared:Specifically, they asserted that self-transcendent values (e.g., universal values, such as social justice, equality, and broadmindedness; benevolent values, such as honesty, loyalty, and responsibility) and positive other-directed emotions (e.g., gratitude, goodwill, appreciation and concern for others) play a fundamental role in the emergence and development of authentic leadership. (p. 318)Avolio's statement that leaders are made rather than born\nMethod: Flanagan (1954) first developed the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to classify aircrews for the US Army Air force during the World War II. Flanagan's CIT has five major steps: (1) ascertain the general aims of the activity being studied, (2) make plans and set specifications for the study, (3) collect the data, (4) analyze the data and (5) interpret the data and report the results. For this study, the general aim was to identify the lessons learned from trigger events or leadership crucibles and how these events might have contributed to the leader's development. The plans and set specifications for this study involved the lead author working with a nationally recognized leadership coach to identify a participant pool of authentic leaders. Potential participants who scored between 64 and 80 on the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) were invited to participate. The lead author conducted all the interviews.\nInterview questions: The interview questions emerged from the literature reviewed for this study. Walumbwa et al. (2008) defined authentic leadership as a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self- development (p. 94). Walumbwa et al. suggested that authentic leaders reveal to others that they genuinely desire to understand how to use their leadership to serve more effectively. It is believed that through reflection and analysis of trigger points and leadership crucibles, authentic leaders and others, may begin to understand how to be more effective.The Walumbwa et al. work is related to the current project in that it utilizes the ALQ to identify genuine, authentic leaders and then explored the content by which and context in which those authentic leaders were developed. This is done by examining the authentic leader's past experiences and the context in which they occurred. The analysis included observation through qualitative interviews and the coding of the content of the interview transcripts. The next three interview questions emerged from Walumbwa's work:Question 1. Can you describe how your leadership is used to serve others more effectively? Is it different because of a trigger event or a leadership crucible? How?Question 2. Do you reflect upon your lived events to gain greater insight into how to be more effective?Question 3. Do you use your trigger event or leadership crucible to influence others more positively?Gardner et al. (2005) presented another conceptual model of authentic leadership that included both leaders' and followers' predispositions toward leadership as affected by their personal histories and trigger events. W. L. Gardner et al. proposed, \"Critical elements from personal history of authentic leaders, including influential persons who model authenticity and pivotal trigger events, serve as positive forces in developing leader self-awareness\" (p. 349). The researchers stipulated that personal histories and trigger events were antecedents for authentic leaders.Daft (2015) explained the trait approach to leadership. The author defined traits as the individual characteristics of a leader that include characteristics such as intelligence, honesty and appearance. Daft did not attempt to separate these traits into those that individuals are born with or those that are developed. However, Daft argued that individuals could develop personal traits such as self-confidence, integrity and drive. Daft further contended that individuals could work toward keeping an optimistic attitude and make decisions based on ethical decisions and actions. The current study considered Daft's definition of traits and sought to focus on those which a leader may develop and argued that authentic leadership is developed. For instance, honesty can be developed, but physical traits such as height or other similar physical characteristics cannot be developed. Daft's work is related to the current study in that the current study sought to understand how leadership crucibles or trigger points develop the nonphysical traits of authentic leaders, thus the following interview question:The researchers' proposition is directly related to the current project and has implications to examine the trigger points in the authentic leader's life and how it may or may not have helped to develop a leader's self-awareness, thus the following interview question:Question 4. Do you feel that your trigger event or leadership crucible was a catalyst for you to become an authentic leader and what authentic leadership traits have you developed because of a trigger event or leadership crucible?\nResults: One of the major challenges of qualitative interviews is the analysis of the data. Flanagan (1954) considered this the most important step in the CIT method. The purpose of the analysis is to develop a categorization system that arranges, summarizes and describes the data in a useful manner. Flanagan provided three primary stages of analysis. In the first phase of analysis, the researcher should determine the frame of reference of the data. This emerges from how the data are to be used. In the current project, data from the interviews were gathered for evaluating trigger events and leadership crucibles in an authentic leader's development. The present study utilized ATLAS.ti 8 to codify the data and organize data codes and themes.Participants\nDiscussion: The discussion is based on the emergent themes from the data collected from the interview process that was previously presented. One interview question and themes are presented followed by a discussion of the findings and answer to the research question.The fourth question presented was, do you feel that your trigger event or leadership crucible was a catalyst for you to become an authentic leader and what authentic leadership traits have you developed because of a trigger event or leadership crucible? This proved to provide valuable qualitative information in developing an answer to the research question. Two themes emerged from the data to this question - trigger event or crucible affects leader authenticity and authentic leadership characteristics developed. When given the opportunity to discuss trigger events and crucibles, the participants overwhelmingly chose and described personal trigger events and in twelve instances reported that the trigger even or crucible did affect their authenticity with others. Additionally, the second theme, authentic leadership characteristics developed, nine participants described authentic leadership characteristics that were developed as a result of their trigger event or crucible - self-awareness (5), humility (4), and balanced processing (1).The research question presented was, do trigger events and leadership crucibles play a significant role in authentic leadership development? The answer to the question is authentic leader behaviors, as a result of events and leadership, leadership behaviors displayed, and leader behaviors/actions are all influenced by trigger events, crucibles and event types. Because of the wide variety of responses, the context of role during trigger event or crucible appears to be inconsequential in authentic leadership characteristics developed. However, authentic leaders positively influence others as a result of a trigger event or crucibles, and their leader commitment is to both shareholders and stakeholders. Authentic leaders reflect upon their lived events and seek feedback from trigger events and crucibles and feedback from leadership mistakes. The authentic leaders in this study displayed leadership actions based upon personal convictions heavily influenced by spirituality. Furthermore, trigger events or crucibles influenced personal convictions, and trigger events or crucibles affect leader authenticity. The authentic leaders heavily reported on leader ontology that was overwhelmingly made by their experiences, which agreed with the participants' preferred learning method--experience. The data undoubtedly support that trigger events and leadership crucibles play a significant role in authentic leadership development.Klenke (2007) proposed an investigation into the role of trigger events or leadership crucibles to better understand their transformative effects in authentic leadership development. The findings of the research indicate that trigger events and crucibles both affect authentic leadership development. This supports George's (2003) position that authentic leaders are influenced by their experiences. Particularly interesting was the fact that personal trigger events and crucibles help shape authentic leader characteristics, which carry over to their roles as organizational leaders. In other words, events outside the confines of an organization are important in developing authentic leader characteristics. The findings of the research also support Gardner's (1990) notion that leaders are indeed made and not born, especially from their experiences.In their definition of authentic leadership, Walumbwa et al. (2008) proposed four essential characteristics possessed by such leaders; self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing and moral perspective. The research findings confirm that these characteristics were predominant in the participants. However, one theme that prevailed was that of spirituality, which may or may not be considered to be part of an authentic leader's moral perspective. This insight confirms Thomas's (2008) assertion that leadership crucibles can provide significant information helpful in leadership development.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the role of trigger events and leadership crucibles in the lives of authentic leaders. The study was based on two theories: authentic leadership theory and born versus made theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Participants were included in the study if they scored between 64 and 80 on the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ). The qualified leaders were then asked to participate in a qualitative interview utilizing an interview guide born out of the relevant literature. The interview followed the guidelines of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT).\nFindings: The data indicated that trigger events and leadership crucibles play a significant role in authentic leadership development.\nPractical implications: Practitioners should emphasize the prominent themes of self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing and moral perspective and the connection with other themes that emerged from the current study when developing or training leaders. Furthermore, practitioners concerned with creating an authentic leadership culture may consider the findings of the current study to develop and employ hiring and promotion strategies that increase the probabilities of hiring and promoting leaders that exhibit authentic leadership behaviors.\nOriginality/value: The findings of the research indicate that trigger events and crucibles both affect authentic leadership development. The research findings confirm characteristics associated with authentic leadership theory were predominant in the participants. However, one theme that prevailed was that of spirituality, which may or may not be considered to be part of an authentic leader's moral perspective\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of policy on immigrant entrepreneurship and businesses practice in Israel	[ "Government policy", "Immigrants", "Entrepreneurs", "Business development", "Israel" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Generally, immigrants are population groups that encounter many barriers when entering established labor markets. Entrepreneurship constitutes an alternative to employment, enabling immigrants to earn a decent income and obtain quality of life. Governmental policy impacts immigrant entrepreneurship by either constraining or promoting opportunities to establish businesses.The purpose of this study is to examine governmental support to immigrant entrepreneurs and its impact on immigrant businesses.More specifically our paper examines the following questions:1. What are the needs of immigrant entrepreneurs as to government support schemes?2. Do immigrant businesses whose owners received governmental support differ from businesses whose owners did not receive governmental support as to resources (labor and capital)?3. What is the impact of government policy upon growth of immigrant businesses?\nGovernmental support for immigrant entrepreneurs: A broad range of studies are devoted to different aspects of support for immigrant entrepreneurship (Davila and Mora, 2002; Mitchell, 2003; Constant, 2004; Rowley, 2004; Pearce, 2005); however, only some focus on governmental policy (Nordfors and Orren, 1998; Pace, 2001; Kloosterman and Rath, 2002; Collins, 2003; Toussaint-Comeau, 2005).According to the theory of entrepreneurship espoused by Light and Bonacich (1988) and Light and Rosenstein (1995), resources shape the opportunities for immigrant businesses. But, immigrant entrepreneurs are often at disadvantage in obtaining necessary resources for setting up businesses. They are constrained in obtaining capital (Collins, 2003; Constant, 2004; Kloosterman and Rath, 2002; Mitchell, 2003; Pearce, 2005; Rowley, 2004; Heilbrunn and Kushnirovich, 2007), are disadvantaged in terms of a lack of knowledge about business norms, the market and legislations of the host country (Collins, 2000; Kloosterman and Rath, 2002; Lowe, 2003; Mitchell, 2003; Pearce, 2005), are confronted with language barriers (Rowley, 2004), and encounter problems associated with the external economic environment (Collins, 2003; Mitchell, 2003). Thus, the focus of policy should be on facilitating immigrant entrepreneurs' access to resources.Waldinger's et al. (1990) model discussing ethnic aspects of entrepreneurship asserts that governmental policy should concern not only resource mobilization, but also the opportunity structure, defining access to ownership. According to Razin (1993) immigrant entrepreneurship is influenced by the opportunity structure rather than by the ethnic resources.Kloosterman and Rath (2002) introduced the concept of mixed embeddedness, which includes the supply side (the resources of immigrant entrepreneurs), the demand side (the opportunity structure) and the matching process between supply and demand. According to this concept, policy that contributes to immigrant entrepreneurship development should be directed, firstly, at enhancing the chances for successfully starting a business (focus on the supply side), increasing human and social capital. Second, demand side policies should be aimed at increasing opportunities for moving a business to growth markets by creating new markets (for example, by means of privatizations), or by reducing rules regulating business start-up and activity (deregulation). Third, policy concerning the matching of demand and supply should lower the threshold for business start-up.van Delft et al. (2000) discussed the effectiveness of policies fostering entrepreneurial activities of ethnic minorities. According to their results, policy should focus upon potential of socio-cultural and ethnic networks, importance of training and education, availability of information on facilities and access to financial resources.A number of researchers state that policy shapes opportunity structures for immigrant entrepreneurs and impacts on rates of immigrant minority entrepreneurship formation and survival (Collins, 2000; Garcia y Griego et al., 2000; Collins, 2003).Different theoretical approaches affect the choice of policy tools such as training, financial support and support for creating and maintaining of business links:1. Training:* language training (Davila and Mora, 2002; Toussaint-Comeau, 2005);* assistance with business plan development (Toussaint-Comeau, 2005);* entrepreneurial training (Toussaint-Comeau, 2005; Collins, 2003); and* courses to improve financial literacy (Toussaint-Comeau, 2005), provide guidelines to business regulations (Pearce, 2005), and general business consultancy (Blanchard, 1999; Rowley, 2004).2. Financial support:* loans (Blanchard, 1999; Pearce, 2005; Min and Bozorgmehr, 2003);* increasing access to capital (Huck et al., 1999; Evans, 2003);* incentives to banks (Garcia y Griego and Martin, 2000);* special funding scheme for start-ups (Constant, 2004); and* subsidies granted in form of tax relief, investment subsidies, support for job creation, innovation grants, subsidized advice, and business development support (Saublens, 2004).3. Support for creating and maintaining of business links:* allocation of percentage of government contracts to immigrant businesses (Min and Bozorgmehr, 2003);* streamlining regulations and reducing consolidation fees (Pearce, 2005); and* improving communication between immigrant entrepreneurs and government institutions (Collins, 2003).Although policy implementation can meaningfully contribute to immigrants' business development (Pearce, 2005), additional determinants affect growth of immigrant businesses. These are gender (Lerner and Hendeles, 1996; Pearce, 2005; Verheul et al., 2001), education and experience of immigrant entrepreneur (Lerner and Hendeles, 1996; Lerner and Khavul, 2003), ethnic networks (Kesavan, 2003), type of business (Smith-Hunter and Enqelhardt, 2004) and receiving government support (Collins, 2003; Lerner and Khavul, 2003; Lerner et al., 2005).Israel is a typical immigration country, but immigration is limited to people of Jewish ethnic origin. Therefore, immigrant entrepreneurs in Israel constitute a group separate to the Israeli born entrepreneurs because of their immigration experience and not because of ethnic differences. This fact explains the unique policy of supporting immigrant entrepreneurs. Governmental policy in Israel includes all known types, offered through a widespread and developed system of public agencies. The core characteristic of the Israeli support system is the close cooperation between government institutions and associations. The largest and the most popular governmental institution is the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, supporting immigrant entrepreneurs via a network of associations (Centers for the Advancement of Entrepreneurship, in Hebrew MATI). Immigrant entrepreneurs in Israel can receive all types of governmental support: training and advice, financial support, and support for creating and maintaining business links. Financial support consists of designated loan on favorable terms. Non-financial support includes businesses courses, workshop and panels, courses on language proficiency, guidelines and brochures, guidance, business mentoring, assistance with development of business plans, business clubs, establishing business networks, and support in market analyses. Lerner and Khavul (2003) when studying immigrant businesses in Israel which received some governmental support, found that diversity of received support does not affect their business' survival, but emphasized that loans remain a significant factor for business' viability.The available existing support for immigrant entrepreneurs in Israel is diverse and extensive, but reflects only the supply side of immigrant entrepreneurship, focusing upon increasing availability of resources. There seems to be little concern with the demand side (opportunity structure) such as creating new markets or reducing rules regulating business start-up and activity. Consequently, matching of demand and supply is not sufficiently accounted for.This study investigates the impact of existing support systems on immigrant businesses in terms of adequacy to needs of immigrant entrepreneurs, business resources and business growth.\nMethod: Data collection\nResults: Needs of immigrant entrepreneurs as to government support\nDiscussion: In our study, we investigated the needs of immigrant entrepreneurs as to government support schemes. We also examined differences between immigrant businesses whose owners received governmental support and those who did not, and the impact of government policy upon growth of immigrant businesses.Need for support evolves from problems encountered by immigrant entrepreneurs when setting up the business. The main problems encountered by immigrant entrepreneurs are associated with the environment, competition, lack of capital and availability of information. These problems are resolvable via business advice, designated loan on favorable terms, and guidelines. Problems concerning issues creating business links such as dealing with suppliers, employees, and partners are of little significance for immigrant entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, government policy in Israel seems to over-emphasize these kinds of support. Competition and the macro economic environment concern opportunity structure. Although perceived by immigrant entrepreneurs as a problem, demand side policy does hardly exist in the Israeli context. The study revealed that immigrant entrepreneurs who received support encountered significantly more problems at start-up than those who did not receive support. One possible explanation is that those who received support are more experienced and they may be less likely to ask for government help. It seems that immigrant entrepreneurs who faced more problems tend to apply to public agencies and receive support.The study revealed differences between businesses whose owners received governmental support and those whose owners did not. The scope of capital invested at start-up of businesses which received support is larger than that of their counterparts. Also, the number of employees of these businesses is higher. Hence, immigrant entrepreneurs who received support manage to mobilize and utilize more resources than others.We examined the impact of government policy upon growth of immigrant businesses in terms of increase of sales revenues, profit, number of customers and number of employees. We did not find significant impact of receiving support on growth of immigrant business. Nevertheless, we found a number of factors that do influence business growth of immigrant entrepreneurs: education, type of business and the share of co-ethnic clients. Businesses owned by higher educated entrepreneurs are less likely to grow which is probably due to the fact that many immigrant entrepreneurs do not rely upon their professional experience. While half of immigrant entrepreneurs have academic degrees, only 12.1-19.6 percent of them are engaged in professional services, meaning that about 30 percent of immigrant entrepreneurs do not utilize their human capital when setting up their business. Dealing with co-ethnic clients facilitates, the growth of immigrant businesses.At first sight, it seems that receiving support does not influence growth of immigrant businesses. But, immigrants who had more problems at start-up are more likely to apply and receive support, thus they start out initially weaker than others. Entrepreneurs who met a fewer problems tend to not to apply for support. Immigrant entrepreneurs, who encountered more problems, have fewer chances of success and their businesses should be less likely to grow than others.In sum, the study revealed that entrepreneurs who encountered more problems at business start-up are more likely to receive government support. Receiving support facilitates mobilizing resources and can compensate for fewer opportunities of initially weak businesses.Further studies should investigate the impact of policy on additional groups in Israel, such as the Israeli Arab minority and women entrepreneurs. Then also a comparison between these groups is possible, investigating whether there is equal allocation of government resources to the various groups.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine governmental support to immigrant entrepreneurs and its impact on their businesses. The study seeks to explore the needs of immigrant entrepreneurs as to government support schemes, and the impact of government policy upon mobilization of resources and growth of immigrant businesses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Combining convenient and snowball sample, 218 former Soviet Union immigrant entrepreneurs from all over Israel and all business spheres were surveyed via a questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted by quantitative statistical methods.\nFindings: - Entrepreneurs who encountered more problems at business start-up are more likely to receive government support. Receiving support facilitates mobilizing resources and compensates for fewer opportunities of initially weak businesses.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Further research might focus upon comparing the impact of policy on immigrant entrepreneurs between countries. Utilization of the findings by policy makers may improve the impact of policy and help to focus the allocation of resources more efficiently.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides valuable insight for academics and practitioners who are interested to foster immigrant entrepreneurship as mechanism of economic integration.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Prosumer motivations in service experiences	[ "Prosumption", "Co-creation", "Qualitative", "Prosumers", "Service experience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Prosumers have traditionally been viewed as consumers who produce for themselves by adapting, modifying, or transforming a proprietary offering (Berthon et al., 2007; Toffler, 1980). They engage in services such as crafts, do-it-yourself (DIY) arts, and construction toolkits (Burroughs et al., 2008; Campbell, 2005; Dahl and Moreau, 2007). Some argue that prosumers contribute to firm-based services by creating user-generated content in online spaces (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). As a result, prosumers have gained scholarly attention because they use marketplace resources to create value in product and service experiences (Mustak et al., 2013). In these ways, the established consumer-firm dyad perpetuates this traditional conceptualization of prosumers, wherein the \"consumer consumes\" and \"firms produce\" (Etgar, 2008). Yet, prosumer participation in the co-creation of value can change the structure and boundaries of service configuration and design (Giannopoulou et al., 2014; Gill et al., 2011).\nTheoretical background: Prosumers\nMethodology: Research context\nFindings: Our results show two major findings with respect to social capital. As discussed previously, social capital is influenced by the size and quality of social networks, and the ability of individuals to procure benefits from them (Portes, 1998; Putnam, 2000). The first set of findings shows that respondents re-create the feeling of social capital by emphasizing moments from past social networks in their service experiences and creative outputs . The second set of findings shows that respondents produce actual social capital by demarcating group memberships in their service experiences creative outputs. Together, these findings illustrate social motivations related to social capital.\nDiscussion: By highlighting what prosumers do with products and goods that are obtained in the market, we show prosumers as creative actors cultivating and designing their own service experiences, rather than as passive responders replying to pre-existing service offers from the firm (Xie et al., 2008). More specifically, this study focusses on empirical research explicating the role of social capital in motivating prosumer participation in service experiences, and extends previous research focussing on individual motivations such as autonomy and competence (Bournelli et al., 2009; Dahl and Moreau, 2007; Rostan, 2010; Watson and Shove, 2008). Our findings assert that service experiences are complex because they are motivated at both the individual and the social levels. That is, while individual motivations may influence the nature and complexity of tasks in service experiences, our findings show that social motivations tend to influence the content of creative outputs desired when prosumers participate in service experiences. Specifically, on one hand, prosumers recreating the feeling of social capital tend to emphasize past social moments while, on the other hand, prosumers producing actual social capital emphasize people. This reaffirms relatedness and community-building as primary motivators of prosumer participation in service experiences (Deci and Ryan, 2000; Cova and Cova, 2001; Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001). The formation of social relationships is a prosumer motivation to participate in service experiences (Garzaniti et al., 2011).\nConclusion: We assert that prosumers (or consumers) literally find value as they interweave ordinary artifacts and objects into service experiences and their own personal production processes. For this reason, service experiences and simple objects may be extremely valuable to particular consumers and not to others. In this way, service, generally, is heterogeneous and largely contingent on personal factors in the lives of consumers/prosumers. We assert that the value or importance of a service, in the context of our study, can also be based on social capital, along with the maintenance and pursuit of social capital (Sandstrom et al., 2008). For these reasons, we emphasize that the design of optimal service experiences requires a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social dimensions of service offerings (Franke et al., 2010). Service is not one-size-fits-all; ultimately, consumers (or prosumers) are designers of their own customized solutions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to, first, make explicit the theoretical link between prosumers and co-creation as articulated in the service-dominant logic framework. The authors re-examine the contributions of prosumers to service experiences with the intent of clarifying how prosumers act as co-creators of value. The second purpose of this study is to clarify the underlying motivations for prosumers' participation in co-creation/service experiences. The authors assert that high-quality service experiences require service researchers and managers to better understand prosumers and their motivations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Through a qualitative investigation, the authors examine prosumers and their social motivations - from a service experience perspective.\nFindings: The findings illustrate that prosumers are not only participants in the co-creation of value; the findings illustrate that prosumers are active designers of service experiences. This is because prosumers are motivated by both individual and social factors that arise from their personal lives, not necessarily by desires to participate in firms' production processes. The authors seek answers to the following research questions: What are the social motivations of prosumers? How do prosumers co-create value through creative outputs?\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings suggest that firms do not solely motivate co-creation and, more specifically, prosumption; rather, these are motivated by factors in the personal lives of consumers.\nPractical implications: The findings illustrate that prosumers are not only participants in the co-creation of value; the findings illustrate that prosumers are active designers of service experiences. Service design and management should account for and accommodate prosumers.\nOriginality/value: This interdisciplinary paper integrates literature from design, marketing, service, and management to provide theoretical underpinnings of a qualitative study into the social motivations of prosumers from a service experience perspective.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A cross-cultural investigation of work values among young executives in China and the USA	[ "Individual behaviour", "Collectivism", "Confucianism", "Employee attitudes", "China", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The size of China's displacement of the world is such that the world must find a new balance in 30 or 40 years. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of man.The preceding observation by Lee Kuan Yew, the guiding hand behind Singapore's economic success, has strong implications for the future of business transactions with the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the ethical underpinning of those transactions. Huntington (1996) foresees problems when Westerners deal with the Chinese. He worries about the application of a Confucian ethic in China - an ethic that stresses \"values of 'authority, hierarchy, the subordination of individual rights and interests.'\" He believes that the Chinese culture is marked with values opposed to those found in the West, particularly those in America. For instance, the goal of maintaining relationships usually takes precedence over deductive reasoning, and even over legal regulations, when the Chinese make business decisions.Cultural differences create challenges for multinational companies doing business in China. For instance, soon after Robust, a Chinese food and beverage brand, and the Danone Group formed a joint venture in 2000, the partnership went sour. The European management of Danone took on a role that was at odds with Chinese business norms. The Chinese executives were used to a centralized (vertical) organizational structure, whereas their foreign partners were relatively more decentralized (horizontal). Coming from a high power distance culture, Chinese managers value authority and adopt the nonparticipatory approach to decision-making. Final decisions are usually made by higher level superiors without consulting their subordinates. The conflicts in work-related values were so severe that the five founders of Robust resigned after a major restructuring of the company (He, 2002). Car manufacturer, PSA Peugeot Citroen ran into similar problems in China, which eventually forced the company to forsake its joint venture in 1997 (Sino Foreign Management, 2004).It is well-documented that many of the countries bordering the North Atlantic are characterized by an individualistic value system, whereas the Chinese are considered to be collectivists (e.g. Hofstede and Bond, 1984; Hsu, 1981; Hui et al., 2004; Lee et al., 1994; Oyserman et al., 2002; Singelis, 1994; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997). To what extent does this comparison still hold true, now that both regions have been impacted by a rapidly globalized business environment? Is the economic reform that has taken place in the PRC since 1979 changing the social value system? China's \"open-door\" policy, especially in light of recent World Trade Organization acceptance, leaves the country accessible to foreign influences. New value systems and lifestyles may well take shape as China integrates into world markets. Yet, as the cradle of Confucianism, will China hold to its cultural inheritance, a fear expressed by Huntington (1996), and not be swayed by the changing external environment?Of particular interest is what values are now important to younger Chinese managers, since they profile the direction in which a country is headed. It is important to differentiate the behaviors of these individuals from those of older functionaries who are less representative of their country's future direction. Furthermore, we are especially interested in the values exhibited in a work domain. Are the ethical values of young executives in different countries converging to a common global business culture? How do work values in the PRC compare to those in the USA at the present time? The study described below was undertaken as a preliminary attempt to answer these questions.The study is structured as follows. We first outline the cultural patterns observed among young managers in America and the PRC. Then, we examine the proclivities toward specific cultural values in the two countries through a two-phase study (one study based on attitudinal value measurement, the other on the values underlying the reasoning used to justify a managerial decision about an ethical dilemma). We then conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings.\nReflections on the value systems in each country: Many cross-cultural researchers assume that one of the most informative classifying characteristics for contrasting Western (e.g. the USA) and Eastern (e.g. China) cultures is the widely accepted individualism-collectivism dimension (e.g. Chan, 1967; Tse et al., 1988). Previous research has viewed individualism-collectivism as a single dimension (Aaker and Maheswaran, 1997; Han and Shavitt, 1994). However, more recent research indicates that this construct is multidimensional, and specific dimensions must be identified to account for observed cultural differences (Gurhan-Canli and Maheswaran, 2000; Triandis, 1995; Triandis and Gelfand, 1998). Individualism and collectivism can be categorized as either horizontal (with an emphasis on equality) or vertical (with an emphasis on hierarchy). Triandis' (1995) typology highlights four types of cultural patterns: horizontal individualism (the self is independent and is the same as the others), vertical individualism (the self is independent and different from the others), horizontal collectivism (the self is interdependent and the same as the others), and vertical collectivism (the self is interdependent and different from the others). The vertical-horizontal dimension captures the equality/inequality among people. The individualism-collectivism dimension measures the relative priority given to the individual's goals and preferences (Triandis, 1995).Triandis (1995) suggests that vertical collectivism and horizontal individualism are the dominant cultural profiles around the world. But, there may be an evolutionary relation between these two categories, since he also suggests that decreasing external threats move a culture from vertical collectivism toward horizontal individualism. Vertical collectivists see themselves as part of an in-group, but members in the in-group vary in terms of status (Thomas and Au, 2002). This cultural syndrome is characterized by social relationships with an emphasis on communal sharing and ranking authority. Inequality is the accepted norm, and sacrifices for the in-group interest are expected (Thomas and Au, 2002). In horizontal individualism, social systems emphasize both the values of equality and individual freedom (Rokeach, 1973).Collectivism vs individualism in China and the USA\nResearch questions: What values are important to a new generation of Chinese managers? How do values among Chinese managers compare to those of American managers? Are there, indeed, differences in cultural patterns between younger American and Chinese managers with respect to their work values? Our study does not posit specific research hypotheses. Rather, it is structured to answer the following research questions:RQ1. Does partitioning the individualism-collectivism value dimension by the horizontal-vertical dimension capture current cultural differences between young businesspeople in America and China?RQ2. Are these cultural differences reflected in ethical argumentation? If so, how?We address these questions through a two-phase study. In Study 1, attitudinal value measurements are taken from a sample of American and Chinese businesspeople. In Study 2, we analyze the discourse about an ethical dilemma between a set of American and Chinese businesspeople to pinpoint cultural value differences reflected in their negotiation styles.\nStudy 1: the vertical and horizontal aspects of collectivism and individualism: Sample and research instrument\nStudy 2: an analysis of negotiations: Sample and research instrument\nGeneral conclusions: Our research findings question the adequacy of the individualism-collectivism dimension alone to account for managerial decision-making by the Chinese and US sample members. Our study is not the first to challenge this cultural dimension. Similarly, Holt (1997) did not find differences between the US and Chinese entrepreneurs on values associated with individualism. Schwartz and Ros (1995) argue that value differences (in terms of the individualism-collectivism dimension) within the West are as large as differences between Western nations and presumably collectivist East Asian nations. Our study detects similarity in the collectivistic orientation of both countries. This suggests that metropolitan Chinese executives are likely to hold values that are similar to US managers, yet are also likely to be culturally bound to value family security (Embeddedness) and deference to superiors (Hierarchy).In the negotiations, tradition did not appear to portray the reasoning used by the American and as much as it did the Chinese subjects (again, see 1:4 in the Analects). The individualistic aspect of American values was not prototypical individualism, however, because of their observed emphasis on Embeddedness values, the value types central to collectivism. While more Chinese than Americans expressed values under the Embeddedness dimension, a minority did appear to express opinions based on Autonomy and Mastery, value types central to individualism.We suggest that the vertical-horizontal dimension might be more appropriate than individualism-collectivism to differentiate the work value profiles we observed in young executives in these two countries. Our Chinese participants are arguably among the most Westernized members of their society, and yet they still differ markedly in this value from the US participants. Although recent research (Woodbine, 2004) questions younger managers' reliance on Confucian values, we found that the Confucian impact on the importance of hierarchy and status differential still persists. This conclusion coincides with that of Bond (1991), based on a value survey which he created specifically for citizens of the PRC. Although our participants are more individualized than their older generation, they still exhibit aspects of the Confucian tradition, which is biased towards obedience and against upward feedback. In China, hierarchical allegiance to authority is more likely to prevail, and a sense of compliance still endures. When confronted with a \"lose-lose\" ethical dilemma, young Chinese managers seemed to conform to a vertical collectivist mode of reasoning, a behavior in accordance with the research of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997). They were also likely to reverse the importance of the three decision criteria mentioned earlier and rank rules ahead of reasoning and relationships.As China moves toward a market economy - at least towards a form of capitalism constrained by political ideology - convergence of values associated with business practices may occur. For instance, in our study, we found that our younger sample of Chinese was more aggressive and competitive in their negotiations than the time-honored cultural stereotype had led us to believe. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that these findings indicate the traditional Chinese value orientations have been completely eradicated in the transition to modernization. Our findings suggest that even the most cosmopolitan sectors of Chinese society have not completely converged in their values and managerial behaviors. This coincides with Matthews' research results in which it was concluded that \"Basic Confucian ideals and values have not changed, only altered or adapted to fit the newer model of the political state\" (2000, p. 121).\nImplications: Shen and Jiang (1985-86) give an interesting perspective to ethics in China when they quote Engles as saying that there is no lasting morality. As international business cooperation intensifies, core values in China may change in an unforeseeable way. For instance, Chinese managers are more likely to become Western-oriented (e.g. individualistic) since they are exposed to much more foreign influence than their less cosmopolitan fellow countrymen. However, as our study shows, Chinese executives do not necessarily follow a Western model of individualism. They still maintain a portion of their Confucian culture (e.g. deference to authority). Tradition and Western thought seem to be two cultural influences that operate within contemporary Chinese culture, a phenomenon dubbed \"crossvergence\" by Ralston et al. (1993). Crossvergence does not mean that the Chinese adopt Western values, but that they internalize some aspects of Western individualism into their Confucian-based value system (Ralston et al., 1993). They develop a unique perspective that possesses facets of both cultures.The Chinese government has sanctioned the establishment of over 100 Confucian primary schools, in part to reemphasize communal values in the face of a growing sense of materialism. While there may be a new emphasis on moral education in the PRC (Li et al., 2004), it will take a long time before it is reflected in managerial behavior. Due to their increasing role in a globalized economy, the ethical orientation of Chinese businesspeople is changing, but changing slowly (Islam and Gowing, 2003). Currently the economic stratification in the PRC is such that for 80 percent of the population, economic survival strongly influences business decisions. This fact may account for the reliance on official rules that our Chinese sample expressed in our lose-lose ethical dilemma. Even if the managers with whom a Westerner deals are in the top (20 percent) economic stratum, those managers are responsible for employees who may well be in the lower 80 percent. That responsibility may confine practicing the Confucian core value of jen (humaneness or benevolence) to those in the firm, to the detriment of outside (foreign) business partners. Jen stresses on the maintenance of interpersonal harmony by following the principle of respecting superiors (those above one in the hierarchy) and the principle of favoring the intimate (those with whom one has a blood relationship) (Hwang, 2001). In our study, we observed an emphasis on these principles in the Chinese negotiators.Habermas (1979) claims that a successful resolution to ethical arguments is built on a mutual comprehension of values. Probing for and listening to the rationale behind their Chinese counterparts' decisions can provide Western businesspeople with potential grounding for alternative courses of action, based on secondary as well as primary values. Interpretation of the results of that listening may not always uncover shared values, but it should, through the tradeoff process, reveal which values are not in direct conflict (see Schwartz (1996) for a listing of potential value tradeoffs upon which a successful negotiation can be built).In phase 2 of our study, an undeniable majority of the resolutions to the posed ethical dilemma were closer to the position originally chosen by the Chinese managers, not that of the American managers, due in part by exhibiting the Confucian traits of listening, discipline, flexibility and self-control. Those are Confucian traits that could prove beneficial to Western businesspeople to emulate in negotiations with their Chinese counterparts.Opens in a new window.Table I\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the study is to investigate what values are now important to young American and Chinese managers, since they profile the direction in which their country is headed. It aims to explore if the ethical values of young executives in different countries are converging to a common global business culture. It also aims to argue that the individualism-collectivism value dimension by itself does not capture the differences between the Chinese and American sample members. The vertical-horizontal dimension, in contrast, seems to better delineate the value orientations among young executives in the two countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this two-phase study, both attitudinal and scenario-based measurements are applied to assess the strength of work value orientations among similar subjects in China and the USA.\nFindings: - In study 1, Chinese respondents score significantly higher on a hierarchical-vertical dimension than do the Americans, although the two groups do not differ significantly on the collectivism-individualism dimension. In study 2, which entails resolving an ethical dilemma, the American subjects apply Egalitarianism as their most frequent expressed value, reflecting their horizontal perspective. The Chinese subjects, in contrast, rely strongly on a traditional vertical value system to resolve the ethical dilemma. Although both American and Chinese negotiators show a collectivist as well as an individualist orientation, their focuses are fundamentally different.\nOriginality/value: - The well-established collectivism/individualism cultural dimension has been heavily used in cross-cultural studies, sometimes without much discretion. This study was undertaken as a preliminary attempt to outline the cultural patterns observed among young managers in America and China. The paper argues that cross-cultural differences underlying ethical conflicts should not be reduced to the single value dimension of individualism/collectivism.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Investor relations - a systematic literature review	[ "Strategic management", "Literature review", "Strategic communication", "Investor relations", "Financial reporting", "Financial information", "Financial markets", "Financial communication" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Shareholders constitute one of the most important corporate audiences - due to their power, the legal substance of their stake and the strategic significance of capital access (cf., Mitchell et al., 1997). Over the previous decades, the specialization, professionalization and globalization of capital markets have led to investors becoming more systematic in their approach to capital allocation, as well as larger and more powerful. Today, corporations are faced with well-informed shrewd and demanding investors not shying away from engaging executives and questioning their stewardship of the corporation.\n2. Methods: 2.1 Systematic literature review\n3. The state of IR research: As Laskin (2009) points out, challenges emanating from the separation of corporate management and ownership can be traced back the 17th century. However, the notion of specializing communication efforts to serve IR did not attract significant attention before the 1960s. Accordingly, IR has only been a distinct corporate function for some 50 years in the USA and for about 30 years in Europe. It took until the middle of the 1990s, though, to establish a more widely shared understanding of the corporate function and role of IR. In many parts of the world, IR can still be considered a young, emergent function today - continually questioning and aligning its responsibilities and key tasks. The state of IR practice differs quite significantly among countries, with the professionalization of IR frequently mirroring the maturity of local capital markets. Most studies to date have been conducted in established western markets, such as the USA, UK or Germany. Hence, the business practices in these markets set the tone both for the state of practice and research of IR.\n4. Summary and discussion: Our systematic literature analysis reveals a dynamic field of research focusing on IR and financial communication - spanning a number of disciplines. The rise of IR research appears to mirror public and professional interest in the discipline, particularly in the West. As the IR function establishes itself, grows and experiences an increasing professionalization, it also attracts ever more pronounced research interest. Today, IR research has moved beyond defining the function, exploring its establishment and analyzing its justification. Studies in the field become more diversified, focusing on a number of specific elements as outlined in this review - including organizational questions, strategies applied in the field, instruments, content and effects.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive, interdisciplinary review of international investor relations (IR) research published since 1990. It highlights the development of IR research, its disciplinary foundations and key areas of inquiry. Research is shown to reflect the rising importance of IR as a corporate communications function, its interdisciplinary character, and the recognition of its contribution to strategic management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Findings are based on an interdisciplinary systematic literature review focusing on peer-reviewed journal articles published in English since 1990.\nFindings: The authors differentiate five strands of research focusing on the organization, strategy, instruments, content and effects of IR. IR research is shown to have strong roots in the business and management, accounting and communications literature. The authors document a rising interest in the topic and a steady development beyond descriptive accounts of the function to distinctive lines of inquiry. The authors summarize the state of the field and derive a number of suggestions for future research.\nResearch limitations/implications: The review is limited in scope to the applied research process, including the choice of keywords, databases as well as peer-reviewed journal publications published in English since 1990.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the necessary structuration and consolidation of the emergent field of IR research by identify salient perspectives and common subfields. It provides both a comprehensive overview of the state of research and specific suggestions for future endeavors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Investigating antecedents and consequences of brand identification	[ "Brand identity", "Brand loyalty", "Social marketing", "Behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: Brands are a most valuable, if intangible, asset for many companies (Lassar et al., 1995; Pappu et al., 2005). Key issues that have historically defined brand relationships - such as trust and commitment - have been investigated in some depth and the metaphor found insightful (e.g. Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Fournier, 1998; Gruen et al., 2000; Esch et al., 2006). One outstanding area of interest for brand management is that of meaning for consumers via identification with their favourite brands (Aaker and Fournier, 1995; Golder and Irwin, 2001). Arnett et al. (2003) have criticised past literature as having focused mainly on the economic nature of brand relationships and for being applied mostly in the business-to-business context. So our research is based on the strong belief that the concept of brand identification is highly relevant to a richer understanding of brand management and we apply it to a business to consumer context.For some time the social identity concept has been investigated in the sociological and psychological disciplines and more recently in organisation behaviour and human resource management. It has been described as a key concept in organisational behaviour (Gioia et al., 2000). However, a review of the literature has revealed that very few studies seem to apply it in the context of marketing (Ahearne et al., 2005). Social identity theory, which we believe has a useful contribution to make to marketing (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003), states that in articulating their sense of self, people typically go beyond their personal identity to develop a social identity (cf. Turner, 1975). Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) added that in the marketing context, customers do so by identifying with and associating themselves with brands that reflect and reinforce their self-identities. Studies have been already carried out in organisations with memberships rather than with paying customers (Ahearne et al., 2005). It is now timely for us to investigate paying customer response to brand identification, moving on from the identification with a membership organisation.In the following section social identity theory and brand identification are explored in detail. Then the effects of prestige, satisfaction and communication on brand identification are discussed. This leads to the development of a model that includes word-of-mouth and brand repurchase as outcomes of brand identification. The model and a rival model are tested with a sample of car owners in the UK using structural equation modelling with LISREL. This will be followed by a discussion of the most important findings as well as managerial implications and limitations of our study.\nBackground literature review: Social identity theory\nConceptual background to hypotheses: In developing our model we begin by discussing the concepts that emerge from social identity theory that might well apply to business to customer relationships. Specifically, we suggest that prestige, satisfaction, and corporate communications will together lead to brand identification. We then discuss how this identification leads to positive word of mouth and intention to repurchase. Figure 1 presents our proposed model.Prestige\nRepurchase: Customer retention is of key importance in most markets where supply threatens to outstrip supply. Retention is a strategy for long-term survival and profitability as dictated by the relationship marketing paradigm (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003). Various studies have shown that retaining customers and reducing defections lead to higher profitability (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). Unsurprisingly therefore, many organisations and research studies have been oriented towards the topic of relationship marketing and on factors that may lead to its success.\"Brand and service loyalty is indicated by repeat purchase or repurchase intentions\" (Bettencourt, 1997, p. 384). Brand loyalty can be defined as the tendency of the customers to purchase a brand (Bhattacharya et al., 1995). In the consumer context, Bhattacharya et al. (1995) have suggested that identification may have positive consequences on brand repurchase. They take an example from Peter and Olson to demonstrate that 94 per cent of Harley-Davidson buyers would buy a Harley again. Ahearne et al. (2005) add that in terms of customer-company identification, the more the customers identify with a company the greater the impact on purchasing behaviour. Hence our fifth and final hypothesis. We have presented our hypotheses in a model, depicted in Figure 1:H5. Identification is related positively to brand re-purchase.\nMethods: Research context\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussion and conclusion: Since relationships are an important part of the individual's identity, it is not surprising that initial research has found meaning and a sense of belonging to be provided by marketers looking to create long term relationships (Gruen et al., 2000). This search for personal meaning has tended to become inseparably linked to brands (Fournier, 1995; Holt, 2002; McAlexander et al., 2002).Consequently, brands are increasingly designed around the need for belonging, and owning certain brands affirms the consumer's sense of identity. The branding literature has embraced this role of being a means of creating meaning for consumers. Since marketers find it more profitable to aim at segments of customers, then the fact established in studies based on social identity theory that group identity can predict behaviours (Turner, 1999) enables marketers to aim a brand at those identifying with it, as a group.Just recently the marketing discipline and its top journals have taken up customer/company identification (c.f. Ahearne et al., 2005; Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003; Algesheimer et al., 2005). Our contribution to developing understanding of brand identification is to focus on the paying customer. As we have said, we share Ahearne et al.'s (2005) view that the \"marketing context is ripe for studying identification\". Identification takes place in the context of a relationship and so our study is timely and relevant because of the numerous situations whereby customers form relationships with a brand, not entirely based on economic factors.Furthermore, this current study has attempted to give a new dimension to the construct of identification. For, in Arnett et al.'s (2003) study in the not-for-profit sector, empirical evidence failed to support the claim that satisfaction was a significant determinant of identification. In our study in the for-profit customer-brand context, satisfaction has proved to impact significantly on the degree to which car owners identify with their car brand. Our findings contradict Van Dick's et al. (2004) results because they proposed satisfaction as a mediating variable. On the basis of our findings, we are convinced that the exercise of testing a rival model has reinforced the support we found for the meaningfulness and robustness of our hypothesised model. The rival model empirically demonstrated its additional value by providing support found for positioning brand identification as a mediating variable in the hypothesised model. For we have now demonstrated that disregarding the mediating role of brand identification reduces model parsimony and leads to a lower percentage of significant path coefficients.This empirical study on the antecedents and consequences of customer-brand identification has revealed that car owners do identify with their car brands. Our conceptual model was empirically tested and antecedents (prestige; satisfaction; communication) were found to lead to customer-brand identification. Results indicated further that this identification when reinforced, leads to enhanced relationship marketing success by generating supportive behaviours like repurchase and word of mouth. This paper has supplemented the growing research in customer-brand relationships by highlighting the importance of brand identification as the psychological ground underlying deep and meaningful relationship marketing success. In support of Ahearne et al. (2005) we have reframed the literature of identification and applied the concept of identification in the consumer-brand context where formal membership is not necessary. The latter perspective has dominated past studies when investigating mainly employee-organisations bonds. This current study has made an important contribution to social identity literature in empirically demonstrating that identification can indeed be a relevant concept even in cases where there is no formal membership. We have also developed linkages between branding and relationship marketing not noted previously. This connection enlightens our understanding of both disciplines and paves the way for future research into the link.\nManagerial implications: Results suggest that managers may want to focus on increasing identification of customers with their brands because of the positive consequences that are generated. From the findings of this current study we recommend that levers like prestige, satisfaction, and communication be manipulated in order to impact favourably upon identification.We have shown why marketers might wish to strive hard to strengthen identification by enhancing the level of prestige associated with their brand. Focussing on the visibility and reputation via external communication may positively impact on the prestige of a brand. Such efforts are likely to increase the level of identification that brand owners feel about their brand by making brand owners \"bask in reflected glory\" and feel proud owners of their brand.In spite of this, prestige is not exclusively affected by a company's communication efforts with various stakeholder groups. Some information sources are obviously outside of a company's influence. These sources could be quite influential in shaping the perceived prestige of an organisation. In the car industry such sources could be popular motoring shows on television or widely read car magazines. Previous research has shown that independent external information sources have an even bigger influence on prestige than company-controlled communication efforts do (Smidts et al., 2001; Farmer et al., 1998). Therefore, managers have to be realistic about the likely influence of direct communication efforts. It would be worth focussing on public relations as a strategic communication tool. Also, in times of a product recall that have become more common in recent years especially in the car industry the prestige of a brand is likely to suffer. Here again, successful public relations tactics certainly increase visibility and broaden corporate brand credibility in such difficult circumstances. Managers are encouraged to develop contingency communications plans so that measures are in place for dealing with such occurrences to limit possible negative consequences on perceived prestige of brands.We also believe it worthwhile to strengthen identification by building on customer satisfaction, for the importance of satisfaction is highlighted by the results. Managers may want to focus their direct communications on the high satisfaction levels of their current customers.For manufacturer-customer communication about the brand has also been seen to significantly affect brand identification. This highlights the importance of corporate communication and shows that customers are more likely to identify with organisations that provide relevant information and communicate well with them. To do this most effectively managers may well have to investigate which communications medium, such as mail, phone or e-mail, customers prefer and how often they would like to receive information.\nImplications for further research: Of theoretical significance, this study connects social identity theory with new areas not previously fully explored. It has established measurable antecedents and consequences of brand identification in business relationships. This can be replicated in settings other than car ownership, and across larger samples in the future. Further research can modify and seek to apply a similar customer-brand identification framework in other areas in order to render the proposed model more reliable and valid. Furthermore, a longitudinal survey across different points in time might reveal more useful information about customer-brand identification. We are confident that this study has made a step forward in the area of brand identification and it can serve as a stepping stone for further research in the future.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to analyse the influences of prestige, satisfaction, and communication on brand identification and to show how brand identification influences word-of-mouth and brand repurchase.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A theoretical model is developed and tested with a sample of car owners in the UK of two global car brands. Structural equation modelling was used with LISREL 8.54 and the maximum likelihood (ML) method.\nFindings: - This paper draws mainly on the theory of social identity to provide a comprehensive understanding of conditions under which brand owners are likely to identify with their brand and the bases and consequences of such identification. It was shown that prestige, satisfaction, and communication effect brand identification. The study confirms that consumers' development of relationships via brand identification results in word of mouth about the brand and intentions to repurchase the brand. Furthermore, it was found that brand identification fully mediates the influences of prestige, satisfaction, and communication on word of mouth and brand repurchase.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The focus was on one country and one industry.\nPractical implications: - Managers are provided with strategies that enhance the identification of their customers with their brand so that they can strengthen the customers' brand identification. Areas for future research are suggested. For instance, it could be interesting to test the model in a different industry and/or cultural context.\nOriginality/value: - Very few previous studies have looked at brand identification which is surprising considering it is such an important variable to influence word-of-mouth and brand repurchase. The study tests three antecedents to brand identification and two outcomes that have not been investigated previously. Overall, the study adds knowledge in this somewhat neglected area.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intellectual capital dynamics in universities: a reporting model	[ "Intellectual capital", "Universities", "Research organizations", "Management information", "Information disclosure" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: European higher education (HE) and research organizations have been undergoing a process of in-depth transformations in recent decades and these can be analysed taking into account two parallel processes.The first process is represented by theoretical insights provided by two evolutionary perspectives: the mode 2 of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994) and the triple helix model (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1996). Both stress the emergence of a new paradigm of knowledge production defined by transdisciplinarity and solution-oriented research. In this scenario, university-industry-government relationships become more dynamic and interdependent, contributing to the creation of hybrid organisations, alliances between universities and firms, trilateral networks, etc. Universities interact now with a variety of other knowledge producers (Gibbons, 1998, p. 1). This framework is mostly accepted in specialised literature and has become crucial for understanding universities' role and their links with other actors in the current economy (Mowery and Sampat, 2004).The second is the increasing interest in HE institutions and the intense debate on the role that they play in the mentioned change of paradigm. This process is represented by the political actions undertaken by the European Commission (2006) and the collective reflection process underway in some institutions, such as the European University Association (EUA), the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators and some experts groups, such as the one responsible for the Reporting Intellectual Capital to augment Research, Development and Innovation in SMEs (RICARDIS) report.Some major consequences of these processes are as follows.1.1 Increasing emphasis on the multi-function of the HE institutions\n2 IC in universities and research organizations: Adapting management and reporting IC in companies to other types of organizations has gone two ways. The first deals with assessing intangibles aggregated at meso (communities, industries, etc.) and at macro level (cities, regions and nations). For example, The World Bank has organized three conferences on this issue in 2005-2007 (Chatzkel, 2006) and attempts have been made to measure IC at country level, for instance in Sweden (Rembe, 1999), Israel (Pasher, 1999) and the Arab region (Bontis, 2004).The second dimension, more related to the scope of this paper, suggests using the IC framework at micro-level for public institutions. Some papers included in this group are based on new public management (NPM) principles. These have been used by governments since the 1980s to enhance public sector efficiency and the quality of its services, by decentralizing and applying competition, treating the beneficiaries of public services as customers. Governments thus provide the particular institution with more autonomy to meet its goals and reward performance (Borins, 1995), which demands measurements and reporting mechanisms, subject to the corresponding auditing revisions. The phenomenon was initially seen as an issue for developed countries, particularly Anglo-Saxon, with the best cases studied in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (Barzelay, 2001; Guthrie et al., 2004). The USA, Canada, and to a lesser extent some European countries, also received attention (Borins, 2002; Guthrie et al., 2004) and the above principles were tentatively applied in certain developing African countries (Larbi, 1999).Dunleavy et al. (2006) argue that \"NPM is dead\" because in the digital era governments will recover control and central management because of their larger communication and storage capabilities. However, if the NPM principles are compared with, for example, the aforesaid EAU demands, the European Commission policy recommendations, and certain policies adopted by European governments[3], the coincidences are clear: universities should follow the basic principles of autonomy and accountability in order to better manage their internal affairs and satisfy societal needs.Some colleagues have compared the NPM with the IC perspective and argued that the latter will help public institution management and reporting. Guthrie et al. (2004) state, for example, that NPM is simply a refinement of the traditional reporting structures while the IC framework provides a better basis for understanding and reporting on organizational performance and providing greater transparency and accountability. Almqvist and Skoog (2007) criticize the excessive focus of most NPM applications on one stakeholder (the customer or the recipient of the service) while the IC framework addresses different stakeholders simultaneously, providing a better view of how collaboration and networking are key drivers in the value-creating process of a public organization.This paper shares the same view, and also that of Mouritsen et al. (2005) and Leitner et al. (2005), in the sense that the IC framework is a valid attempt to meet the new demands of public institutions, and that the IC report is a useful tool for internal and external purposes. Some examples show how the IC report goes beyond the NPM focus, because it provides, together with a language and management control system, \"a communication device about how the public sector institution works to create value\" (Mouritsen et al., 2005, p. 285). An IC report can help to identify structural and personal strengths and weaknesses, reveal the current state of the different university missions and be used as a controlling and monitoring instrument (Altenburger and Schaffhauser-Linzatti, 2006).IC information is not necessarily designed for evaluation purposes but can be used for it. As in any evaluation process, the evaluation criteria must be set a priori (Leitner, 2004), meaning that the institution's goals should be clear and included in the IC report, so that both managers and outside readers may check actual performance in relation to them.However, not all are in favour of universities following this reporting path. Piber and Pietsch (2006), using the focal point of new institutionalism in sociology and examining the Austrian law (referred to later on), argue that this is an attempt to obtain legitimacy from the social environment by taking as gospel things that are not necessarily proven. Although the authors do not share the way, they criticise the overall exercise, they agree on the idea that a complex organization such as a university cannot be completely translated into figures and expect them to guide the decision-making processes successfully. Indeed, the usefulness of the IC framework useful resides in its use as a communication tool where individual figures are meaningless and detailed description is needed, and one of whose objectives is to encourage discussion on what has to be measured and how. Performance assessment should be related to the explicit institution objectives and, accordingly, greater internationalization, for example, would only be \"better\" if such an objective were the institution's aim.\n3 IC measuring and reporting experiences: As argued before, different institutional initiatives show how IC approaches are used within universities and research organisations (Sanchez and Elena, 2006; Leitner, 2004; Leitner and Warden, 2004). Examples of national, multinational and regional approaches are provided below.3.1 A national case: Austria\n4 The ICU Report: main characteristics and test: The aim of the ICU Report which forms part of the OEU project is to make recommendations for the disclosure of university information on research. Following the recommendations of the European Commission (2006), it depicts the logical movement from management and internal strategy (design of the institution's vision and goals) to the disclosure of indicators, taking into account previous guidelines for companies (Meritum Protect, 2002; Danish Trade and Industry Development Council, 2003; Society for Knowledge Economy, 2005; Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2005) and for universities (Leitner and Warden, 2004).The three parts, all equally important, are the following:1. Vision of the institution, aiming to present the main general objectives and strategy and the key drivers to reach them.2. Summary of intangible resources and activities, aiming to describe the intangible resources that the institution can mobilize and the different activities undertaken or planned to improve them. It should show the uniqueness of the institution and the priority lines established and the main areas of interest on which the institution will focus.3. System of indicators, aiming to allow the internal and external bodies to assess the performance and estimate the future of the institution correctly. In this way, a university engages with measured and clear objectives that can be assessed over time. It should allow a follow-up on whether the activities have been launched and if objectives are being met.As shown in Table I, the indicators are classified following a well-spread taxonomy, into human, organisational and relational capital. Within each category, the different headings follow the strategic issues defined in the OEU guide. It is suggested that indicators are produced in both absolute and relative terms so as to provide useful comparisons.The indicators were selected from the very many suggested in the OEU guide with the following criteria:* feasibility of data gathering, based on the experience of all universities participating in the OEU project;* perceived usefulness of the information provided and expected confidentiality concerns, mainly based on the UAM testing study; and* a first pre-trial to test the characteristics indicators should have (Meritum Protect, 2002).It was clear during the OEU exercise that every question could be answered using different indicators and that these could be interpreted differently by different readers. Therefore, any system of indicators is not self-explanatory and it is crucial to take into account the narrative of the first two sections to avoid ending up with meaningless information.Since the indicators are intended to show both comparability and the uniqueness of the institution a tension is created which is further discussed in Section 5. Accordingly, this proposal acknowledges the European Commission (2006) recommendations and suggests a set of indicators which might be common to all the institutions in the sector. The chosen list is not too long ands allows universities to add those indicators considered necessary to clearly reflect what was included in Parts 1 and 2 of the report.The proposal also addresses some practical issues. For example, it provides recommendations about the data-gathering process, who should be responsible for it, and the reporting frequency. It also suggests breaking down the scientific fields in six knowledge areas, following the Frascati Manual (OECD, 2003).As mentioned before, the ICU Report has been tested by interviewing different level decision makers[5] at the UAM. The goals of the UAM case study were:* evaluating, following a Likert scale, the usefulness of the selected indicators for management; and* assessing possible barriers for the disclosure of indicators due to confidentiality issues.The interviewees considered all indicators useful or very useful and none was rejected. No indicator raised confidentiality concerns and everybody showed awareness of the need for transparency, e.g. in funding distribution, and interest in engaging with measurable objectives and compromises with society.This ICU Report proposal is an exploratory exercise. Several shortcomings have been identified which call for additional research and testing. For example, some indicators have to be more clearly defined; the OEU exercise dealt mainly with research resources, so no indicators are proposed for any activities, and teaching synergies between teaching and research are not tackled. Finally, the ICU Report is not a panacea, since universities have been gathering information on some indicators (such as the number of publications or patents) for years. The main achievement, apart from providing some new information, is presenting it in a single document with homogeneous language and criteria. But, more importantly, it shows the emergence of a new culture based on greater societal demands and accountability concerns.\n5 Main challenges and work ahead: The above examples show that the real achievement of a model widely used by universities and research centres to manage and report on their IC is still a long way-off. Some of the challenges to overcome, taking the previous experiences into consideration may be the following.5.1 Boundaries of the institution definition\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the increasing attention to universities and research organizations at political level and the growing implementation in these institutions of intellectual capital (IC) management and reporting mechanisms, traditionally used by private companies. The objective of the paper is twofold. On one hand, to present an IC report specially designed for universities, suggesting a battery of indicators for resources related to research activity, and, on the other hand, to move one step forward and discuss current challenges in relation to establishing standards for universities to manage and report on their IC and the difficulties in capturing the process dynamics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper reviews recent literature both on conceptual issues and experiences in relation to IC. The Austrian IC report, the observatory of European university exercise and some recent experiences of the Madrid regional government concerning Madrid universities are analysed. Both theory and practice contribute to the development of an IC reporting and management model for universities.\nFindings: - A model for reporting and managing IC resources in universities and research organisations is suggested. IC dynamics are discussed and current shortcomings of IC analysis presented. The latter points may define the research agenda in the field.\nOriginality/value: - Available experiences are used to discuss possibilities and difficulties in showing the dynamics of higher education institutions by means of an IC report.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between feminist/womanist identity and leadership styles of women managers in Turkey	[ "Women executives", "Feminism", "Leadership", "Turkey" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Feminist thought emphasizes the inequalities between the two sexes and the abuse of women in society (Bierema and Cseh, 2003; Kark, 2004) therefore; one of the central aim of a feminist is the elimination of sexual discrimination in social, political, and economic environments (Bierema and Cseh, 2003). Stereotypes are shaped and learnt according to the cultural expectations of society (Carless, 1998). In expectation-based context, gender perception can be defined as a stable belief (Gardner et al., 1994) concerning sexual differences that are commonly shared in a society. In this context, gender conception is also used to indicate the psychological, sociological, and cultural differences between the two sexes (Claes, 1999). The basic driver of gender stereotypes is in-group favoritism or in-group preference; this reflects automatically categorization of people (Reskin, 2003, pp. 61-3). Prejudice or stereotype is an attitude and belief of advantaged group members toward disadvantaged group members; according to system justification theory the advantaged group members show in-group favoritism to protect their social hierarchy and self-esteem; disadvantaged group members can tend to in-group favoritism with similar logic (Dasgupta, 2004, pp. 146-8). Prejudice is parallel with the belief that women's opinions are ignored, especially in mix-gender groups; therefore, their ability to develop authority is hindered (Ridgeway, 2001) as a result of the general belief that men are better at attaining managerial success (Brenner et al., 1989). Such examples illustrate the general tendency to regard men as better than women in terms of managerial success, which is directly related to gender stereotypes that define men as more \"competent\" and provide higher status to males (Ridgeway, 2001).Feminist thought has helped improve the position of women, not only in society, but also within organizations (Calas and Smircich, 1993). There have been many studies in the field of social science regarding gender differences and leadership styles (Druskat, 1994; Day and Stogdill, 1972; Chapman, 1975; Terborg, 1977; Cann and Siegfried, 1990) in particular, the issues surrounding management and leadership concepts have been the subject of focus because the notion of masculinity (van Engen et al., 2001), which hinders women attaining senior positions (Kent and Moss, 1994; Irby and Brown, 1995; Schein et al., 1996; Schein, 2001), has been perceived as the basic criterion for leadership. This perception runs parallel to the basis of all feminist theories: the conceptualization of male dominancy (Calas and Smircich, 1993). Consequently, it has become obvious that gender role stereotypes emerge in leadership practices. The purpose of this study is to test of relationship between feminist identity and leadership styles of women managers in Turkey. This paper is divided into three sections: the first outlines feminist identity and female leadership concepts, the second evaluates the results of the regression analysis, and finally, the paper will conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings for female managers and leadership styles relationship.Feminist/womanist identity\nMethodology: Participants\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: The main purpose of this study is to determine how the feminist/womanist approaches of senior female managers in Turkey affect their leadership styles; therefore, research was conducted on 102 female senior managers employed by large companies in Turkey. The obtained data yield some interesting results. The synthesis of feminist thought with regard to feminist identity, or the understanding of the meaning of feminist thought, has a significant effect on inspirational leadership; that is, the sub-element of transformational leadership. In the present study, a positive and meaningful relationship between two of the variables was detected. Womanist identity affects visionary, collaborative, and participative leadership styles. Interestingly, the more equalitarian a female executive, the more visionary she becomes, but at the same time she behaves less collaboratively. These findings support those of Pasa et al. (2001), signifying that in a cultural sense the Turkish ideals of leadership behaviors are relationship-oriented, based on administrative qualities, collaborative team-work, and many charismatic and transformational attributes (e.g. visionary and inspirational). Another finding of note is that while the active participatory nature of feminist identity or attitude has a positive affect on team-based integrator leadership styles, it also leads to increasingly autocratic leadership. An explanation for this finding is provided below.Female managers in Turkey adopt feminism on both mental and active boundaries; thus, such an adoption increases their team-based activities and autocratic leadership styles as a consequence of external factors and male-dominancy. This is a natural consequence of adapting to a male-dominated environment. This finding runs parallel to the tendency for women to label themselves as women having feminist thoughts rather than as feminists (Burn et al., 2000; Liss et al., 2001), and to their intellectual expression that as the polarization between masculinity and femininity lessened, the women saved themselves from getting involved in feminist conceptualizations (Billing and Alvesson, 2000). This finding is also supported by the relationship-orientation advantage enjoyed by Turkish female managers, accompanied by the disadvantage of emotional stability (Sumer, 2006). Women find it necessary to accept autocratic leadership styles to preserve their emotional stability while moving toward a more relationship-based leadership role. It can also be said that the strongest influences on leadership styles in Turkey are tacit power and authority (Pasa, 2000), making this theory valid for both male and female leaders.As for a collaborative leadership style, it is positively affected by womanist consciousness; moreover, as expected, traditionalist attitude has a reducing effect on visionary leadership. Collaborative leadership in Turkey is supported by womanist attitudes rather than by feminist, as feminist thought remains a minority belief system and is still not well received. This is not the reality though, because to become more successful than their male colleagues, female managers accept a more passive identity and dedicate themselves to becoming more competent than men to \"fit in\" with the system (Linstead and Thomas, 2002). Similarly, according to Aycan (2004), the male-dominated organizational culture in Turkey hinders the career development of Turkish women and their socialization. As a result, feminist attitudes cannot be expressed.\nConclusion and managerial implications: Various scales have been developed to measure perceptions of women managers. The Women as Managers Scale (WAMS) scale developed by Peters et al. (1974) and Terborg et al. (1977), examines women from a managerial base, revealing her abilities and adoption structure, while making cultural comparisons (Owen and Todor, 1993; Cordano et al., 2002; Tomkiewicz et al., 2004). Aside from these structures, there is also a physical constraint dimension (Bowen et al., 2000). Another scale that can offer a similar point of view is the aversion to women who work scale (AWWWS) (Valentine and Mosely, 1998). This scale has two dimensions: the incompatibility of women with business life, and traditional role preferences (Mostafa, 2005). However, to our knowledge, no prior study or descriptive research has focused on the relationship between feminist identity of women managers and their leadership styles and there is insufficient-related literature. Female managers in Turkey believe that womanist identity, or woman consciousness as it is termed in this paper, is sufficient to create collaboration. It is also claimed that an equalitarian woman identity reduces the collaborative structure. Female managers who want to perform equalitarian practices may be manipulated by other female managers who are not competent or by male managers who fear that management may get \"softer.\" These findings do not support Ford's (2005) alternative view, which states that female perceptions do not imitate male behaviors or men who do not conform to masculine traits. Similarly, these results conflict with Powell et al. (2002), who proposed that as the number of female managers increases, the tendency for men to perform masculine traits decreases. Male-dominated structure is still alive in Turkey; therefore, it is true that Turkish female managers lack leadership qualities as a result of the congruity theory and the barriers presented by their traditional roles (Celikten, 2005). The male managerial elite are preserving their positions (Woodward and Ozbilgin, 1999). One reason for the negative effect of equalitarian thought on collaborative leadership is that the inequality between the sexes in Turkey is advantageous for men (Bodur and Kabasakal, 2002), and gender egalitarianism is rare (Kabasakal and Dastmalchian, 2001). The effect of an equalitarian attitude on participative leadership can be attributed to the global nature of equalitarianism and its position as an essential factor in participative activities.There is a thin line between the definitions of womanist and feminist theory in Turkey. Culturally, even though woman consciousness is slowly emerging, the traditional belief that a male protector is necessary remains strong. In Turkey, feminism has not become widespread because it is seen as creating a separation between men and women; Zucker (2004) asserted that this created a third structure, egalitarianism, denying the feminist label. It was concluded that there is a positive relationship between women's egalitarian role expectations and their high feminist identity level (Yoder et al., 2007). In Turkey, women are still regarded as highly feminine and inclined to motherhood. This traditional tendency restrains highly feminine women from defining themselves as feminists and from participating in feminist movements (Suter and Toller, 2006).There remains a tendency for women to avoid masculine jobs, and the view remains that feminist values separates men and women. A typical example of this practice is seen in the field of engineering. Women prefer to work in sub-sectors that are seen as the more feminine engineering fields, and this strongly influences gender distribution (Zengin-Arslan, 2002); regarding men and women as two separate classes can be seen as the main reason for this distribution. The process of modernization has increased woman consciousness and the integration of feminist thought; however, it is obvious that even though women are accepted as colleagues, they are still not welcomed as leaders in Turkish organizations.Consequently, in terms of a feminist framework, Turkish female managers practice positive discrimination towards women, which means that they have adopted the womanist attitude that aims to solve the apparent conflicts and attain an integral point of view (Brown, 1989). Eagly et al. (2003) found that women are somewhat more transformational than men in leadership style as well as more transactional on the positive \"contingent reward\" dimension. In countries in which women occupy a higher percentage of leadership roles, women possess task-oriented leadership styles just like their male counterparts (Sczesny et al., 2004). This is the reason behind Turkish female managers' preferences for an autocratic leadership style, a consequence of quick augmentation despite the slow rate of leadership participation: this theory is supported by the need to be more competent to defeat gender stereotypes (Yoder, 2001). These are encouraging results for managers in Turkey. Firstly, top managerial positions can give priority to women managers that show more equality attribute to orientate the subordinates and participate them to this process. But, If they want to applicate authoritarian team management, they can prefer women managers in active commitment level of feminist thought. This condition can balance power relations in organization. Because, a settlement of the power relationships within an organization will support the formation of a more equalitarian structure (Oakley, 2000).Alike, Turkish managers may prefer women managers who have a synthesis feminist identity to enhance capacity of subordinates and strengthen their perceptions concerning company strategies. Otherwise, top managerial positions can establish a collaborative management approach that consist performance feedback, process management with women managers who has womanist consciousness. These all sub-analysis reflect several feminist point of views are in progress in organizations in Turkey. This finding matches with Chodorow's (1995, p. 523) idea that masculinity and feminist concepts are not in a polarization, also there are ways that women and men operate psychologically and experience and define their selves. In this manner, Turkish women managers must internalization their feminist/womanist identity to reach different leadership styles. Because, ideology, values, and goals are significant notions that play roles in the stability of feminist thought (Martin, 1990). If women managers assimilate in male-dominated organizational environment, there will be no effect of feminist identity on their different leadership styles.\nLimitations and directions for future research: The results of the present study are sufficiently significant to establish a relationship between the feminist attitudes of female managers in Turkey and their leadership styles; however, some limitations exist. One limitation concerns the sample respondents. Only female managers from large-scale companies were included in the research; therefore, the results only reflect the opinions of women from large organizations. It is not known for certain whether the opinions of women in smaller enterprises or medium-sized companies would be the same. In addition to the theoretical background, public opinion concerning feminism could have influenced the research results. A further limitation is the strong possibility that the respondents all view feminism differently. In addition, the marital status of the respondents was not established, a factor that could affect feminist thought. Future studies might be conducted analyzing the sub-characteristics of female managers, identifying their leadership styles accordingly, while establishing in detail the effect of cultural and personal values on feminist attitudes and leadership styles. It is apparent that interviewing those female managers in Turkey who truly define themselves as feminists will lead to beneficial results.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To investigate how the perceived feminist/womanist identities of female managers in Turkey affect their leadership styles.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Three main constructs were used to measure the relationship between feminist and womanist identity and leadership styles: womanist identity attitude scale, feminist identity composite scale, and GLOBE leadership scale. Data were collected by web-based survey from the 102 female managers of large-scale private sector companies in Turkey. Results were analyzed by regression analysis.\nFindings: - The results of the study, gathered over a two-month web-based survey, show that the feminist/womanist approaches held by women influence a variety of leadership styles. While feminist approaches are inspiring and effective in team-work, womanist approaches affect collaborative, participative, and visionary leadership styles.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Only female managers from large-scale companies were included in the research; therefore, the results only reflect the opinions of women from large organizations.\nPractical implications: - Feminist/womanist lines of thought that emerged as extensions of the women's movement have also impacted upon the executive branches of organizations. In particular, it is thought that female managers possess different leadership qualities than men, thereby constituting a separate group within an organization. It is therefore significant to note that feminist/womanist approaches influence women's leadership styles.\nOriginality/value: - This study adds significantly to the published body of knowledge. Its findings reflect valuable contribution concerning which factors of feminism/womanism attitudes have an effect on leadership styles.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
All at sea with leadership styles: Control and command or engage people skills?	[ "Interaction", "Leadership", "Engagement", "Disengagement", "Levelling" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A business leader who adopts a \"When I say jump, jump!\" style of leadership expects orders to be carried out immediately and effectively by the people he or she leads - by definition, the followers. And why not? After all, the leader is in a position of great responsibility; he or she knows more than the subordinates do about the \"big picture\" and why and how things need to be done, and the leadership role involves a degree of \"the buck stops here\" thinking.\nE-mailed order or a face-to-face \"Would you mind ...?\": Matt Offord, a Royal Navy Defence Fellow, Professor Roger Gill and Dr Jeremy Kendal, all of Durham University, UK, questioned ratings (non-commissioned personnel) serving on mine-hunters based at the RN's nuclear-submarine base in Scotland about their opinions of the leadership of their senior officers.\nGreater application or effort was a likely consequence of better leadership: The first three axial codes noted in the research findings were leadership behaviors. The first two were termed engaging leadership and disengaging leadership. The third was that of leadership style. The notion of style did not seem as important as the other two. Indeed, ratings were of the opinion that style was not a significant leadership factor. The final three axial codes concerned the way in which followers react to leader behavior - engagement, disengagement and levelling. Participants stated that they were more or less likely to \"give 100 per cent\" depending on leader behavior. Their language was often profound, suggesting deep commitment or withdrawal. Less often, but with animated language and gestures, the sailors gave examples of how they thwart (\"level\") poor leaders - for example, direct criticism, feigned ignorance, mocking or gossip.\nComment: This review is based on \"Leadership between decks. A synthesis and development of engagement and resistance theories of leadership based on evidence from practice in Royal Navy warships\" by Matt Offord, Roger Gill and Jeremy Kendal. The authors seek to define how interaction works within naval teams by understanding the role of interaction in the process of leadership. The research was conducted among personnel serving with Royal Navy warships.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of interaction in the process of leadership. Interaction has been claimed to be a leadership competence in the Royal Navy. The aim of this research is to define how interaction works within naval teams.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research uses grounded theory. Following a series of leadership discussions in separate focus groups, discussion topics were coded and subjected to recursive qualitative analysis. The grounded approach is used to synthesize and develop existing leadership theory strands, as well as to extend the trait-process approach to leadership.\nFindings: The research discovers the key interaction behaviors of engagement, disengagement and levelling. The findings support recent developments in follower-centric perceptions and in interaction specifically. The authors develop engagement theory by combining it with the less well-researched area of leadership resistance. The authors then re-frame resistance as social levelling, a more comprehensive interaction mechanism.\nOriginality/value: This research uniquely uses grounded theory to extend current theories (competence-based leadership and trait-process theories of leadership), explaining the complexity of leadership interaction. The research also synthesizes and develops engagement and levelling (resistance to leadership) theories for the first time. As such, the project suggests a full range model of follower response to leadership, including subtle forms of resistance to power. The value of group-level analysis using focus groups is recommended, especially for other collective leader-follower approaches to leadership. The research is of interest to those studying leadership process theories, competencies, leader-follower traditions, engagement and power/resistance research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategic information systems planning in Malaysian public universities	[ "Malaysia", "Universities", "Information systems", "Project planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Information technology (IT) has revolutionised business practices and plays a central part in business strategies. Enterprise-wide information systems, enabled by sophisticated technology, can help organisations adapt to the challenging business environment, providing new forms of customer services, new distribution channels and redefining organisational procedures and boundaries. To achieve this, organisations should have a strong and well-developed strategic information system plan (SISP). A SISP consists of a strategy for both information planning and management, including the use of functions and features of IT (Galliers et al., 1995). With a proper strategic IT plan, organisations can use IT more competitively, identify new and higher payback IT applications, and better forecast IT resource requirements (Basu et al., 2002). Similarly, SISP within tertiary educational institutions is important for the successful implementation of a campus-wide information system.Realizing the importance of SISP, several researchers have proposed SISP models to guide business organisations (e.g. Smits and Van der Poel, 1996; Lederer and Salmela, 1996). Many studies have also revealed factors motivating and inhibiting SISP projects (e.g. Doherty et al., 1999; Hackney and McBride, 2002). However, most of this research centered on business organisations. Very little is known about the status of the SISP process in the context of higher learning institutions. Therefore, this study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the status of SISP implementation in the specific context of public universities in Malaysia. Specifically, this study attempts to answer the following questions:* What is the current status of SISP in Malaysian public universities?* What are the benefits gained by Malaysian public universities from implementing SISP?* What are the problems faced by Malaysian public universities in implementing SISP?It is hoped that the findings from this study will increase the awareness and understanding of SISP and its implementation among public universities in Malaysia.\nPrevious studies: This section briefly reviews literature relating to IT developments and SISP initiatives in higher education.IT in higher education\nResearch methodology: This study focuses primarily on 17 Malaysian public universities. For this purpose, dual but mutually supportive strands of investigations were carried out. Initially, a mail questionnaire was undertaken. This provides a basis for examining the status of SISP implementation among the institutions. The questionnaire was divided into three sections. Section A of the questionnaire was designed to elicit background information on the institutions. Section B was designed to elicit the status of SISP implementation of the institutions. Section C was designed to investigate the perception of the respondents towards the importance of each of the SISP tasks outlined by MAMPU and also whether the tasks are followed or not by the respondents during the implementation process. The four-point scale used was: 1=important and implement; 2=important but not implement; 3=not important but implement; 4=not important and not implement. A series of interviews were then carried out with the Director of the Computer Center of each institution. This method provides details of the benefits and problems faced during the SISP implementation process and allows a richer appreciation of the process by which SISP emerges and develops in these institutions. Among the main questions asked include:* How are IT decisions made and priorities set? By whom?* How is funding allocated for IT spending?* How are IT functions/services and staff currently organized?\nResults: This study aims to explore the status of SISP implementation among public universities in Malaysia. Nearly half of the institutions were established more than 20 years ago, and so can be considered mature institutions. Twenty-nine percent of the institutions have been established for five years or less. Preliminary results show that only one (6 percent) of the 17 institutions has completed SISP implementation. Thirteen institutions are in the implementation stage, two institutions are still in the planning stage, while one institution has yet to decide its IT strategic plan.The MAMPU SISP guideline consists of four implementation stages:1. analysis of business environment;2. analysis of IT environment;3. development of IT strategy; and4. development of implementation plan.Each stage consists of several phases, which also comprise several tasks. The following sections present the survey results of the respondents' perception toward the importance and compliance of each task.Analyses of business environment\nDiscussion: Using mail questionnaire and interviews, this study identifies the status of SISP implementation among public universities in Malaysia. Despite the fact that nearly half of the institutions were established more than two decades ago, only one (6 percent) institution has completed its SISP exercise. Thirteen (76 percent) institutions are in the implementation stage, whilst two (12 percent) other institutions are still in the planning stage. The fact that nearly one-third of these institutions were established less than five years ago may explain the high percentage (76 percent) of institutions that are still in the implementation stage. Compared to Vicziany and Puteh (2004) and Yaakub et al. (2005), the findings from this study suggest that public universities in Malaysia are beginning to acknowledge the importance of SISP and have taken the necessary steps to implement it. One (6 percent) respondent, despite acknowledging the importance of SISP to its institution, has yet to come up with a plan for SISP. No pressure from top management was the main reason for not implementing SISP.The respondents were then asked to rate the importance of each of the 37 tasks outlined by the MAMPU guideline. Almost all respondents perceived the tasks as being important to their SISP initiatives. The respondents were also asked whether they implement each of the 37 tasks. Interestingly, despite acknowledging the importance of most of the tasks, some respondents, however, do not implement them. Respondents gave various reasons for not implementing the tasks (among others, lack of manpower and expertise, lack of commitment from the top management, lack of cooperation and collaboration between departments, and budget and time constraints). Some of the respondents also claimed that despite their importance, the tasks did not fit their environment. On the other hand, some respondents perceived some of the tasks as not being important but decided to implement them. There is no specific reason given by the respondents, but a few of them admitted that they just follow the guideline. The finding is somewhat surprising as the MAMPU guideline itself is not totally precise but can be adapted to unique business environments such as institutions of higher learning. The finding also implies a lack of SISP knowledge among respondents.Information gathered from interviews with the Director of the Computer Center of these institutions is noteworthy. Almost all respondents agreed that MAMPU SISP is a very useful guideline. However, many of them also agreed that current structure of IT planning team at their institutions prohibit effective communication, and thus collaboration between departmental units which resulted in a lack of comprehensive and coordinated IT plans. For example, the respondent from university A claimed that:... [the] initiative for IT strategic plan at this university seems to be the sole responsibility of the Computer Center ... but you know we at the Computer Center lack formally trained staff in managing IT strategic planning ... they know little about management because they are IT people\".He further added:... we really need full cooperation not only from the top management but also support at the departmental and faculty level.Interestingly, the respondent from university J said:... this is not nice to say but I think ... most of the committee members don't really know much about IT ... so I really think that we may need to rethink about this ... like appointing someone with some IT know-how.The respondent from university G even questioned the sincerity of its management in promoting the effective use and application of IT at his institution. He claimed that:... regarding budget for IT ... first, the management allocated about RM6 million for our IT expenditures ... by mid-year the allocation was cut down to RM2 million and you know ... we finally end up with only RM2 million ... so it kind of jeopardised everything that we have planned for ... nothing much that we can do with that amount of money ... and this thing happened almost every year, which can be frustrating.The respondent from university D, on the other hand, claimed that:... we normally have no problem with the management to approve our IT projects, but when it comes to funding it always stuck somewhere ... I don't know what happens really ... there seems to be a lack of communication between the approving committee and the Bursar Department.The respondent from newly established university M, however, claimed that:... I am quite lucky because I receive full management support ... and so far money is not a problem ... probably because M is a new university.Respondents were asked about the benefits and problems of SISP. Among the most frequent benefits mentioned by the respondents are that SISP helps (can help) organisations develop priorities for information systems development, determine opportunities, align business strategies with IT strategies, increase user participation and involvement, and forecast and allocate resources. The most frequent problems cited by the respondents are lack of expertise, lack of user participation and involvement, and lack of time to ensure that all planning tasks and individual responsibilities are well understood. Other problems identified are a failure to get full support and commitment from top management, unclear corporate plans, failure to translate goals and strategies into action plans, and budget constraints. Interestingly, the respondent from university C noted that:... [The] MAMPU IT Strategic Plan, like many others, is a nice guideline but we also need a strong and well-coordinated IT planning team at the university level to make it happen ... and this must be supported by a sound fiscal plan.He further noted that:... we must also ensure that all these nice IT plans move in tandem with the university overall strategic plan.\nConclusions: Findings from this study suggest that current SISP status among public universities in Malaysia is in tandem with the calls for all government agencies to effectively implement SISP in their organisations. In the meantime, our impression of the public universities is that much still needs to be done to effectively integrate IT into administrative and learning approaches. The institutions need to devote more time, effort and resources to implementing SISP successfully. Participation and involvement from top management are crucial for the successful implementation of SISP. The IT planning team needs to play a more active role by constantly reviewing SISP exercises. Most importantly, the SISP task force should not follow the MAMPU guideline as it is, but should customise it to fit their unique environment and the special talents of the team's members. The forthcoming and newly designed KICTSP-IPTA guideline suggests that things are about to change. It is hoped that the new blueprint will assist university planners in developing a more effective and uniform IT strategic plan for all Malaysian public universities. Finally, the findings of this study should stimulate SISP implementation not only among public universities but also in private colleges and universities, and encourage researchers to further examine the links between the status and success of SISP implementation and its influence factors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper's purpose is to investigate the current status, problems and benefits of strategic information systems planning implementation in Malaysian public universities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study uses dual but mutually supportive strands of investigation, i.e. a questionnaire survey and interviews.\nFindings: - Malaysian public universities are aware of the importance of SISP. While only one university has implemented SISP, 15 others are either at the implementation or planning stage. These universities are suggested to devote more time, efforts, and resources to successfully implement the SISP initiative.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study to investigate SISP status and process in Malaysian public universities using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of leadership styles on knowledge-sharing behavior: a review of literature	[ "Performance outcomes", "Leadership styles", "Knowledge sharing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Knowledge sharing has been conceptualized in the literature as the process of conversion of an individual's knowledge to a form understandable and usable by others. It has been widely accepted by scholars and practitioners that knowledge is a source of competitive advantage for firms. Tapping the knowledge pools already present within organizational boundaries is, therefore, the first step toward the attainment of this competitive edge. This endeavor is facilitated by the process of knowledge sharing, thus making it a topic of importance for contemporary organizations.\n1. Leadership styles and their impact on subordinate behavior: 1.1 Empowering leadership\n2. Conclusion: Knowledge sharing is desirable in contemporary organizations as it is associated with a host of positive outcomes at the individual, team, and firm levels. Leadership styles adopted by the managers in these organizations have a significant impact on the knowledge-sharing behavior of followers through several underlying mechanisms. Given the fact that most organizations today are knowledge-based organizations that aspire to achieve a competitive edge through knowledge management, the role of leaders in helping the organizations achieve that edge cannot be overemphasized. Hence, it is imperative that managers choose those styles of leadership that help subordinates develop a positive outlook toward knowledge sharing and consequently propel them to share their knowledge with others. This sharing would not only lead to the growth of an individual employee but also benefit the organization. The theoretical framework presented in the article highlights a number of possibilities for practicing managers by providing a range of leadership styles that may lead to enhanced knowledge-sharing behavior in contemporary knowledge-based organizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to summarize the extant literature investigating the impact of leadership styles on the knowledge-sharing behavior of followers in the organizational context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A thorough review of the literature was conducted. Empirical, as well as conceptual, studies examining the relationship between leadership styles and follower knowledge-sharing behavior were reviewed.\nFindings: Based on the findings of the studies reviewed, a theoretical framework is presented. The framework lists various leadership styles that have been found to significantly affect desirable individual- and team-level outcomes through a host of underlying mechanisms and subsequent knowledge sharing by the subordinates.\nPractical implications: The theoretical framework proposed in this study holds direct relevance for practicing managers. It provides a range of leadership styles that managers may choose from and practice to successfully elicit knowledge sharing among their subordinates.\nOriginality/value: Considering the vast array of studies exploring the role of leadership in predicting followers' knowledge-sharing behavior, the present study contributes by summarizing the scattered literature on the same. The framework is of immediate value to executives and saves hours of reading time by presenting the most relevant information in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Entrepreneurship education pedagogy: teacher-student-centred paradox	[ "Pedagogy", "Culture", "Entrepreneurship education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The effectiveness of the entrepreneurship education has been measured through entrepreneurial behaviour (Rauch and Hulsink, 2015; Souitaris et al., 2007), or through entrepreneurial intention constructs such as attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, and self-efficacy (Fayolle and Gailly, 2015; Izquierdo and Buelens, 2011; Piperopoulos and Dimov, 2015; Othman and Ishak, 2009). A systematic review of the impact on entrepreneurship education in higher education shows that there are a number of benefits for students. For example, this education will help an individual to bring about personal change (attitude, knowledge, skills, feasibility, and entrepreneurial intention), and also help with business start-up (Nabi et al., 2017; Othman et al., 2012).\n2. Teaching-studying-learning process: didactic and experiential approaches: The common teaching style in higher education focusses on didactic teaching styles. This method is teacher centric, educators are seen as transmitters of knowledge, and there is an emphasis placed on getting the \"right answer\". The didactic approach uses the static learning materials such as notes, PowerPoint slides, and textbooks. Students are sometimes assigned additional readings (e.g. from newspapers, websites, and online learning platform) to enhance their understanding of certain topics.\n3. Teacher- vs student-centred approaches: The teacher-centred approach uses the structured and static learning materials such as notes, PowerPoint slides, and textbooks. Educators are seen as transmitters of knowledge, and there is an emphasis placed on getting the \"right answer\". Students are sometimes assigned additional readings (e.g. from newspapers, websites, and online learning platform) to enhance their understanding of certain topics. As a result, there is less interaction between educators and students in the classroom, thus allowing the students to act as passive learners.\n4. Learning outcomes: objective and subjective measures: Fretschner and Weber (2013) asserted that entrepreneurship education has two purposes: to determine whether the students should learn to develop entrepreneurial knowledge for the purpose of changing mindsets, attitudes, and entrepreneurial desirability; and learning to be an entrepreneur by acquiring with various managerial and entrepreneurial skills. This is in line with Matlay's (2008) study, which explored the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and attitude.\n5. Learning culture: a Malaysian higher education context: Didactic teaching has been criticised in terms of generating rote learning, learning by note taking, and potential boredom as the approach limits students' participation and reflection. Nonetheless, students from a particular culture may be more accustomed to this approach. For example, in Malaysia (a context of this study), the culture of \"spoon-feeding\" during the primary and secondary school and an examination-oriented curriculum in the education system affects the country's learning culture. The transitions of Malaysian students from schools to higher institutions of learning may be difficult because of the structured learning environment and the emphasis of surface learning, rote memorisation (Chang et al., 2011), and dependent learning, rather than deep learning (Maesin et al., 2009). Thus, even though they are studying at higher education institutions, they prefer the \"spoon-feeding\" learning as that was the way they were trained in primary school (Keat et al., 2011). Furthermore, the school systems are generally based on examination systems (Wong, 2004). This is a way to categorise students' knowledge and assign students to the right higher learning institution (Kahl, 2013). As a result, they will memorise information (rote learning) in order to pass examinations.\n6. Entrepreneurial intention: Unlike past entrepreneurship literature that used intention to start-up as measure (e.g. Othman and Mansor, 2012, Samsudin et al., 2016), the current study employs implementation intention theory to measure the entrepreneurial intention. The study focusses on how the development of learning outcomes (skills) will likely influence the students' future career. This is a novel approach for entrepreneurship education study because by implementing the implementation intention it helps to reduce the gap between the intended and the actual behaviour, which has being a main criticism of the entrepreneurial intention studies (Ajzen et al., 2009). Formulating the implementation intention by indicating when, where, and how it will carry out the intended action can increase the probability to perform the behaviour. Additionally, according to Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006), people who form implementation intentions are in a good position to recognise opportunities to act and respond to these opportunities swiftly.\n7. Learning outcomes influence entrepreneurial intention: It has also been noted that entrepreneurial intention can change over time. Volery et al. (2013) argued that the significant effects are often observed directly upon completion of an intervention. This suggests that a third point of measurement could indicate the effect of stability. For instance, Varamaki et al.'s (2015) study found that students' entrepreneurial intention declined, while, Sanchez's (2013) study found that students' entrepreneurial intention increased. Therefore, this study measures how subjective and objective learning outcomes predict the entrepreneurial intention at Time 1 (immediately after the intervention) and at Time 2 (two weeks[2] after the intervention). The two points of time are needed to examine the changes in the entrepreneurial intention over time. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:\n8. Learning outcomes as a mediator between the pedagogies and entrepreneurial intention: Gibb and Hannon (2006) asserted that well-designed pedagogies could nurture the skills and attributes that may be needed by all kinds of organisations and individuals, as well as in a starting venture. Keogh and Galloway (2004) also suggested that a start-up business project provides an educational experience to the students in that it provides them with encouragement and education to work as entrepreneurs in the future, if they wished to do so. Furthermore, this study confirmed that the variation in career intentions, as well as perceptions of entrepreneurship, is affected by entrepreneurship education.\n9. Methodology: 9.1 Participants and procedures\n10. Results: Table II shows the results of normal distribution of data test. Table III shows correlation among variables which were moderated[7]. Cronbach's is (internal reliability test) are also presented in Table III and suggest a strong relationship amongst the items in each scale for each variable at Times 1 and 2:\n11. Discussion: The first hypothesis aimed to analyses the relationship between the pedagogical approaches (teacher centred vs student centred) and the subjective and objective learning outcomes. The results are informative. The researcher found that both pedagogical approaches (teacher centred vs student centred) had a positive effect on the development of subjective and objective learning outcomes. Nonetheless, the students who learned under the teacher-centred approach developed higher levels of subjective learning outcomes (at sig. p<0.001) and objective learning outcomes (at sig. level p<0.01). In other words, students who learned under the teacher-centred approach improved significantly on their subjective and objective learning outcomes, compared with the students who learned under the student-centred approach.\n12. Limitations and future studies: The first limitation concern in this study regards examining the difference between pedagogical approaches (teacher centred vs student centred) and the development of objective learning outcomes. The result, even though interesting (because it only partially supports the hypothesis proposed), should be interpreted cautiously, for three reasons. First, the subjective learning outcomes were measured using self-reported questionnaires. Students might over-rate their capabilities in the managerial and entrepreneurial skills (which are referred to as the learning outcomes in this study) based on how they perceived themselves as capable, which is a very subjective question. Second, although the objective measure was used to complement the subjective measure, there are still some issues of concern. The objective learning outcomes were measured using exams and a business case essay, which seem to align more with the teacher-centred themes, rather than student-centred themes. Although the current study aims to capture knowledge through the exams and essay, future research could employ reflective essay or learning dairies, examining how and what students learn. Third, due to the nature of sample limitation, short time lag (two weeks) was used. Future research could investigate the effect of pedagogical approaches using a longitudinal study (e.g. six months, one year), because it can measure changes over time, thus giving an insight in terms of the stability of students' skills and entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, this study has encouraged future scholars to replicate our model, researching a larger sample, involving more higher education students from other cultures, universities, and regions.\n13. Conclusion: Entrepreneurship education has been found to influence the current behaviour and future intentions of learners. The study has been designed to help researchers reach a better understanding of how the selection of pedagogical approaches in teaching entrepreneurship education impacts the subjective and objective learning outcomes and entrepreneurial intentions of students. Furthermore, to encourage more young people to become entrepreneurs, it is important to instil an entrepreneurial mindset and attitude towards entrepreneur career at the university level.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to answer the research question: \"Do different pedagogies used in teaching entrepreneurship education influence individual skill development, which then in turn translates into a likelihood of entrepreneurial implementation intention?\"\nDesign/methodology/approach: The number of total participants for the quasi-experiment was 308 undergraduate students in Malaysia, in which pre- and post-test (n=203) and control (n=105) groups are included. Students who enroled in the entrepreneurship course were randomly allocated into a class employing teacher-centred pedagogy or student-centred pedagogy. Learning outcomes are measured by objective and subjective measures.\nFindings: Both pedagogical approaches had a positive effect on the development of the learning outcomes. However, the students who learned using the teacher-centred approach statistically developed a higher level of objective and subjective learning outcomes compared to the students who learned using the student-centred approach. The findings also suggest that the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention mediates by learned skills.\nOriginality/value: The quasi-experimental design greatly improves the ability to make accurate claims about the impact of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurship-related outcomes. Further, the study uses the implementation intention strategy in measuring the entrepreneurial intention. Thus, the study strongly supports for the view that implementation intention improves predictive validity of the behavioural intention within the framework of theory of planned behaviour by setting out in advance when, where, and how the goal will be achieved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Men and their groomed body: Understanding personal grooming as both a discursive and embodied practice	[ "Merleau-Ponty", "Body-subject", "Embodied concerns", "Embodied practice", "Male grooming", "The discursive body" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is often assumed that men are less interested in personal grooming and that they dress for fit and comfort rather than appearance and presentation. Yet, in recent decades, marketers and academics alike have witnessed strong growth in the men's toiletries and fragrances market (Galilee, 2002; KeyNote, 2015; Tuncay and Otnes, 2008). In the meantime, it has been argued that male consumers today are equally, if not more concerned about their bodily presentation (Campbell, 2012; Frith and Gleeson, 2004), facilitated by the inversion of the male gaze (Patterson and Elliott, 2002). Despite these growing phenomena, little research has been devoted to understanding the interconnection of bodily presentation and personal grooming for men and their identity construction. Even less research has been done so far on the embodied aspects of male grooming (Entwistle, 2000). The current research seeks to address these gaps in our knowledge by examining the embodied concerns that underpin men's personal grooming practices through which they:\nMethodology: In line with past consumer research on personal grooming (Thompson and Haytko, 1997; Thompson and Hirschman, 1995) and Merleau-Ponty's philosophical thought (Matthews, 2014) that emphasise understanding individuals' experiences from the first person perspective as lived, phenomenology was chosen to guide the data analysis. In total, 16 unstructured interviews, ranging in length between 60 and 112 min, were conducted with heterosexual, British men of age between 20 and 76 (Table I). While these informants came from various professions, they all tend to express the self as coming from a working-class background. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim thereafter. The majority of the interviews were conducted face-to-face at the researcher's home, office or the informant's home or preferred coffee shop, with the exception of three interviews that were conducted via video conference at the informants' request (e.g. Skype). Personal contacts and referrals were used for informant recruitment. All of the informants are referred to by pseudonyms throughout the findings.\nFindings: Interpreting and analysing the ways in which my male informants described their experiences of, and intentions embedded in, their everyday personal grooming practices identified four bodily identity positions: the compensator, the carer, the antagonist and the social acknowledger. With illustrative examples, Table II presents a summary of the four bodily identity positions and their salient dimensions. It also shows how consumption orientations may be revised according to the bodily identity position that becomes salient when coping with specific embodied concerns. These bodily identity positions help to orient bodily experiences and construct differing relations between self and the socialising other(s). They give a dynamic picture of how the groomed body and its external image can interact with the internal sensation within the self in various ways.\nDiscussion: Using a theoretical framework informed by Merleau-Ponty's concept of the body-subject and the sociology of the body as discursively constituted, this study has sought to capture and systematically examine the links between embodiment and identity issues in men's everyday personal grooming practices. The research findings demonstrate the different ways personal grooming can become assimilated into an individual's system of beliefs and practices. It was found that the regular, habitual practices of personal grooming are intertwined with four bodily identity positions that individuals take up to orient their bodily experiences and construct relations between self and other(s). The four bodily identity positions were identified as the compensator, the carer, the antagonist and the social acknowledger and solicited by a range of embodied concerns in situations: self-worth, relationship building, felt authenticity and external approval/rewards (Table II). It can be said that it is through these bodily identity positions that consumers as embodied agents enter the subject-object dialogue and determine the latent sense of the surrounding objects. For example, guided by the concern of self-worth, the compensator experiences his body as a source of anxiety and/or insecurity that requires ongoing management. The consumption of personal grooming products for the compensator is thus marked as other-directed, focussing on the need of eliciting people's positive responses to compensate for a perceived lesser, inferior and/or negative self in situations. While the social acknowledger's consumption is also guided by an other-directed orientation, this bodily identity position is more concerned with satisfying perceived situational demands in order to obtain the concomitant social/interpersonal benefits and rewards. The body in this case is experienced as a social product that is a subject of surveillance and discipline. In contrast, the practical usage of grooming products for both the carer and the antagonist is interpreted as inner directed. Yet, while the carer's bodily experiences are focussed on relationship/communal building, the antagonist experiences his body as a source to aid self-expression through which he derives a sense of felt authenticity. In sum, these findings extend and contribute to past research that has paid relatively more attention to women's bodies as lived, as well as the discursive and representational aspects of male grooming. They highlight not only how the body is presented but also how the (groomed) body is experienced and manifested in the different ways that male consumers seek maximum grip on the world in a range of social and/or interpersonal situations.\nImplications for practitioners and future research: In addition to the theoretical contributions, the research findings also yield important implications for practitioners. With an increasing contemporary focus on the marketable self (Fuat Firat et al., 1995), the multi-billion pound beauty and personal care industry has been thriving for decades, at least in the Western context. While the female market remains highly competitive and established, the men's grooming market is witnessing strong growth (KeyNote, 2015). Global sales of men's grooming products is expected to garner US$166 billion by 2022 (Euromonitor, 2014). Like the sociological study of the body (Crossley, 1996, 2001; Entwistle, 2015), Merleau-Ponty's thesis of body-subject is concerned with self-body unities and as such it could be argued that it is also conceptually appealing to markets pertaining to personal care and fashion (Evans, 1989; Thompson and Haytko, 1997). Such markets are to help consumers express both physical and experiential aspects of the self and within the fashion system. With more men becoming more interested in physical appearance and starting to purchase personal care products for themselves rather than women buying them gifts, the markets have not matched such changing roles and attitudes (Euromonitor, 2014). The preliminary study findings on the links between personal grooming practices and embodied concerns shed some light on these changing roles and attitudes. These findings I argue provide marketers with rich narratives and food for thought to go beyond the traditional sexual and/or alpha male themed marketing and advertising. More importantly, these findings may help practitioners better understand the preferences and needs of specific male consumer segments and tailor products and marketing communications to each segment. For example, the compensator may prefer product/brand narrative that emphasises improved self-esteem; the carer may be more receptive to narrative that promotes an image of intimacy and community building; the antagonist may appreciate more distinctive product/brand messages; and the social acknowledger may respond better to messages that endorse assorted ways of meeting situational demands for social/interpersonal successes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to offer insights into the embodied concerns that underpin men's personal grooming practices through which they experience their body as the \"existential ground of culture and self\" and manage their everyday bodily presentation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study analyses 16 interviews with male consumers of age between 20 and 76. The interpretative analysis is informed by both Merleau-Ponty's concept of the body-subject and the sociology of the body as discursively constituted.\nFindings: This study proposes four bodily identity positions that link individual personal grooming practices to specific embodied concerns. These bodily identity positions underline the different ways the male body is called upon to carve out a meaningful existence.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research findings are not intended to generalise or to be exhaustive. Rather, it is hoped that they may stimulate readers to think more deeply about the role of the body in aiding male consumers to seek maximum grip on their life-world.\nPractical implications: The study findings provide marketers with rich narratives for brand positioning and image development beyond the traditional sexual and/or alpha male-themed marketing and advertising. They also offer preliminary insights for mental health practitioners into how the male body shapes men's identity development and experiences of well-being.\nOriginality/value: The study identifies the different ways personal grooming can become assimilated into an individual's system of beliefs and practices. It also offers empirical support for a definition of the body as active and acted upon, especially with respect to male grooming.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Internal audience segmentation and diversity in internal communication	[ "Human resource management", "Employee communications", "Diversity", "Segmentation", "Internal communications", "Internal marketing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The consciousness of diversity, defined as \"all characteristics and experiences that define each of us as individual\" (Bunton, 2000), can be translated into positive changes within several dimensions of an organization. According to CIPD (2005a, b), the success stories of managing diversity can be classified into four balanced scorecard dimensions: customer focus, innovation, creativity and learning, business process improvement, and the financial bottom line. Managing diversity is strategic in the sense that it is internally driven, individual-focused, and outcome-focused. In managing diversity, various factors describing individual differences are taken into account to create a productive environment, in which organizational goals are efficiently and effectively met by making the best use of everyone's talent and potential.\nRelevant literature: Internal audience segmentation\nMethods: Our data set was collected through an institutional survey at a healthcare service system in the USA. For our particular test, we required an informational context in which the practices of diversity and mission statement are salient to employees. Therefore, we chose a large healthcare system in a major Midwestern US city with a heavily publicized diversity policy and mission statement. Pretests indicated sufficient variance across employees regarding their perceptions of the diversity policy and mission integration to test our model, without introducing additional variance from a cross-sectional sample.\nSegmenting internal audience: Segmentation is a technique for classifying people into segments or cluster that are relatively homogenous within themselves and heterogeneous with respect to each other. Note that homogeneity and heterogeneity could be measured based on a defined set of characteristics. Segmentation is one of the superseding techniques in the area of marketing. It allows marketing managers to calibrate each marketing mix differently based on groups' characteristics (Berrigan and Finkbeiner, 1992).\nPLS-SEM model and Chow test: A PLS-SEM model was built to compare Groups A and B to verify the effectiveness of our internal audience segmentation. By showing different results from the two segments in a nomological network of variables regarding mission integration, a Chow test will prove the effectiveness of our approach with respect to internal audience segmentation.\nDiscussion: We attempted to develop a methodological and technical procedure to coordinate the issue of diversity using internal audience segmentation. We segmented the internal audience into different clusters to reflect the centrifugal force of diversity in an intermediate way and tested a theoretical network of mission integration between the internal audience segments to examine the centripetal force of diversity. A few statistical techniques and tools were illustrated to build a practical managing model of diversity. The technical procedure of our model can be applied to the different stages of internal communication.\nManagerial implications: Starting from such an intermediate, simpler segmentation approach, companies may adopt a whole dynamic set of stages in internal audience segmentation and accordingly implement the strategic insights gained from each stage. It is important to maintain the relevancy of the strategy by being agile to respond to changes and directing the course of the stages regarding a simple set of issues.\nLimitations and conclusion: Our approach is not a complete one, being merely an intermediate approach to managing diversity by segmenting an internal audience within which are multiple brackets. According to our segmentation approach, along with the PLS-SEM and Chow test results, managers should emphasize both the centrifugal force of diversity to value individuals and the centripetal force of diversity toward mission integration.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Workforce diversity is becoming a crucial matter in the area of internal communication. Realizing that there are multiple brackets within the body of a workforce (i.e. internal audience), the purpose of this paper is to develop an intermediate approach to manage diversity by segmenting the internal audience.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Developing a segmentation approach for managing diversity, the authors recommended the use of a few mathematical methodologies, including the expectation-maximization algorithm, partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) methodology, and Chow test, on a surveyed data set collected from 1,236 nurses of the US healthcare system. A PLS-SEM model, including employees' mission awareness, management's mission fulfillment, employees' mission fulfillment, and turnover intention, was examined with respect to two internal segments.\nFindings: Using a simple set of demographic variables, the authors demonstrated a practical approach to segmenting an internal audience and showed that causal relationships in a nomological network of variables regarding mission integration are significantly different between internal segments. Based on the segmentation approach, the authors proved that managers, in an effort to gain maximum diversity, can mix and match both the centrifugal force of diversity and the centripetal force of diversity to value individuals and for mission integration in their practices, respectively.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors highlighted a practical matter of internal communication by connecting the concepts of diversity and internal audience segmentation. However, the generalizability of the results must be assessed in other settings.\nPractical implications: While managing diversity involves valuing employees as individuals, the segmentation concept can function as a practical and useful intermediate tool for managing diversity. Practitioners can utilize varied sets of segmented variables according to their contexts.\nSocial implications: The authors emphasized valuing employees as individuals and developed a managerial way to make personal differences an asset to the productivity of an organization and society.\nOriginality/value: Introducing a segmentation approach to internal communication and adopting a set of useful statistical techniques, the authors attempted to develop a unique managing model of diversity. The authors suggested a dynamic and substantial segmentation of an internal audience with a smaller set of appropriate variables in each context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Open innovation in supply networks: an expectation disconfirmation theory perspective	[ "Open innovation", "Expectation disconfirmation theory", "Supply chain competence", "Supply network" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of new products and services, or the improvement of those an organization already provides, constitutes one of the key mechanisms that permits the organization to maintain its competitive advantage. This condition is imperative, among other factors, because organizations' customers are becoming better informed, and the pressure the competition exerts on the organization is increasing (Tamayo Torres et al., 2014). When facing this reality, organizations must improve the functionality of their innovation process by developing new products and services faster and better, for example, by adopting new business practices characteristic of open innovation.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Conceptualizing open innovation\n3. Hypothesis development: 3.1 Enablers of orientation to open innovation\n4. Methodology: This analysis has focused primarily on the antecedents and consequences of open innovation. Because comprehensive measures were lacking, a new scale was developed for orientation to open innovation - open innovativeness.\n5. Results: EQS 6.0 was used to analyze the structural model. The results of the structural analysis are shown in Figure 2. First, the model's goodness of fit must be studied taking into account the indicators and the recommended values presented by Hair et al. (1998). With regard to the model's absolute fit, the RMSEA takes a value of 0.03 and, with the GFI (0.682), indicates the model's good overall fit. It is also necessary to ensure that the model has a good incremental fit. In the model proposed, all indicators were well above the minimum threshold (AGFI = 0.834; NFI = 0.87; NNFI = 0.96; CFI = 0.97; IFI = 0.97). The final aspect to be studied is the proposed model's parsimony. The value of the normed chi-square (1.82) is within the accepted limits. The results of the analysis are consistent with the hypotheses advanced, confirming the hypotheses proposed. All relationships are significant.\n6. Discussion: Our study extends the EDT research stream by showing the effect of expectations on satisfaction (Fan and Suh, 2014; Lankton and McKnight, 2012; Oliver, 1980) with factors leading to engagement in open innovation. Applying EDT to social exchange theory elements offers a new perspective on the current state of knowledge in the supply chain management and social exchange literature, which contains only normative statements about level of perceived trust and commitment (see studies by Hausman and Johnston, 2010; Kumar et al., 1995; Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Pala et al., 2014; Ring and Van de Ven, 1994; Tomlinson and Fai, 2013).\n7. Managerial implications: This study provides insights for managers interested in integrating their supply network into their innovation activities, that is, in partner-oriented open innovation. First, an organization's attitude toward partner-oriented open innovation can evolve, depending on, among other factors, the degree of risk of potential opportunistic behavior from its open innovation partner(s). Organizations therefore should not scrimp in their efforts to foster a trusting environment with their open innovation partners. Given the absence of control in open innovation, building trust over time is a key element in practicing this paradigm and results from meeting or exceeding prior expectations of trust from its open innovation partners. These findings call for managers to set realistic expectations about trust to develop a more favorable situation for practicing open innovation. Managers should always attempt to fulfill high expectations, as behavioral intention to open innovation is greater when expectations of trust in the supply network are both high and met. Positive disconfirmation of trust thus enables managers to reduce their fear of opportunistic behavior from the party with whom they practice the paradigm of open innovation - in this case, the supply network. Our study suggests that organizations must encourage development of the capability of relating to others when they decide to operate under this paradigm.\n8. Limitations and future research: Despite the results obtained, this study is not exempt from limitations. First, the perceptions of an organization are not uniform, as using a single informant can bias our research. This study would be enriched by using more than one informant per organization surveyed. Second, as the measures of open innovativeness were developed for this study, further validation of the measures is an important step for future research. Third, the buyer-centric nature of our study is another limitation. Future research may focus on studying the supply network's perspective. Fourth, our measures of performance were perceptual. Using more objective measures of performance would help ensure that performance improvements are real and not a result of a perceptual bias.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to use expectation disconfirmation theory (EDT) to investigate how an organization's satisfaction with its supply network's behavior influences its intention to open innovation with that network. This paper proposes that an organization's orientation to open innovation is influenced by confirmation of previously held expectations of trust and commitment and level of perceived procedural justice in its open innovation partner. This paper also examines the effect of this orientation on the organization's supply chain competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using data from a survey of 286 European firms, the study proposes and evaluates a structural equation model.\nFindings: The results show that a positive disconfirmation of trust (where perceived trust exceeds expectations) plays a crucial role in shaping organizations' intentions to continue open innovation with their supply networks. These results show that disconfirmation is a good predictor of overall satisfaction with open innovation. This paper also confirms the positive effect of orientation to open innovation on supply chain competence. Finally, this paper obtained evidence for the positive effect of supply chain competence on firm performance.\nOriginality/value: This study shows the importance of managing expectations in open innovation under the EDT. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no previous research has analyzed the consistency between the trust and commitment an organization expects from its open innovation partner and the trust and commitment it ultimately perceives as a factor explaining its degree of orientation to open innovation. Therefore, this research contributes to a better understanding of open innovation enablers and also its consequences.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Linking to the past: an analysis of community digital heritage initiatives	[ "Cultural heritage", "Digital archives", "Community identity", "Digtial economy", "Semantic linked open data", "Qualitative research", "Scotland" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Developments in digital technologies are facilitating community activity in the collation, production and communication of cultural heritage. Information and artefacts can be digitised, catalogued and archived and tools such as websites and Apps have been developed to retrieve and present this information to users. This means that historical artefacts, which were once confined to local collections in libraries, community centres or in private properties, can now be made available to anyone with an Internet connection. Technological developments are also facilitating new mechanisms for user engagement and the co-production of heritage by a wider range of people. However, community digital archives often arise as a result of grants or government support, which allows for the initial tasks of digitisation, cataloguing and technical developments to be completed, but there can be subsequent problems of sustaining these resources in the longer term once the funding runs out. Furthermore they are often heavily dependent on volunteers and can be reliant on the continued involvement of key individuals.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 The mobilisation of digital cultural heritage resources\n3. Methodology: The empirical findings presented in this paper are based on a case-study of Hebridean Connections (www.hebrideanconnections.com). We draw on interview data from 11 interviews with key stakeholders, all of whom are based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, and more specifically the northernmost island of Lewis. The interviews were conducted during May 2011. The interviewees were representatives from the local historical associations or \"Comainn Eachdraidh\", as they are known in the local Gaelic language. Four of these interviewees were representing Comainn Eachdraidh who had been part of the original Hebridean Connections project (coded as Original HC Member) and, of these, two interviewees were also directly involved with the management of Hebridean Connections and so were representing both roles for the interviews (coded as Original HC member/HC Project Team). An additional five interviews were conducted with representatives from four Comainn Eachdraidh who were joining Hebridean Connections and are going to be depositing data (coded as Joining HC member) in the next phase of the project. Finally, two interviews were conducted with affiliated heritage organisations from the Outer Hebrides (coded as Heritage Organisation).\n4. Findings and discussion: 4.1 The development of Comainn Eachdraidh and Hebridean Connections\n5. Barriers to sustainability of Hebridean Connections and toolkit development: The analysis of findings from the case study of Hebridean Connections has revealed a number of challenges and barriers to the sustainability of digital cultural heritage initiatives. Although we have demonstrated that Hebridean Connections developed as a result of particular cultural, historical and social factors that have resulted in a novel resource, a number of the problems identified will be relevant for all community digital archives:\n6. Conclusion: This paper has provided insights into the challenges and opportunities that digital archives present for community organisations. Our findings are consistent with the literature on community heritage resources in the respect of the memory work of communities and the disorderly nature of the process for collecting, archiving and cataloguing information in these communities which leads to challenges of sustainability of community heritage resources in the long term. We found that a key motivation for the development of Hebridean Connections was a desire to capture and communicate the heritage (as understood by the community) of the Outer Hebrides.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Community initiatives to collate and manage different kinds of cultural forms and resources are a popular way for local people to engage with the heritage of their area. These initiatives are often heavily dependent, however, upon short-term funding and long-term efforts of a few dedicated individuals. This paper aims to explore how community digital archives offer scope to widen participation in cultural activities and to investigate the sustainability of these initiatives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A case study approach was taken of Hebridean Connections, which is a community managed, online historical resource. This paper is primarily based on interview data with key stakeholders, all of whom are based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.\nFindings: Participation in Hebridean Connections was reported in positive terms by respondents and many cited that it was a good way to reconnect with diasporic populations and that they believed that this would encourage tourism. It was also reported that the system of linked records added value to the collections as previously undiscovered connections could be made that would not be possible without the electronic resource.\nOriginality/value: Few studies have been undertaken examining community digital archives. The multidisciplinary nature of the study also brings together different perspectives on the area of enquiry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A communication model of employee cynicism toward organizational change	[ "Organizational change", "Higher education", "Employee attitudes", "Communication" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The higher education environment has been undergoing tremendous changes during the past two decades, including reductions in financial resources, changing student demographics, and questioning from the public about the nature and purpose of higher education (Lindholm, 2003). As a consequence, higher education institutions have to engage in planned changes to adapt to the shifting educational environment. One particular trend of planned changes in higher education is that leaders increasingly resort to profit-driven business practices to improve efficiency and effectiveness. However, higher education institutions are guided by traditional academic values, such as \"intellectual creativity,\" \"academic freedom,\" and \"shared governance,\" more than just by the \"bottom-line performance\" in corporate organizations (Eisenberg et al., 1998). When change efforts disturb the deep-rooted academic culture, faculty tend to respond with cynicism (Ramaley, 2002). For example, some refer to business practices as \"corporate buzzwords\" or \"management fads\" (Birnbaum, 2000). Bok (2003, p. 20) noted that business terms \"widen the gulf between faculty and administration,\" and the most prevalent reactions of faculty toward business on campus are suspicion and resistance. As Kanter and Mirvis (1989) have mentioned, when the pursuit of profits is paramount over work ideals, cynicism tends to occur.The present study examines one specific form of cynicism - employee cynicism in response to a specific organizational change (i.e. change-specific cynicism) in a higher education setting. Research has indicated that organizational change is particularly likely to engender cynicism (Dean et al., 1998). Employees tend to be cynical toward constant changes in organizations. Wanous et al. (2000) argued that cynicism could become its own self-fulfilling prophecy, and thereby inhibit the success of further change efforts. This topic merits more research attention considering the potential for widespread organizational changes due to a turbulent economic environment.The purpose of the present study is to explore the role of communication processes and factors in predicting change-specific cynicism. Various studies have emphasized the role of internal communication in the effectiveness of organizational change (Daly et al., 2003; Elving, 2005). This study follows this line of research. Specifically, this study will employ social information processing (SIP) theory to investigate the informational context and relational context in contributing to change-specific cynicism. SIP is used because it explains the communication processes in influencing work-related attitudes, and SIP has received solid empirical support (Zalesny and Ford, 1990). In this study, cynicism is conceptualized as a communication problem rather than a stable personality trait. Cynicism is socially constructed and emerges from a social context. Hence, change-specific cynicism, as one type of attitude in the workplace, is amenable to study within the SIP theoretical framework.\nDefining change-specific cynicism: Researchers have attempted to provide various definitions of cynicism. However, existing research on cynicism is varied yet sparse, and it is still at the initial stage of scientific research development (Andersson and Bateman, 1997; Stanley et al., 2005; Wanous et al., 2000). Thus, a consensus about the definition and measurement of cynicism has not yet been formulated. There are two research traditions on cynicism: one treats cynicism as a general construct reflecting a stable personality trait, and the other treats cynicism as a specific construct directed toward society, occupations, institutions, and organizational change (Dean et al., 1998). The former shows a personal attribution, and the latter, a situational attribution of cynicism. This study follows the latter research tradition.The definition for this paper derives from research on employee cynicism and cynicism about organizational change (CAOC). Andersson and Bateman (1997, p. 450) describe employee cynicism as \"the feelings of frustration and disillusionment as well as negative feelings toward and distrust of a person, group, ideology, social convention, or institution.\" This definition captures much of the similarities in cynicism research. A comprehensive definition of organizational cynicism is provided by Dean et al. (1998). They define organizational cynicism as:A negative attitude toward one's employing organization, comprising three dimensions: (1) a belief that the organization lacks integrity; (2) negative affect toward the organization; and (3) tendencies to disparaging and critical behaviors toward the organization that are consistent with these beliefs and affect (Dean et al., 1998, p. 345).This multidimensional definition of organizational cynicism reflects all three aspects of the conceptualization of this attitude.Currently, only two studies have examined specifically employee cynicism toward organizational change. Wanous et al. (2000) first proposed the construct \"CAOC\" and developed a measure for this construct. They defined CAOC as \"a pessimistic viewpoint about change efforts being successful because those responsible for making change are blamed for being unmotivated, incompetent, or both\" (Wanous et al., 2000, p. 133). They found that CAOC results from situational factors rather than dispositional negative affectivity.Stanley et al. (2005) note that CAOC reflects CAOC in general, but does not reveal employee cynicism toward a specific change. Therefore, they developed a concept called change-specific cynicism. According to Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), specific attitudes are better predictors of individual intention and behavior. Consequently, change-specific cynicism should be a better predictor of individual intention to resist a specific change. Stanley et al. (2005, p. 436) defined change-specific cynicism as \"a disbelief of management's stated or implied motives for a specific organizational change.\"Based on the definitions given by Andersson and Bateman (1997), Dean et al. (1998), Wanous et al. (2000) and Stanley et al. (2005), a tentative definition of change-specific cynicism for this paper is proposed as follows:Change-specific cynicism refers to a negative attitude toward a specific organizational change consisting of three dimensions: a disbelief in management's stated or implied motives for the change; a feeling of pessimism and frustration about the change efforts; and tendencies to disparaging and critical behaviors toward the specific organizational change.\nTheoretical framework and the proposed model: Previous research mainly adopts psychological contract violation theory to explain employee cynicism. The present study aims to explore the role of communication processes in developing cynicism. The theoretical framework of SIP is employed in this study. The essence of SIP is that work-related attitudes are not given, but socially constructed. To be specific, they are derived from social context and subject to informational social influence. On one hand, individuals form attitudes based on social cues or information from others in social context. On the other hand, what others think could also directly influence individual attitude through social norms. Therefore, social context implies two aspects: informational and relational. The early research on SIP emphasizes the informational aspect (Miller and Monge, 1985). The more recent research focuses on the relational aspect of the social influence process through social network analysis (Meyer, 1994).The present study takes both informational and relational aspects into consideration. The informational context entails the variable, perceived quality of information. The relational context includes two variables: cynicism of colleagues toward the change and trust in management. These variables constitute the antecedents of change-specific cynicism, and intention to resist change is the consequence of change-specific cynicism.Change-specific cynicism and intention to resist change\nResearch questions: The present study intends to examine whether or not the communication variables combined in this model could predict change-specific cynicism, and ultimately intention to resist change. Although previous literature identified various sources of change-specific cynicism and intention to resist change, very little research has developed models from a communication perspective to explain the two types of attitudes toward organizational change. From the above analysis, it is reasonable to propose that communication processes directly or indirectly cause the formation of cynicism and resistance. The research questions for this study are specified as follows:RQ1. Is this model, which describes the causal effects among the five variables, consistent with the observed correlations among these variables?RQ2. If this model is consistent, what are the estimated direct, indirect, and total causal effects among the variables?\nMethods: Research site\nResults: Path analysis technique was used in this study to test the proposed model. AMOS 7.0 was used to analyze the data. To assess the overall model fit, the following indexes were applied: the kh2 test, the comparative fit index (CFI), the normed fit index (NFI), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The kh2 statistic tests the difference between predicted and observed correlations. A non-significant kh2 indicates consistency between predicted and observed correlations and a good model fit. CFI and NFI assess \"the fit of the proposed model relative to the independence model, which assumes that there are no relationships in the data\" (Meyers et al., 2006, p. 632-3). The criterion of acceptable value is 0.95. The RMSEA is \"the average of the residuals between the observed correlation from the sample and the expected model estimated from the population\" (p. 633). A value less than 0.08 is deemed as good fit.In this study, the kh2 test was non-significant, kh2 (12, N=182)=3.96, p>0.001, indicating a good match between the proposed model and the observed data. The CFI and NFI were 0.998 and 0.994, respectively, exceeding the 0.95 criterion. The RMSEA value was 0.042, less than the 0.08 criterion. The indexes showed a good fit of the proposed model.The path coefficients from the predictor variables to the dependent variables were estimated via AMOS 7.0. All of the four direct path coefficients in the proposed model demonstrated statistical significance (p<0.05). The direct, indirect, and total causal effects among the variables in the proposed model were also estimated through AMOS 7.0. The results were described in Table IThe results of the analysis showed that the proposed model fit the empirical data in the current study. The model explained a significant amount of variances in the outcome variables. Altogether, the three exogenous variables explained 72.5 percent of the variance in change-specific cynicism. The model explained 61.7 percent of the variance in intention to resist change. In addition, all path coefficients were statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Perceived quality of information had the most effect on change-specific cynicism, followed by cynicism of colleagues, and finally trust in administration. The model also suggested that change-specific cynicism accounted for a very large proportion of variance in intention to resist change. For a quicker review of the results, the model including the path coefficients is shown in Figure 2.\nDiscussion: Research implications\nConclusion: Cynicism is a common reaction among employees during organizational change. Previous studies on employee cynicism were mainly conducted in the fields of management and psychology. They employ psychological contract violation theory to explain the concept of cynicism and its antecedents and consequences. The present study explores employee cynicism from a communication perspective. It applies SIP theoretical framework in analyzing and predicting change-specific cynicism, and emphasizes the role of social context in formulating this attitude. The findings show that perceived quality of information, cynicism of colleagues, and trust in the administration could predict change-specific cynicism, which, in turn, lead to intention to resist change. As an initial attempt to build a communication model of employee cynicism, the study points to a new direction which warrants the research attention of communication scholars.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The study was designed to generate and test a model of employee cynicism toward organizational change from the communication perspective in a higher education institution.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using the theoretical framework of social information processing (SIP), the study investigated the communication processes in the social context, which contributed to employee cynicism toward organizational change in the higher education setting. Path analysis was used to test the overall model fit.\nFindings: - The findings suggest that the three variables, perceived quality of information, cynicism of colleagues, and trust in the administration, predict change-specific cynicism, which, in turn, lead to intention to resist change.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As an initial attempt to explain employee cynicism toward organizational change in higher education settings, this model inevitably has loose ends. Further research is needed to expand the model from a communication perspective.\nPractical implications: - The research provided administrators with strategies and advices to cope with employee cynicism during organizational change.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first known study to examine the concept of change-specific cynicism within the theoretical framework of SIP. It points to a new direction which warrants the attention of communication scholars.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Branded restaurants employees' personal motivation, flow and commitment: The role of age, gender and length of service	[ "Restaurants", "Flow", "Commitment", "Personal motivation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Branded restaurants account for one of the largest shares of the restaurant industry (Ha and Jang, 2013). In the UK, this sector averaged 3.2 per cent year-on-year growth since 2010 (MarketLine, 2015), driven by consumers looking for a universal dining experience rather than just food and beverages (Auty, 1992). Branded restaurants comprise fast-food and other casual dining restaurants which are distinguishable by the brands \"personality\", and what it means to the consumer (Lin and Huang, 2012). They differ from other independent outlets as they offer a high level of replicability and standardization - logo, menu, staff uniform, restaurant design, service, operating and food production procedures (Murase and Bojanic, 2004) - reducing service uncertainty for the customer (Riley, 2005). Such recognisability elicits consumer loyalty across units in multiple locations.\nReview of literature: Flow\nMethodology: Data collection and measures\nResults: PLS-SEM was used for analysing our conceptual model. PLS-SEM has shown prominence in marketing and tourism research (Wells et al., 2016; Hair et al., 2012). First, it is desirable for not only the primary stages of theory building but also adding new construct(s) that have not get enough attention formerly. Second, \"PLS-SEM's statistical properties provide very robust model estimations with data that have normal as well as extremely non-normal (i.e. skewness and/or kurtosis) distributional properties\" (Hair et al., 2017, p. 40). We tested for skewness and kurtosis test in our study, with results indicating skewness and kurtosis values were between the accepted threshold of -3 and +3 (Mardia, 1970). Third, it is appropriate when the model has a lot of indicators (Wells et al., 2016). Wetzels et al. (2009, p. 190) argue:\nDiscussion and implications: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Augmenting employees' commitment is of important interest to hospitality managers, particularly in the branded restaurant industry where the workforce is often transient. This paper aims to identify and analyse if levels of personal motivation and flow are drivers of commitment, and if the relationship between the variables is moderated by length of service, age and gender.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is a large-scale empirical investigation of hospitality staff in the UK branded restaurants through 1,133 survey responses, measuring levels of personal motivation, flow and commitment, as well as the moderating effects of multi-group differences among age, gender and length of service. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used for analysis of data.\nFindings: Using PLS-SEM found personal motivation to be important in determining employees' level of flow and, in turn, employees' commitment. Using multi group analysis, results revealed that relationship among personal motivation, flow and commitment played superior role for older employees and working for a long time in a hospitality organisation than those younger and working less than five years. No significant differences between male and female staff are found.\nResearch limitations/implications: Through finding flow and personal motivations to be drivers of commitment, branded restaurant practitioners can focus on emphasising these elements in their employees to increase commitment. Further, part-time roles are often taken by people likely to be non-committal in their job needs, e.g. students funding their studies. By focussing on extending lengths of service to meet the optimum years identified, managers can fortify their businesses.\nOriginality/value: The paper is one of few large-scale quantitative studies to examine personal motivation, flow and commitment in the context of UK branded restaurants. It identifies that employees exhibit higher levels of commitment through intrinsic values over time, and establishes relationships between the constructs of flow, personal motivation and commitment.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of justice for cooperation and contract's moderating effect in construction dispute negotiation	[ "Construction management", "Dispute resolution", "Negotiation", "Justice", "Contract completeness", "Cooperative behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many construction projects can be described as one-off, long-term, highly complex, information asymmetric or as involving asset specificity (Maylor et al., 2008; Chang and Ive, 2007a). These features lead to incomplete or incorrect specifications, owner-initiated specification changes, political processes, etc. (Cox, et al., 1999), and in turn cause disputes to occur frequently (Kumaraswamy, 1997).\nTheoretical background: Cooperation in construction project dispute negotiations\nHypotheses: Justice-cooperation relationship\nMethod: Data collection\nResults: In order to test the impact of different dimensions of justice and their influence under different dimensions of contract completeness, the analysis of results lies in the factor level.\nDiscussion: The impact of justice\nConclusion and implication: In this paper, the authors endeavoured to more systematically discuss justice theory, which has been well developed in the organisational field, in the field of project dispute negotiations. In contrast to previous studies, the authors defined all three forms of justice in project dispute negotiations, and by adding all three forms of justice into the model, attempted to investigate whether distributive, procedural and interactional justice were all related to cooperative behaviours in project dispute negotiations and to ascertain the extent to which each form of justice is important. Furthermore, this paper explored variations in the importance of each form of justice in negotiations under different contractual conditions. The results supported the proposed hypotheses that all three forms of justice are significantly related to project dispute negotiators' cooperative behaviours. Moreover, the effect of procedural justice is more salient when contractual obligatoriness is high or when the specificity of terms is low; and the effects of interactional justice is magnified by the low level of term specificity.\nFurther research: Further research is still needed to address the following limitations and to further address the effects of justice in the context of project dispute negotiations. First, while this paper linked perceptions of justice and cooperative behaviour in construction project dispute negotiations, the authors did not determine whether their relationship is mediated by any other factors which may further address the kinds of perspectives pursuant to which negotiators in projects consider justice to be an important preposition to behaving cooperatively, which has also been proposed by Luo (2007) in the strategic alliance arena.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Justice, although well developed in the organisational field, has not been given adequate attention in the area of construction project dispute negotiations. Based on previous studies, the purpose of this paper is to more elaborately discuss whether each dimension of justice (distributive, procedural and interactional) is important for negotiators to cooperate in construction project dispute negotiation and whether their impact was moderated by the completeness of construction contract.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey of 164 prime negotiators from different construction projects was conducted. A stepwise multiple regression was employed to test the impact of each dimension of justice, and then a moderated multiple regression model was used to test the moderating effect of contract completeness.\nFindings: The results indicated that, while distributive justice is related to cooperative behaviours, the impact of procedural justice and interactional justice also have great impact, and even more significantly related to cooperative behaviours. Moreover, while contractual obligatoriness positively moderates the relationship between procedural justice and cooperative behaviours, the term specificity negatively moderates the relationship between procedural and interactional justice and cooperative behaviours.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, the authors aimed to test the effect of justice on cooperative behaviours in construction dispute negotiations originally, but did not determine whether their relationship is mediated by any other factors. Second, contractual governance was chosen as the moderator; other factors may also influence behaviours in project dispute negotiations.\nPractical implications: First, project dispute negotiators should not focus their attention solely on the distribution of the negotiation issues. For a cooperative approach, negotiators should also give strong consideration to whether their offers reflect procedural justice and whether their opponents are being treated fairly. Second, while contractual design may affect the frame surrounding the negotiations to help negotiators achieve an integrated outcome, they should give more attention to certain forms of justice.\nOriginality/value: In contrast to previous studies, the authors defined all three forms of justice in project dispute negotiations, and by adding all three forms of justice into the model, the authors attempted to investigate whether distributive, procedural and interactional justice were all related to cooperative behaviours in project dispute negotiations and to ascertain the extent to which each form of justice is important. Furthermore, the authors explored variations in the importance of each form of justice in negotiations under different contractual conditions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Semantic transportation planning for food products supply chain ecosystem within difficult geographic zones	[ "Ontology", "Interoperability", "Food perishability constraints", "Multi-agents systems", "Transportation planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the transportation domain, distribution of large volumes is receiving greater attention (Ulku, 2012). Many efforts are being made for proposing solutions of transportation displacements concerning distribution to faraway locations in large quantities, and food products are not an exception (Hallman et al., 2015). Bringing food products from distinct regions across the countries and continents has become a regular routine in today's time. Consumers find products not grown or produced locally but brought in from distinct areas, making food business a global phenomenon.\n2. Literature review: Literature on collaborative transportation planning can be categorized into two main research areas: order sharing and capacity sharing (Verdonck et al., 2013). In order sharing, carriers combine and exchange delivery orders, while participating vehicles remain unchanged and they are located at specific locations (depots), where they start and terminate the delivery route. In capacity sharing, carriers tend to cooperate on sharing vehicle capacities. In contrast to order sharing, capacity sharing carriers maintains the confidentiality by not communicating the customer order information to other carriers. Carrier may reserve only capacity of other carriers and each carrier is solely responsible for its own order set. A detailed literature review on order sharing and capacity sharing is presented in the subsequent sections.\n3. I-POVES multi-agent model: I-POVES as shown in Figure 2 is composed of six basic components: supervisor agent, environment, virtual shipper (VS) agent, virtual carrier (VC) agent, pathfinder agent and a global ontology. An ontology provides a shared vocabulary (terminologies) and relationships, which can be used to model a knowledge domain (Gruber, 1993). In order to ensure interoperability, all agent components communicate with each other using a shared or (common) global ontology, modeling the knowledge domain of transportation and food product related concepts. Environment and supervisor agents have the same functioning as in the SCEP model. Environment is the blackboard for exchanging the information between active components. It simulates the ground for marketplace. Supervisor agent is responsible for managing the marketplace. It controls the access to Environment. Finally, pathfinder agent is responsible for determining the dynamic routing for transport orders.\n4. Application: Case study considered here is shown in Figure 7 and has been extracted from the European project TECCAS. TECCAS name is derived from the Spanish words \"Desarrollo de TEcnologias orientadas a favorecer la Colaboracion entre agentes de la Cadena Alimentaria de Suministro,\" meaning that its objective was the \"Development of technologies to promote collaboration between the actors of food supply chain\" in the border area of France and Spain. Its duration was two years from 2012 to 2014 and it had four partners two from industry and two from research. Case study comprises carriers and shippers operating in the cross-border area of France and Spain, a mountain area, geographically difficult. It contains shipper companies, one situated in Spain (Shipper-S) and other situated in France (Shipper-F), and similarly two carriers. One carrier operating in the south of France is called 3PL-F. Other carrier operates in the north area of Spain and is called 3PL-S. 3PL-F and 3PL-S share an intermediate distribution center at Candanchu city for loading and unloading goods between France and Spain. Both carriers are specialized in transporting food products and manage their own fleet of vehicles equipped to maintain certain temperature for different food products. 3PL-F owns three vehicles and 3PL-S owns four vehicles. In this case study, it is assumed that all the vehicles have fixed itineraries and fixed pre-calculated timetables of departure for each elementary non-stop displacement associated with them.\n5. Limitations and perspective: I-POVES does not take into account at this stage perturbation during transportation and reactive strategies to handle them; however, reactive strategies are implemented in its ancestor model SCEP. They just need to be adapted in I-POVES. I-POVES does not consider the different cost structures of different type of products: frozen, refrigerated, normal, etc. I-POVES does not have any mechanism to divide the transport order product quantity among multiple vehicles, in case if one vehicle lacks the capacity to transport it completely.\n6. Conclusion: In order to deliver the food products in small quantities in difficult zones or inside cities, a model I-POVES is proposed, which simulates a marketplace for offering and acquiring transport services. I-POVES is an extension of the generic SCEP model. I-POVES's functionality, however, is not limited into these difficult zones, but its generic nature elevates its utilization in case of transportation planning of large volumes and faraway locations. I-POVES facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents. I-POVES is embedded with a global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. Shippers demand delivery of food products, where each product is associated with certain perishability constraints. Carriers on the other hand possess transport resources, which have their own characteristics to load different food products. I-POVES planning mechanism handles the correspondences between these transport resources characteristics and products perishability constraints in order to facilitate the consolidation of transport orders and fill up the transport resource capacity at maximum, reduce the number of travels. The reduction in number of transport travels not only yield the reduction of transportation cost but also the reduction in CO2 emission. The reduction in CO2 emission will lead to a decrease in the environmental pollution and will cause positive effect on people's health. A reduction in the transport cost will cause a reduction in product prices that will make global impact of reduction on overall inflation rate. Future directions for our work include studying the load consolidation mechanisms at the planning level, introducing tracking and tracking methods, considering product size, weight and volume particulars, etc.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products (fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmental constraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidating multiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers).\nFindings: A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents.\nPractical implications: I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain).\nOriginality/value: There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of organizational commitment and structural empowerment on patient safety culture: An analysis of a physician cohort	[ "Affective commitment", "Patient safety culture", "Structural empowerment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: At the organizational level, health care systems are highly complex and require dynamic interaction and coordination between various care providers to enhance overall patient care. Indeed, health care is often characterized as a high-risk industry where information is often limited, medical knowledge is fallible, and error is prevalent in the administration of patient treatment, which can compromise the quality of patient outcomes (Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2004). Relative to other industries, health care is especially vulnerable to failures from the myriad of interactions between treatment and administrative functions. Mastectomies on the wrong breast, fatal chemotherapy overdoses, and misdiagnosis resulting in patent mortality are just a few examples of highly publicized medical failures which awakened public outcry and marred the credibility of the health care industry.\nConceptual background and literature review: Medical errors in the context of patient safety\nMethod: Sample and data collection\nResults: Table I presents associated means, standard deviations, and correlations among the variables used in the study. As shown in Table I, both affective commitment and structural empowerment were positively and significantly related to patient safety culture (r=0.26, p<0.05 and r=0.38, p<0.05, respectively). Additionally, affective commitment was positively and significantly correlated with structural empowerment (r=0.32, p<0.05).\nDiscussion: To our knowledge, this study is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between structural empowerment as proposed by Kanter and the culture of patient safety using a cohort of physicians. Despite the wide recognition of employee empowerment and commitment in organizational research, the topic of empowerment in health care in particular is rather sparse as researchers have only recently begun to explore the effects of empowerment on organizational outcomes in health care settings. Although several implications can be drawn from the findings of this study, four findings in particular deserve elaborations here.\nLimitations and implications for future work: We recognize several limitations to the study and the limitations of our study also warrant where future research should be directed with respect to examining potential variables affecting patient safety culture.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between patient safety culture and two attitudinal constructs: affective organizational commitment and structural empowerment. In doing so, the main and interaction effects of the two constructs on the perception of patient safety culture were assessed using a cohort of physicians.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Affective commitment was measured with the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, whereas structural empowerment was assessed with the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II. The abbreviated versions of these surveys were administered to a cohort of 71 post-doctoral medical residents. For the data analysis, hierarchical regression analyses were performed for the main and interaction effects of affective commitment and structural empowerment on the perception of patient safety culture.\nFindings: A total of 63 surveys were analyzed. The results revealed that both affective commitment and structural empowerment were positively related to patient safety culture. A potential interaction effect of the two attitudinal constructs on patient safety culture was tested but no such effect was detected.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study suggests that there are potential benefits of promoting affective commitment and structural empowerment for patient safety culture in health care organizations. By identifying the positive associations between the two constructs and patient safety culture, this study provides additional empirical support for Kanter's theoretical tenet that structural and organizational support together helps to shape the perceptions of patient safety culture.\nOriginality/value: Despite the wide recognition of employee empowerment and commitment in organizational research, there has still been a paucity of empirical studies specifically assessing their effects on patient safety culture in health care organizations. To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between structural empowerment as proposed by Kanter and the culture of patient safety using physicians.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring influencing factors of offline knowledge service transactions on an online-to-offline knowledge-sharing economy platform	[ "Knowledge sharing", "Sharing economy platform", "Quality", "Price", "Signaling theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In an increasingly globalized world, competition advances at a fierce pace and knowledge becomes one competitive resource for both individuals and organizations (Del Giudice and Della Peruta, 2016; Del Giudice and Maggioni, 2014). To respond to a changing environment, individuals or small groups within organizations may attempt to seek external knowledge to generate novel solutions and solve ill-structured problems (i.e. involve unexpected and unknown interactions among different sets of knowledge) (Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2019). The mainstream KM literature suggests that external knowledge is important for realizing knowledge strategic purposes (Del Giudice and Della Peruta, 2016; Dost et al., 2019).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Knowledge, knowledge types and knowledge sharing\n3. Theoretical model and hypotheses development: This study derives determinants of offline knowledge service transactions via an O2O knowledge-sharing economy platform from both quality and price perspectives and builds a theoretical framework based on the SERVQUAL model and signaling theory. According to the SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman et al., 1988), reliability, responsiveness and assurance are three important indicators of offline knowledge SERVQUAL on knowledge-sharing economy platforms. However, an informational asymmetry exists between knowledge providers and seekers, so it is hard for seekers to observe the true information about offline knowledge SERVQUAL directly. Signaling theory (Spence, 1973; Donath, 2007; Basoglu and Hess, 2014) suggests that, to resolve existing informational asymmetry, knowledge providers can signal knowledge and SERVQUAL by different cues. Knowledge seekers will look for cues in the form of supporting evidence as indicators of the quality and value of offline knowledge services. As previous studies suggested, producer and knowledge good itself are important sources for knowledge SERVQUAL signals (Pacharapha and Ractham, 2012).\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Discussion, implications and limitations: 5.1 Discussions and conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Online-to-offline (O2O) knowledge-sharing economy platforms have emerged as a new public channel for matching up knowledge providers with knowledge seekers. It can facilitate offline provision and consumption of high-quality tacit knowledge around a topic upon online search and payment (called offline knowledge service transaction). However, limited research investigated this new knowledge-sharing phenomenon in the field of knowledge management (KM). The purpose of this paper is to enrich KM literature by developing a theoretical model to explore determinants of offline knowledge service transactions via O2O knowledge-sharing economy platforms from both quality and price perspectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The model was tested with objective data crawled from Zaihang - a leading O2O knowledge-sharing economy platform in China.\nFindings: The results show that, in the context of O2O knowledge-sharing economy, transactions of an offline knowledge service are positively related to its provider's popularity, but negatively related to the price. Moreover, knowledge seekers are more likely to accept and purchase a high-priced service of a knowledge topic with a higher overall review score and supplied by a provider with lower popularity and shorter response time. However, the length of offline knowledge service has no significant association with its transactions.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to KM literature through investigating a new phenomenon of tacit knowledge sharing (including provision and consumption) in the context of O2O service and the sharing economy. The results give implications for knowledge providers and platform managers to facilitate online transactions of offline knowledge services.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Addressing alignment concerns into the design of domain-specific information systems	[ "Manufacturing strategy", "Manufacturing technology", "Modelling", "Business performance", "Business and IT alignment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Recent economic, cultural and technological phenomena such as globalisation and the upsurge of new technologies have impacted several industrial sectors and resulted in the need for many companies to improve their competitiveness to survive. These challenges have led companies to modify their business models through, for example, specialisation, and the outsourcing of those activities that are not considered as core or strategic (Manesh et al., 2011). In this context, there has been a need to develop flexible Information Systems (ISs) supporting the specific application domains in which companies want to specialise activities, such as product manufacturing, thus enhancing their new business model and strategic position in the market.\nThe SAM: The SAM structure\nThe Sam metamodels: A metamodel abstracts the concepts and relationships of a specific domain and represents the structure of this domain, defining what can and cannot be expressed in the models (Kuhne, 2006). Typically, the process of building models and metamodels follows a chronological order in which the metamodel is created before the model. However, in some contexts this is not the case, as in IS alignment. In our study, the construction of the SAM and its extension models does not follow this order. In fact, the SAM was proposed by replicating the Business domain structure to build up the IT domain. Therefore, as the Business domain involved two levels (external and internal) and three components at each level, the IT domain included two levels with three components at each level. Furthermore, as noted in the last subsection, alignment models proposed for specific applications by extending the SAM were built up mainly by reapplying this same logic.\nA methodology to align is for domain-specific applications: The methodology we propose consists of three phases to work out progressively the specific alignment models and analyse them in the organisational context of the domain-specific IS under study (see Figure 4). The first phase, building IS alignment models, consists in working out alignment models and sequences for specific domains by instantiating the proposed metamodels. We complete this initial phase with two phases enabling us to exploit the alignment models and sequences resulting from the metamodel instantiation. Thus, the second phase, called analysing the initial situation of the implementation project, aims at understanding the initial state of the IS and the organisation before the beginning of the IS design and development project. It detects misalignments by using the alignment model and sequences. The third phase, analysing the final situation and building alignment, uses the alignment model and sequences to build alignment and represent the project's final state. In the following subsections we detail the methodological phases.\nCase study: evolution of a MES: The case study concerns a manufacturer group that uses a MES for the automation and monitoring of its production processes. Among other functionalities, the MES allowed production unit supervisors to monitor production and quality performance through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) presented in a client software application installed on personal computers (PCs) allocated at their offices. The KPIs were intended to help them to understand in real time if production and quality targets were being reached during the manufacturing process, in order to promote greater responsiveness and guide the actions of operators. This functional capacity aimed at helping the company to reach the following objectives: to reduce errors and reach production objectives (manufacturing objective); and to reach operational excellence leading to lower costs and better quality of the products (business objective). However, as these objectives could not be met adequately, the company decided to create a committee to investigate the causes, propose remedial actions, and carry out a pilot project in one of the company's factories to implement the suggested solution. To this end, the proposed alignment approach was used.\nConclusion: The proposed metamodels and methodology provide a holistic approach in which concerns for a specific-domain IS are considered at strategic, tactical and operational levels and different time pitches (as-is and to-be). The benefits of this approach include to:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find alignment concerns (e.g. requirements, restrictions and issues) and addressing them into the design and development of domain-specific information systems (ISs) supporting product manufacturing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach is based on two metamodels of the Strategic Alignment Model that formalise its underlying concepts. The metamodels are used to build specific alignment models that define the elements to be aligned and the corresponding alignment sequences. The models and alignment sequences are intended to guide the design and development of an \"aligned\" domain-specific IS. An industrial case study for the manufacturing industry shows the feasibility of this approach.\nFindings: The instantiation of the alignment models components with information about the specific-domain IS project enabled us to deal with current and future concerns into the design of ISs aligned with the manufacturing strategy and infrastructures.\nOriginality/value: IS alignment is generally tackled at a strategic level, in this paper the operational and tactical levels are also addressed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring perceptions of customer value: The role of corporate social responsibility initiatives in the European telecommunications industry	[ "Corporate social responsibility", "Customer perception", "Customer value perception", "Ethical consumerism", "Prioritization of CSR initiatives" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Ethical consumerism has become an important topic in both the popular press and academic literature. High visibility issues such as the use of child labour in developing countries or the global environmental impact of production and consumption appear increasingly to affect the purchasing decisions of consumers around the world. The question of how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the perceptions of customers and other stakeholders and how it influences a company's reputation, corporate identity, image and organisational success has become one of the key topics at the intersection of sustainability and marketing research (Bhattacharya et al., 2009; Sen et al., 2006; Smith, 2003). Thus, CSR has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide as well as an increasingly important construct in academia (Runhaar and Lafferty, 2009). And this trend continues to grow within the multinational sector - between 2010 and 2013 the total CSR contribution of the world's largest companies increased by 15 per cent to $17.55bn. The majority of the reporting companies (64 per cent) increased their total giving within this period (CECP, 2014).\nTheoretical background: Corporate social responsibility concepts\nConceptualisation: Customer perception of corporate social responsibility initiatives - corporate social responsibility beliefs\nResearch framework: link between corporate social responsibility perception and value perception: When researching ethical consumerism, it becomes important to understand the customer perception of CSR initiatives in connection with the effect these initiatives have on variables affecting customer attitudes and behaviour. No framework in the literature could be found combining the different perspectives - therefore a new framework has been designed for this research.\nMethod: The main purpose of this research is to understand complex human issues and behaviour (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2002) and to capture in-depth consumer attitudes and manners (Bryman and Bell, 2011). The overall aim is to extract the meaning people attribute to their experience with CSR topics and initiatives through their personal circumstances and situations, as well as understanding meanings they interpret from CSR initiatives which companies communicate (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2010). Given this aim and the sensibility of the topic, a qualitative methodology will be used.\nSample: For the purpose of this research 12 semi-structured interviews with highly educated female customers aged 25 - 55 years in three European countries - the UK (5), Germany (3) and Denmark (4) - were conducted seven face-to face interviews and five over the telephone interviews. The researchers decided to choose a purposive sample focussing on females as the main target group for CSR initiatives within different countries to cover the key constituencies of perception of CSR whilst ensuring to cover enough diversity within each key criteria (Ritchie et al., 2014).\nTelecommunications industry: This research examines customers of multinational telecommunications companies represented in the Dow Jones Sustainability and/or FTSE4Good index, with headquarters in Europe and operations in developed and developing countries. The reasoning for this choice was that these companies have CSR strategies in place and show a high involvement in CSR reporting. Companies fulfilling the criteria included inter alia British Telecom (UK-based), Deutsche Telekom (German-based), Vodafone (UK-based), Telefonica (Spain-based), Telekom Italia (Italian-based) and Telenor (Norway-based).\nData collection: Owing to the very personal and subjective nature of this sensitive topic, the one-to-one interviews were conducted in the home of the interviewee, in meeting rooms or over the telephone at times of convenience for the interviewee in a wider time window to avoid stress and to create a relaxed atmosphere and avoid socially desirable bias. All interviews with the exception of one were conducted in English and all were taped and transcribed. The first two interviews were conducted to optimise the interview guide but only minor adaptions were necessary.\nData analysis: NVivo was used as a computer-aided qualitative data analysis software and analytical support. The interviews were uploaded as sources and were given a case. The coding and indexing of the data was done by selecting relevant parts of the text, highlighting them and organising these under developed categories (\"nodes\") by common themes and statements. The data were arranged and rearranged several times by checking the content within the different categories over all cases to assure the consistency of each node and tree node. The lists of categories were revised and reviewed during the entire analytical process, firstly, to remain more focussed on the research question, and secondly, to make room for additional and relevant information provided by the interviewees. Easy access to the original data has been assured during the whole process to ensure the data supports the concepts and ideas developed within the process of analysis. The data was explored in interactive fashion, constantly comparing and reviewing the qualitative data and the developed framework. The data was coded according to common themes and common statements which formed the developed categories. Ongoing reviews of the data were conducted and categories were revised, renamed and abandoned, as necessary. The main changes made were merging different codes because of overlapping information or deleting nodes because of minor relevance for the interviewees.\nFindings: In the following section the findings will be discussed in accordance with the three parts of the framework\nCustomer perception of corporate social responsibility initiatives - corporate social responsibility awareness and attribution, lifestyle and value: Customer awareness of corporate social responsibility initiatives\nCustomer value perception of corporate social responsibility initiatives: Focus on extrinsic self-oriented value\nDiscussion on ethical consumerism: The research taps into consumers' CSR-related lifestyle and values leading to the prioritisation of certain CSR initiatives as a determinate of customers' value creation. Overall, the findings indicate that CSR initiatives evaluated as relevant for customers can enhance customer value and may lead to ethical consumerism.\nIndication for a mediation effect of prioritisation of corporate social responsibility initiatives: Based on the research results, the authors observed a connection between the customer's lifestyle and values and CSR initiatives. The results show that only if customers consider the CSR initiatives as \"real\" CSR initiatives (attribution) and the initiatives clearly fit to customers' lifestyle and values that the customers will show a preference for these initiatives. Personal interest and affinity to environmental, human and product responsibilities build the grounds for value creation of CSR initiatives. If, for example, interviewees presented themselves with a special interest in environmental topics, a clear preference of environmental initiatives was observed.\nValue perception of corporate social responsibility initiatives: P1 and P2:\nConclusions and implications: Ethical consumerism research is an important area for academics and management practice. The question of how CSR affects the perceptions of customers and how it influences the customer-company relationship and customer behaviour is an increasingly emerging topic within marketing and CSR research.\nLimitations and directions for further research: The research revealed that prioritisation of CSR initiatives is a possible mediator between customers' perception of CSR initiatives and customer value perception. These are early findings, which should be confirmed by quantitative research in different industries - as well in industries with higher awareness of companies' CSR engagement.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that describes and explains how corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are perceived by customers and links customer perception to the notion of customer value perception. To explore customer value conception firstly, the perception of CSR initiatives is investigated; secondly, indications for the value-enhancing effects of CSR initiatives are studied, and finally, the varying effects which different value categories can have on customer attitudes and behaviour are extracted.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data consists of 12 semi-structured interviews with customers of European telecommunication companies.\nFindings: The results suggest that CSR initiatives, when communicated efficiently and considered as relevant by customers, will enhance two customer value categories: the extrinsic self-oriented value defined as efficiency and excellence and the intrinsic other-oriented value pertaining to ethics or spirituality. Enhancement of extrinsic self-oriented value imbeds the potential of CSR initiatives to affect customers' purchase behaviour and thus strengthen ethical consumerism within the telecommunications industry.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main implication for research is a better understanding of the relationship between customer perception and customer value perception in the field of ethical consumerism. Focussing on one industry for the study can be named as a limitation.\nPractical implications: As indicated by the research, results by customers prioritised CSR initiative can affect the customer value perception, mainly the extrinsic/self-oriented value. If the company is aiming to change customer behaviour and to strengthen ethical consumerism, it is important that the customer experience of CSR initiatives improve excellence (quality) and/or efficiency of the product/service.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfils an identified need of research on how CSR initiatives can influence consumer behaviour.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Feedforward or feedback - reframing positive performance management	[ "Feedforward", "Performance appraisal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Traditional feedback processes, the basis of performance appraisal (PA) for many organizations, are increasingly under question. When Accenture[1] announced in 2015 that is was abandoning traditional annual performance reviews for its more than 300,000 employees, many other organizations paused to ask how they promoted great performance in organizations and if they should also be doing things differently.\nWhat would feedforward look like in practice?: The format of the traditional PA interview can be used, but instead of matching past outcomes to previously-defined goals, the first step will be to ask the employee to identify occasions of successful performance. Identifying this success story will allow a deeper discussion of those organizational and personal elements supporting this success, generating new insights for the future. Further, telling these stories allows for their context to be explored - what were the elements that supported this outcome and how did this positive experience make the employee and their team feel.\nComment: This review is based on \"Looking forward to performance improvement: a field test of the feedforward interview for performance management\" by Budworth et al. (2016).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: Removing the negative elements of traditional feedback-based performance appraisal and refocusing performance management on positive plans for the future can have profound effects on individual and organizational performance.\nPractical implications: The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How to develop knowledge culture in organizations? A multiple case study of large distributed organizations	[ "Knowledge management", "Organizational culture", "Large enterprises" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The emergence of the knowledge economy necessitated many organizations to recognize knowledge as a crucial resource to achieve sustainable competitive advantage (Davenport and Prusak, 2000; Drucker, 1988; Hertog and Huizenga, 2000; Skyrme, 1999; Teece, 1998). This recognition resulted in imparting strategic importance to the knowledge management (KM) and triggered the commencement of formal KM programs in many organizations. In the last few years, several theories have been put forward for practicing KM. However, given the abstract nature of the subject area, there is little consensus on the components and ways of knowledge management. Davenport and Prusak (2000) suggest that organizations should take a hard look at their culture before launching a knowledge initiative. Several other authors support this notion and advocate that organizational culture should be the focal point of KM programs (Bock, 1999; Krogh et al., 2000; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Rastogi, 2000). Despite this widespread recognition of organizational culture as a core factor in the KM arena, very little is known about creating an effective culture for knowledge management. Many unanswered questions remain regarding the meaning and content of organizational culture itself (Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; DeLong and Fahey, 2000; Louis, 1983; Martin and Siehl, 1983). Pacanowsky and O'Donnell-Trujillo (1983) argued that, \"organizational culture is not just another piece of the puzzle, it is the puzzle. From our point-of-view, a culture is not something an organization has; a culture is something an organization is\". The problem of defining culture is not new and arises from age-old arguments in anthropology, sociology and archaeology. Given the backdrop of continuing deliberations over the definition of culture, addressing the cultural factors towards effective knowledge management, becomes a complex problem for organizations.However, some organizations have proved more successful than others have, in their KM efforts, often citing their inherent culture as the central aspect behind their success (Hackett, 2000). Thus, the goal of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the KM subject area, by exploring and describing various organizational factors that determine knowledge culture. This paper commences with a discussion about culture and knowledge management, to devise a broad set of research questions to explore the factors affecting the knowledge culture in organizations. The discussion and formulation of the research questions was based on a review of literature in organizational behavior, human resource management, information systems, business process management and knowledge management. Second, the paper presents the research methodology and design adopted for this study to address the specified research questions. Third, the findings of this study are analyzed, discussed and evaluated with the insights gained from the existing KM literature. The concluding section of the paper presents the implications of the findings of this study on KM research and practice. The section also discusses the limitations of this study and provides some directions for further research.\nCulture and knowledge management: Organizational culture\nResearch methodology and design: Case study method\nFindings, discussion and evaluation: Based on the empirical analysis, ten factors (F1 to F10) have been derived that have influenced the development of knowledge culture in the organizations under study. Although many of these factors are interrelated, they are still deliberated as discrete factors because of their individual importance and manageability characteristics. The following sections describe each of these factors in detail with substantiating illustrations. The derived factors and the associated study findings are evaluated with the pertinent theories in the existing KM literature.F1 Leadership\nConclusions: There is a widespread view in KM literature that organizational culture plays a key role in developing knowledge culture. This study has explored, analyzed and presented some major factors affecting the development of knowledge culture in large organizations. Based on an empirical research conducted at six large distributed organizations, this study has identified ten organizational elements influencing the creation and development of knowledge culture. These factors include leadership, organizational structure, evangelization, communities of practice, reward systems, time allocation, business processes, recruitment, infrastructure and physical attributes.Figure 3 summarizes the study findings while depicting the explored factors as a collective and presents a ten-factor framework for developing knowledge culture. The floral portrait shows each factor with characteristic strategies identified during the study. Nurturing the knowledge culture, positioned at the nucleus, requires effective management of each centripetal factor. The study has evidently emphasized that all these factors should be prudently managed in order to foster an effective knowledge culture. The supporting illustrations and rationale, provided for each of the factors, offer some realistic strategies for the development of knowledge culture. Some findings of this study have deviated from established notions in the contemporary KM literature, especially in the issues related to the organizational structures, leadership, reward systems and other human resource management practices. The organizational dimensions explored in this research, present some original thoughts for developing sustainable knowledge cultures.The factors described in this paper are based on KM practices at the organizations with well-established KM programs. These can serve as the pragmatic guidelines for the KM practitioners and researchers. Some of the current literature in KM tends to orient towards a particular track or an organizational element, such as, the process orientation, people orientation and technology orientation. Conversely, this study demonstrates that the KM practitioners need to adopt a composite view (Figure 3) of organizational factors for developing the knowledge culture. Perhaps, the major limitation of this research study is associated with the sample selection strategy. All of the cases in this research study are large-scale distributed organizations with more than 40,000 employees. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The disassociation of organizational details from various findings presented in this paper may not permit the readers to construct specific assumptions and derivations. However, such a strict code of ethics was needed to preserve the identity of the participants who provided valuable contributions to this research project.The organizational factors and the correlated characteristics described in this paper may be applied for a universe of large-scale distributed organizations. The rationale of generalization is supported by the diversity of the cases, depth of the interviews and the evaluation criteria adopted for this study. However, the assertiveness and generalizability of some of the explored factors and the derived conclusions maybe improved through a consecutive research survey. The authors intend to further examine the following findings as the hypothetical propositions, P1-P6, derived from various aforementioned factors, F1, F2, F5, F6, F8 and F10, respectively:P1. In the context of knowledge culture, the expression of leadership attributes by the middle and front level managers is equally essential, as it is from the top management.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to identify various factors affecting knowledge culture in some of the large organizations and suggest realistic strategies for developing knowledge culture.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In-depth case studies were conducted at six large distributed organizations to investigate and assess knowledge management (KM) practices and associated organizational culture. The core data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with senior managers who play a significant role in KM programs at their respective organizations. A range of internal documents of these organizations has also provided some important inputs for the empirical analysis.\nFindings: - The study identified ten major factors affecting knowledge culture in organizations. These include leadership, organizational structure, and evangelization, communities of practice, reward systems, time allocation, business processes, recruitment, infrastructure and physical attributes.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Perhaps, the major limitation of this research study is associated with the sample selection. All of the companies participated in this research project, were large-scale distributed organizations. Therefore, the findings may not be applicable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the derived conclusions would be more assertive if they were tested as hypothetical propositions through a consecutive research survey.\nPractical implications: - This study provides illustrations and rationale for a diverse range of factors influencing the knowledge culture. Some of the findings deviated from established notions in contemporary KM literature, especially in the issues such as organizational structure, leadership and reward systems. The organizational dimensions explored in this study provide some original thoughts for building sustainable knowledge cultures.\nOriginality/value: - The factors described in this paper are based on the existing KM practices at organizations with well-established KM programs. These can serve as pragmatic guidelines for KM practitioners in developing knowledge culture.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Reflecting on competences to increase role clarity during service delivery in a Third World setting	[ "Reflection", "Tacit competences", "Explicit competences", "Role clarity", "Uganda", "Service delivery" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Ministry of Public Service in Uganda through the Public Service Reform Programme (PSRP) introduced a new public performance management system which requires managers in the District Local Governments (DLGs) to shift focus from inputs to results (Williamson, 2003). The system encourages district managers to set clear priorities for the resource available while following standardised operating procedures to produce results. This implies that no matter what little resources are available, there should be results to show that resources are appropriately utilized. The Ministry of Public Service introduced Result Oriented Management (ROM) to enhance the process of developing individual competence profiles with output targets that are specific to a particular job. This was supported by the introduction of a competence dictionary that highlighted generic competences a district manager must possess (Williamson, 2003). The competences were distinguished into two types; behavioural competences and technical competences. The dictionary defined behavioural competences as traits and attitudes required for a given job. It defined technical competences as the job required skills and knowledge. The managers were expected to profile their competences at any of the four levels, the learning level which is the basic level for understanding ones job; the working knowledge level where an individual handles most tasks independently with minimal direction on work objectives; the experienced knowledge level for individuals that are technically experienced to exercise independent judgment regarding all technical issues within a broader context; and the expert knowledge level for individuals in strategic positions with capacity to interpret and direct others on issues related to broader organisational and national goals. Despite these efforts, the district official found the competences that were provided under the behavioural and technical categories too complex to articulate and translate into individual role profiles with output targets. By the time we conducted this study, there were no individual competence profiles in the districts. Most district managers were operating at the basic learning level and those who were successful, usually did their jobs spontaneously. The spontaneous nature of competence application made it difficult for managers in high level positions to share work experiences with the junior managers at the basic learning level. The competences they accumulated over time that led to their success in their work had become tacit and difficult to articulate precisely (Colonia-Willner, 1998). Haldin-Herrgard (2000) refers to this tacit competence based spontaneity as the real distinction between superior and ordinary performers. Nevertheless, such spontaneity/tacit competence is bound to become non-functional whenever novel problems requiring alternative approaches arise (Teece et al., 1997; Keating et al., 1996; Frese and Zarp, 1994). One novel situation that district managers faced was the requirement to develop role based explicit competences with output targets as a requirement in the process of implementing the ROM. The failure to convert the generic competences found in the Competence Dictionary indicated that those who had acquired tacit knowledge could not convert it to deal with the novel task created by the ROM. Following Haldin-Herrgard (2000) we argue that it is only when individuals learn to explicitly articulate their tacit competences, that they will gain the capacity to profile their role competences with output targets, and thus experience continuous role clarity regardless of the situation. This study sought to examine whether the process (or the experience) of reflection provides for a stronger association between explicit competences and role clarity when reflection is used as a means of articulating competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes).Tacit and explicit knowledge\nMethod: Sample participants and procedure\nResults: We examined the means, standard deviations and correlations between variables as shown in Table I. Following the rule of 68-95-99.7, 68 per cent of the participants had been in their position for a period ranging from one to five years. In addition, 68 per cent of the participants' scores ranged from 2 (to a little extent) to 3 (to a greater extent) for all the other main study variables (reflection, explicit competences and role clarity). When we calculated the Z-scores [z=(x-)/s] we found that the scores were all within +-3 and therefore concluding that there were no outliers. Zero order results demonstrated a significant strong positive correlation between reflection and explicit competences (r=0.72, p < 0.01), thus supporting H1. Correlation between reflection and role clarity was also significant, moderately strong and positive (r=0.47, p < 0.01) supporting H2. However there was no significant relationship between time spent in a job position and explicit competences, hence rejecting H3.We used hierarchical regression analysis to test for hypothesis four. Model 1 indicated that reflection alone significantly predicted role clarity, b=0.47, p < 0.01 and the percentage of variance explained (adjusted R2) was 22 per cent. However in model 2, both reflection and explicit competences explained 31 per cent of the variance in role clarity. The beta values for these two independent variables were 0.19, p < 0.05 and 0.43, p < 0.01 respectively. In model 2, the predictive power of reflection reduced from 47 per cent (model 1) to 19 per cent when explicit competences variable was introduced. This confirmed explicit competences to be the best predictor of role clarity. Additionally, the results showed no indication of multicollinearity since the tolerance value 0.49 was well above 0.20 as recommended by O'Brien, 2007; and Marija, 2008.\nDiscussion: Brookfield (1987) stated that it is important to articulate tacit knowledge to create explicit competences where unpacking tacit competences involves reflecting on ones behaviours and attitudes in order to make them measurable. The results of this study confirmed this argument by indicating a significant positive relationship between reflection and explicit competences. This is also in line with action theory thinking that when managers critically reflect on their past behaviour they develop certain goals which may require explicit competences to address the goals (Frese and Zarp, 1994). The process of reflection helps managers to uncover knowledge and behaviours they have never been conscious of and check whether they are valid for the given work objectives (Nonaka et al., 2000). The results from descriptive analysis on the reflection variable indicated that on average the degree of the managers' reflection behaviour in this study was, \"to a little extent (=2.39)\". These results confirmed findings from an earlier study done by Cheetham and Chivers (1998) in which 37.5 per cent of the practitioners that were studied argued that, their operations were already structured and they were expected to apply specialized knowledge. This implied that, to them there was no need to reflect since the competences expected of them were already standardised. This practice is likely to result into a danger of utilising the same kind of competences which may not be relevant to the desired results (Brewis, 1996). Moreover, our study affirmed that managers who regularly reflected on their competences were only 0.4 per cent. It is evident from this statistic that acting intuitively is a common practice for managers. However intuitive behaviour is based on tacit competences and if continuously applied on job, it becomes difficult for a manager to trace actions that lead to successful or unsuccessful results. Consequently managers may cease to learn from their previous experiences, and instead they may continue acting habitually without paying sufficient attention on the outputs and results of their actions. They may tend to remember thinking about the outputs when the actions are already completed and sometimes when mistakes are already been made (Watson, 1996). Take an example of agricultural extension officers in this study that planned to meet farmers during a rainy season and they made an effort to mobilise them using a mobile audio-speaker. They scheduled the meeting between 10 am to 12 pm, forgetting that by that time of the day farmers would still be cultivating their plantations. They waited for the farmers during the scheduled time and none turned. The farmers turned up at 3 pm when the agricultural extension officers had already left. The extension workers could have anticipated this situation had they been reflecting on their actions. Lack of reflection made it impossible for the agricultural extensionists to think and assess the accuracy of their decision in relation to the dynamics in the farmer's work context (i.e. farmers behave differently during rainy seasons against dry seasons and therefore competences have to suit the changes). This scenario provides some kind of learning that reflection which leads to accurate and explicit competences is essential to enable managers understand what they need to know, why, when where and how to do it to achieve the desired results (Armstrong and Mahmud, 2008). Yoong (1999) suggests that reflection can make a possible link between doing and making sense of what could be a complex set of competences. According to Yoong (1999) reflection is a process of re-evaluating past experiences to enable managers unpack their mental models, plan and strategize new actions that are appropriate to deal with similar or different situations in the future. The manager therefore will address all situations accurately which then will increase role clarity and minimises the probability of making errors that would have occurred if the behavioural responses to the situation were used in an \"intuitive\" manner (Cheng et al., 2003; Woerkom et al., 2002).The results from the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that both reflection and explicit competences predicted role clarity. The results also showed that reflection would still predict 47 per cent of role clarity when the effects of explicit competences were controlled. However results indicated that reflection, if mediated by explicit competences, would explain a slightly high percentage of variance (31 per cent) in role clarity compared to the 22 per cent explained by reflection alone. Explicit competences combine measurable behaviours and personal characteristics such as attitudes relevant for a particular task. Parry (1999) defined these behaviours and attitudes as competences that allow managers to become proficient in solving day to day problems. However, Watson (1996) argues that attitudes are more of virtuous competences that promote public good such as pleasing the boss while behavioural competences are oriented towards achievement of successful results. Explicit competences facilitate the manager's ability to unlearn the unproductive behavioural competences and increase capacity to clearly evaluate planned role objectives (Brookfield, 1987). During the process of reflection, the manager develops strategic explicit competences that would be utilised as a resource to deal with technological, ethical and political dilemmas that may affect the achievement of the organisational goals (Brooks, 1999). The manager would ask self-questions like: who do I interact with (people or other environment factors)? What information do I look for in this interaction? What problems do I solve on a regular basis? What hard decisions do I make when faced with challenges? These questions serve as guideline for reflection and enable the individual to translate tacit competences into explicit competences, hence gaining role clarity (Stover, 2004).Despite the small percentage of managers (0.4 per cent) who acknowledged regular reflection when carrying out their job tasks, slightly a big percentage (14.8 per cent) confirmed that they always experienced role clarity on their jobs. This brings back the precedence of intuitive reasoning of many managers that achieving successful results is obvious even when one cannot tell which behaviours led to the success of the results. Hoyrup (2004) recommend that managers should not only focus on the immediate outputs of their actions, but also pay attention to specific actions that may influence the outputs being delivered. That is what we interpreted as role clarity. The degree to which managers receive and understand information required to execute their job roles is considered to be an important factor for acquiring multiple competences required for job performance (Mukherjee and Malhotra, 2006). The study findings indicated a significant relationship between explicit competences and role clarity (see Table I). Results from regression analysis (see Table II) also indicated explicit competences as the best predictor of role clarity (b=43 per cent and p=0.01). These results are supposedly supported by findings of Hayes et al. (2000) when they argued that managerial competences cannot be replicated or transferred directly to another work situation without being modified. The context of managerial work is unpredictable and uncertain rendering tacit competences as largely ambiguous and impractical. Even within the same organisation, the competences that apply in one location may not necessarily be precisely duplicated in another location (Hayes et al., 2000). In the case of district local governments, managers would still find variations in the competences required to produce results in one geographic location or work context as against another. There are always differences in community needs, beliefs and politics. When roles are translated into specific competences (actions) they become precise and different and they influence the effectiveness of each different managerial role and applicability in the different work situations (Lindsay and Stuart, 1997; Boam and Sparrow, 1992). The process of reflection provided opportunities to the sampled managers to explicitly articulate and assess their competences, and to discover the key competences that were regularly marginalised and those that they rarely thought of as important hence increasing role clarity. Wickramasinghe and De Zoyza (2008) emphasised that without a system to assess challenging situations that demand diverse competences, managers are likely to apply the same knowledge and behaviour when performing their duties regardless of the changes in the work situation. Under such circumstances the managers may develop a habit of focusing on the easiest means of achieving results and paying less attention to the actual needs of service beneficiaries in the community (Hong et al., 2004). As a result the achieved results may not necessarily be what the beneficiaries expected. Baron and Armstrong (1998) affirmed that role clarity increases managers' perception of being competent because they become aware of what they need to do and how to do it accurately.\nConclusion: Reflection is about the employees' capacity to step back from their routine work and consciously seek to examine strategies that did not work as were expected (Woerkom et al., 2002). Employees need to appreciate that mistakes are often done on the job and that there is need to re-examine one's competences in order to suit the operational environment. One of the reasons why mistakes commonly occur on the job is because of the intuitive manner in which individuals respond to the various job related situations using tacit competences. These tacit competences may have accumulated in one's subconscious but may not necessarily be relevant to the situation at hand (Burgoyne, 1990). Managers are called on to regularly scrutinize the key job related competences in order to increase role clarity. This recalling of what happened (reflection) helps them to re-evaluate and detect whether they still hold relevant competences required for their roles or whether some role ambiguity exist (Naquin and Holton, 2003; Homer, 2001). Once role ambiguity is identified, corresponding competences should be articulated and may formally be shared among team members to increase role clarityPractical and theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is essentially to examine the contribution of reflection in providing a stronger association between explicit competences and role clarity when reflection is used as a means of articulating competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study employed a correlational survey design and targeted 223 employees in managerial positions of nine districts' local governments in Uganda and primarily used a structured questionnaire.\nFindings: - The research confirmed a significant positive relationship between reflection and explicit competences, showing the importance of articulating tacit knowledge to develop explicit competences that would increase role clarity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - There are seemingly other confounding factors that may enhance reflection and explicit competences such as community participation in goal setting which need to be considered in future studies.\nPractical implications: - This paper adds to the understanding of the consequences of routinely utilizing competences without concern on whether they will leads to the desired results. It introduces the concept of reflection; an approach for articulating competences explicitly to increase role clarity.\nOriginality/value: - The study recommends district managers to formally engage in continuous reflection on tacit competences in order to minimise errors and increase role clarity during service delivery.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Editorial: beyond publish or perish: the importance of citations and how to get them	[ "Impact", "Publishing", "Citations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: It almost goes without saying that, for researchers, it is important to publish their findings. As French mathematician and physicist, Francois Arago[1], observed:\nWhich journal to target?: Let's first take an author/researcher perspective on the process. A successful outcome requires the research paper to be published, to be read and to be cited. The pathway to success is laden with obstacles to overcome and requires careful decision-making and planned activities on behalf of the researcher. One of the earliest decisions, and one that is often made prior to carrying out the research, is which journal to target with the research paper. In the absence of the many political agenda surrounding journal publication, a key consideration would be a journal where the material is likely to be read by the largest number of scholars working in the same domain. However, we all recognise that it is not as simple as this. Gruber (2014, p. 166) emphasises the prevailing guiding principles for many researchers seeking a \"suitable\" journal:\nDoes the writing style matter?: Whatever journal is chosen, the likelihood of the paper being read/downloaded will increase if it is succinct and appears interesting. Writing is important, as many eminent scholars in the past have emphasised. Canadian neuropsychologist, Donald O Hebb[5], observed that:\nWhose role is it?: In the past, once a paper was published, authors had to sit back and wait for evidence that their paper had been read. In the current, electronic age, however, there is a far greater opportunity for authors to play a proactive role in creating awareness of their publication to as wide an audience as possible, which brings us back to the question posed earlier: \"Whose role it is to build citations - authors? Editors? Associate Editors? Publishers?\" The answer is that it is everyone's role. Each one of these stakeholders will benefit from increased citations; the author gains personal prestige and demonstrated impact of their work, the editorial team gains reputational brownie points by publishing notable pieces of research as well as better quality submissions, and the publisher gains an increased impact factor which improves their market appeal and therefore commercial value.\nHow to build citations: As the primary audience for this article is authors, we will confine our suggestions to that particular stakeholder group. For the purpose of this section, we are going to assume that you have an article that is interesting, high quality, relevant and makes a unique contribution to your field. In other words, you have a great product/service in search of a communication strategy. How many marketing academics ever sit down to do a marketing plan on their own research, what are the hot topics in the field (demand estimation): what knowledge does the target market desire (product/service development), how much effort and cost are they prepared to pay to find this knowledge (price), will the knowledge come to the target audience or do they need to seek it out (channel), will the knowledge be worth the effort (exchange), is the target market aware of the research and will they share it with others (communication)?\nConclusion: Throughout time, for research to have value it needs to be published read and cited and the mantra for many business schools has been publish or perish. In this day and age, competition for publication is intense. The quality of writing, especially succinctness, matters and so too does generating citations. Citations are extremely important for authors as well as journal editors and publishers. There are solid grounds for asking authors to play a more proactive role in raising awareness of their published research to draw attention to their published work, with the aim of increasing downloads and citations. In other words, authors need to co-create the value provided by their research and not rely solely on the producer of the journal. Hopefully, we have provided sound arguments for the importance of citations over impact factors and given some useful tips on how to generate them.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of citations as a success metric and provide practical tips for increasing citations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors build on previous commentators to provide evidence for citations.\nFindings: The purpose of academia is not to merely publish. It is to contribute to the body of knowledge. This means shifting focus from publishing as an end goal to publishing as a means to an end.\nOriginality/value: The editorial reminds scholars of their duty to science and the need to take individual responsibility for the spread of knowledge. The generation of citations is not a difficult process as illustrated by the practical tips offered.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The lead-lag relationship between stock index options and the stock index market: Model, moneyness, and news	[ "Stochastic processes", "Stock markets", "Options markets", "Stock prices" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: In a perfectly functioning capital market, there would be complete simultaneity across markets. That is, any new information disseminating into the markets would be reflected simultaneously in them all. However, such factors as lower transaction costs, higher liquidity, and higher financial leverage may make one market is more attractive than the others, and this one market may thus be able to absorb new information more quickly. In addition, if one market provides information more efficiently, then it should lead the others: price discovery may thus be interpreted as an indication of relative market efficiencies. Many traders take positions in inter-markets simultaneously. As a result, differences in reaction times, and the size of the differences in cross-sectional prices between markets, may have a crucial effect on profits. Thus, arbitrage opportunities may exist across markets.This market efficiency has attracted the attention of researchers, and there have been several studies of the roles of price discovery in markets. Many researchers have examined the relationship between the stock market and its futures market, and have reported that the latter strongly leads the former[1]. However, although the majority of researchers has argued that the futures market leads the stock market, some conflicts have emerged in research on the relationship between the stock market and the options market.Stephan and Whaley (1990) reported that price changes in the stock market tend to lead those in the option market for active Chicago Board Options Exchange call options by as much as 15 minutes, but according to Manaster and Rendleman (1982), Bhattacharya (1987) and Anthony (1988), Finucane (1991), and Diltz and Kim (1996), the options market leads the stock market. Moreover, recent studies have focused on the relationship between individual stocks and the corresponding options. Considering the results of the previous studies collectively, we can conclude that the lead-lag relationship between markets are different from one another depending on corresponding markets of the countries and methodologies.Nam et al. (2006) argued that it is necessary to analyze the intraday patterns with a high frequency of derivatives markets with abundant liquidity to find out more apparent lead-lag relationship between markets. In this paper, we discuss the Korea Composite Stock Price Index 200 (KOSPI 200) stock index options market, which is one of the emerging options markets. It is ranked first in the world in terms of options trading volume, of which over 50 percent is by individual investors. In 2006, the combined trading volume reached 2.4 billion contracts, which accounted for 22.4 percent of total contracts in the world. The sufficient liquidity of the markets ensures that the KOSPI 200 stock index options market is an appropriate one in which to study the market microstructure of price discovery, and the pricing bias associated with stock index and options markets.The object of this paper is to examine the price discovery role of the KOSPI 200 stock index options market in contrast to the other developed options markets. In addition to the difference in the sample market, we also examine several hypotheses that previous research has not addressed.First, we examine whether the option pricing model gives different results for the lead-lag relationship between the stock index and options markets. The Black and Scholes (BS) model used in previous research is known to suffer from empirical deficiencies. From the several models that make up for the weak points of the BS model, we choose the stochastic volatility option pricing model. Several researchers have examined the importance of the stochastic volatility of the underlying asset in option valuation. For example, Bakshi et al. (1997) empirically tested the Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) market, and reported that it is significantly essential to consider stochastic volatility in option valuation. In addition, Kim and Kim (2004, 2005) documented the importance of stochastic volatility in option valuation, and empirically supported the argument within the Korean options market. Of course, we may estimate the model-free implied index price by using the put-call parity. In this case, only one option with specific moneyness is used. However, Ederington and Guan (2005) showed that the information content of options differs by the moneyness of options. Thus, we use the specific option pricing model to estimate the implied index price, by using the option prices with all moneyness. However, to prevent any distortion of the results based on the selected model, we employ both the BS and the Heston (1993) models to calculate the implied index prices from the options data.Second, we focus on individual investors, who account for a considerable portion of options market trading volume. Accordingly, we can expect the Korean options market to show a greater lead effect with respect to the stock index market than any other options market, because individual traders are expected to enter the options market for speculative reasons rather than hedging purposes[2]. On the other hand, individual investors have less information on market movements than institutional investors, not because of informed trading that makes use of foresight, but because individual investors engage in speculative trading in the expectation of \"winning the lottery.\" As a result, the options market may not lead the stock index market. In addition, options are known to be instruments for volatility rather than directional trading. What conclusion can be drawn from these two conflicting reasons?We test whether the price discovery role of option prices is dependent on the moneyness of options. It is generally accepted that individual traders have a speculative rather than a hedging purpose, and use out-of-the-money (OTM) options. That is, individual traders intend to make a directional bet on the direction of the underlying stock index by purchasing cheap OTM options as a form of lottery ticket. These assumptions indicate that the OTM options that traders buy, with the intention of making a directional betting trade in a large stake, can be an instrument of informed trading. As a result, the index implied by OTM options can be expected to lead the stock index.Finally, we test whether the price discovery role of option prices is dependent on the type of news. If investors receive good (bad) news in advance, they will hold call (put) options to obtain high leverage and a loss-limit effect. As a result, the options market is expected to lead the stock index market. In addition, in the case of bad news, profits from informed trading cannot be realized in the underlying stock index market because of the restriction on short selling. Therefore, in a declining market, the lead effect of the options market may become stronger. As a result, with a rising trend, call options are expected to lead the stock index, whereas in a declining trend put options would be expected to lead. We assume that it is easy for investors to receive information when the stock market moves on a large-scale, and that this enables them to examine the difference in the lead-lag relationship between the stock index and options markets.The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains in detail the empirical methodology adopted. Then, the data section describes the sample data, and the empirical results section presents the empirical results regarding several hypotheses. Finally, Section 4.6 presents the conclusions and a summary of the results.\n2 Empirical methodology: 2.1 Co-integration and error-correction model\n3 Data: KOSPI 200 stock index options are based on the KOSPI 200 stock index, which consists of 200 constituent blue-chip stocks of the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) and European-style options. The KOSPI 200 stock index options market, which was opened on July 7, 1997, began with unprecedented enthusiasm. During the five-year period from 1999 to 2003, the KSE options market ranked, in terms of trading volume, as the most heavily traded options market in the world, and annual trading volume reached almost 1890 million contracts in 2002. Obviously, the main explanation for this extraordinary growth was the interest and enthusiasm of the investors in the market. In addition, the exercise style of the KOSPI 200 stock index options market is European, and thus contracts can be exercised only on the expiration date. Hence, our test results are unaffected by the complications that result from the early exercise feature of American options.The sample period includes data from January 2002 to July 2004. Minute-by-minute transaction prices for the KOSPI 200 stock index options were obtained from the KSE. The 91-day certificate of deposit yields are used as the risk-free interest rates, and were obtained from the Korea Bond Pricing and Korea Rating Co. In the following section, we explain the criteria that were employed to filter the data used in the empirical tests:* To eliminate any liquidity-related biases, options with less than six days or more than 60 days to expiration were excluded.* Five-minute data were sorted from the minute-by-minute data of options prices[5].* The following condition of no arbitrage had to be satisfied for inclusion in the test: Equation 4 where Ct,t and Pt,t are the call and put option-price data in t periods from time, respectively, and Bt,t denotes a zero-coupon bond that pays 1 in t periods from time t.* As simultaneous bids and offers start from 2:50 p.m., only transactions from 9:00 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. were employed in the test.* As it was necessary to use actual traded options data only, we adopted only those data where an actual transaction occurred. This option volume was not equal to that occurring five minutes previously.* To mitigate the impact of price discreteness in option valuation, prices lower than 0.2 were excluded from the sample.\n4 Empirical results: 4.1 Market microstructure effects\n5 Conclusion: We studied the price discovery role of KOSPI 200 stock index options. We conducted various analyses on the assumption that options have different information according to moneyness, and followed a specific option pricing model, the BS model. First, to eliminate the possibility of errors associated with choosing a specific option pricing model, we employed the stochastic volatility option pricing model of Heston (1993) and other research, to confirm its usefulness, and to compare the results with the BS model. Second, we examined whether the OTM options purchased by individual investors, who account for over 50 percent of the trading volume of the options market and generally have a speculative purpose, have a stronger price discovery role than options with other moneyness. Finally, we tested whether options have a stronger price discovery role in bullish and bearish markets than in normal markets.We showed that the stock index leads the implied index estimated from both the BS and Heston (1993) models. As a result, irrespective of the option pricing model used, a lead effect of the stock index market to the options market was observed. The evidence examined here calls into question previous work in this area. The general consensus in the literature is that the options market leads the stock index market. This is supported by the trading cost hypothesis suggested by Fleming et al. (1996), which argued that the derivative markets give investors much lower trading costs than stock index markets. In addition, the lead-lag relationships between the markets are in accordance with the leverage effect hypothesis, which argues that derivatives markets should lead the stock index markets. Our results, which used more refined data and a more general methodology, indicate that the consensus on the Korean financial markets may be wrong.Second, OTM options, which individual investors prefer, do not improve the lead effect of the options market. This result shows that individual investors in Korean financial markets are not informed traders. Most trading volume involves individual investors in the KOSPI stock index options market, but they do not strengthen the lead effect.Finally, in a stock index market with marked increases or decreases, the interrelationship between the two markets is strengthened. However, the lead effect of the stock index market on the options market remains unchanged. This result is consistent with the general viewpoint that options are an instrument for volatility trading. In addition, this result seems to be brought about not by informed trading according to foresight but by speculative trading by individual investors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the price discovery role of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index 200 (KOSPI 200) stock index options market in contrast to other developed options markets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The price discovery roles of the stock and options markets using the error-correction model derived from the co-integration relationship are examined. Various analyses are conducted. First, Heston's stochastic volatility option pricing model is employed to confirm its usefulness, and compare the results with the Black and Scholes (BS) model. Second, whether the out of the money (OTM) options purchased by individual investors have a stronger price discovery role than options with other moneyness is examined. Finally, whether options have a stronger price discovery role in bullish or bearish markets than in normal markets is tested.\nFindings: - It is found that stock index prices lead implied index prices estimated from option prices using both BS and Heston models. In regards to the OTM options, the lead-effect of real stock index to implied index prices holds. Also it is shown that there is a weak rise in the lead effect of the options to the stock index, but the lead effect of stock index market rules over that of the options market.\nOriginality/value: - The paper examines the price discovery role of the KOSPI 200 stock index options market in contrast to other developed options markets and the results indicate that the consensus on the Korean financial markets may be incorrect.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Generation Y's dining information seeking and sharing behavior on social networking sites: An exploratory study	[ "Information sharing", "Generation Y", "Consumer opinion leadership", "Consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence", "Dining information seeking", "Social networking websites" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social networking sites (SNS), as recent technology innovation, have considerably affected the hospitality industry (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). Various online communities, whether consumer- or market-developed, provide consumers with an opportunity to write reviews of and provide feedback about various brands available in the marketplace (Bailey, 2005). The use of the internet is characterized by increased participation and interaction of users to create and share knowledge and experiences, express themselves and communicate. Mackenzie (2011) compiled various marketing studies and reported that 81 percent of the online population received advice from friends and followers relating to a purchase through SNS and 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision. Consumers exchange opinions online about not only retail products but also restaurants and dining experiences. Diners use SNS to acquire dining-related information and share their personal experiences, comments, opinions, reviews, meal pictures, and suggestions. Many people now consult more than friends and relatives when seeking a restaurant, by turning to online guides and social media (Pantelidis, 2010). Thus, online reviews and shared experiences influence more than $10 billion in purchases every year (Compete, 2007), and a recent survey revealed that 92 percent of online users read reviews before making purchase decisions (Channel Advisor, 2010).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Social networking sites (SNS)\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Preliminary analysis\n5. Discussion, implications, limitations, and further research: Generation Y exerts a powerful influence on modern society as its members progress through different life stages (Morton, 2002). In particular, it has emerged as a major group in the restaurant industry. This study has aimed to raise marketers' awareness of Generation Y consumers; to market successfully to this generation, marketers should realize where these young consumers tend to spend their time and money. They are highly sociable and technologically savvy (Metcalf, 2006). The results of this study further confirm that Generation Yers are heavy users of a wide variety of SNS, though the three most popular sites are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. On average, Generation Y seeks and shares dining information on SNS at a moderate frequency, though a small proportion of Generation Y exhibits very active information seeking and sharing behavior. These findings highlight the importance of social media marketing, in the sense that companies and restaurants must recognize and exploit the power of social media. Bearing in mind the large number of Generation Yers using SNS, marketers should open new channels to reach this emerging growth segment. For example, instead of distributing flyers and menus on the streets, restaurants might build Facebook fan pages to connect with diners and post commercials or promotions on SNS. If a restaurant does not offer such online interactions, it could be losing out on a vast number of potential patrons. Restaurants also might create their own SNS to help Generation Yers find and engage with them online. Some restaurants already have started deploying such methods; Chipotle's company policy mandates that someone answer every Facebook post, whether positive or negative, and typically within an hour or two. As Zagat has warned, restaurants should never underestimate how far the words \"thank you\" can go (Drell, 2011). Restaurants also can benefit uniquely from SNS by using them as showcases for food, explaining the origins of menu items, and even showing videos of chefs in action. Another technique might be to post beautiful pictures of the dishes, because people enjoy looking at artful food (Drell, 2011). Further techniques involve generating new service ideas from SNSs (Sigala, 2012). Restaurants can use SNS as public relations tools too, by posting press information. These efforts all should help restaurants drive traffic to their websites. Because SNS are about making connections, and considering the importance of Generation Y, restaurants should connect with Generation Yers through SNS.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Since the advent of the internet, social networking sites (SNS) have grown rapidly in popularity. This paper aims to explore Generation Y's information seeking and sharing behavior with regard to information about SNS; it also investigates the impact of consumer characteristics and gender differences on information seeking and sharing behaviors, to help marketers and researchers gain better insight into Generation Y consumers and social media marketing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A self-administered survey was conducted among Generation Y college students. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and Mann-Whitney U-tests were employed to address the research questions.\nFindings: Generation Y'ers are heavy users of SNS. Consumer opinion leadership (COL) and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII) affect Generation Y's dining information seeking and sharing behavior on SNS. No gender differences emerged.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research extends COL and CSII, from general consumer behavior to dining-related behavior, and offers insights into the information seeking and sharing behavior of Generation Y. In practical terms, it raises marketers' awareness of Generation Y consumers and highlights the importance of social media marketing. A limitation of this study is the sample size and generalizability of the results.\nOriginality/value: This study represents a first attempt to use COL and CSII to explain dining behavior and link these two consumer characteristics with social media marketing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of CSR on consumer-corporate connection and brand loyalty: A cross cultural investigation	[ "Global brand management", "Corporate brand loyalty", "Corporate competence associations", "CSR associations", "Personal self-concept connection", "Social self-concept connection" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Brands play an essential role in developing and maintaining customer relationship as well as determining corporate marketing performance (Schau et al., 2009; Sprott et al., 2009). Previous research has pointed out that global brands are beneficial for firms because they provide global identity and enhance economies of scale in manufacturing, marketing, and research and development activities (Holt et al., 2004; Ozsomer and Altaras, 2008; Strizhakova et al., 2008).\nTheoretical background: Corporate associations\nA model and research hypotheses: Based on previous research on brand loyalty, corporate associations, self-connection, and national culture, we developed a theoretical model in which a consumer's corporate associations and self-concept connect to the consumer's loyalty to corporate brand are lined, along with features regarding the moderating role of national culture (see Figure 1).\nResearch method: Data from a survey sample were collected to assess the instrument's reliability and validity as well as to test the hypothesized relationships of the research model. To develop the survey instrument, various items were identified from the literature on corporate competence associations, CSR associations, self-concept connections and corporate brand loyalty, and were modified to fit this study.\nResults: We used a structural equation modeling approach and the AMOS 21 program to fit the measurement and structural models. Detailed estimation results are reported as follows.\nDiscussion: The results of our study showed that consumers' corporate competence associations were positively and significantly related to their personal self-concept connection. Consumers' CSR associations were positively and significantly related to their social self-concept connection. Additionally, consumers' personal self-concept connection and social self-concept connection appear to be positively and significantly related to their corporate brand loyalty. These results are consistent with the findings in previous research (Choi and Park, 2011; Swanimathan et al., 2007).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship among consumers' corporate associations, consumer-corporate connection, and corporate brand loyalty, with a particular focus on the moderating role of national culture.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The conceptual framework is tested on American and South Korean subjects. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypothesized framework.\nFindings: The positive influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations on social self-concept connection is stronger in collectivist than individualist culture, whereas the positive influence of personal self-concept connection on his/her loyalty to the corporate brand is stronger in individualist than collectivist culture.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study relied on participants' memory about a product and a manufacturing company of a product. It is possible that their memories about the product and manufacturing company could be incomplete and be tainted by their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a particular product they experienced rather than overall brand image of the company's products.\nPractical implications: Firms are advised to assess how customers of the target market across different national cultures perceive their CSR initiatives and corporate competences in deciding on the type of images and associations to invest and build, that is, either authentic CSR activities or product quality competence.\nOriginality/value: A substantiation of the moderating role of national culture on the impact of a consumer's corporate associations on his/her self-concept connections as well as on the impact of self-concept connections on his/her corporate brand loyalty.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Gendered corrosion of occupational knowledge: Contracting-out Israeli social services	[ "Gender", "Social services", "Caring services", "Contracting out", "Occupational standards", "Sennett" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In his analysis of the ways in which the workplace has changed since the late 1980s, Richard Sennett (1998) directed attention to a dimension of flexibility that he named \"discontinuous reinvention.\" This dimension refers to the dominance of the principle of \"reinventing institutions decisively and irrevocably so that the present becomes discontinuous from the past\" (p. 48). From a feminist political economy perspective, this principle can be understood in three different ways: the first suggests that discontinuous reinvention enables the disruption of the traditional gender hierarchies. With women's work in care service occupations continuing to be devalued and in very persistent ways (Duffy, 2011), discontinuous reinvention is not applicable in this case. The second suggests the disruption of the controlling character of many practices used by those in caring occupations, reinforcing the oppression of those in need (Abbott and Meerabeau, 1999). Given the still-weak influence of critical social work, nursing, and pedagogy in public systems (Gardner et al., 2006), neither is discontinuous reinvention applicable in this case. The third suggests the disruption of the 1970s and 1980s feminist achievements that enabled unions and professional associations to protect the value of skill in care service occupations (Armstrong, 2013). In light of Hugman's (1999) analysis of the ways in which managerialism has consistently contributed to de-professionalization, it appears that discontinuous reinvention may be an important feature of a feminist political economy. In this paper, I use Sennett's notions of \"discontinuous reinvention\" and \"the concentration of power without centralization\" to elaborate on the understanding of the latter interpretation, focussing on the possibility raised by Sennett (1998) that \"to the economics of inequality the new order thus adds new forms of unequal, arbitrary power within the organization\" (p. 55).\nTheoretical framework: According to Sennett, character is the ethical value we find in our work, the pride we can take in working properly; it is grounded in an individual's connection to others, and it consists of a long-term aspect of workplace-related emotional experience. Corrosion of character is the process via which shame gradually replaces this pride - not merely the shame of not being able to work in ways one believes one should, but also the shame of being emotionally dependent on how the work is done and on the others doing it. As workplace culture becomes one of self-sufficiency and self-control, the realization of one's dependency on the work and on others leads to a sense of failure and distrust. Sennett views this process as destructive not only to the self: \"Shame about dependence has a practical consequence. It erodes mutual trust and commitment, and the lack of these social bonds threatens the workings of any collective enterprise\" (p. 141).\nMethodological approach: When public agencies seek to privatize a service, a commissioning process begins wherein public sector budgeters must decide how generous the funding will be while taking occupational standards into account so that the quality of service is assured. The occupational standards administrators involved in the process have different titles in different countries: \"commissioners\" in the UK; \"bureau-professionals\" or \"welfare professionals\" in Europe, and \"program staff\" in the USA.\nFindings: Gender emerges from the analysis as implicated in three instances where administrators' weak negotiating positions prevent care-related knowledge from shaping budgeting decisions: first, when they are serving as members of the budgeting committee; second, when they are trying to convince service deliverers to recognize their occupational insight; and third, when realizing that existing services' quality and the job quality provided therein are low. I analyze these three instances, focussing on how a gender hierarchy that undermines caring knowledge is reproduced.\nLack of support for occupational knowledge: Legitimacy, worth, and a sense of rational operation are all derived from the meticulous attention and respect shown to the occupational standards administrators at the preliminary stages of the contracting-out process. Because often the occupational standards administrators are women who have amassed experience in various social services, and who struggle to protect that skill recognition, their emotions become relevant to the analysis of the processes that shape the resulting contract.\nA foreign language defines what's important: The occupational standards administrators' pride is built in particularly powerful ways when a new public sector function is being contracted-out. At these preliminary stages, their opinions are given heightened attention. According to Tatiana F., the dialogical approach soon disappears, replaced by the indignity of powerlessness where their voices are almost completely ignored:\nOccupational standards administrators' resistance: Professional knowledge is further ignored when regulating services is needed. In some cases, during the contract management stage, the occupational standards administrators find themselves just accepting the low quality of the services, unable to express resistance. In already operating services, they are already aware of the outcomes that ignoring their knowledge will have on the service. Here's how a male occupational standards administrator describes his feminized position in which his caring expert knowledge is ignored:\nDiscussion: Managerialization, de-professionalization, and user empowerment are generally recognized as key developments in the administration of social services since the late 1990s in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and Israel, among other countries. While several authors have already addressed the influence these trends have on administrators in the field (Carey, 2014; Clarke, 1999), little scholarly investigation has targeted the impact that they have on occupational standards administrators whose knowledge could shape the quality of jobs for employees in contracted-out services. Moreover, their knowledge embeds the historical accumulation of critical insights proposed by research in these areas. Thus, their deep understanding of workloads has always been recognized as salient for both quality of caring jobs as well as quality of services. By targeting this impact, a power struggle is exposed, one that engenders daily violations of occupational standards' administrators' occupational identities and pride.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: When public agencies seek to privatize a service, a commissioning process begins wherein public sector budgeters must decide how generous the funding will be while taking occupational standards into account so that the quality of service is assured. One important area of occupational standards is the required personnel and job sizes of certified employees. Not enough attention has been directed to how occupational standards' related knowledge is treated in the process. The purpose of this paper is to: first, investigate how the commissioning process is experienced by Israeli, often female, occupational standards administrators. Second, proposing a gendered perspective on Sennett's corrosion of character thesis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: As part of an institutional ethnography project, 16 interviews were conducted with (14 female and two male) occupational standards administrators at the Israeli Welfare, Education and Health Ministries.\nFindings: The routine of commissioning involves a stage of using occupational standards' knowledge and experience, and a stage of dismissing it. The \"corrosion of character\" embedded in the dismissal stage undermines historical achievements in the area of recognizing caring work and skills.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is unable to distinguish between the specific caring occupations discussed.\nPractical implications: Service delivery modes has to develop into more publicly visible forums where occupational standards' are protected.\nSocial implications: The continuous corrosion of occupational knowledge may result in the demise of professionalization in care service occupations causing increasingly more polarization and poverty among their employees.\nOriginality/value: While Sennett's thesis has already been found plausible for understanding public servants' experiences of the \"new public management,\" until recently, not enough attention has been devoted to the commissioning processes' gendered implications for contract-based delivery of services. This paper examines these implications for the power struggle between the feminist achievements protecting skill recognition in caring occupations, and policy makers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The philosophical foundation of the lecture-versus-case controversy: Its implications for faculty teaching, research, and service	[ "Educational philosophy", "Teaching", "Lectures", "Case studies", "Academic staff" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Any adequate comparison between the lecture and the case methods of instruction necessarily requires a comparison of their underlying philosophies. This is based on the premise that foundational philosophies or worldviews underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction. More specifically, this paper shows how each foundational philosophy underlies how faculty teaching, research, and service are performed.The comparison between the lecture and the case instruction methods translates into the comparison between their underlying philosophies and methodologies. However, the paper warns that the evaluation of philosophies is self-defeating since each philosophy is coherent and consistent, based on its underlying set of assumptions, and that there does not exist an independent point of reference to be used for evaluation.This paper crosses three existing lines of literature: foundational philosophies, educational philosophies, and educational methods. More specifically, its frame of reference is Burrell and Morgan (1979) and Morgan (1983, 1985) and applies their ideas and insights to educational philosophies and educational methods. Clearly, a thorough treatment of all the relevant issues referred to in this work is well beyond just one paper. Within such limits, this paper aims at only providing an overview of the topic and leaving further discussions of all the relevant issues to the references cited herein. The aim of this paper is not so much to create a new piece of puzzle as it is to fit the existing pieces of puzzle together in order to make sense of it. In implementing this aim, the paper has benefited from the extant literature cited in the reference section[1].The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses how any foundational philosophy or worldview can be positioned on a continuum formed by four basic worldviews or paradigms. Section 3 discusses the major educational philosophies and their correspondence with these paradigms. Section 4 notes that each educational philosophy favors a certain educational methodology, which in turn determines the way or the method that the instruction is performed. More specifically, this section shows how each foundational philosophy underlies how faculty teaching, research, and service are performed. Section 5 is the conclusion.\n2 Foundational philosophies or paradigms: Any adequate analysis of the role of foundational philosophies or worldviews in educational philosophy must recognize the assumptions that underwrite a given foundational philosophy or worldview. Educational philosophy can usefully be conceived in terms of four key worldviews or paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon mutually exclusive views of the social world. Each generates educational philosophies, instructional methodologies, ways of instructions, methods of research, and performance of services which are different from those of other paradigms.In order to understand a new paradigm, one should be fully aware of the assumptions upon which his/her own paradigm is based. Moreover, to understand a new paradigm one has to explore it from within, since the concepts in one paradigm cannot easily be interpreted in terms of those of another. No attempt should be made to criticize or evaluate a paradigm from the outside. This is self-defeating since it is based on a separate paradigm. All four paradigms can be easily criticized and ruined in this way.Based on Burrell and Morgan (1979), each educational philosophy can be related to one of the four broad worldviews or paradigms. The four paradigms are based on different assumptions about the nature of social science (i.e. the objective-subjective dimension), and the nature of society (i.e. the dimension of regulation-radical change), as in Figure 1. Owing to space limitations, this paper focuses on the first two paradigms[2].2.1 The functionalist paradigm\n3 Educational philosophies: Section 2 discussed how any foundational philosophy or worldview can be positioned on a continuum formed by four basic paradigms. This section discusses the corresponding major educational[3] philosophies[4].3.1 Realism and education\n4 Implications for faculty teaching, research, and service: This section discusses the implications of the previous two sections with respect to the lecture-versus-case methods of instruction. For this purpose, this section brings major aspects of the previous two sections to the forefront, elaborates on their connections and implications for the way or the method faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.The previous two sections, in essence, have shown that foundational philosophies or worldviews underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology[7]. In other words, as one moves from the objective to the subjective end of the spectrum in Figure 1, the in-class instructional methodology favored changes from totally having a lecture orientation to completely having a discussion orientation, e.g. a case orientation.In fact, for the realist, whose position on the objective-subjective continuum in Figure 1 is to the far right, the teacher is a guide. The real world exists, and the teacher is responsible for introducing the student to it. To do this, the teacher uses lectures, demonstrations, and sensory experiences. The teacher does not do it in a random or haphazard way; he/she must not only introduce the students to nature, but also show them its regularities.At the other extreme on the objective-subjective continuum in Figure 1, for the pragmatist, truth is relative, reality is probabilistic, and structural relationships are contingent. Therefore, teaching and learning are most effectively accomplished through discussion rather than exploration. Since phenomena are intrinsically complex simple theoretical relationships cannot explain them and little of value can be communicated directly from the teacher to the student. Under these circumstances, the learning process must emphasize the development of understanding, judgement, and even intuition.In short, as one moves from the objective to the subjective end of the continuum in Figure 1 the nature of reality viewed changes and along with it changes the foundational philosophy, its corresponding educational philosophy, and its instructional methodology[8]. That is, a move from lecture methodology to discussion methodology, e.g. case methodology.The lecture method may be summed up as follows: teaching is telling, knowledge is facts, and learning is recall. That is, teachers are responsible for delivering content, in the form of factual information. Students are responsible for receiving it. The relationship between teacher and student is satisfactorily completed when the student has successfully transferred material back to the teacher at the required moment.The lecture method has great advantages. It is efficient and economical of the time, energy, and the patience of instructor and student. It produces brilliant results. A student raised under it seems to possess a sureness, a precision, a firming of grasp remarkable for the relatively short time when he/she is compelled to spend on acquiring his/her knowledge.The lecture method is of great power when the transfer of knowledge is the primary academic objective. But when the objective is critical thinking (as in the liberal arts education) or problem-solving (as in the professional schools), and the development of qualities such as sensitivity, cooperation, and zest for discovery, then discussion pedagogy offers substantial advantages. To achieve these goals, both teachers and students must modify their traditional roles and responsibilities.The case method starts with an entirely different purpose and ends with an entirely different result. Professional people must be able to meet in action the problems arising out of new situations of an ever-changing environment. Education, accordingly, would consist of acquiring facility to act in the presence of new experience. It asks not how a student may be trained to know, but how a student be trained to act.The case method of instruction is a learning process consisting of a complicated interaction of the case situation, individual student, overall class section, and the teacher. This method is an effort to blend cognitive and affective learning modes.Wherever decisions are required and issues must be solved, the case method is proving itself a most effective educational vehicle. Cases are the distinguishing characteristic between case teaching and other forms of instruction. Using cases requires a deeper understanding of what makes their effectiveness a reality. There is no one best way of teaching with cases.There are other methods of teaching: lectures, movies, field trips, readings. Any way students can learn is a good way. There are places where the case method is not ideally situated. But, broadly speaking, in business there is nothing like it for explaining the decision process.Next, it is shown how each foundational philosophy implies a certain way of viewing and performing faculty teaching. The roles of foundational philosophy in faculty research and service are discussed afterwards.4.1 Faculty teaching: science of teaching vs art of teaching\n5 Conclusion: This paper showed how foundational philosophies or worldviews underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction. More specifically, this paper showed how each foundational philosophy underlies how faculty teaching, research, and service are performed.The paper emphasized that there is no unique evaluative perspective for assessing instructional methods generated by different foundational philosophies. Therefore, it becomes necessary to get beyond the idea that instructional methods can be evaluated in an absolute way.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To see how educational philosophies that underlie lecture and case methods of teaching are related to how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper is based on the premise that foundational philosophies, worldviews or paradigms underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction.\nFindings: - The findings of this paper are that each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn determines not only the way that the instruction is performed but also how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper implies that differences between the underlying world views of lecture and case methods of teaching similarly lead to differences in many other aspects of the teaching and learning process.\nPractical implications: - This paper implies that, in practice, faculty would perform their teaching, research, and service in a more consistent manner if they become consciously aware of the underlying philosophy of their teaching method.\nOriginality/value: - The original contribution of this paper is that it shows how in a systematic manner the differences in teaching philosophy lead to differences in what faculty do in all areas of their activities: teaching, research, and service.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Loyalty formation toward Halal food: Integrating the Quality-Loyalty model and the Religiosity-Loyalty Model	[ "Satisfaction", "Religiosity", "Value", "Loyalty", "Halal food" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Halal food is food where ingredients and manufacturing processes are in accordance with Islamic values and teachings. This food is appealing to Muslim customers because it fulfils their physiological needs while adhering to their religious obligations. Globally, Halal food sales are projected to reach $3.7 trillion in 2019 (www.halalhighlights.com/HH%20Feb14.html). This huge demand is driven by the increasing Muslim consumers' awareness of halal products, a growing global Muslim population, and the perception that the product is safe, hygienic, tasty and is a wholesome product (Ab Talib et al., 2016; Awan et al., 2015). Thus, this industry has been steadily expanding in most countries whose population includes a large number of Muslims. With its huge demand, the Halal food industry, especially in Muslim countries, is facing fierce competition not only among the Halal food brands but also from conventional food brands. In this promising but competitive environment, comprehending loyalty toward Halal food is imperative from a theoretical as well as managerial perspective.\nLiterature review and hypotheses: Loyalty toward Halal food\nResearch method: Considering the need to have valid and reliable measurement instruments, this research adapted measurements from past research studies and adjusted them to fit with the context of this research. Food quality is measured by four items derived from past research (Ali, Xiaoling, Sherwani, and Ali, 2018; Suhartanto, Chen, Mohi and Sosianika, 2018). Four items that reflect social, quality, price and the emotional were used to measure the customer's perceived value (Jen et al., 2011; Lai and Chen, 2011). Customer satisfaction is measured by three items (Ali, Xiaoling, Sherwani, and Ali, 2018; Suhartanto, Farhani, Muflih and Setiawan, 2018), while customer loyalty is measured by three items (Abd Rahman et al., 2015; Suhartanto, Chen, Mohi and Sosianika, 2018). The Religiosity scale is measured by ten items and was developed from a number of previous studies (Ali, Xiaoling, Sherwani, and Ali, 2018; Rehman and Shabbir, 2010; Suhartanto, Farhani, Muflih and Setiawan, 2018). All of these variable constructs were gauged with a five-point Likert scale, strongly disagree (1), and disagree to strongly agree (5). To warrant the construct's validity, three Islamic studies scholars were asked to review the theoretical concept of the variables and their measurement. By following this process, the instrument (in Indonesian) was pretested with 20 Halal food customers to evaluate the suitability of the questionnaire instructions and questions. Feedback from the pretest was then evaluated, and several changes were made to assure that it was reliable for this research.\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussion and theoretical implication: Based on the model fit assessment, this study offers a new loyalty model, by integrating the Quality-Loyalty Model (including the variables of food quality, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty) and the Religiosity-Loyalty Model (including the variables religiosity, satisfaction, and loyalty). This result is important as the previous studies (Ali, Xiaoling, Sherwani, and Ali, 2018; Awan et al., 2015; Fu et al., 2018; Hidayat et al., 2015) have tested the model separately to explain loyalty toward both products as well as services. From a theoretical perspective, this study confirms the existence of both loyalty formation models for Halal food. However, when these models are integrated into a single model, it offers a better explanation on how loyalty toward Halal food is formed. This finding is imperative as it extends the existing theoretical model of customer loyalty toward food products (Ha and Jang, 2010; Suhartanto, Chen, Mohi and Sosianika, 2018). This finding suggests that in religion-related products such as Halal food, besides product quality, religiosity should be included in the loyalty model. Thus, future studies related to religion-related products should integrate both models rather than using a model separately to explain customer loyalty.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to integrate the Quality-Loyalty Model and the Religiosity-Loyalty Model to assess loyalty formation toward Halal food.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data from 320 respondents were collected in Bandung Indonesia through a survey. A partial least-square modeling was employed to evaluate the association between food quality, religiosity, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty.\nFindings: This study discloses that the two integrated loyalty models are fit, indicating that incorporating these loyalty models provides a better comprehension of loyalty toward Halal food. Further, this study confirms the importance of both food quality and religiosity in determining loyalty.\nPractical implications: This research offers an important finding for Halal food managers to develop customer loyalty through food quality and religiosity. This research recommends that Halal food managers, besides obtaining Halal certification, need to constantly innovate and adopt world food-quality standards to deal with customers' constantly changing demands.\nOriginality/value: This research is the first that integrates the Quality-Loyalty Model and the Religiosity-Loyalty Model to get a better understanding of loyalty formation toward Halal food.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Platform management: Implication for new product development and supply chain management	[ "New products", "Product development", "Supply chain management", "Buyer‐seller relationships", "Hearing aids", "Denmark" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Management attention has moved from competition between firms to competition between supply chains, encompassing all firms from raw materials supplier to the end customer. The management's capability to establish trust-based and long-term relationships with suppliers and other strategic partners becomes a crucial competitive parameter (Christopher, 2005). The increased integration and collaboration among companies within the supply chain increases the complexity of management and control. It requires new management skills in terms of developing inter-organizational relationships with strategic partners.Shorter product life cycles, increasing customization of products, in addition to supply chain integration (Bagchi and Skjoett-Larsen, 2003; Mouritsen et al., 2003) are encouraging many firms to increase outsourcing of various activities, not only in services but also in NPD (Chiesa et al., 2004; Veloso and Fixson, 2001), or to collaborate with suppliers (Bonaccorsi and Lipparini, 1994; Dowlatshahi, 1998). Each industry evolves at a different rate, depending on its product, process, and organization clock speed (Fine, 1998). Industries, such as electronics, media and communications, and biotechnologies are fast-clock speed industries. In these industries, Fine claims that competitive advantage arises from concurrent design of products, processes, and capabililities. The literature often emphasizes the impact of the initial stages of NPD on the overall performance of the development projects (Khurana and Rosenthal, 1998; Wheelwright and Clark, 1992; Bacon et al., 1994; Ulrich and Eppinger, 2004; Petersen et al., 2005). The initial stage includes planning, concept development, and system level design. Platform design strategies and related sourcing strategies are often devised during this stage. The extent to which a system can be decomposed with well-specified and standardized interfaces determines whether component outsourcing is a viable strategy, which has a great impact on when to involve and collaborate with suppliers in NPD (Mikkola, 2003). Ragatz et al. (2002) found that technology uncertainty has a negative impact on cost results, but no direct effect on quality or cycle time. The results from their study showed that integration of the supplier's technology roadmaps into the development cycle was critical to ensure that target costs were met.Involving suppliers early in NPD can help firms reduce costs, reduce concept-to-customer development time, improve quality, and provide innovative technologies (Handfield et al., 1999). However, it requires a great effort and many tradeoffs need to be considered. Wynstra et al. (2001), for instance, identify four driving factors that can affect the significance of the different management areas: the size and complexity of the organization; the type of production technology employed; the importance of R&D processes; and the dependence on suppliers.\nResearch objectives: This paper discusses the implications of platform management for NPD and sourcing strategies. Specifically, our objective is to examine the following research questions:RQ1. To what extent are firms involving suppliers in NPD, and at which stage of the NPD process are suppliers invited to participate in platform designs?\nLiterature review: Platform management\nResearch methodology: This is an explorative study as we ask \"which\" and \"what\" questions to investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context and use multiple sources of evidence. Therefore, a case study is the most appropriate research methodology, according to Yin (2003).The study seeks to identify some of the major issues and problems firms face when they collaborate with suppliers in NPD. We also seek to understand the process in which customization of products is translated back to the focal firm. In order to illustrate the implications of ESI in NPD and the impact of product customization and customer-interfaces, we have chosen Oticon, a leading edge Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, for a case study. The hearing aids industry is a niche industry, of which three of the five largest manufacturers in the world are from Denmark. Furthermore, the production of hearing aids requires an advanced technology and NPD has a very important role to ensure that these firms stay competitive in this market.From the NPD part of the study, face-to-face and semi-structured interviews (with open-ended as well as descriptive questions) were performed with the following respondents from Oticon: the Project Manager and the Integrated Circuit (IC) Designer. The respondents have been personally involved in the NPD processes of the SUMO platform design (the focus of our case study) from the very beginning. The interviews were followed up by telephone conversations and e-mails. From the VMI and customer relations' part of the study, personal interviews were performed with key personnel from the supply chain department at the production plant in Jutland, including the supply chain manager, the inbound and outbound logistics managers. Interview narratives were sent to parties from both parts of the study for corrections and final approval.Case study: Oticon\nManagerial and theoretical implications: The case illustrates the dilemma a firm may face regarding ESI in NPD. On the one hand, Oticon wants to keep control of the development of platforms and core components. On the other hand, a few suppliers have the control of the sophisticated technology, which is necessary to produce competitive products. There are only two relevant suppliers in the world, who are currently capable of producing the receiver used in SUMO. To some extent, these suppliers also share knowledge and technology with Oticon's fiercest competitors. Therefore, there is an obvious risk that proprietary knowledge is leaked to the competitors.Another issue related to the use of sole suppliers for core components is the risk of disruptions in the supplies, caused by events such as bankruptcy, acquisition of the supplier by a competitor, plant fire or strikes. If such events happen, Oticon will not, in the short run, be able to replace the supplier with an alternative source. Oticon is very conscious about the potential problems of disruptions. Therefore, it balances the risk by working with the two receiver suppliers in order to ensure that they are both active in all areas. Such policy also ensures that the technical level of the suppliers is kept high.In order to reduce the risk of disruptions, Oticon is very careful with the supplier approval process. A supplier committee approves new suppliers. Evaluation criteria include financial issues, investments, quality, delivery reliability, certificates, and procedures. Several visits, both at Oticon's and at the supplier's premises, also take place prior to approval, and regularly after approval. The ability to provide customized products and quick response (QR) system is equally challenging.Oticon is a small company compared with the major electronics component suppliers. This raises the question, how buyers without leverage can become an interesting customer for large suppliers (Christiansen and Maltz, 2002)? Oticon's yearly demand for chips might not exceed more than a few hours of production capacity for a large chip manufacturer. Therefore, Oticon has to convince the chip manufacturer that it deserves a special interest, such as by sharing industry specific knowledge, which the supplier can sell to other customers, or by co-developing and testing new technology, which later on can be released to a broader market. Furthermore, companies such as Oticon, Bang & Olufsen, and Grundfos have a worldwide reputation for high-quality products, and are, therefore, valuable as references, even for large suppliers.In addition to ESI (supplier-buyer interface) and customization (supplier-customer interface), one needs also to consider the impacts of vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and QR systems. Oticon has applied both principles.Vendor-managed inventory\nConclusion and future research: The findings reported in this paper are based on a single case study. In order to generalize the findings from this study it is necessary to study more companies from different industries, with different technologies, competition, and contextual features. In order to generalize the findings from this study it is necessary to study more companies with different technologies, competition, and market settings. Although one case is reported, the authors have gained in-depth knowledge of the research questions posed at the beginning of the paper. The authors believe that some issues cannot be generalized, such as issues of supplier involvement, especially with issues related to platform strategies. Based on our three research questions, the following conclusions are arrived. For Oticon, which is a conservative company, SUMO project is one the projects of which suppliers were invited to collaborate in NPD. For the two unique components (IC and receiver), the suppliers were invited to participate in the manufacturing phase and early on the NPD process of the project, respectively. Furthermore, Oticon prefers to practice dual sourcing to reduce the risks associated with outsourcing, although the receiver for SUMO had only one supplier, which creates a strong interdependence between Oticon and its supplier. This creates a tremendous challenge for Oticon to achieve integration with its internal as well as external partners in the supply chain. In order to overcome this challenge, Oticon is listening more to its customers, and at the same time, involving more its key suppliers in its NPD processes.Collaboration with suppliers and customers enables a company to reduce response time and to adapt quicker to changes in the marketplace. The electronic industry is a clock speed industry with fast technological innovations, short product life cycle, and global competition. According to Fine (1998), the ultimate competence in a fast clock speed world is the ability to create and manage new capabilities while growing profits and adjusting to ever-faster clock speeds. In a supply chain a \"team\" of suppliers, finished goods manufacturers, distributors, service providers, and customers should be established in order to create and deliver high-quality products and related services. ESI in NPD and close collaboration with key suppliers, service providers, and customers seems to be a promising way to maintain competitive advantage in the hearing aid industry.However, there might well be differences from industry to industry. van der Valk and Wynstra (2005) studied supplier involvement in NPD in the food industry and concluded that food companies go through the same cycle, as do companies in other industries with more complex products and processes. Grant (2003) has studied the practices and methodologies that UK aerospace manufacturers have developed in integrating preferred suppliers in the product development process, and the potential benefits from closer integration at an early stage of the design cycle. Zirpoli and Caputo (2002) have analyzed buyer-supplier relationships in co-design activities in the Italian Fiat automotive industry. Their results show that the incentive, discipline, knowledge, and information sharing mechanisms, suggested by literature as effective tools to implement co-operative vertical relationship have proved to be too complex requiring specific organizational investments.For future research, we would like to investigate some theoretical questions posed in the previous section. We would also like to know more about how companies are dealing with concept of mass customization (with a focus on NPD and SCM).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To identify some of the major issues and problems firms face, when they collaborate with suppliers in new product development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents a case study of a leading Danish hearing aid manufacturer.\nFindings: - Early involvement of suppliers in new product development reduces time-to-market, but increases the risk that proprietary knowledge is leaked to the competitors. Therefore, the supplier approval process is very important.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper discusses the implications of platform management for new product development and sourcing strategies. The paper is based on a single case study. In order to generalize the findings, it is necessary to study more companies from different industries, with different technologies, competition, and contextual features.\nPractical implications: - The paper illustrates the risk of single sourcing and raises the question, how buyers without leverage can become an interesting customer for large suppliers.\nOriginality/value: - The paper analyzes the implications of platform management for new product development and supply chain management at the interfaces between focal company and its suppliers and customers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identifying the underlying structure of perceived service fairness in restaurants	[ "Customer services quality", "Food service", "Factor analysis", "Restaurants" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Since an implicit promise of fairness commands a central role in human relations, enhancing perceptions of fairness as an effective route to business success has gained the attention of marketing practitioners and scholars (Seiders and Berry, 1998). Likewise, restaurant consumption involves a tremendous amount of human interaction beginning with greeting from the host, being assigned to a table, and interacting with service providers. Each part of this sequence is subject to considerations of fairness. How do you feel if other parties who came later than you were called in and seated before you? What if your server did not take your order in a timely manner? How do you feel if you think the food you ordered was reasonably priced? How do you feel if your server was attentive in providing good service? These episodes relate to the fundamental need for fairness and can ultimately affect the customer's decision to visit the restaurant again.Customers expect consumption experiences to be fair and judge their relationships with institutions and salespersons using fairness as a fundamental base (Martinez-Tur et al., 2006). Thus, customers' judgments of service fairness surface when their experience conflicts with their fairness standards and they sense either injustice or uniquely fair behavior (Martinez-Tur et al., 2006; Seiders and Berry, 1998). Previous research has focused primarily on the role of different facets of justice in understanding customer reactions to a firm's service failure and recovery efforts (Blodgett et al., 1997; Kelly and Davis, 1994; Palmer et al., 2000; Sundaram et al., 1997). However, justice perceptions are always present in consumption experiences, beyond the small percentage of customers who complain (Richins and Verhage, 1985; Swan and Oliver, 1989). Despite the fact that consideration of all service delivery situations (with or without service failure) provides a richer portrait of service fairness (Bowen et al., 1999), the significance of perceived service fairness in a more general context has often been neglected and has lacked empirical support.For decades, fairness has been viewed as a three-dimensional construct, comprised of distributive fairness, procedural fairness, and interactional fairness (Alexander and Ruderman, 1987; Bies and Shapiro, 1987). More recently, Colquitt (2001) has suggested that interactional justice can be further separated into two dimensions:1. interpersonal treatment; and2. informational justice.Despite previous research endeavors to reconstruct the dimensionality of justice, most studies have predominantly focused on service failure and the recovery process (Colquitt, 2001; Colquitt et al., 2001; Mattila and Cranage, 2005). However, customers may have the occasion to observe services from a fairness perspective beyond service failures. Since fairness perceptions are context-dependent (Brady and Dunn, 1995; Colquitt, 2001), the conceptualization of fairness in an all-inclusive service delivery process would not be congruent with the service failure context.Although the justice principles developed in social psychology may be useful in the contexts for which they were developed, they may have limitations when applied to specific consumption situations. For example, Deutsch (1985) criticized the measurement problems of the original justice theory in that it is difficult for consumers to assess input and output values at the same time. Swan and Oliver (1985) also argued that input/outcome operationalization was problematic because equity items in their study were factored together in certain buyer outcomes.Since there have been conflicting views regarding the specification of the dimensions of fairness and it has been suggested that fairness perceptions are context-dependent (Brady and Dunn, 1995; Colquitt, 2001), it might be expected that the conceptualization of fairness is not congruent with the dominant view of a service failure situation. Due to the lack of information on fairness-based evaluations beyond the service failure episodes, this study attempts to propose a new framework to evaluate perceived fairness during the whole service delivery process (a four-factor model of service fairness) and to test its appropriateness for explaining fairness concepts in comparison with that of the traditional view of justice principles (a three-factor model of service fairness). A contribution of this study is the elucidation of customer perceptions of fairness within, as well as outside of, the service failure context and the provision of empirical support for the theoretical recomposition of the fairness construct. Therefore, in this study, \"service fairness\" signifies consumers' perceived fairness within the context of an overall service experience with or without service failures.\nLiterature review: A traditional view of service fairness\nMethodology: Measurement items\nResults: Demographic profile of the sample\nDiscussion and implications: This study addressed the concept of \"fairness\" as a novel approach for evaluating services in restaurant settings and examined the underlying structure of service fairness in an all-inclusive service delivery context. To do so, the research employed questionnaire responses collected from real restaurant patrons during their restaurant experiences. Considering the under-explored nature of fairness within an inclusive service delivery context (with or without service failure), the traditional three-factor model of fairness and an alternative four-factor model of fairness were proposed and compared based on the fitness of each model to the data.One of the most important theoretical contributions of this study lies in its recomposition of the factor structure of service fairness. Although previous research has suggested and confirmed the four-factor structure of justice (distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice) in organizational justice, no study has assessed the four-dimensional view of fairness in a consumer behavior context. To this end, this study integrated customers' utility perspectives (benefits and sacrifice) with the original fairness theory in order to better understand the under-explored nature of service fairness in an all-inclusive service delivery context. Considering customer sacrifice and benefits, this study proposed a four-factor model of service fairness. Price fairness (the price paid) and procedural fairness (the time spent) were applied as the two representative constructs of service fairness in terms of consumer sacrifice, while outcome fairness (the favorability of the non-interactional form of service) and interactional fairness (the manner in which the customer was treated) were implemented as the key aspects of customer benefit. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that in a more general circumstance (with or without service failure), a four-factor model of service fairness was more appropriate for explaining fairness concepts in comparison with that of the traditional three-factor fairness dimensions, which has mostly been employed in the context of service failure. The results imply that the conceptualization of fairness within an inclusive service delivery context might not be congruent with the service failure context.Besides theoretical implications, this study also provides managerial implications. This study offers managers a perspective for how consumers evaluate service from a fairness standpoint. The supportive results of the proposed four-factor structure of service fairness enhance the understanding of how consumers perceive service fairness issues considering their benefits and sacrifices. In terms of customer sacrifices, perceived price can be the driving force in which a consumer decides to eat, therefore, restaurant managers should consider fairness issues when setting menu prices. Also, it would be advisable for restaurateurs to establish the strategic approach to time-based procedural fairness, such as ensuring \"first-come, first-served\" policy and prompt services without any delays. At the same time, restaurant managers should not ignore the significance of tangible outcomes because food quality may act as a basic qualifier for restaurants and core benefits to customers as well. In a competitive business environment, restaurant operators should preserve tangible outcomes at a level that meets or exceeds customer standards as a part of the overall service marketing strategy. Furthermore, restaurateurs need to focus on implementing policies that facilitate evaluations of high interactional fairness and train customer contact employees to present the appropriate traits, such as politeness, courtesy, impartiality and fair-mindedness.This study also provides the base information for investigating which aspects of service fairness are critical in eliciting favorable emotional and behavioral consequences. For example, the violation of procedural fairness may cause negative emotions and lead to behavioral outcomes. Also, the excellence of interpersonal interaction between the customer and contact employee could affect consumer emotions in a positive way. Therefore, restaurant managers could improve the probability of favorable behavioral intentions by establishing procedural fairness and improving the quality of repatronage behavior.Our results should be interpreted with caution because of the limitations of the study. This study did not involve a priori emotions and attitude of customers, which might have some influence on their answers to perceived service fairness. Also, the data were collected from only casual dining restaurants. The perceived service fairness would not be the same in a restaurant in which the average guest check would be higher. Therefore, generalizing the results to other segments of the restaurant industry may not work.Moreover, this study proposed and tested the applicability of fairness concepts in all-inclusive service delivery context (including non-service failure situations and service failure situations). Thus, unless something goes wrong, awareness of fairness might not be operative for all customers. If this is the case, it would enforce the customers to use fairness perceptions. Even though this study proposed a suitability of fairness for evaluating restaurant services even in non-failure situation, the relevancy of the fairness concepts needs to be further examined in the future study to validate the results of this study. From a methodological standpoint, further fairness research in restaurants should benefit from refining and revalidating the fairness items applied in this study and the factor structure which could be rather different in a failure and a non-failure situation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the applicability of fairness concepts as a lens for evaluating services in restaurants addressing service fairness issues within, as well as outside of, the service failure context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data are collected from two casual dining restaurants in the USA. In order to identify the underlying structure of perceived service fairness in restaurants, this study proposes and tests the fitness of two competing models - a traditional three-factor model and an alternative four-factor model.\nFindings: - A confirmatory factor analysis supports that a four-factor structure of service fairness, which has integrated a customer benefits and sacrifice perspective with the original fairness theory, would be better for evaluating restaurant services instead of the three-factor model that has frequently been applied in service failure and recovery contexts.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The data are collected from only casual dining restaurants. Therefore, generalizing the results to other segments of the restaurant industry may not work.\nPractical implications: - This study offers managers a perspective for how consumers evaluate service from a fairness standpoint. The results also provide the basis for investigating which aspects of service fairness are critical in eliciting favorable emotional and behavioral consequences.\nOriginality/value: - Compared with previous fairness studies, which have focused exclusively on the role of justice after service failure and recovery, this study considers all service delivery contexts (with or without service failure) in order to provide a richer portrait of service fairness. Also, this study contributes to the services marketing and consumer behavior literature by shedding light on the issue of \"fairness\" as an axiom for evaluating services in restaurants.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Development of three scales to measure leader accountability	[ "Leadership", "Management accountability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Increased reports of corporate accounting scandals, clergy sexual and financial misconduct, as well as political upheaval at the federal and state level have exposed a need for systems to hold leaders accountable for their communication and behavior, as well as an apparent unwillingness of leaders to actually be accountable (Jewett, 1999; McClellan, 1999; Lerner and Tetlock, 1999). According to Sedikides et al. (2002), accountability pressures may be the means through which a social structure or social situation can influence individual behavior, reminding leaders of the need to act in compliance with prevailing norms and justify conduct that deviates from those norms. Tetlock (1999) adds that no social system can function for a sustained period without accountability checks on group members. Wood and Winston (2005) maintain that such social accountability begins with the leader. Wood and Winston define leader accountability as:* the leader's willing acceptance of the responsibilities inherent in the leadership position to serve the well-being of the organization;* the implicit or explicit expectation that he/she will be publicly linked to his/her actions, words, or reactions; and* the expectation that the leader may be called on to explain his or her beliefs, decisions, commitments, or actions to constituents.These three constructs form a contributing collective that shape and influence accountable-leadership. In that context, these constructs should be measurable, with identifiable differences between leaders with high levels of accountability and those with little or no accountability. In spite of the many calls for and debates over accountability to this point no statistically reliable or valid method for empirically measuring leader accountability has appeared in the growing body of literature. The focus of this present study is to construct three instruments to measure the three constructs that comprise leader accountability, using the principles for scientific scale development and psychometric testing (Spector, 1992; DeVellis, 2003).\nTheory and variables: Conners et al. (1994) note that the concept of accountability is more than a concept or principle only applicable when something goes wrong or when someone else is trying to determine cause or pinpoint blame. Accountability requires a level of ownership that includes:* making;* keeping; and* proactively answering for personal commitments.Such a phenomenon should, therefore, be evident and measurable, regardless of whether results are favorable or not. Lerner and Tetlock (1999) define accountability as the implicit or explicit expectation that one may be called on to justify one's beliefs, feelings, and actions to others. Accountability has also been defined metaphorically as stewardship (Fairholm, 2001) and in the Biblical language of honor (Jewett, 1999). Leader accountability must be understood, however, in contradistinction to the constructs of obligate and responsible, which may be similar, but are not universally synonymous. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary \"obligate\" refers to binding legally or morally (accessed August 31, 2006 www.m-w.com/dictionary/obligation) whereas, \"responsible\" involves liability to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent of a relationship or duty, or being the cause or explanation for a given result (accessed August 31, 2006 www.m-w.com/dictionary/responsible). Accountability, on the other hand, has to do with acceptance of responsibility (Kouzes and Posner, 1993), voluntary transparency (McClellan, 1999), and answerability. Thus, while accountability may involve authority structures in organizational life, it is possible to be obligated without being accountable, and vice-versa. Moreover, it is possible for someone to be responsible without being accountable because responsibility may be assigned, enforced, or even mistakenly applied to an individual or group by an external force. The goal for developing this instrument is to measure accountability as a construct completely separate from obligation or responsibility.Willing acceptance of responsibilities\nScope of this study: The scope of the study is limited to developing three scales:1. responsibility;2. openness; and3. answerability.\"Leader\" in this context refers to a man or woman who occupies either a formal position of authority or an informal, but clearly-understood position of influence. Thus leader accountability, while it may share some similar characteristics with other forms of accountability (such as interpersonal accountability), is concerned specifically with the behaviors, communication, and relationships of people in leadership. Building on the leader accountability construct developed by Wood and Winston (2005), and the summated rating scale design principles of Spector (1992) and DeVellis (2003), the study sought to produce an instrument that is useful in future studies of leadership and potential leadership effectiveness.\nMethod: Summated rating scales are widely used by social scientists to measure factors as diverse as emotional states, personal needs, personality, and description of jobs (Spector, 1992). DeVellis (2003) adds that scale development enables researchers to quantify a particular phenomenon in order to pursue researchers' ultimate research objective(s). For this current study the leader accountability scales were developed using a combination of the steps suggested by Spector and DeVellis as follows:* define the construct;* generate an item pool;* determine the format for measurement;* have the initial item pool reviewed by experts;* administer items to a development sample;* evaluate the items; and* optimize scale length.Define the construct\nDiscussion: The results indicate the existence of three uni-dimensional scales, each with an extraordinarily high degree of reliability. In addition, the panel of experts indicate that face validity for the items and the scales exists. While those results are certainly encouraging, the scales should continue to be tested to confirm the results indicated here.Limitations of the study\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to focus on the development of three scales to measure the three dimensions of accountability presented by Wood and Winston (2005): responsibility; openness; and answerability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The scale development process followed the method proposed by Spector in 1992 and DeVellis in 2003 in that each of the three constructs were defined and through a search of the literature the authors generated pools of 26, 21, and 19 items respectively. The items were submitted to a panel of six experts, who reviewed them for relevance to the construct and who made suggestions for the general improvement of the scales. The scales were then tested online by 148 participants.\nFindings: - Factor analyses revealed that the item pools measured one construct in each of the scales. Reliability analysis revealed Cronbach alpha coefficients of 0.98 (Responsibility), 0.99 (Openness) and 0.98 (Answerability). The scales were reduced to 10 items by removing items deemed redundant or confusing. Alpha scores for the ten-item scales were 0.97 (Responsibility), 0.97 (Openness) and 0.98 (Answerability).\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study participants were primarily Caucasian males. Further study should be done to validate the instrument in other ethnic groups.\nOriginality/value: - The three scales may be useful for leadership selection, development, and research in overall leadership effectiveness.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modeling corporate financial distress using financial and non-financial variables: The case of Indian listed companies	[ "Logit model", "Financial distress prediction", "Institutional holdings", "Promoter holdings pledged", "Sick companies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Predicting financial distress has been a topic of interest for many decades because of its significance to listed firms, interested stakeholders (which includes financial institutions, investors, government and researchers) and the country's economy (Geng et al., 2015; Jayasekera, 2018). Ben Jabeur (2017) argues that business failure affects the very existence of companies and represents a high cost to financial institutions in the event of partial or total loss of loans. They also represent a significant risk to other creditors, which can, in turn, become defective. In its standard and legal sense, failure covers a range of situations that contribute to the collapse of a particular company because of severe financial problems that lead to insolvency. At times, widespread financial distress may occur due to the failure of key individual institutions or company that spreads to the entire financial system (Shrivastava et al., 2018). For example, the bankruptcy of the financial behemoth, Lehman Brothers caused the US financial crisis. Given the broader social, political and economic impacts of large-scale corporate distress across the global economy, the development of robust predictive models and frameworks is essential to regulators, practitioners and academics (Jones et al., 2017).\n2. Review of literature: Many definitions have been provided for financial distress by many authors, and we will discuss some of those. Financial distress is a broad concept and is interchangeably used with terms such as failure, insolvency, default and bankruptcy to categorize the economic problems of a company (Altman and Hotchkiss, 2006). Financial distress is the condition in which a company's liquidation of total assets is less than the total value of creditor claims. It is the scenario in which a company's operating cash flow cannot supersede the negative networth. If continued, this situation can lead to forced liquidation or bankruptcy (Altman and Hotchkiss, 2006; Chen et al., 1995). Mselmi et al. (2017) defined corporate financial distress as the condition in which a company's cash flow is not sufficient to meet the contractually required payments. Predicting financial difficulties of a company in advance is called FDP (Halteh et al., 2018).\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1 Sample selection\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test\n5. Conclusion: This paper reports the development of models for the prediction of financial distress of listed Indian companies one year before distress event, by using nine financial and four non-financial variables in logit regression. The results are summarized in Tables XIII and XIV.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to develop a corporate financial distress model for Indian listed companies using financial and non-financial parameters by using a conditional logit regression technique.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used a sample of 96 companies, of which 48 were declared sick between 2014 and 2016. The sample was divided into a training sample and a testing sample. The variables for the study included nine financial variables and four non-financial variables. The models were developed using financial variables alone as well as combining financial and non-financial variables. The performance of the test sample was measured with confusion matrix, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F-measure, Types 1 and 2 error.\nFindings: The results show that models with financial variables had a prediction accuracy of 85.19 and 86.11 per cent, whereas models with a combination of financial and non-financial variables predict with comparatively better accuracy of 89.81 and 91.67 per cent. Net asset value, long-term debt-equity ratio, return on investment, retention ratio, age, promoters holdings pledged and institutional holdings are the critical financial and non-financial predictors of financial distress.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the financial distress prediction literature in different ways. First, there have been, until now, few studies in the area of financial distress prediction in the Indian context. Second, business failure studies in the past have used only financial variables. The authors have combined financial and non-financial variables in their model to increase predictive ability. Thirdly, in most earlier studies, variable institutional holdings were found to affect financial distress negatively. In contrast, the authors found this parameter to be positively significant to the financial distress of the company. Finally, there have hitherto been few studies that have used promoter holdings pledged (PHP) or pledge ratio. The authors found this variable to influence business failure positively.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Emerging stock market co-movements in South Asia: wavelet approach	[ "South Asia", "Stock market co-movement", "Wavelet coherence", "Wavelet correlation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The phenomenon of co-movement among different stock markets has been a central issue of investigation in the contemporary financial and economics literature. The underlying reasons are: devising investment management strategies, management of investment risk and optimization of investment portfolio (Tiwari et al., 2016). More specifically, the co-movement dynamics between developed and emerging markets and also within the emerging markets group has been a key aspect of investigation since the contribution of Grubel (1968). Grubel (1968) and Levy and Sarnat (1970) promulgate the benefits of the diversification of portfolio in emerging markets since they are less correlated with the developed markets. Additionally, Lucas (1990) also emphasizes the benefits of capital flow to the emerging markets. Lucas (1990) argues that capital should move from New York to New Delhi, since the marginal returns to capital are higher in emerging markets. Nevertheless, with gradual increment in capital flows, economic integration in terms of trade, financial transactions and diminishing information asymmetry that reduces the initial benefits of investment in emerging markets is expected to fade significantly by inducing higher degree of stock market co-movements (Pretorius, 2002; Bekaert and Harvey, 2003; Beine and Candelon, 2011; Das, Kannadhasan, Tiwari and Al-Yahyaee, 2018). Hence, a growing body of literature has evolved in this line of research to understand the co-movement dynamics to derive diversification benefits and having an optimize portfolio for international investors.\n2. Review of literature: This section reviews some of the recent and relevant studies on stock market co-movement. Sharma and Seth (2012) present a comprehensive literature review on stock market integration. The study covered literature from 1990 to 2010. The authors conclude that scholarly contributions in the area of stock market integration increased particularly between 2005 and 2010. In addition, integration among emerging markets was mostly studied in recent years. The objective of the literature review of this study is to carry out a survey of literature documented after 2010. In doing so, a couple of relevant contributions (Rua and Nunes, 2009; Arouri et al., 2010), which was excluded by Sharma and Seth (2012), are included. Thus, the timeline of literature typically ranges between the years 2009 and 2017. Table I is segregated in six possible heads that present the review in a manner that is easily discernible to readers.\n3. Estimation methodology: This section briefly discusses the methodological approach adopted for the purpose of study. We first use wavelet local multiple correlation (WLMC) for testing the contagion hypothesis following previous studies (Fernandez-Macho, 2018; Das, Bhowmik and Jana, 2018). In the next step, we use wavelet-rolling correlation, i.e. we use rolling correlation method on wavelet-decomposed data. The decomposition is done using maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT). Finally, we also check that which market maximizes the cross-correlations in linear combination of all other markets using the wavelet multiple cross-correlation (WMCC) (Fernandez-Macho, 2012).\n4. Data: 4.1 Dynamics of emerging and frontier markets in South Asia\n5. Empirical results and discussions: This segment of the study describes and discusses the empirical findings of the study. We first dealt with the results of the examination of the contagion hypothesis. Figure 5 exhibits the WLMC map, which shows the co-movement of all three markets in a time-frequency domain. For the purpose of easing interpretations, the horizontal axis on the left is converted into the number of days. The scale moves vertically upward from short to long frequencies. The color bar on the right of the map signifies the strength of the correlation. In other words, the red zone corresponds to stronger correlations and the blue zone depicts weaker degrees of correlations. Additionally, the coefficients are also indicated in the surface contour of the map.\n6. Conclusions: We examine the degree and nature of stock market co-movement in selected South Asian markets applying wavelet-based methods, which enable temporal and frequency analysis concurrently. Overall, the results suggest lesser co-movement among the markets. This definitely offers arbitrage opportunities since the patches of co-movements in the short to medium run are negligible. Additionally, we also report that the major macroeconomic events (both international and region specific) cause changes in the long-run correlation structure. Finally, we also find that Indian stock market is the potential market leader that maximizes the cross-correlation in this region.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the co-movement and market integration dynamics of the emerging/frontier stock markets in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) with a portfolio management perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Scholars in the past have documented the limitation of standard econometric techniques such as co-integration analysis to capture this phenomenon. The other econometric technique widely used in integration and comovement literature is dynamic conditional correlation-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity. This method captivates the time-varying correlations, although frequency information is absent. The wavelet-based analysis decomposes the time-series data in a time-frequency domain, which is largely useful to fund managers and policy makers. This study examines the regional integration in selected South Asian markets using wavelet analysis.\nFindings: The results suggest some degree of market integration, however weak as compared to regional integrations in developed markets. Pakistan and India were found to be the potential leaders at varying time scales in the region. Weaker co-movement phenomena may offer ample arbitrage opportunities to investors in this region. In addition, the authors also find that the structure of correlation changes after some of the major macroeconomic events.\nOriginality/value: This study is among the first to examine co-movement and integration of stock returns in a time-frequency domain for South Asia. In addition, the authors also highlight weak integration in these markets, which may be beneficial for portfolio diversification.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The propaganda of universal fascism: peace, empire and international co-operation in British Union of Fascists' publicity from 1932 to 1939	[ "British Union of Fascists", "Propaganda", "Public relations", "Populism", "Nationalism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One of the enduring historical myths of World War II is that a reasonable and united Britain stood alone in its fight against the threat of an alien fascist tyranny in Europe. Yet latent pacifist feeling in Britain was widespread up until the outbreak of war in 1939, and historical omissions and generalisations since then have become \"chief among the habits of forgetfulness which permitted and permit the myth to subsist\" (Calder, 1991, p. 90). The standalone myth also precludes the existence of a vibrant fascist movement in Britain throughout the 1930s that co-operated with fascist states in Europe, received funding from Italy and campaigned against war with Germany even after the fighting had started. The founding of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932 meant that throughout the 1930s, Britain had experienced its own version of the political extremes that emerged in other European countries, and fascist ideas found support among the population at large, the media and social and political elites.This historical essay considers the methods, messages and institutional arrangements of the British Union of Fascists' publicity and propaganda in the years between its foundation in 1932 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, with a particular focus on the BUF's campaigning for a universal fascism or \"fascist internationalism\" (Liburd, 2018, p. 295) in which the rules-based co-operation of the League of Nations was replaced with more casual co-operation between fascist states. So beyond an explication of how the BUF did its public relations (PR) work in the foreign policy field, the article unpacks the BUF's messaging on themes of peace, transnational co-operation and opposition to war that were as much as part of its proposition as ultra-nationalism and anti-semitism.\nLiterature review: The history of political PR, propaganda and publicity\nResearch method and materials:: This investigation is based upon scrutiny of original BUF documents relating to the period 1932-1939, which was when the BUF was most active in British politics, with a correspondingly high level of publicity and propaganda activity. Documents were examined in the British Union Collection and The John Beckett Collection, both of which are held in the Special Collections Centre at the library of the University of Sheffield, and the Mosley Collection at the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham. The archival search uncovered three categories of artefacts that form the corpus in the investigation that follows: examples of BUF publicity and propaganda materials such as booklets, posters, newsletters; BUF documents relating to the organisation of PR work (including correspondence with important supporters of the publicity effort, such as Lord Rothermere, Mussolini's regime in Italy and also with Nazi Germany) and biographies of key actors in BUF publicity.Analysis of these materials was organised using historical institutionalism, one of several methodological approaches derived from institutionalist theory, which can be traced to Powell and DiMaggio's (1991) foundational book on The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. This work led to new literature and research approaches in offshoot fields such as organizational discourse - see Grand, Hardey, Oswick and Putnam's (2004) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse, for an introduction, as well as Cooreen (2015) - and organizational institutionalism - see Greenwood, Oliver, Sahlin and Suddaby's (2008) Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. These approaches have appeared in critical public relations projects (Fredriksson et al., 2013; Frandsen and Johansen, 2013 and others in the neo-institutionalism special section of Public Relations Inquiry in May 2013) while it has also been advocated and used in public relations history by Sandhu (2015) and Bentele and Wiesenburg (2016). As its name suggests, the historical institutionalism variant of institutional studies pays attention to the historical development of institutions, path dependency over time and the role of both \"formal and informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions embedded in the organizational structure of the polity or political economy\" (Hall and Taylor, 1996, p. 938). The role of the agents of the institution (such as leaders and supporters) in internalising and transmitting these scripts (Hall and Taylor, 1996, p. 946) and the assumption of changing relationship between institutions, ideas and agents over time makes this approach relevant to an examination of the BUF and its publicity work. Despite appearing rarely in public relations projects, historical institutionalism has been advocated as a valuable addition to the communication scholar's theoretical toolbox by Bannerman and Haggart (2015, p. 8) who formulated a useful methodological refinement for communication studies, which they specified as \"tracing the interaction of institutions, ideas and agents over time\". This variant of the historical institutionalist method - as summarised below - was adopted as the framework for organising this project:Selection of the institution for study and time period. (BUF from 1932 to 1939).Identify the institutional ideas. (The core ideology and messages of BUF).Identify agents/actors. (BUF leaders and communications actors)Identify supporting mechanisms. (BUF media supporters and distribution systems).Identify overall institutional effects. (The BUF's communication and its effects).\nFindings: The institutional case study: The BUF from 1932 to 1939\nDiscussion: The institutional effects of the BUF's foreign policy publicity and propaganda\nConclusion: Like the fascist politics it sought to propagate, the publicity and propaganda of the BUF had transnational characteristics and ambitions alongside the nationalist rhetoric of \"Britain First\". This essay has presented examples in the historical record of transnational co-ordination, co-operation and funding for BUF messaging that were operated in concert with more local British concerns. In particular, the BUF's 1935 \"Mind Britain's Business\" campaign can be read as an effort to simultaneously undermine the League of Nations' core principle of collective security at the international level and undermine support for British military involvement in any far away war under its obligation of mutual support, which in this case was the prospect of action against Italy to liberate Abyssinia. The slogan \"Mind Britain's Business\" was used continually by the BUF and endured even after the start of World War II, by which time it was appended with the equally nationalistic campaign message that \"Britain only Fights Britain's Wars\".There is little causal evidence of whether or how the BUF's publicity and propaganda work contributed to growth and decline of the movement in the 1930s, alongside numerous other factors such as Mosley's leadership and key decisions, policy propositions and the political climate. The changes in the BUF's financial position over time and presence of large donors such as Mussolini seem to have been the key driver in determining the level of PR activity, with a corresponding decline once cash flow and membership went down. The undisputed part of the historical record is that the BUF did not make the transition from a movement to a successful party in the UK political system. A combination of the British welfare system, the economic management and political stability offered by the National Governments between 1931 and 1940 produced living conditions that were not as favourable for fascist messages compared to nations such as Germany, Italy, Spain and others in mainland Europe. As Todman (2016, p. 45) observed: \"The National Administration had many faults but it did create a feeling of political stability that limited the attraction of more radical alternatives. The British experience of the 1930s was not a fertile breeding ground for Fascism of Communism. In international comparison, this was a very fortunate escape\".In the broader context of national history and cultural memory, any study of the propaganda and publicity of fascism involves questions about the varied understandings of the way fascism manifested itself in different countries and the historical relativity of its importance in national life. This relativity had influenced the historical record in many ways, including in contemporary Britain, where national memory appears to have put aside the years when the country had an active fascist party and has focussed instead on Britain \"morally on top of the world, fighting \"alone\" in what many consider to be the last good war\", (Brendon, 2017). While the BUF archives are extensive, historical relativity has led to limited secondary sources and scrutiny of key propaganda actors. There are multiple biographies of Goebbels, for example, and many studies on Nazi propaganda. One limitation of this study is that it relied on a relatively narrow set of biographical sources. The only biography of John Beckett, for example, was written by his son and the most referenced biography of Sir Oswald Mosley was written by one of his sons. This relative paucity of material on the BUF's propagandists compared to other European countries is itself perhaps an indication of a careless national memory in Britain on fascist matters in general and on BUF publicity and propaganda in particular.Despite its institutional volatility as evidenced by frequent changes in personnel and financial precariousness throughout the 1930s, the BUF maintained a degree of consistency in its messages on foreign policy. From the start, patriotic support of empire was consistent with its military veteran ethos and was promoted alongside a vision of a universal fascism in which a new order of fascist states entered into international co-operation. Anti-semitism was progressively added to the anti-war outlook and between 1939 and 1940, as the campaign against war with Germany reached its climax. Mosley's sustained advocacy of a fascist internationalism of co-operation with foreign fascist states during this time sealed his fate. The BUF's activism against war with Germany was monitored by the security services but allowed until the intensity of military operations in the Battle of France throughout 1939-1940, which ended with the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June 1940. The Emergency Powers Act was rushed into law on 22 May 1940 and Mosley was arrested the next day, never charged with a criminal offence but interned under Defence Regulations until release from prison in November 1943, after which he was confined to house arrest until the end of the war. Despite having left the BUF in 1937, John Beckett's continued involvement with fascism in Britain led to his arrest in May 1940 also. He was released in October 1943 but confined to a radius of five miles of his house until the end of World War II.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This article presents a historical investigation into the foreign policy messages of the British Union of Fascists' (BUF) publicity and propaganda from its foundation in 1932 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, along with a discussion of the methods and institutional arrangements used to propagate its ideas of peace, empire and transnational co-operation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The historical investigation is based upon scrutiny of original BUF documents relating to the period 1932-1939 from various archives. After cataloguing of the relevant publicity and propaganda materials in time sequence and thematically, analysis was organised using a historical institutionalism approach.\nFindings: The article explains the different phases of the BUF's message development and how publications, meetings and media were used to project its ideas. It also discussed the impact of support from Viscount Rothermere's newspapers and financial support from Benito Mussolini. Consideration of publicity materials alongside files from BUF headquarters enabled identification and investigation into the communicative actors who did the publicity work, including Director of Publicity, John Beckett.\nSocial implications: The article reflects upon how the British Union of Fascists' publicity and propaganda relates to modern manifestations of the communication of authoritarian and nationalistic political propositions and the historical continuities that endure therein.\nOriginality/value: The project makes an original contribution to the history of British political propaganda and public relations through an inquiry based upon scrutiny of historical documents in UK archives relating to BUF publicity related to foreign policy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Stakeholder complexity in large scale green building projects: A holistic analysis towards a better understanding	[ "Stakeholder", "Case study", "Social network analysis", "Green building project" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The global construction market has been asking for greener building solutions and practice; as a tremendous amount of raw material consumption, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the construction sector (US Green Building Council, 2016a). Green building is a practice of mitigating building impacts on the environment and human health by planning over the whole building lifecycle, lowering waste and pollution, and optimizing the efficiency of resource use. According to the US Department of Energy (2011), green buildings perform better than conventional buildings by using 25 percent less energy and 11 percent less water, releasing 34 percent less carbon dioxide, as well as reducing +80m ton of waste to landfill. Reacting to the imperative need for a more sustainable built environment, construction market leaders and policymakers worldwide have been boosting green building project (GBP) developments at a dramatic rate - referring to the US Green Building Council (2016b), it is expected that \"global green building continues to double every three years\" and over 60 percent of construction projects will be green by 2018. While the market of green buildings is flourishing for their economic, environmental and social benefits, many failure stories and barriers in GBP implementation have been discussed recently, e.g. stakeholders' inadequate consciousness of the value creation by green building (Jensen and Maslesa, 2015); stakeholders lacking common ground and directions on how a GBP develops (Jensen and Maslesa, 2015); and stakeholders lacking knowledge and information on available green options (Better Building Partnership, 2010). In fact, many obstacles in GBP development are due to stakeholders' diverse values and perspectives (Stephen and Menassa, 2014), and their complex interactions (Yang et al., 2016); making the engagement and management of stakeholders an arduous task.\n2. Background research: 2.1 Why analyzing stakeholders in GBPs\n3. A holistic stakeholder analysis framework: This study adopts a holistic framework to analyze stakeholder complexity in large GBPs - it integrates empiricism and rationalism, by using the chain referral sampling and SNA together with interviews and surveys. Many existing GBP stakeholder studies tend to use a single analytical perspective, but this may not gain a full picture of project stakeholder complexity. Applying only empirical methods (e.g. interviews) is a weak approach to understand stakeholders and their concerns - stakeholders may reveal many concerns in interviews; if solely relying on interview findings, it would not be objective enough to ascertain which concerns as \"critical\" (that should be handled with care and at higher priorities) from all issues. Likewise, when solely relying on quantitative findings (from rationalistic tools like SNA) and without actual communication with stakeholders, it may result in an incomplete understanding of the identified key stakeholders and concerns, as well as their underlying reasons and impacts. The holistic stakeholder analysis framework used herein adopts both empiricism and rationalism. By complementing qualitative information from stakeholders with quantitative stakeholder assessment results, GBP leaders/implementers can be brought toward a more informed project decision making, an improved understanding of project stakeholder complexity, as well as more effective engagement of stakeholders. Figure 1 shows the holistic stakeholder analysis framework with details explained below.\n4. Data collection methods and process: 4.1 Case study methodology\n5. Results and discussions: 5.1 Information exchange network of stakeholders\n6. Contributions of the study: The failure stories and managerial hurdles in GBP developments reveal that the current stakeholder analysis approaches are not adequate to accommodate the high project stakeholder complexity, showing an urgent imperative to improve the existing GBP stakeholder analysis and engagement practice. This study developed a stakeholder analysis framework, integrating both perspectives of empiricism and rationalism, to accurately and holistically assess the three aspects of stakeholder complexity, in the GBP context.\n7. Conclusions: Effective engagement and management of project stakeholders are vital to ensure that a GBP attains the greatest environmental, economic and social values for all involved. However, the high complexity entrenched in GBP stakeholder environment has erected barriers to creating stakeholders' common values, and impeded the creation, decision making and execution of truly green solutions which fit for all. Holistically analyzing stakeholder complexity toward a better understanding is, therefore, crucial to improve GBP management. Despite the extensive stakeholder research in GBP context, many of them adopted a single analytical perspective to assess stakeholder complexity which may not help obtaining a complete understanding. This study adopts a holistic framework, which integrates empiricism and rationalism, to analyze stakeholder complexity in GBPs. The framework applies empirical methods of interviews and survey, together with rationalistic methods of chain referral sampling and SNA; to assess the three aspects of GBP stakeholder complexity - who the stakeholders are, what they concern and how they interact. Complementing empirical with rationalistic findings, this framework enables an objective and accurate stakeholder analysis; and leads GBP leaders/implementers toward a complete understanding of project stakeholder complexity, a more informed project decision making and more effective stakeholder engagement.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In response to the world's rising awareness on sustainability, industry players and policymakers are devoting great efforts to bolster green building developments. Every green building project (GBP) involves numerous stakeholders and potentially incompatible concerns. Despite the associated environmental, economic and social benefits, GBP developments have often confronted managerial barriers which are actually emerged from stakeholders - the actual key determinants of a project. Holistically analyzing the complexity of stakeholders in GBPs is, therefore, crucial to improving GBP management and achieving greater sustainability for all involved. The purpose of this paper is to analyze stakeholder complexity in large GBPs using a holistic framework which integrates both empirical and rationalistic analytical perspectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The complexity of stakeholders in GBPs can be considered from three aspects - identifying stakeholders, assessing stakeholder interactions and analyzing stakeholder concerns. The proposed stakeholder analysis framework uses both empirical methods (e.g. interviews and surveys) and rationalistic methods (e.g. chain referral sampling and social network analysis) to analyze GBP stakeholder complexity. Case study of a lab-enabled commercial GBP in Hong Kong was undertaken to illustrate the framework.\nFindings: The framework enables a holistic, objective and effective stakeholder analysis; leading GBP leaders toward a complete understanding of project stakeholder complexity. The case study findings bring managerial insights to GBP leaders on the general SNA-related stakeholder dynamics and the important stakeholder concerns, of large Hong Kong GBPs. The findings diagnose general connectivity structures of GBP stakeholders, identify influential and peripheral actors in GBP information exchange, and suggest clues to improve their dynamics. In addition, ten key stakeholder concerns were identified, including comprehensive governmental standards and procedures, clear sustainability goals at the outset, effective stakeholder engagement, adequate design flexibility, and a \"can-do\" attitude of contractors and consultants - which are all vital for successful GBP development. The underlying reasons of these concerns and recommendations to addressing them were also discussed.\nOriginality/value: Many existing GBP stakeholder studies appear to use a single analytical perspective to assess project stakeholder complexity, but this may not gain a full understanding. The holistic stakeholder analysis framework used herein combines empiricism and rationalism. It helps to bring GBP leaders and implementers toward a more informed project decision making, a more thorough understanding of stakeholder complexity, as well as a more effective engagement of stakeholders.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Multi-criteria decision making for supplier selection using fuzzy AHP approach	[ "Case study", "Analytical hierarchy process", "Multi-criteria decision-making", "Supplier selection", "Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process", "Supplier evaluation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In today's competitive manufacturing environment, it is a challenge to produce high-quality products while offering competitive prices to the customers. Having reliable and competent suppliers is one of the critical factors for it. The key objective of the purchasing department in any industry is to source the right quality of material in the right quantity from the right source at the right time and also at a reasonable price. In today's era of competition, the manufacturing organizations pay particular attention to the selection of alternative supply sources. Hence, supplier selection process has become the most significant variable in the modern supply chain management as it helps in achieving high-quality products and customer satisfaction (Gonzaile et al., 2004). Effective supplier selection needs robust analytical methods and decision support systems (Ni et al., 2007) that are able to deal with multiple criteria. Supplier evaluation and selection assumes very important role in any industry as the cost and quality of goods and services sold are directly related to the cost and quality of goods and services purchased. However, it becomes a complex issue to address for manufacturing firms when it considers multiple subjective and objective criteria. Criteria may vary depending on the type of product or industry being considered and include many qualitative factors in addition to the quantitative criteria (Vokurka et al., 1996). An efficient supplier selection process is capable to handle the complexity of the current business scenario.\n2. Literature review: During the recent years supplier selection process has received considerable attention in the literature. Supplier selection process is influenced by a variety of criteria (Aissaoui et al., 2007). Based on a questionnaire sent to 273 purchasing agents and managers from USA and Canada, Dickson (1966) identified 23 different criteria (i.e. quality, delivery, performance history, warranties and claim policies, production facilities and capacity, price, technical capability, financial position, procedural compliance, communication system, reputation and position in industry, desire for business, management and organization, operating controls, repair service, attitude, impression, packaging ability, labor relations record, geographical location, amount of past business, training aids and reciprocal arrangements) evaluated in supplier selection process. Among these, the price, delivery and quality objectives of the buyer are particularly important factors in deciding how much to order from the available suppliers. Wind and Robinson (1968) identified possible contradictions such as the supplier offering the lowest price may not have the best quality, or the supplier with the best quality may not deliver on-time. As a result, it is necessary to make a trade-off between conflicting criteria to find the best suppliers. Observe that in compensatory models, a poor performance on one criterion can be compensated by a high performance in another one whereas in non-compensatory models, different minimum levels for each criterion are required. Weber et al. (1991) observed that price, delivery, quality, production capacity and localization are the criteria most often treated in the literature. Sevkli et al., (2007) considered 25 sub-criteria under six criteria, i.e. performance assessment, human resources, quality system assessment, manufacturing, business criteria and information technology. Inemek and Tuna (2009) reviewing a plethora of literature highlight 44 criteria which have use for supplier selection in and found quality had highest frequency and followed by delivery and cost. Wu and Blackhurst (2009) identify price, quality and delivery performance as selection criteria for supplier selection model. Sevkli (2010) used delivery performance, quality performance, price\\cost, financial strength, management and organizational strength in his supplier selection model. Bruno et al. (2012) proposed an AHP model in which process and product quality, service level, management and innovation and financial position are attributes for supplier selection.\n3. Methodology: A FAHP approach is proposed here to address the supplier selection problem of an automobile company. Basically, FAHP is an integrated approach, which consist fuzzy sets theory and analytical hierarchy process. Fuzzy sets theory resembles the human reasoning and mathematically represents the uncertainty and vagueness. In this study Chang's extent analysis method is used to select the best supplier among the number of alternative supplier available. Chang (1996) uses TFN for the pair-wise comparison in AHP. Chang's approach is less time taking and less computational expense than many other FAHP approaches.\n4. Application of FAHP extent analysis method to supplier selection problem: One of the leading car and truck manufacturing company in India wants to select the best supplier for one of its critical component used in truck. The company providing the context for this application is a multinational manufacturer of automobiles, motor vehicles and internal combustion engines founded in 1921 enters the Indian market to built medium and heavy duty commercial vehicles in 2010. It is a leading car and truck manufacturing company. In addition to automobiles, it manufactures buses and provides financial services through its sister concern. It set up a manufacturing plant for trucks in southern India. The company considered in the study is new in this sector and is trying to increase and widen its customer base. The purchasing managers are of the view that suppliers have a major influence on customers' satisfaction level. Therefore, the company decided to develop an effective supplier selection policy for the responsive market. The managers of the company recognized that a wide range of factors must be considered in the supplier selection process, and the selection decisions should not be made merely on the basis of price factor alone.\n5. Results and discussions: According to the final scores as shown in Table XI, S\n6. Conclusion: After scanning a plethora of literatures it can be concluded that the supplier selection process is one of the most popular issues within the supply chain management and it becomes more important in the context of an automobile industry. A typical manufacturer spends 60 percent of its total sales on purchased items such as raw materials, parts, subassemblies components, etc. (Krajewski and Ritzman, 1996). In automotive industries, these costs may be more than 50 percent of the total revenues. That can go up to 80 percent of the total product costs for high technology firms (Weber et al., 1991). Selection of the best suppliers significantly reduces the purchasing costs and improves corporate competitiveness.\n7. Limitations and direction for future research: This paper should be viewed in light of some limitations. As this analysis and findings are based on only a case study of an automobile company operational in India, and this necessitates caution in interpreting the results. The limited number of interviewed managers in a company restricts the generalizability of the results. Though the company selected for this study is typical of developing country businesses, the findings of the paper may not be readily extensible to other companies. Future research could examine these results using a larger sample set or field surveys in developing country settings. Second, this study used retrospective settings, based on the interviewed feedback after the events had occurred. This method naturally poses limitations due to respondent recall and the accuracy of information provided. Third, the problem chosen for this study is based in a single country context and further additional research will be required to examine if the findings could be extended to other automobile companies in other developing nations. Fourth, this study, however, can be extended to add more supplier alternatives, which encompass both domestic and international suppliers, but this can increase the computational complexities. Some environmental criteria can be added to this model to deal in green supply chain environment.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-criteria supplier selection model using fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) approach for a leading automobile company in India.\nDesign/methodology/approach: FAHP approach followed by a sensitivity analysis has been used.\nFindings: In this study, a FAHP-based supplier selection model is proposed to provide useful insights in choosing appropriate suppliers in dynamic situations in order to enhance long-term relationship with them.\nPractical implications: This study proposes a supplier selection model for an automobile industry which often faces heterogeneous supply environments. This model may have a high acceptability where a large number of suppliers are available to supply the materials or provide the services. As analytic hierarchy process is the most widely used methodology for supplier selection, however, it becomes less efficient in case of inconsistencies observed in the data. However a FAHP-based approach may overcome this difficulty.\nOriginality/value: It contributes to supplier selection process and points out the importance of supplier selection problem, especially in the context of multi-criteria decision-making in Indian scenario.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Canadian chefs' workplace learning	[ "Workplace learning", "Professional chefs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Workplace learning is important to managers and organizations because more than 80 per cent of workers engage in job-related informal learning (Livingstone, 2010). Further, workplace learning contributes to a firm's ability to be innovative and grow (Kock, 2007), to improve competitive advantage (Kock, 2007) and to facilitate organizational change (Doyle and Young, 2007; Jacobs and Russ-Eft, 2001). Workplace learning is also important for organizations that face labour shortages, skills shortages and new and enhanced skill requirements for employees (Goldenberg, 2006).\nWorkplace learning: Workplace learning is a broad concept that refers to \"a process whereby people, as a function of completing organizational tasks and roles acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enhance individual and organizational performance\" (Hicks et al., 2007, p. 62). Workplace learning research, in a general sense, has taken many directions, but several areas that continue to be developed include strategies for, outcomes of, barriers to and facilitators of workplace learning (Crouse et al., 2011; Doyle et al., 2012).\nMethod: Participants\nResults and discussion: The first part of the survey set the stage for learning by asking participants, \"How important is it for you to learn new skills and knowledge in today's environment?\" Participants responded to a five-point scale in which 1 = very unimportant through to 5 = very important. All participants (12/12, 100 per cent) gave learning a score of 5, so learning is very important to chefs. This finding is consistent with reports that learning is important for chefs (Baskette, 2001; Carroll, 2008; and Hayes et al., 2012) as well as for others including small business owners (Doyle and Young, 2007), hotel employees (Doyle et al., 2012), human resource managers (Crouse et al., 2011) and managers in knowledge-based industries (Doyle and Young, 2007).\nConclusions: There are numerous overlaps between the chefs' workplace learning and that of other occupational/professional groups. Professional chefs have a very positive view of their own learning and that of others in their field. Learning in the workplace is important for professional chefs, as it is for other professional groups, and it tends to be largely driven by industry changes and a desire to be professionally skilled, similar to those in other fields. However, chefs play a major leadership role in the context of workplace learning, not only in managing their own learning but also leading the learning of others, a point made by several industry experts (Baskette, 2001; Carroll, 2008; Hayes et al., 2012).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the formal and informal workplace learning of professional chefs. In particular, it considers chefs' learning strategies and outcomes as well as the barriers to and facilitators of their workplace learning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology is based on in-depth, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 12 executive chefs from a variety of restaurant types. Chefs were asked questions that focused on how they learned, the learning outcomes that they experienced and factors that inhibited or facilitated their learning.\nFindings: Findings suggest that the strategies, outcomes, barriers and facilitators experienced by professional chefs are similar in many respects to those of other occupational/professional groups. However, there were some important differences that highlight the context of chefs' workplace learning.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample, which is relatively small and local, focuses on one city in Canada, and it is limited in its generalizability. Future research should include a national survey of professional chefs.\nOriginality/value: Using a qualitative approach, this in-depth study adds to the literature on workplace learning, strategies, outcomes, barriers, facilitators and context factors by addressing a relatively understudied profession.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intervention intermediaries flourish: matching firms with solutions to complex needs	[ "Motives", "Design", "Service", "Innovation intermediaries", "Models", "Mechanisms" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nMatching challenge: Most organizations struggle to evaluate and select innovative ideas and solutions from among the vast number of possibilities and partners in a universe that is no longer confined to the boundaries of the firm. To address the challenges of sourcing innovation outside the boundaries of the company, a new set of actors - innovation intermediaries - has emerged.\nClassification of innovation intermediaries: To address the objectives, 51 innovation intermediaries were identified and analyzed by conducting interviews with managers and researchers (see Appendix), including the directors of four different innovation intermediaries (Atizo, dotopen, Innoget and IdeasProject of Nokia). The main intermediary models identified can be categorized along two dimensions of organizational interest of seekers:\nInnovation intermediary models: Broadcasting\nLimitations of models: The results reveal clear differences in the matching services of the innovation intermediaries and demonstrate that understanding the expected outcomes and platform design are key for a successful innovation. This understanding also reduces wasted resources of time and money and takes advantage of opportunities that drive better commercial performance.\nImplications and conclusions: As they mature, intermediaries aim for a more specific mechanism where each excels at addressing specific functions and outcomes. In this respect, broadcast search excels at finding and then reusing already existing solutions or at finding novel uses for existing solutions. However, the seemingly small amount of the rewards involved, together with the absence of collaboration in the search process, may limit the discovery of novel recombination and new social interpretations of existing technologies. A clear limitation to this mechanism is the need for a large and focused network of solvers to cultivate sufficient critical mass and interest in the proposed challenge.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the main models of innovation intermediaries as determined by the matching mechanisms they offer as a service to organizations, and to reveal underlying limitations of each mechanism to have a better understanding of their appropriateness for organizational requests.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper reports an exploratory study of 51 online innovation intermediaries using semi-structured interviews, supported with direct observation, scientific papers and official documentary sources.\nFindings: The overall findings suggest that innovation intermediaries are not homogeneous, are evolving and that the underlying mechanisms with which they support their operations vary substantially, depending on the size of the community, platform design (collaboration vs non-collaboration) and reward conditions. The study identifies five mechanisms on which the models are based: broadcast search (directed and undirected), brainstorming with ranking (directed and undirected), networking/connecting, expert group and licensing out. Some of the underlying tensions and limitations of these mechanisms are also explored as are the managerial implications for the choice and use of innovation intermediaries.\nOriginality/value: This paper identifies distinct models of online innovation intermediaries in significantly more depth than what has been presented so far. In addition, it discusses their limitations as a mechanism and their use to achieve a better match between innovation intermediaries and needs of solution-seeker companies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A process model framework for Participants area of AACSB standards	[ "AACSB", "Process", "Standard", "Accreditation", "Business school" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the last two decades, there has been a rapid increase in the number of business schools seeking accreditation (Elliott and Goh, 2013). Business schools consider accreditation as an important factor of future success (Cornuel, 2007) as it helps in international recognition and provides assurance to the prospective students that an independent agency has passed the schools' activities after assessment, based on its quality standards (Wilson and Thomas, 2012). The focus of accreditation standards is on consistency and coherence of programs (Cornuel and Kletz, 2011), evaluation of the processes, and improvement of its quality (Urgel, 2007).\nAACSB: AACSB is the oldest and largest of the non-governmental international accreditation agencies for business schools. The standards of AACSB are prescriptive in nature (Dumond and Johnson, 2013) and are used for evaluating a business school's mission, faculty qualifications/contributions, operations, and programs (Istileulova and Peljhan, 2013). The accreditation approach of AACSB is mission-linked (Trapnell, 2007; White et al., 2009) and considers the self-evaluation report of the business school as the basis for accreditation decisions (Lock, 1999). The AACSB standards put emphasis on a clear mission, well-qualified faculty and faculty participation, a high-quality curriculum, processes and continuous improvement, and resource requirement plan in line with the business school's mission (Trapnell, 2007; Miles et al., 2014). Its goal is to promote continuous quality improvement in management education (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), 2013). AACSB accreditation seeks to achieve this objective by defining a set of criteria and standards, coordinating peer review and consultation, and recognizing high-quality business schools that meet the standards and participate in the process.\nMethod: A process is defined as an organized group of interrelated activities that work together to create a result of value (Hammer, 2001) through the transformation of inputs to outputs (Laguna and Marklund, 2005; ISO, 2005). To define a process, the process activities need to be identified first, and then the order of the identified activities needs to be established (Damji, 2007).\nDiscussion of the results: The requirements of AACSB standards are usually descriptive, with respect to functions, attributes, or other special features. The expression of these requirements involves some form of processing to translate the non-design terms into design terms. The process model, therefore, involves the presentation of information in a format that enhances the understanding of precisely what AACSB standards expect.\nConclusions: In this paper, the authors have presented the requirement checklist and the process model to address the requirement of AACSB standards. This modeling process shows how to derive the process design specification from the AACSB standard requirement. It is essential to have properly structured and controlled process design specifications that are consistent, understandable and include all requirements and concerns. To achieve this important milestone, the authors exploited the systematic approach by developing a requirement checklist structure to define the process model of the AACSB standard requirement.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model, focusing on the detailed analysis of the requirement of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) standards related to Participants area, for implementation in a business school setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper presents an articulated procedure for the development of the process model. The study adopted a three-step approach for developing the process model.\nFindings: The process model has provided a systemic approach to process design and implementation of AACSB accreditation standards related to Participants area in a business school environment. The process model was developed and applied over the course of systematic reviews in a business school setting.\nResearch limitations/implications: The present study has developed the process model catering to the requirements of the AACSB standards related to Participants area only. In the near future, the authors intend to develop processes for the remaining areas of AACSB standards.\nOriginality/value: The present work attempts to develop a process model to meet the requirements of the standards related to Participants area. Academic institutions can benefit from the process model whether they are planning to implement AACSB standards for accreditation or are interested in changing their current processes following AACSB standards.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Destination image: to see or not to see? Part II	[ "Opinion polls", "Tourism", "Qualitative market research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A recent review of literature related tourism destination image (White, 2004) suggested that the conceptualisation and operationalisation of image as a construct was fragmented and incomplete. Some authors viewed it as a cognitive assessment of various dimensions of destination attributes (Ahmed, 1996), another incorporated a behavioural element (Leisen, 2001) and yet another conceptualised image as consisting of a cognitive, or perceptual component and an affective, or feeling aspect (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999). Perhaps the most elaborate model of image was developed by Echtner and Ritchie (1993), who after reviewing tourism and marketing literature related to image, proposed that an image consisted of two components, one attribute based and the other holistic, both of which encompassed functional and psychological characteristics.From an operational perspective, two of these studies measured, in one form or another, respondents perceptions of destination attributes, such as nightlife or cuisine (Ahmed, 1996; Leisen, 2001), another measured respondents perceptions (cognitions) and their affective dispositions towards the destination (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999) while Echtner and Ritchie (1993) captured, amongst other things, respondents perceptions of physical attributes, the way they feel about the destination (affect) and a single item that requested respondents to state what images or characteristics came to mind when thinking of the destination.At length, it is evident that image as a construct does mean different things to different people, but an important question that has not been adequately addressed, is that, is there anything to be gained, from a theoretical or practical standpoint of understanding the image an individual has of an object or destination? Perhaps understanding an individual's perceptions, emotions or attitudes, constructs that are well known to social researchers, are sufficient.The debate over whether an image is an image, that can be recalled and used to solve certain kinds of problems (pictorialists), or just a coloured word like representation that resembles a perception (descriptivist), has been hotly contested in the cognitive psychology domain for many years (Pylyshyn, 1973; Kosslyn, 1994), and has largely focused on the structures that form mental images. Unfortunately, while the vast majority of knowledge generated from these two dominant positions within the debate does little to address the image issue as it relates to tourism destination planning or management (White, 2004), a third perspective offers some possibilities.After arguing against the notion of a universal cognition, Richardson (1969), proposed that some people may record experiences as images and others may use words. Moreover, for him, mental images are conscious entities that can be categorised by the degree of conscious control one has over the image content, and the degree of image vividness. For example, in extreme cases of hallucinogenic imagery, the individual is unlikely to recognise that the hallucination is a mistake, whereas in memory or thought imagery the mind has taken something under consideration in a more controlled way and the \"something\", gives the content meaning.The degree of vividness of an image has received some empirical attention with one study reporting a significant positive relationship between high vividness scores and achievement motivation (Friedman and Krus, 1983). Both the degree of vividness, and image type could make new and interesting independent variables for destination image researchers and the possibilities that exist here have been elaborated on elsewhere (White, 2004).Despite the interesting possibilities arising out of the cognitive psychology debate, the issue of whether the content of an image differs from the content of a perception still remains elusive. That is to say, it is not yet clear whether any difference would exist in the content of an individual's response depending upon whether the individual was requested to state their image of a destination or their perceptions of it. More explicitly, the aim of this paper is to determine whether a discernable difference, in the nature of responses to questions that incorporate the terms image and perception exist, and if so, what are the implication for researchers and destination managers.\nThe study: In order to address this problem, the present author conducted 45 interviews. There was no scientific basis for determining the size or composition of the sample and certainly no firm propositions established to guide the inquiry. A qualitative research design was deemed appropriate for this study because the available theory as it relates specifically to tourism destination image is \"immature\", and as such, there was a felt need to explore and describe the phenomena to assist in theory development (Creswell, 1994). In adopting this approach the present author recognised the limitations of this paradigm in respect to the representativeness and generalisability of the findings, however, the absence of positivistic rigidity allows for more flexibility in terms of the data collection process and interpretation of findings. Of the 45 participants, 29 different nationalities were represented and there were approximately equal numbers of male and female respondents and all respondents were fluent in English. The destination chosen to be the focus of the inquiry was Sri Lanka but it could have been anywhere as the destination is irrelevant to the purpose of this study.Participants were asked two questions. The first, \"What is your perception of Sri Lanka as a tourism destination?\" And the second, \"What image comes to mind when you think of Sri Lanka as a tourist destination?\" And this form of question was chosen because it was similar to what Echtner and Ritchie (1993) used to measure image in their study. Anyone who had been to Sri Lanka was excluded from the study so in this sense there was no external stimulus in the form of actual visitation experience to influence participant's responses. The interviews were not intended to probe deep knowledge of the subject area, in terms of how the perception or images were formed, and they lasted only a few minutes each. The words \"your perception\" and \"what image\", in the first and second questions, respectively, were in all cases repeated twice to emphasise the difference between the two questions.Preliminary interviews were conducted by the researcher so as to acquire a better awareness, or gain additional insights into the problem at hand by being a participant observer in the interviewee/interviewer interaction. This stage was not intended to clarify whether the participant understood the questions, because they were few and uncomplicated, but to \"pick-up\" on peripheral, non-verbal messages that may enrich the overall study.As a result of this process two insights were revealed. Firstly, all of the trial participants hesitated for a number of seconds after they were asked the second question, and secondly, some participants were observed to be more animated when attempting to respond to that same question. It was as if they knew what they wanted to say but could not find the appropriate words, and therefore relied on their hands or facial expressions to construct the meaning. This awareness allowed the researcher to take these insights into consideration when conducting the study properly.Clearly, the design of this study lacks the rigour of an experimental or clinical approaches however such on the spot solicitation of responses often characterises much of hospitality and tourism market research. Moreover, as it was not the intention to generalise the findings across specific market segments, the small and convenient sample that provided the data for this investigation was deemed to be suitable for the exploratory \"work in progress\" nature of this study.\nInsights and discussion: In relation to the perception question, all of the respondents stated attributes such as beaches, culture, elephants, friendly people, dangerous, poverty, political unrest, nature and food. Mostly functional characteristics of a destination and these resembled items in Baloglu and McCleary's (1999) cognitive scale and Echtner and Ritchie's (1993) tangible/attribute component. All the participants had stated both positive and negative attributes. For the second question, 30 of the participants pretty much restated the same or similar responses that they had made to the perception question, with one notable exception. That being, only five restated the negative attributes, and this may have occurred because the majority of participants had an aversion to dwelling on, or mentioning negative aspects more that once. Nevertheless, there were less negative associations from all participants when responding to the image question.Interestingly, the remaining 15 participants' responses to the image question were based on more generic descriptors. The most frequent of these were exotic, paradise and tropical, terms that are more abstract and general than the more specific descriptions that characterised responses to the perception question. Of these 15 cases, six actually referred to colours in their description; four mentioned green and one mentioned green and blue. Moreover, it was noticed that all of these 15 participants were more animated in their response to the image question compared to the other participants. For instance, while one participant was mentally searching for words, she was using her hands to \"mould in air\", the shape of a dome, a shape characteristic of Eastern religious architecture. The first, and only word she used was \"Ceylon\", the former name of that country, and this held strong meanings for her that was unable to be expressed in words.As mentioned above, it was evident during the preliminary interviews that participants hesitated for some seconds before responding to the image question and it was established that all participants (45) adopted this practice. This may have been due to the fact that both questions appeared similar and it took some time for participants to recognise that the difference was related to the terms image and perception. It may also have been possible that participants actually tried to recall and use an image, in some kind of picture form in order to address the question, in line with the pictorialists view described above, and further research would be necessary to explore this issue. Table I summarises these findings.In analysing these findings it appears that the majority of participants (30) in this study used the same type of words to describe the destination regardless of whether they were requested to state their perceptions or image. These findings converge with those of Echtner and Ritchie (1993) who reported that when requesting what images were evoked when thinking of the destination the most frequently stated responses were beaches (80.5 per cent), tropical climate (61.1 per cent), sun (44.3 per cent) and ocean (30.2 per cent), and while these were slightly different to the items included in their tangibles scale, they still reflected tangible characteristics of a destination. Tropical, a more generic descriptor was mentioned however it was associated with a more detailed descriptor, climate. In some sense this provides support for the view that for many individuals the use of the word image in a question is unlikely to provides more detailed or richer content than using the word perception.One point of interest in these findings was that 15 of the participants who used more generic descriptors in replying to the image question were more animated in doing so, and it is possible that these individuals could have been using different mental processes when responded to this question. This may be a result of attempting to extract information from the long-term memory, in that the generic or generalised nature of the responses were due to fading memory effects. This particular finding suggested that while there may be some different processes occurring from one question to another, for some individuals, the actual content is unlikely to contain richer or more meaningful information.Another interesting insight raised here, was the participants' use of colour in describing an image, and that, the colour was predominately green. It is not known whether those participants actually saw a vivid green at that time, or green was more a word like representation that has obvious connections to tropical type environments. It should again be pointed out that a colour was mentioned by only 6 of the 15 who responded with generic statements to the image question and exactly what the relationship was between colour and generic descriptions can only be speculated upon here. One possibility may be that colour is the last aspect of a memory to fade; that is to say, the longer the information is stored in the memory the more likely the finer details will appear less clear and distinct and the residue will appear as a colour. As age was not controlled in this study, future research in this area could determine what influence the effects of aging has on the shape and form of responses to questions relating to image.Another possibility is that colour could also have some richer symbolic meaning. If as some have posited (Jung), that images are connected to a psychic well or collective unconscious then maybe what we are looking for here is not picture like representations or a linguistic description, but more symbolic representations, that manifest as colour. Perhaps for some individuals, destinations have a particular kind of colour or blend of colours associated with them and it may be possible to observe an individuals disposition toward a destination through colour descriptions or selection, and future research could investigate the relationship between colour, vividness of colour and destination appeal or visitation intentions.\nConclusion: In concluding this study, it was recognised that destination image had received considerable attention in the tourism literature over the last two decades and the conceptualisation and operationalisation of the construct has varied considerably within the tourism discipline. Insights from philosophy and psychology were drawn upon in an attempt to broaden understandings of the image construct as it relates destination management, and this review suggested that the dominant focus of this research was on the structures and processes that formed images, and there was little evidence to suggest that an image was much different than a perception. An alternative approach accepted that images can exist and could be classified according to the degree of vividness and degree of control an individual has over them and a number of suggestions for future destination image research were identified.Despite the possibilities that these suggestions offered, the question of whether using the term image or perception would evoke different responses, still remained elusive, and this issue was explored using an interview/observation approach. For most participants, the content of their responses remained unchanged when addressing an image or perception type question although a significant number of participants appeared to be using different mental functions and expressions when dealing with the question that involved image, and these included the use of colour and animation. Some further research directions were provided on the basis of these findings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to generate insights into the area of tourism destination image.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper was based on earlier work that identified a number of gaps in the literature related to destination image, and a qualitative design that incorporated structured interviews generated the results.\nFindings: - Indicated that when individuals (45) were requested to respond to questions that included the terms image and perceptions of a destination, the responses were mostly identical. There was, however, some differences in the content of a small but significant number of responses (15) to the image question. Moreover, these individuals were more animated than the others, and six of them used colours in their response.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The representativeness and generalisibility of the findings are limited due to the small and convenient sample that formed the basis of this study.\nPractical implications: - These findings provide interesting possibilities for tourism destination researchers and question whether managers and marketers should use the term image when gathering the information.\nOriginality/value: - This paper has contributed to the development of theory related to destination image and has presented insights that have not yet been considered in the tourism literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A decision support tool for bi-objective risk-based maintenance scheduling of an LNG gas sweetening unit	[ "Reliability", "Genetic algorithm", "Risk-based maintenance", "Shutdown", "Simulation-based optimization", "Liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Nomenclature\n1. Introduction: Maintenance management is not only essential to manufacturing facilities but also highly critical to the asset intensive industries such as petrochemical, refineries and gas processing plants (Ben-Daya and Duffuaa, 1995; Pil et al., 2008; Nwaoha et al., 2011, 2013; Ait Mokhtar et al., 2017). Many of these facilities consist of hundreds of equipment, which operate on a continuous basis. Inspection and maintenance have three critical aspects, which, what, and when? \"Which\" relates to selecting the equipment considering the operational risk, \"What\" relates to defining maintenance task or activity, and \"When\" explains the time these activities should be performed. The right task at the right time on the right equipment is essential to make sure that facility remains in a reliable operational condition. Typically, inspection and maintenance cost ranges from 28 to 52 percent of the total operating cost of a plant (Campbell et al., 2011). In complex systems, a risk-based approach to maintenance planning, also referred to as risk-based maintenance (RBM), is most desirable (Khan and Haddara, 2003; Arunraj and Maiti, 2007; Ahmed et al., 2015; Arzaghi et al., 2017; Ruparathna et al., 2018). Managing different objectives is one of the most desirable aspects of RBM; among these, two are most essential, one is total cost minimization, whereas the second objective is reliability maximization (Lounis, 2006; Ahmed et al., 2015).\n2. Literature review: This work is built upon three main concepts: maintenance of LNG facility, risk-based approach and heuristic-based optimization. A brief review of the past work related to these concepts is presented below.\n3. LNG gas sweetening unit: At atmospheric condition when natural gas is cooled to approximately -162degC, it takes the liquid form which is generally known as LNG. A typical LNG processing plant schematic is shown in Figure 1. These equipment require timely maintenance to meet safety, availability and reliability of the facility. In the gas processing facility, raw natural gas received from reservoirs is processed to remove unwanted corrosive and hazardous material before it can be liquefied and transported. In the majority of the gas processing facility, three-phase raw gas is received at onshore processing plant in the inlet-receiving facility where the gas, condensate and water are separated. Condensate is usually sent to the refinery for further processing to obtain by-products. The separated natural gas from the inlet-receiving facility is processed to remove Sulphur in the form of hydrogen sulfide and water in the gas sweetening unit before it can be converted into the liquefied form. A general schematic of a section of the gas sweetening unit is shown in Figure 2. The primary function of this unit is to remove H2S, CO2 and organic Sulphur from the stream and convert the gas into sweet gas for further processing. Since this unit deals with highly corrosive and hazardous materials, equipment inspection and maintenance must be planned carefully to achieve reliable operation. The proposed methodology has been applied to develop an optimized maintenance schedule under multiple constraints for a section of the gas sweetening unit.\n4. Risk-based bi-objective maintenance scheduling model: In this section, a risk-based bi-objective mathematical model for maintenance scheduling for the gas sweetening unit of an LNG plant is presented.\n5. Proposed decision support tool: The framework of the proposed decision support tool is presented in Figure 4. The framework uses simulation-based optimization. Before the proposed simulation, the risk-based equipment selection has been completed in Section 4.4; moreover, a bi-objective non-linear integer program (BONIP) is proposed in Section 5. Next, following the solution suggested in Figure 4, we developed a\n6. Simulation study: 6.1 Operational risk-based equipment selection/prioritization\n7. Conclusions, limitation and future research suggestions: This paper proposes a decision support tool for risk-based maintenance planning for the gas sweetening unit of an LNG plant. The tool is tested and validated using real data from the LNG plant. The decision support tool addresses multi-constrained, bi-objective non-linear combinatorial optimization model using GA for maintenance scheduling. The proposed simulation-based approach presented in the study provides many equally viable schedules for inspection, maintenance and replacement activities to achieve the overall system reliability performance and cost optimization. Typically, a shutdown of an LNG producing facility generates a significant financial impact, resulting in millions of dollars in loss of production. The developed risk-based equipment selection strategy embedded into the proposed decision support tool helps to minimize the adverse event of loss production triggered by the shutdown for maintenance of the unit.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision support tool for risk-based maintenance scheduling for a large heavily equipped gas sweetening unit in a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant. Two conflicting objectives, i.e., total maintenance cost and the reliability, are considered in the tool. The tool is tested with the real plant data and suggests several Pareto-optimal schedules for a decision maker to choose from. The financial impacts are assessed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A bi-objective scheduling optimization model is developed for maintenance scheduling using a risk-based framework. The model is developed integrating genetic algorithm and simulation-based optimization to find Pareto-optimal schedules. The model delivered true Pareto front optimal solutions for given plant-specific data. The two conflicting objectives: the minimization of total expenditures incurred on maintenance-related activities and improving the total reliability are considered.\nFindings: For large and complex processing facilities such as LNG plant, a shutdown of facility generates a significant financial impact, resulting in millions of dollars in production loss. The developed risk-based equipment selection strategy helps to minimize such an event of production loss by generating a thorough maintenance strategy for inspection, repair, overhaul or replacement schedule of the unit without initiating the shutdown. The proposed model has been successfully applied to obtain an optimize maintenance schedule for a gas sweetening unit.\nResearch limitations/implications: A future work may consider the state-dependent models for various failure modes that will result in obtaining a better representation of the model. The proposed scheduling can further be extended to multi-criteria scheduling including availability, resource limitation and inflationary condition. A comparative analysis with other meta-heuristic techniques such as harmony search algorithm, tabu search, and simulated annealing will further help in confirming the schedule obtained from this application.\nPractical implications: Maintenance scheduling using a conventional approach for special equipment generally does not consider the conflicting objectives. This research addresses this aspect using a bi-objective model. The usefulness of risk-based method is to assist in minimizing the financial and safety risk exposure to the operating companies, but some variation in results is expected due to varying risk matrix for different organizations.\nSocial implications: Managing two objectives, i.e., minimizing the cost of maintenance-related activities, while at the same time maximizing the overall reliability dramatically, helps in mitigating adverse safety and financial risk due to fires, explosions, fatality and excessive maintenance cost.\nOriginality/value: Research develops a decision support tool for managing conflicting objectives for an LNG process. This research highlights the impact of utilizing the simulation-based approach coupled with risk-based equipment selection for complex processing unit or plant maintenance scheduling optimization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Expanding a Canadian community health centre	[ "Organisational development", "Governance", "Process management", "Quality healthcare", "Organisational effectiveness" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite significant primary-healthcare literature, little is understood about processes required to expand primary healthcare - defined as enhancing organizational activities' scope and reach (Wilson, 1978). Our purpose is to examine community health center (CHC) board governance during an expansion period, with particular attention to organizational and relational aspects affecting its success. Community health centers have become an increasingly popular mechanism for delivering primary health services to underserved communities. Current estimates are that 5 percent of the US population is served by CHCs (Adashi et al., 2010) and 43 percent still require such services in medically underserved areas (United States Government, 2009). Economic slowdown and increased unemployment are potential precipitating factors for service demand (Iglehart, 2008; Isaacs and Jellinek, 2007). Increased use heightens demands on already stretched services and that require more staffing and infrastructure to meet these demands.\nMethods: Participants and procedure\nResults: Several discourses were revealed throughout the analyzed dialogues related to organizational governance and structure. Discourse primarily focused on governance and addressed: responsibility/governance, decision-making, strategy, knowledge/ experience, internal relationships, information/communication, documentation and closure.\nDiscussion: The board members' strategic governance role arose many times in the discourse around expansion. Board members said that strategic governance was well within their purview; however, they struggled with acquiring the role owing to inexperience and discomfort. Other non-profit board members also identified this tension (Ferkins et al., 2009). Findings indicate, however, that progress was realized after a clear and well-articulated strategic plan was completed and the board agenda was redesigned to align with the organization's strategic priorities. This supports other studies demonstrating the strategic orientation's importance to board members (Inglis et al., 1999) and board skillset linked to strategic contributions (Edwards and Coffin, cited in Ferkins et al., 2009). Study participants described having started a strategic planning process when the decision for expansion was raised. A completed plan may have helped support board members' comfort with strategic governance. Participants also identified the need for more proactive decision-making, which could have increased their comfort with the governance role. Future research could explore governance capacity.\nConclusion: The expanded service continues to operate and demonstrate positive client outcomes. While finances and board meetings for the organization remain separate based on funding models, there is no sense from current board members that they see any distinction between the original organization and the expanded service. Our study revealed much about internal structure relating to key governance decisions. Findings related to organizational processes included a need for a robust strategic organizational direction; providing information to guide decision making, governance policy development and clearly outlined documentation processes. Other findings related to board members included requirements for skills-based recruitment, enhanced board engagement and evaluating current skills. Additional research is suggested to explore why board members volunteer, how they expect to be used and how best to engage them within the organizations they agree to govern.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The current study's purpose is to examine, through a case study, a community health centre board's governance during an expansion period with particular attention to the organizational and internal board relations that contribute to or inhibit expansion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: All board members on the slate during the expansion were invited to participate in one semi-structured interview. Administrative data (board documentation and correspondence) were also used to inform the study. Discourse analysis was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: While board members agreed with the expansion they acknowledge that the expansion process should be examined. Board members identified missing board skill sets, comfort with governance and low organizational understanding as personal barriers to an enhanced process. External barriers included: absent decision support tools; documentation and information availability and historical decision making processes.\nResearch limitations/implications: Half the board members agreed to participate in the interviews. Of those declining, 30 percent cited difficulties during the expansion period as their rationale for withdrawing.\nOriginality/value: Findings add to: the limited publications regarding primary healthcare service expansion; and understanding expansion and volunteer board members' roles and their governance process during this time.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Role of inter-organisational compatibility and IOIS integration in large firms and SMEs retailing chains	[ "Australia", "Organizational processes", "Retail management", "Information systems" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's dynamic business environment, organisations are facing significant pressure to enhance operational, technical and strategic business processes. Inter-organisational information systems (IOIS) are important for most small-medium enterprises (SMEs) that need to manage frequent changes of orders by their first and second tier buyers (Huin et al., 2002). As a result, organisations are increasingly utilising information and communication technologies (ICT) such as electronic data interchange (EDI), the internet, extranets and world wide web to enhance their agility, flexibility and responsiveness in addressing customer needs (Archer and Yuan, 2000; Ngai and Gunasekaran, 2004). The internet provides an affordable and cost-effective opportunity for SMEs to harness ICT needed to facilitate responsiveness to customers and suppliers (Zheng et al., 2004).As suppliers to the retailing sector are scattered around the globe, integrating information systems across supply chain partners that facilitate information sharing is crucial in enhancing competitiveness. Thus, as a facilitator, IOIS enable organisations to quickly identify consumer requirements and communicate the information throughout the supply chain (Soliman and Janz, 2004). According to Cash and Konsynski (1985), IOIS are automated information systems that facilitate information and data sharing between two or more organisations. Such IOIS enable organisations to gather, process, and disseminate information and data across the supply chain (Tracey et al., 2005). According to Arend and Wisner (2004) the implementation of supply chain management varies between SMEs and large firms as larger chain partners have the resources to implement IOIS in supply chains, whilst SMEs suffer with lack of resources and skills.Prior literature that has investigated the benefits of implementing information systems within the supply chain (Lancioni et al., 2000; Lee and Lim, 2005) suggests that implementation of ICT does not necessarily guarantee organisational success. According to Poon and Swatman (1999) organisations can only gain significant benefits only when they integrate information systems with partnering organisations and their supply chain partners, as IOIS integration facilitates fast, accurate and reliable data and information transfer within the supply chain (Lancioni et al., 2000; Philip and Pedersen, 1997).Most organisations have heavily invested in information systems anticipating significant improvement in information sharing capabilities, data security, inter-organisational relationships and supply chain processes (Li and Williams, 1999; Weber and Pliskin, 1996). However, most of these anticipated benefits have not been realised by most organisations. The use of advanced ICT such as EDI, radio frequency identification (RFID), and mobile technology by the manufacturing, service, logistics and retail sectors have resulted in mixed and inconsistent supply chain benefits (Ketikidis et al., 2008). IOIS integration is influenced by product characteristics and the degree of electronic information processing (Kim, K.K. et al., 2006). Additionally, complexity in technical and technological issues associated with IOIS has also been identified as inhibitors to successful inter-organisational integration, inter-organisational relationships (Huang et al., 2003; Li and Williams, 1999) and supply chain performance (Ketikidis et al., 2008).Determinants of IOIS integration can be intra- and inter-organisational. Intra-organisational factors such as resource availability, top management support and technological capabilities influence an organisation's decision to implement and integrate information systems with supply chain partners (Lee and Lim, 2005). In particular, scarce resources and lack of technology advancement hinder the implementation of ICT within SMEs and between SMEs and supply chain partners. Whilst most organisations can overcome problems with intra-organisational factors, realisation of IOIS integration may still be problematic, suggesting the need for further empirical research investigating the effect of inter-organisational factors on IOIS integration. Factors such as incongruence in partnering organisations' attitudes as well as their cultural and strategic behaviour (Vandenberghe, 1999), are believed to thwart development of enduring inter-organisational relationships between supply chain partners. Further, limited attention has been paid to the design, implementation and integration of ICT for the effective and efficient management of logistics and business-to-business relationships in supply chain contexts. Thus, there is need for empirical work focusing on identifying the determinants and outcomes of IOIS integration. In view of the above gaps in literature, the current study focuses on answering the following research questions:RQ1. What are the antecedents to IOIS integration?RQ2. What inter-organisational factors are crucial for achieving effective IOIS integration?RQ3. What are the outcomes of IOIS integration within the retailing chain?The paper is structured as follows. First, literature review on inter-organisational compatibility, IOIS integration and supply chain performance is presented. The theoretical framework that underpins the study is then discussed. This is followed by a discussion of the research methodology. The conceptual framework is developed based on the results and the paper concludes by outlining limitations and areas for future research (Table I).\nLiterature review: Supply chain and IOIS systems\nTheoretical framework: Most prior supply chain researchers have adopted inter-disciplinary theories, such as; diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers et al., 1995), systems theory (Conklin and Dietrich, 2009) and actor network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2004) to explain adoption of information systems. Whilst, the above mentioned theories offer some explanation of the implementation and adoption of information systems within the supply chain; there appears to be a vacuum in theories explaining the role of IOIS integration within the supply chain ANT is a theoretical framework that explains the way technological artifacts are constructed in a society (Elgali and Kalman, 2010). Though the framework explains how the human and non-human actants embedded in a network and facilitates integration processes (Latour and Woolgar, 1986), it does not provide insight on the factors facilitating the integration processes. On the other hand, the diffusion of innovation theory well explains the influence of technological and environmental factors in innovation adoption processes. However, its application is restricted to implementation and adoption. Given that extant information systems and supply chain theories provide limited explanation of the link between inter-organizational relationship and IOIS integration the current study uses congruency theory to explain the relationship between these factors. Congruency theory has been applied to explain intra- and inter-organisational relationships (Gassenheimer et al., 1998), organisation-employee commitment (Boxx et al., 1991) and organisational culture fit (Vandenberghe, 1999) in prior studies. For instance, Leavitt (1965) proposed the need for congruence between partnering organisations in terms of technology, task, structure and people skills to attain expected business performance. These four variables are viewed as highly interdependent and thus there is need for some degree of congruency in these to achieve desired results (Leavitt, 1965). Hinde (1979) defined congruency as cognitive consistency and that can be explained by the degree of similarity in the attitude and behaviour of partnering organisations. According to Nadler and Tushman (1980, p. 45) congruence is:[...] the degree to which the needs, demands, goals, objectives, and/or structure of one component are consistent with the demands, goals, objectives, and/or structure of another component. [...] Other things being equal, the greater the total degree of congruence or fit between the various components, the more effective will be the organisations.Congruency refers to similarity in business attitudes (Osgood and Tannenbaum, 1955), strategy, tasks, people, reward systems, information sharing and decision-making processes of partnering organisations (Galbraith and Kazanjian, 1986). Success in inter-organisational relationships depends on congruency between partnering organisations' strategies, technology, position, and organisational reward systems (Mackenzie, 1991). Therefore, the current study extends Osgood and Tannenbaum's (1955) view on congruency theory by extending the theory to explain the link between inter-organisational compatibility dimensions (technical, strategic and cultural), IOIS integration and supply chain performance within retailing chains.\nMethod: Research design\nResults and discussion: Profile of respondents and respondent organisations\nConclusion and future research: The study makes some theoretical and managerial contributions to marketing, supply chain and information systems literature and has implications for practitioners in these fields. First, the study identified technical, strategic and cultural compatibility as antecedents to IOIS integration within the retailing chains. Inter-organisational incompatibility can result in problems at pre-integration, during and at post-IOIS integration stages. When integrating IOIS with supply chain partners, organizations' need to focus on enhancing all the three inter-organizational compatibility dimensions; technical, strategic and cultural. These findings also indicate there is need to search for supply chain partners that have compatible and congruent technical, strategic and cultural goals and business processes when organizations want to maximize the benefits accruing from IOIS integration at the pre-integration stage. As the type of IOIS used by supply chain partners vary widely, SMEs in retailing chains need to pay close attention to selection of supply chain partners with whom to integrate IOIS with. Further, small retailers need to adopt a strategic view when deciding to integrate IOIS with chain partners to attain maximum benefits from the process. Second, the study revealed the existence of relationships between inter-organisational compatibility, IOIS integration and supply chain performance. Third, the study pinpointed that while positive supply chain outcomes such as cost minimisation, enhanced logistic performance and responsiveness may be achieved through IOIS integration, the benefits varied between SMEs and large firms in the same retailing chain. Finally, the study extends the application of congruency theory to inter-organisational compatibility and IOIS integration, and advances a model explaining the relationships between inter-organisational compatibility, IOIS integration and supply chain performance that could be tested in future research.The research evaluated IOIS integration effect on supply chain performance from the standpoint of both SMEs and LE in retailing chains. As supply chain management is a complex process involving a network of firms, its entire domain cannot be covered in just one study. Further, empirical work focusing on the different stages of the supply chain and in different contexts is needed to ensure generalisability. Finally, like most case-based research, the generalisability of the findings of this study is limited. Future research could empirically test the relationships that emerged from this study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of inter-organisational compatibility on inter-organisational information systems (IOIS) integration and supply chain performance of large enterprises (LE) and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australian retailing chains.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Convergent interviewing technique was used to collect data from managers of 12 fast-moving consumer goods and hardware manufacturing and retailing organisations. Within- and cross-case analyses were used to analyse the data.\nFindings: - The results indicate that technical, strategic and cultural compatibility between supply chain partners are antecedents to IOIS integration and supply chain performance of both LE and SMEs. A conceptual model explaining the relationship between inter-organisational compatibility, IOIS integration and supply chain performance is advanced. The study extends congruency theory to information systems and supply chain contexts.\nPractical implications: - The study provides some guidelines to supply chain and information systems managers on how inter-organisational compatibility can be used to facilitate IOIS integration and enhance supply chain performance in both large and small firms. Technical, strategic and cultural compatibility emerged as antecedents to IOIS integration, suggesting the need for supply chain managers especially within SMEs to pay close attention to inter-organisational compatibility factors when integrating IOIS with supply chain partners.\nOriginality/value: - Research relating IOIS integration and supply chain is limited, especially in the SMEs context. Thus, this paper contributes to the body of knowledge by examining how inter-organisational compatibility influences organisations' decisions to integrate IOIS with supply chain partners using congruency theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Attraction in buyer-supplier relationships: Improving supply network performance through purchasing recognition and proficient collaboration initiatives	[ "Collaboration", "Customer attractiveness", "Supply chain relationships" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Collaboration between buyer and supplier can offer many opportunities and, during years, literature has explored factors affecting the success of these collaborations (e.g. Anderson and Narus, 1990; Badaracco, 1991; Jap and Ganesan, 2000; Menguc et al., 2014; Schiele and Vos, 2015; Tanskanen and Aminoff, 2015; Makkonen et al., 2016), with most of these studies investigating the role of relational characteristics (e.g. length of buyer-supplier relationship, culture, trust, commitment and satisfaction, Ragatz et al., 1997). The role of these variables has been shown, although something seems missing to a complete understanding of this subject. Recently, the concept of \"attraction\" has been introduced to explain how relationships initiate, endure and develop (Mortensen et al., 2008; Hald et al., 2009; Kumar and Routroy, 2016; Makkonen et al., 2016; Pulles et al., 2016). Attraction is described as \"the force fostering voluntarism in purchasing and marketing exchanges, and further pushing a buyer and supplier closer together in a mutual advantageous relationship\" (Hald et al., 2009, p. 968). The basic idea behind attractiveness is that high-skilled and innovative suppliers are rare, and so they may not dedicate their resources equally to all customers, thus becoming highly selective. Thereby, in order to secure access to the best resources, customers must increase their level of attractiveness (Schiele et al., 2012; Huttinger et al., 2012; Pulles et al., 2016). Improving the level of attractiveness is also important as buyers need to achieve the status of \"preferred customers\" for the suppliers. As preferred customers, they have easier access to several benefits, such as product quality and innovation, better support, delivery reliability, lower price and costs (Ramsay, 2001; Huttinger et al., 2012; Nollet et al., 2012; Pulles et al., 2016). Although the positive effects of higher attractiveness have been largely debated, a quantitative analysis of its main achievable benefits is limited (Huttinger et al., 2012), especially in terms of performance obtained for the goods/services provided by the supplier--a relevant unit of analysis in the purchasing and supply management field--rather than at the firm level. Beyond tangible benefits, literature has also focused on how to increase customer attractiveness, through the identification of its main drivers (e.g. Huttinger et al., 2012; Pulles et al., 2016). In this area, most studies are mainly conceptual or exploratory, whereas there is need of additional theory-testing empirical research (Spina et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 The concept of attraction\n3. Research framework and hypotheses: The different research streams previously discussed were useful to clarify the concept of customer attractiveness in industrial relationships; identify a wide set of potential antecedents for customer attractiveness, both at procurement department and supply relationship level; and focus the attention on the main impact customer attractiveness can have on performance.\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Sample\n5. Data analysis: In order to analyze data and test the model, we first performed some tests to assess common method bias. Given that we relied on a single respondent design, we controlled for common method bias in two ways: through the procedure of the study and through statistical control (MacKenzie and Podsakoff, 2012). Regarding the survey, the research project was labelled as a comprehensive overview of procurement strategies and practices, therefore no explicit reference to customer attractiveness or its effect on innovation performance was evident. Thus, respondents' attention was not drawn to the relationships being targeted in this study. Moreover, questions were organized in an order that separated category characteristics from strategies and practices as well as from performance to prevent respondents from developing their own theories about possible cause-effect relationships. Furthermore, the questionnaire was carefully created and pretested and respondents were assured of strict confidentiality. As a second mean to ensure against common method bias, we performed the common latent factor technique (MacKenzie and Podsakoff, 2012); with this analysis, we found that the common latent variable has a linear estimate of 0.5728. This value, when squared, indicates a variance of 0.328 which is below the threshold of 0.50. Overall, this ensures data analysis is not excessively affected by common method bias.\n6. Results: 6.1 Measurement model\n7. Discussion: After our testing, all the formulated hypotheses have been confirmed. We are able to demonstrate that relationship attractiveness positively affects the customer performance related to a given procurement category, in terms of both innovation and cost. This result is in line with previous studies about supplier collaboration (e.g. Corsten and Felde, 2005; Vereecke and Muylle, 2006), and becomes interesting in the context of our discussion, as it links the ways to become more attractive customers (which is a typical marketing perspective; Hesping and Schiele, 2015) to the effects that this may have on performance at specific functional level (purchasing, in this case).\n8. Conclusions: This paper aims to investigate the impact of customer attractiveness on performance (innovation and cost) and assess the impact of antecedents on customer attractiveness. The main results identified are the following:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the dynamics of buyer-supplier industrial relationships and the role of customer attractiveness--a requisite to obtain best efforts from suppliers involved in collaborative initiatives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper develops a theoretical framework tested through an international survey with a structured equation modeling approach.\nFindings: Results confirm that customer attractiveness positively affects both innovation and cost performance ensured by suppliers. Moreover, several direct and indirect antecedents of customer attractiveness are identified, including characteristics of the buying firm's procurement department (i.e. procurement knowledge and procurement status) and supply chain relationship characteristics (i.e. proficiency of supplier collaboration and visibility).\nResearch limitations/implications: Because of the survey approach, the research results are limited to the data collected.\nPractical implications: Findings support the relevance of collaborative relationships in improving performance, and the key role procurement department could play in managing the multifaceted aspects of supplier collaboration.\nOriginality/value: This paper investigates, on the one hand, why customer attractiveness is relevant for supply chain management, and what are the effects on innovation and cost performance ensured by suppliers; on the other hand, antecedents of customer attractiveness are considered, with a main focus on organizational and relational procurement variables.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From hollow hero to expert empathiser: leadership in transition	[ "Leadership", "Management education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nSpecial issue aims: This special issue \"Hero or Human? Transformative approaches to leadership education in contemporary Business Schools\" examines leader centred teaching, deconstructs the hero leader, encourages more reflexivity to help leaders understand their own feelings, reactions and motives for behaviour and offers some tried and tested alternative pedagogies to encourage bespoke leadership competencies which can be adapted for individuality. Finally, we examine the importance of and methods for developing responsible leaders who can find a path which is not led just by financial interest but a sustainable approach which encourages and allows leaders of our businesses and society to approach the world differently, paying homage to the messiness of reality and thriving in spite of such chaos.\nIntroduction: It has become apparent that business school programmes are often far removed from the messy corporate reality of the executive once they leave the campus grounds. Augier and March (2011) and Khurana and Spender (2013) describe business schools as pursuing scientific rigour at the expense of relevance, while Thomas et al. (2013) suggest that business schools need to move closer to practice to regain relevance and legitimacy. They suggest that no matter how many leadership theories emerge there is still no consensus as to the set of knowledge and skills which a leader requires. Marques (2014) points out that education is mostly based on past needs and observations as human beings cannot foresee future developments and problems. He suggests that previous decades allowed us to examine the cyclical actions of business, but this is no longer a luxury we have. Even with the lofty ambitions of PRME[1], the financial crash created a whole new horizon for doing business. A decade later, business schools are trying to achieve a curriculum balance between domain knowledge and the skills of problem solving, criticism and consensus (Thomas et al., 2014). Marques (2014, p. 147) suggests that the two unstoppable currents are; the millennial generation demanding more hands-on approaches and a contemporary work environment which is becoming decreasingly mechanistic and requiring more agility and creative thinking. Thomas et al. (2014) describe the need for a more holistic approach to management education as well as moving closer to practice. With this as the backdrop, the focus on the leadership curriculum at business schools has led to this special issue which offers the latest empirical research on how business schools might achieve such a revolution and deepen their relevance.\nIn this issue: The five papers in this special issue focus on compounding these potential transformations, particularly \"leader centred\" teaching which has long been influenced by heroic perspectives of leadership (Collinson and Tourish, 2015). This assumes leadership to be a stable construct as opposed to a social construct (p. 578), which, in turn, leaves executives and students of leadership in a frustrated state when faced with realities of increasing challenges of uncertainty, disagreements and unpredictability of their environments. The prescriptive recipes of predictability and command and control offered by prolific management and leadership theories (Mumford and Fried, 2014), often grounded in trait and charismatic schools of leadership, do not always help leaders to deal with the increasing challenges of uncertainty, disagreements and unpredictability which they face. Petriglieri and Petriglieri (2015) call for a humanisation of leadership to stimulate behaviours which are more sympathetic to the context of leaders and managers, turbulent or otherwise, reducing reliance on current business school textbook approaches to leadership. Our first paper by Liz Wiggins and Janet Smallwood titled \"An OD approach to leadership development\", a case study in healthcare, offers a trailblazing notion for leaders to be allowed to take charge of their own learning as much as leading where faculty become powerful participants and draw on their own skills rather than leaning heavily on the experts. This paper offers an alternative positon that leadership is constructed as a personal and relational endeavour rather than using competencies to create identikit heroes. The paper addresses the underexplored aspect of power dynamics between faculty and leaders. They refer to Mole (2004, p. 129), who argues that leadership cannot be merely treated as though it was a portable set of knowledge, skills and attitudes which works in one context and not another. The paper speaks of the three shadows of competencies; Incongruence - the false promise of predictability, Idealisation - intonation that there is a \"right way\" of leading and unconscious coercion - the power play between developer and the leader. The authors offer an organisational development (OD) lens where reality and relationships are socially constructed. OD facilitators favour a process rather than an expert role where they ask questions and explore difference around topics and experiences. They illustrate some conventional OD approaches using action learning sets, coaching and teaching of interpersonal skills to examine how such a programme can develop relational rather than individual skills. They offered some programme structure, without being overly descriptive, to provide a defence against anxiety which often emerges from learners hankering for some expert knowledge and power. The learning outcomes cited an increase in organisational and system wide capabilities, integration across system boundaries, improved clinical engagement and innovative service provision. They describe their approach as one which encouraged leaders to develop skills and capability to enquire into and work with their own group processes, which Stacey (2012, p. 28) describes as the adoption of practical wisdom and further suggests that \"we constrain each other at the same time as enabling each other and it is this paradoxical activity that constitutes power\". Perhaps an OD approach is what is needed to coax business school faculty to step away from their podiums and undergo a mutual development process to build and create real leadership development?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Leader-centred teaching has often taken as normal a cyclical pattern of business, which Marques (2014) argues is no longer the appropriate model. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current leadership curriculum paradigm and the case for an alternative pedagogy which better caters for the messy reality - without recurrent patterns or historical certainties - that global organisations and their business leaders currently often have to deal with. In particular, it addresses implications for the \"hero\" model of leadership.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical findings are elicited through a combination of case studies, qualitative surveys and action research methods which include organisational development which encourages leaders to develop skills and capability to enquire into and work with their own group processes and design. Arts-based methods, such as poetry, music, painting, sculpture or music are offered as a means to help cultivate the leader's creative potential and reach into those vulnerable places which often remain hidden amongst traditional didactic methods of facilitation.\nFindings: The empirical findings call for a deconstruction of the hero leader through increasing reflexivity to help leaders understand their own feelings, reactions and motives. It encourages bespoke leadership competencies which can be adapted for individuality. This suggests that contemporary leaders and managers first need to understand what capacities and deficiencies they have as individuals, and second how to build an appropriate mix of skills through understanding and reflecting on their own individual experiences and actions.\nOriginality/value: The paper introduces an approach to leadership training which takes account of the demand for organisations to serve a social purpose, and the need for effectively leading a workforce where the power of the individual is growing with millennials pushing this and questioning the very premises of corporate behaviour and economic and social principles which guide it. It acknowledges that the demands on leaders are shoulder-buckling at the best of times but proposes that business school teaching on leadership must address the messiness of reality and offer means and ways of thriving in spite of such chaos.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mentors break down cultural boundaries: Research points to value of finding common ground	[ "Students", "Higher education", "Cross‐cultural studies", "Mentors", "North America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nSink or swim?: Mentoring has become an increasingly significant part of undergraduate programs, replacing the \"sink or swim\" mentality which prevailed largely a generation ago.For students from different countries and cultures, mentoring is a form of support that can be quite valuable. While anecdotal evidence suggests that it is much appreciated, this is not an area that has been the subject of a great deal of research.Five years ago, eight colleagues at a North American university got together to consider the possibility of establishing a cross-cultural mentoring organization that would work, with new international students (NIS), in a more structured way than previous informal assistance.Such programs couple new or less experienced students with more advanced students who \"bedded in\" comfortably perhaps a year or more since. Typically, the programs might last for around six months to a year. The North American university's case study came to be known as the International Student Mentor Association (ISMA). Among the tasks set by its protagonists were to consider the contents that such a program would need and the challenges and opportunities which would have to be addressed.\nMaking adjustments: Every year, this university has 1,100 NIS, and the help they need might range from assistance with the English language and community living essentials to developing social networks and understanding how their host's academic system works. These cultural adjustments are essential to the wellbeing and ultimate success of foreign students, which makes mentoring work important. It is an awareness of this by the hosts which doubtless encourages a good number of local students to apply to a mentor, perhaps spurred on too by the idea that this role can be a two-street in which they learn something about the culture of their \"mentees\".The eight colleagues who came together to initiate the program had diverse cultural backgrounds themselves, with two Indians, two non-White Hispanics, one Black non-Hispanic, one Caribbean, one Hispanic and one Korean. Few had much knowledge of mentoring, organization establishment and program development, so they initially conducted convenience-oriented literature and benchmarking research. Later, more structured, regular meetings were held and an informal board leadership team was formed.ISMA's mission statement proclaimed that it \"strives to serve the needs of new international students [...] and to foster [mentoring] relationships between students of different cultures\".More than 100 candidates applied during the first recruiting initiative, half of whom were international, the remainder US mentors. The board leadership supported the idea of both group and paired mentoring, with attention paid in the latter case to the use of mentors who could bring different strengths and backgrounds. If one mentor was non-US and a graduate, the other might be an American undergraduate; the former would bring to bear his or her developed cultural competencies and survival skills, the latter could offer good social networks and local knowledge. Differing ages, experience and levels of education would also combine to provide the NIS with a richer learning experience.\nPoor turn-out: Strategic modifications were eventually necessary because in the fall of 2006 only half the mentors (50) turned up. An alternative approach resulted in one mentor being assigned to one mentoring group, instead of the two paired mentors to one mentoring group. So, one mentor would still be able to support as well as depend on the other. A team structure was created among mentors to help retain them and keep a good bond. All mentors were asked to apply to one of six teams: human resource, finance, operations, communications, social relations, or organization development and training.Recruitment took place in April and November for the following semester, after interviews. Applicants were asked about their leadership, mentoring and cross-cultural experiences and were also required to apply for any functional team with which they preferred to work. Later, these teams met once every two weeks to work on functional jobs, although the original purpose was to provide supportive networks.The vice president of ISMA's organizational development and training was responsible for a team that designed sessions on team building and leadership, and cross-cultural communication in addition to mentoring itself. Eventually, based on matching applications, one to four proteges were matched to one mentor. Although mentors were asked to fill out development goals on the agreement form, most parties on both sides preferred more informal arrangements. Throughout the semester, mentors were asked to submit at least two activities to be used in their small group mentoring processes, and ISMA scheduled large group activities once every three to four weeks - known initially as \"Continuing Conversation\" and later as \"International Interactions,\" which included academic career, cultural, immigration, social, travel and leisure issues.The cross-cultural nature of ISMA was built into the recruiting process. Mentors were asked to consider how their skills and competencies would fit them for the role and an interview included questionnaires of cross-cultural knowledge, experiences and interests. Half the selected mentors were not American and the remainder had international or cross-cultural experiences.\nCulture first: Matching of mentors and NIS was based on the interests of both parties, especially those cultural interests that could be seen as international and therefore transcending local boundaries. This would indicate a natural tendency to seek out common ground, but there was a significant cross-cultural content introduced into the International Activities mentoring activities, with events relating to the cuisine of other cultures proving particularly popular. The outcomes of such structured activities were largely reported to be positive, with interpersonal connection between US and non-US ISMA participants enhanced by the nature of the program design.To some extent, of course, it has to be allowed that a certain amount of success is automatically built in to the scheme: individuals offering their services must have some interest in benefiting from the cross-cultural insights and prospects for developing new relationships which are offered. For their part, the proteges learn to settle more easily in the new environment.These two factors illustrate the most interesting outcome of the research: rather than being a barrier in the mentoring process, as some literature has previously suggested, they imply that cultural issues can have a positive effect. In an increasingly global and multicultural business environment, this is something that HRD practitioners should not ignore.\nComment: This review is based on \"Establishing a formal cross-cultural mentoring organization and program,\" by Sewon Kim and Toby Egan. This is a useful area for research, stronger perhaps on the reasons for the project and the way it was set up than for its analysis of specific outcomes, but the message about breaking down barriers should not be ignored.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to review the latest management development across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: - Mentoring has become an increasingly significant part of undergraduate programs, replacing the \"sink or swim\" mentality which prevailed largely a generation ago. For students from different countries and cultures, mentoring is a form of support which can be quite valuable. While anecdotal evidence suggests that it is much appreciated, this is not an area which has been the subject of a great deal of research.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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