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Strategic technology sourcing in corporate ventures: A study of Taiwanese pharmaceutical firms	[ "Corporate ventures", "Technology led strategy", "Transaction costs", "Resources", "Pharmaceutical technology", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A firm's technology development process is not only achieved by in-house research and development but is increasingly through external (Croisier, 1998), open (Chesbrough, 2003) and distributed sources (Chang, 2004; Granstrand et al., 1997). No company can keep ahead in all fields of technology by itself (Quinn, 2000). Howells (1999), Howells et al. (2008) and Jones (2000) identified the increasing trend of R&D and technology outsourcing in the UK. More specifically, Howells et al. (2008) indicated the share of outsourcing R&D by R&D expenditure in the UK pharmaceutical firms almost doubled from 1998 (14 percent) and 2003 (26 percent). Jones (2000) revealed the external R&D increased from 5 percent to 16 percent between 1989 and 1995. However, Granstrand et al. (1997) argue that a decision to \"buy not make\" a production input does not automatically translate into a similar choice about technological knowledge because technologies are usually complex, costly and tacit in nature. The effective use and improvement of outside components and sub-systems requires matching in-house capability and system integration that can integrate and manage systemic change (Granstrand et al., 1997). As a result, this makes technology outsourcing inevitable. Moreover, the uncertainty of R&D process, the high costs of transaction and risk of losing vital strategic assets impede non-internal R&D activities (Narula, 2001).Technology is the most fundamental capability of a firm (Itami and Numagami, 1992) and different sources of technologies incur distinctive costs, risks and impacts. Firms have to match their capabilities to the changing environment (Teece et al., 1997; Sachwald, 1998). Consequently, maintaining a firm's competitive advantage requires exploiting both internal and external firm-specific capabilities and developing new ones (Teece et al., 1997). Moreover, products are becoming more \"multi-technology\" and the firm's competences more \"distributed\" rather than \"distinctive\" (Granstrand et al., 1997). Veugelers and Cassiman (1999) found that in Belgium more and more large firms gradually combined both internal and external technology acquisition (made and bought, not made or bought) in their innovation strategies. Prior research suggests that the relationship between internal R&D and R&D outsourcing is complementary not substitutive (Granstrand et al., 1997; Howells, 1999; Teece et al., 1997; Veugelers and Cassiman, 1999; Arora and Gambardella, 1990). In other words, a firm needs to undertake internal R&D to develop its absorptive capabilities that allow it to monitor, evaluate and learn from outside scientific and technology development (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Granstrand et al. (1997) noted that difficulty due to increasing distribution of corporate technological competences is the major reasons contributing outsourcing of technology.Most previous research has been conducted to investigate how technology sourcing can be done from a single strategic angle. This paper, instead, proposes a technology sourcing strategy could be properly developed by integrating multi-level: industry, firm and governance factors as a whole. This study integrates the factors drawing from three intellectual roots of strategy theories: technology regimes (TR), transaction cost (TC) theory and the resource-based (RB) view. It empirically tests the factors influencing sourcing strategy in corporate ventures of the Taiwanese pharmaceutical firms.The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews the factors influencing technology sourcing from the three theoretical perspectives of: technological regime, resource-based view, and transaction cost theory. The Taiwanese biotechnology sector is briefly reviewed in Section 3. The methods of data collection, company selection and four cases are presented in Section 4. The results of case studies are discussed and three analytical propositions are proposed in Section 5. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for further study are given in Section 6.\n2. Strategic technology sourcing in corporate ventures: Technological regime\n3. Taiwanese bio-pharmaceutical sector: To promote biotechnology in Taiwan, policy-makers have taken a coordinated R&D approach (Wong, 2005). The market sales of biotechnology-related products in Taiwan were about NT$ 17.8 billion in 2002 and reached NT$ 20 billion in 2003, with an annual growth rate of 12 percent after 1999 (MOEA, 2004). The 2002 market sales of the Taiwan's biotechnology sector by types of business were 26 percent in bio-business services (e.g. venture capital, experimental equipments and material, contract research services), 16 percent in diagnostics, 15 percent in environmental biotechnology, 14 percent in bio-food business, 13 percent in specialty chemicals, 12 percent in agricultural biotechnology (e.g. microbiological chemicals, flower organ cultivation) and only 4 percent in bio-pharmaceuticals (DCB, 2003) It is obvious that the bio-business services have been booming areas and have a lion share of the Taiwanese biotechnology market. About 165 newly dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) were established from 1997 to 2003 in Taiwan, and these employed about 6,610 people (IEK, 2002). In terms of types of bio-businesses, there were 45 firms (27 percent) in bio-pharmaceuticals, 36 firms (22 percent) in diagnostics, 29 firms (18 percent) in biotechnology support services, 26 firms (16 percent) in bio-food, nine firms (5 percent) in environmental biotechnology, and three firms (2 percent) in chemical specialties (Table I). A total 27 percent of the firms dedicated to biopharmaceuticals generated only 4 percent of market sales in the Taiwanese biotechnology sector. In contrast to the little value-creating biopharmaceuticals, the second majority 22 percent of the firms in diagnostics produced 16 percent of the market share. It is evident that bio-diagnostics have less R&D cost, time and risks the R&D of bio-pharmaceuticals.\n4. Research methods: Case selection and data collection\n5. The four case studies: The four firms focused on different biotechnology businesses and operate with different business models. Firm A is mainly dedicated to bio-processing fermentation scale-up and down-stream processes such as biological material purification and abstraction. Consequently, this firm is dedicated to developing fermentation scale-up technology for their functional health products. Firm A also provides OEM/ODM fermentation services for other customer firms. Firm B is interested in developing microbial pharmaceutical and nutraceutical ingredients and bio-pesticides. It is mainly a contract manufacturing organization (CMO) that produces bulk pharmaceutical ingredients for both domestic and overseas pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, Firm B was interested in sourcing scale-up experience and yield improvement technology to improve yields. Company C was interested in entering the large domestic bio-diagnostic market for HIV, pregnancy and drug-abusing testing. It was sourcing the diagnostic reagent technology to fulfill market demand through its own brand and channels. Finally, Company D was pursuing the fast growing prevention drug business for the aging population. Company D operates a global technology sourcing strategy and was interested in acquiring the kidney stone prevention drugs that have passed Phase I clinical trials at a US university. The following case study demonstrates the characteristics of technological regime, resource-base and transaction cost of sourcing biotechnology in four pharmaceutical firms.Firm A: sourcing fermentation technology internally\n6. Discussion: Through these cases, the proposed TR, RB, and TC factors have interrelated influence on the firms' sourcing decisions. Table III summarizes the strategic factors influencing technology sourcing across four technologies. From the TR perspective, which is industry-specific, we find that external sources of innovation facilitate technology outsourcing decision across four cases. Moreover, the paper supports the studies of Narula (2001) and Veugelers and Cassiman (1999) that a strong IPR regime (e.g. patented technology) facilitates the distribution of innovation, which makes target technology available in the market place for sourcing firms (Firms C and D). The results also have shown that the main external sources of technology availability increased the firm's propensity to outsource in the cases of Firms C and D, and vice versa in Firms A and B. Being less path-dependent, less tacit, less complex and more independent of sourcing technologies increased the firm's propensity to outsource. Consequently, we propose Proposition 1, as follows:P1. If a technology is characterized by external sources of innovation, strong IPR protection, path dependence and tacit knowledge, a firm tends to source the technology externally.From a RBV the results of the four cases support the notion that core competence is highly relevant to decisions on technology outsourcing activities. Firms ex-ante examine the relationship between sourcing a particular technology and their own core competences. If the technology to be sourced is relevant to the core competence of the firms; they should definitely develop it internally (Firms A and B). On the other hand, if the sourcing technology is a non-core competence firms could outsource. In terms of relative competence strength of the firm compared to complementary asset owners, the results are consistent with the work of Teece (1986). That is firms face weak complementary asset owners, even though they source the technology externally, it will not decrease its profit from the innovation (Firms C and D). In order to avoid sharing profits with strong complementary asset owners, firms will tend to develop the technology in-house. Our results are also consistent with Chesbrough and Teece (1996), as well as Veugelers and Cassiman (1999) that firms can outsource their autonomous, independent technology/innovation to a third party, as long as they can integrate the autonomous technology into the product system quickly with acceptable quality.P2. If a technology is characterized by core competence, weak complementary asset owner and autonomous innovation in nature, a firm will tend to source the technology externally.After evaluating the TR and RBV fit is possible to propose technologies suitable for outsourcing. However, TC theory allows firms to examine suitable governance of institutional production: market, hierarchy and hybrid modes. Our results confirmed that low asset specificity (e.g. patent knowledge, wider availability), low transaction frequency, and low uncertainty of the technology (e.g. late R&D stage, short development cycle) increase a firm's propensity to outsource a technology. The outsource modes depend on the forms of IPR protection (copy right, patent, specialized know-how) and forms of purchased technologies (e.g. subcontract material, components and sub-systems, contract of R&D).P3. If a sourcing mode is characterized by low asset specificity, low transaction frequency and low uncertainty of the technology, a firm tends to use a market mechanism.However, our cases of outsourcing in Firms C and D are types of licensing. Regarding the internal sourcing, Firm A chose to establish a new biotechnology research center within the company, while Firm B chose to spin-off a new CMO venture.\n7. Conclusions: The proposed integrated model suggests that the factors of technological regimes, resource-based view, and transaction cost perspective together affect a firm's sourcing strategy. The technological regime allows firms to examine industry-specific factors (technological opportunity, IPR protection, accumulativeness and knowledge-base). When the resource-based view provides a firm-specific perspective to examine the relevance of a firm's resource base to its core competence, the relative position of a firm's assets compared to the complementary assets owners, and interdependence between types of innovation (autonomous innovation vs. systemic innovation). After having considered both TR attributes and RBV attributes of sourcing technology, firms should check whether the sourcing technologies are available on the market. If there is governance with low transaction cost (low asset specificity, low transaction frequency and low uncertainty), then, the firm can choose an outsourcing mode such as licensing or subcontracting.Little research has been conducted to investigate how technology sourcing can be done from a holistic strategic angle. The paper proposes an integrated framework that could allow business R&D and technology transfer managers to better determine the most effective technology sourcing strategy from both an integrated view and also from a logic process-oriented thinking. The model might prevent mangers from inappropriate technology outsourcing decisions which could endanger the firm's long-term competitive advantage. However, it would be naive to overemphasize the importance of technology outsourcing, and it should be undertaken only to supplement in-house R&D rather than be a substitute for it. Technology outsourcing should only be undertaken where doing so is cost-effective and does not threaten the competitive advantage of the firm (Narula, 2001). We conclude that effective technology sourcing decisions should consider the industry-specific (TR view), firm-specific (RB view) and institutional factors (transaction cost theory) as a whole.Further studies might use a quantitative approach to measure the characteristics of technological regimes, resourced-based view and transaction cost where sourcing technologies are involved. By doing so, it would allow the validity of three propositions raised in this study to be quantitatively tested. Moreover, managers could be classified into three groups:1. technological regime-centric;2. resource base-centric; and3. transaction cost-centric.Their technology sourcing performance (e.g. time to market, product development cycle time, customer satisfaction, and growth of internal corporate ventures) by group could then be further compared. The pharmaceutical industry is characterized by strong IPR protection, long R&D cycle (12-15 years), and science-based technology. The biotechnology capabilities of most Taiwanese pharmaceutical firms are relatively weak. Therefore, it might be useful to test three positions in more advanced countries and in service sectors such as software or call centers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic technology outsourcing of corporate ventures from an integrated perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The proposed model argues that technology sourcing modes are jointly determined by the technological regime, industry-specific factors and resource-based view (RBV), as well as firm-specific factors. Four Taiwanese top publicly traded pharmaceutical companies dedicated to biotechnology are studied.\nFindings: - This paper demonstrates that firms most likely to outsource technology are characterized by the following technological regime factors: reliant on external sources of innovation, tight IPR protection, path independent from the existing technology trajectory, less complexity, easy to codify and having resource-based (RB) factors: irrelevant to the core competence, weak complementary assets, and autonomous innovation.\nPractical implications: - Current approaches generally focus on technology sourcing with a single strategic theory. New venture managers can apply the list of four industry-specific factors and three firm-specific factors of sourcing technologies to determine the appropriate sourcing modes (internal vs internal).\nOriginality/value: - There has been little research on how technology sourcing can be done from a holistic, strategic angle. This paper demonstrates that technology sourcing strategy could be properly done by integrating multi-levels, industry, firm and governance factors in a coordinated plan.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A short, practical guide to implementing strategy	[ "Implementation", "Strategy", "Metrics", "Guidelines", "Process management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2).\nCommon pitfalls: Many firms undertake an intensive, year-end strategy formulation program. In the best cases, rigorous analysis of industry and market dynamics, competitive position, financial performance, and internal issues culminate in a revised vision or mission statement, and a set of objectives or strategies for the firm (e.g. improve efficiency, seize market share, enhance customer service, or less helpfully, become the market leader). All too often in the planning cycle, this session represents the apex of management focus: managers debate choices, priorities are set, the CEO exhorts the team to go back and make things happen.Managers must then re-immerse themselves into the day-to-day operational grind, where they typically lose their focus, their enthusiasm, and their way. \"Strategies\" that made eminent sense in the context of the workshop begin to lose relevance, or become untranslatable: \"improve internal efficiencies\" sounds reasonable, but all change takes time, effort, and resources, and where should you start? Who's responsible? New deadlines and stakeholder demands intercede, old commitments and priorities reemerge, and longer-term initiatives simply lose momentum. In the worst scenarios, overstretched management teams are corralled into painful follow-up status meetings, and compelled to prepare complex reports updating their progress week by week, month by month - compounding their sense that \"strategy\" really means \"more paperwork,\" at the expense of performing their \"real jobs.\" Figure 1 recaps the usual suspects.There is, fortunately, an alternative approach that improves the chances of successful implementation and both motivates and galvanizes the management team. While the process was originally designed for mature, middle market firms (revenue $100M-$500M) suffering from bureaucratic inertia, we've applied it successfully to larger, sophisticated firms (where managers are more entrenched, and systems are more resistant to change), and to smaller firms (where conflicting systems don't exist, but distractions abound). The approach works because it stresses simplicity, consistency, and alignment with the firm's managerial systems.\nGetting started: The six weeks that immediate follow the strategy development session are pivotal: this is when implementation programs are crafted, expectations set, and targets specifically identified. Figure 2 presents an overview of this period.Step 1: refining vision and strategy\nBest practices for implementing strategy: ten practical guidelines: 1. Keep it simple\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Most strategies stumble in the implementation phase. This article outlines a market-validated process, and practical guidelines, for optimizing implementation. The primary audience is mid-level and senior executives charged with the responsibility for implementing strategy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This implementation process focuses on the critical timeframe immediately following formal strategy selection, when broad objectives need to be translated into specific actions, schedules, budgets, and metrics. The approach is to capture the key decisions in an accessible, common format, and to deploy this tool consistently throughout the organization to monitor and guide implementation. Dozens of firms across a wide array of industries have used the methodology, which derives from two decades of senior operating and strategy consulting experience.\nFindings: - Strategy development receives significant attention and resources, but implementation is often neglected, with disastrous consequences. Using a straightforward approach, format, and process, managers can bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality; they can succeed in accomplishing what they set out to do, and think and act strategically.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The approach and logic described are universal, but the actual format may need to be adapted to fit the planning cycle and technology of each firm, and refined over time to dovetail with the firm's budgetary process.\nPractical implications: - Strategy programs need to be expanded to focus on the implementation process. More attention should be given to breaking down lofty statements into practical, actionable, measurable activities. The language and methods used to implement need to be simplified, and consistently deployed. Success in implementation is critical to validating the investment in strategy in the first place.\nOriginality/value: - The rational, practical approach described offers middle and senior managers a toolkit for bringing strategies to life - for bridging the gap between aspirations and real performance. It outlines a practical process, providing hands-on guidelines for optimizing performance, and galvanizing the management team.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Developing learning solutions that last: An interview with Sue Stoneman, CEO, NKD Learning	[ "Learning and development", "Human resource management", "Training", "Coaching", "Technology", "Social media", "Enterprise social media" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: NKD Learning is fast-becoming one of the UK's most revered learning-solutions providers. In 2012 they received recognition at the Training Journal awards as provider of the Best Commercial Training Programme, and came runner-up in the Best Training Partnership category. The year 2013 started in a similar vein, with a HR Distinction in Leadership award for their partnership with DHL, followed by a silver award in the Learning Company of the Year category at the Learning & Performance Institute's annual ceremony (Plate 1).\nWhat challenges and opportunities do new technologies create for the delivery of L&D?: For me, there are two ways in which technology is influencing learning and development: one is the delivery, the other is the depth.On the practical side, technology can really extend the reach of training. Through virtual classrooms and webinars, you can reach more people with having one central learning venue, so it has an important role to play in expanding - at pace - how learning reaches people. Similarly, on training courses, people can be working with hand-held tablets, rather than needing screens and projectors. Again, the impact of technology in terms of delivery is huge. That doesn't necessarily improve the quality of content, but you can get more of it into the hands of people quicker and more easily.More exciting is the role it can play in deepening learning, and getting more sustainable results from the L&D work that you do. For a long time we have been concerned with getting groups of learners to pre-engage with the learning, and then to take it beyond the classroom - back into work, into learning groups.Self-managed learning groups are an important part of post-L&D activity, but there are always logistical issues when trying to organize them. Now, with social networking in particular, people have the opportunity to engage with each other prior to the learning, engage with materials and have open and online discussions about them. Beyond the formal intervention they can stay in touch, and talk about their experiences, their successes, what didn't work so well, and gather hints and tips from each other.This engagement deepens those neural pathways where the learning is taking place, because people are taking learning into their everyday life. They can log-on to Yammer or LinkedIn and continue to have a dialogue about the application of learning. I think that is where the really exciting use of new technology occurs: it is less about the actual delivery of training, and more about the learning dialogues that go on between learners, before and after the structured learning session.\nIn a world of constant change, how can L&D help individuals to become more adaptable?: The world of work is constantly changing, as are the demands on leaders and employees. Therefore, to be truly successful at work you have to be at peak performance, operating at your personal best. In order to do so, you need to refresh your skills, your knowledge, and your attitude towards things. L&D is a key way of doing that, alongside such things as coaching in the workplace.Lifelong learning and development, along with that desire to be at peak performance, is what is going to keep businesses ahead of the curve and number one in their industry. If people want to adapt to changing situations, either within their own company or in their marketplace, they need to learn, they need to grow, and they need to develop.L&D as a function has a huge role to play in putting accessible learning in the hands of employees, not just in the traditional classroom setting, but using all the social media that are out there to stimulate thinking, to put learning in the hands of the learner, to point them in the right direction, and to keep them appraised of new ideas and thoughts that are out there.\nThere are issues on the horizon that may soon affect the talent pool, such as fewer university graduates due to the rise in tuition fees, and an aging workforce due to the abolishment of mandatory retirement. What challenges will these issues pose for organizations?: They both pose the same challenge. What they mean is that there will be a different type of \"talent\" available to organizations. There may be less talented young people available, and more talented older people than we are used to. But the issue is the same. It's going to change the dynamics of the talent pool that organizations have available to them, and therefore the challenge is how do you, as an organization, recognise talent?In that changed space, organizations need to develop the ability to quickly and accurately recognise and measure talent, regardless of age. Everybody has something to offer, and there is talent at all levels and ages in organizations. The real skill is recognizing it and capturing it in talent pools. Then, you can maximise the strengths of each individual within that talent pool, ensuring they have all the right skills, knowledge, and attitudes required to fulfil the company's needs.In an aging workforce, it is important to identify more mature talent, and ensure they get the necessary training to fill any skills gaps which might be less apparent with younger employees. Ultimately, it is a talent management issue, and once you have identified and nurtured it, you need to make sure the talent wants to stay within the organization, so you can maximise the return from the talent pool you have Figure 1).\nWhat is the future of learning and development?: I have spent most of my career in the operations and customer service side of business, so L&D is a latter space for me to operate in. However, from my experiences working with different organizations, it is clear that products and services are becoming increasingly commoditized, which affects their ability to stand out in the market place. All of the hard aspects of what businesses offer to their customers or B2B clients are becoming so standardized that it is becoming incredibly difficult to differentiate. This means that, for customers and clients, emotional connection is becoming increasingly significant, as the more connected they feel, the more likely they are to stay with an organization, and recommend them to other people.The same applies to employees. Organizations need to up the emotional connection that their employees feel, so that those employees act as real brand ambassadors. This will be reflected in their interactions with customers, who will in turn feel that this is an organization that really cares about my needs.That level of customer connection only comes when employees and leaders are totally emotionally aligned with their company, and that is where L&D has a major role to play. Sure, they need to impart skills and knowledge, but more and more they need to develop that emotional connection between employees and business, so employees feel valued.In the coming years product development will continue to be an important function of businesses as they develop. Having a great strategy is important. But if you don't have employees who are knowledgeable, passionate and loyal then you're never going to differentiate from the competition. Increasingly, businesses are running out of assets which set them apart - everyone has the same technology, the same products, the same services. The only thing we can differentiate on is our people, and the emotional connections they make with customers. In the future, L&D will become the key strategic department within organizations, because our people are, and will increasingly become our biggest asset.It used to be that a CEO's first port of call for advice would be the finance director. Over the next ten years, s/he will increasingly turn to the HR director, as leaders begin to realize that the impact their decisions have on their human resources is more important than, or at least directly related to, the impact on their financial numbers. Ultimately, if they don't get it right for their own people, they won't get it right for customers, and their financial numbers will suffer anyway (Figure 2).\nHow has your background in customer service shaped your thinking in L&D?: While running ops teams or customer service teams, which are often the biggest, I was probably L&D's biggest customer, but also its biggest critic. It has made me much more cognisant of the fact that, in today's business world, you need learning that is really gritty, real world, and makes a difference; stuff that learners can go back to work and use. It can't be the theoretical and idealized stuff that HR functions used to come up with. It has to answer questions like: what can I do with this tomorrow? Will it make a difference? Will it make my life at work easier? And, will it make things better for my customers? If you can design learning in that space then I think people realize they can take action.At NKD Learning we believe learning isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about inspiring action back at work. And if you inspire 100 different actions at work then you make a difference. If you just give learners more knowledge that they can't do anything with then, yeah, they've had an interesting day out at some hotel, but what is the lasting outcome? I absolutely believe that the most successful L&D and HR directors that I deal with as clients have all come from an operational or customer service background, and they have made that shift between a line job and a HR job. The people I find less open to change, and less willing to take a risk on how they do their L&D, are the ones that have always been in that function - their minds are much more closed regarding what L&D are there to do. I think ours is a much grittier, pragmatic business-savvy approach.About NKD Learning: www.nkdlearning.co.uk\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to provide an interview with Sue Stoneman, CEO, NKD Learning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The article interviews Stoneman about NKD Learning's approach, the challenges facing learning and development professionals, new technology, and the future of L&D.\nFindings: - The interview discusses her thoughts on the industry and gives insight into her background\nPractical implications: - The article discusses talent pool issues which may soon arise, and how to overcome them.\nOriginality/value: - The article presents the insight of a leading practitioner in the field of learning and development.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Scholarly e-books: the views of 16,000 academics: Results from the JISC National E-Book Observatory	[ "Electronic books", "United Kingdom", "Libraries", "Students" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: During the last decade libraries together with publishers have made a successful move towards the provision of journals and databases in online format. The next information resource that is destined to be part of this digital transition would appear to be academic books. Although the move towards e-books in academic libraries seems to be very challenging, the prospect looks bright. E-book publishing has been growing rapidly and the International Digital Publishing Forum (Industry eBook Sales Statistics, 2005) reports a 23 per cent increase in e-book revenues in 2005 compared to 2004 and a 20 per cent increase in e-book titles published year-on-year. More libraries are also adding e-books to their collections. These are all signs of progress on the supply side. But what do we know about the demand side? What is the perspective of students and academics, the main e-book users, on e-books? In order to gain a deep understanding of the prospect of e-books usage in the higher education sector, JISC funded the UK National E-Books Observatory.\nProject background: The JISC National E-Books Observatory project (www.jiscebooksproject.org/) is a ground-breaking project in which over 120 UK universities receive two years free access to course reading materials in e-book form to support students studying in Business and Management, Medicine, Media Studies and Engineering. The purpose of the Observatory was to license e-core reading books relevant to the UK higher education taught course students in the four mentioned disciplines, observe behaviours and develop new models to stimulate the e-books market. Publishers were paid PS600,000 for 36 textbooks for a period of two years. The books were supplied on two platforms: Wolters Kluwer Health and MyiLibrary. The impact of \"free at the point of use\" e-books on publishers, aggregators and libraries would then be assessed employing a mixture of deep log analysis, questionnaires and interviews. The knowledge obtained would then be transferred to stakeholders to help stimulate an e-books market. This paper assists in this transfer by providing an evaluation based on a questionnaire, which we believe to be the biggest ever conducted into e-books.\nRelated works: Although in terms of size and representativeness no survey study conducted comes close to the current study, there have been a few studies that have polled different user communities in order to find out about their opinion of e-books. Chu (2003) reported on a survey conducted in a class she taught at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science. The study showed \"around the clock availability\" and \"searchability\" to be the most favourable features of e-books and \"being hard to read and browse\" or \"need for special equipment\" as reasons hindering the use of e-books. The results clearly could not be generalized and do not give us a sense of how end-users perceive electronic books. This is because the survey was distributed to only 27 students as potential users, all of them studying to be librarians. Another survey of 118 self-selected participants, conducted as part of the California State University E-book Task Force in 2001, showed that the users were generally pleased with netLibrary (an e-book platform), though 60 per cent said they preferred print (Langston, 2003).Anuradha and Usha (2006) surveyed 101 staff and students (with a low response rate of 2.94 per cent) at the Indian Institute of Science in 2004. The responses indicated that the students tended to use e-books more often than faculty members and staff. Those who did use e-books mostly used reference and technical material. Another survey of all students, faculty and staff (with a healthy 2,067 respondents this time, 30.1 per cent response rate) at the University of Denver in 2005 by Levine-Clark (2006) showed that e-books were used by about half of the campus community. However, most of these people used them only occasionally. About 68 per cent of faculty, 57 per cent of undergraduates and 64 per cent of postgraduates used them occasionally. Generally, of the 1,116 people responding to this question, 28 per cent used e-books once only, 62 per cent thought that they used them occasionally, and 10 per cent believed that they used them frequently. When asked about how they typically used e-books, of the 1,148 people saying they used e-books, 57 per cent read a chapter or article within a book, and 36 per cent read a single entry or a few pages within a book, but only 7 per cent read the entire book. The survey (Levine-Clark, 2007) also revealed subject differences between users. For example, humanities scholars, compared to their peers in other disciplines, were more aware of e-books and tended to discover e-books through catalogues. However, this greater awareness did not translate to greater use and they used e-books almost at the same frequency as the other respondents said they did.E-book provider eBrary conducted a \"global\" survey (McKiel, 2007) in which 906 individuals representing about 300 higher education institutions from 38 countries (but mainly the USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand) took part. The aim of the survey was mainly to measure faculty attitudes towards e-books. Among the important findings was that half of faculty said they now preferred to use online resources, while just 18 per cent said they preferred print. Some 89 per cent of respondents used \"educational, government and professional\" web sites for research, class preparation, or instruction, followed closely by e-journals (86 per cent). Indeed e-journals tended to be thought of as a more appropriate resource for students than e-books. A question was asked \"How do you currently integrate the use of e-books into your courses?\"; 372 people said they encouraged students to use e-books as a viable resource, 319 did not; 250 said they used chapters/sections for course reading, 146 said they put links in course management software; 83 said they required the reading of entire text. When asked \"What do you feel would make e-book usage more suitable for use in your area?\" the top three answers were: greater breadth and depth of collection; ability to download; and fewer restrictions on printing and copying. In the study summary, Allen McKiel wrote that \"e-books had a fairly poor showing\" and they rank \"down with personal and corporate web sites\". This supports eBrary's librarian survey, where 59 per cent of librarians said e-book usage was \"fair to poor\".A survey of 1,818 staff and students at University College London (Rowlands and Nicholas, 2008) as a forerunner of the current survey showed that e-books clearly compare very unfavourably indeed with print titles for perceived ease of reading. The benefits of e-books cluster around convenience: ease of making copies, perceived up-to-dateness, space-saving, and around the clock availability. Hard copy is decisively favoured in terms of ease of reading. There was a big difference between men and women in respect of features and functionality: men tended to rate these aspects much more highly.\nMethodology: As part of the JISC observatory project, a nationwide benchmarking survey of students and staff of participating universities was conducted. The online survey was designed and piloted by members of the CIBER team at University College London and implemented using Survey Monkey (Professional version).Information about the survey was distributed to our partners in higher education libraries and they made very considerable efforts to market the survey to staff and students in their universities. Links to the live survey database were distributed via e-mail, staff and student newsletters, via departmental secretaries and embedded in library web pages.The survey ran between 18 January and 1 March 2008, over which period 22,437 full or partial responses were received, which makes it by far the largest survey ever conducted on the subject. Data collection ceased when the target of 20,000 full completions was reached. The fact that 89.1 per cent of our respondents managed to get to the end of a quite long and complex questionnaire is a clear indication of the level of interest within the academy in e-books. We received responses from 123 universities before the questionnaire was switched off.The results of the quantitative part of the survey were analyzed and published elsewhere (Nicholas et al., 2008); presented here are the findings of two open-ended questions, which were included in the survey. The attraction of the free text analysis is precisely that, respondents were free to express themselves and were not constrained or shoehorned by the questioner. While the questionnaire was open to both staff and students the respondents to these two questions were almost wholly students. The respondents of the survey provided large numbers of comments in reply to the following two questions:(1) In your opinion, what were the biggest advantages that e-books offered compared with a printed book? (Please volunteer up to three reasons). This elicited 11,624 responses. Although the question asked for three advantages, most of the respondents mentioned just one. In total 11,763 advantages were mentioned.The second question was more general and supplementary in tone; it was a catch-all question:(2) Is there anything that you want to add regarding course texts, print or electronic, or about your university library? In total 4,809 comments were received to this question. Some of these comments related to advantages and benefits of e-books as well.The answers to these two questions form the basis of this article and were analyzed using the software QSR N6, a text-analysis software package. Each response was coded using themes that were drawn from the answers.\nFindings: Advantages of using e-books\nConclusions: This is probably the largest LIS survey that has ever been conducted in the UK and possibly elsewhere. The free views of 16,000 scholars cannot be ignored and they raise issues not previously associated with e-books - the importance of \"portability\" and environmental factors. The two main advantages of e-books for students are: they were easy to access, which means they can use them at any time anywhere, and their searchability (another form of access, if you like). These two advantages were also highlighted in the study by Chu (2003). The findings also show a big potential market for e-textbooks. Although students seem to favour e-books for pragmatic reasons such as avoiding going to the library, convenience of use, added features such as searching, and copy and pasting are not thought to be sufficiently student friendly. The most inhibiting feature of e-books is the difficulty of reading them from the screen. Printing features need to be improved and there should be systematic plans and programmes organized by librarians for promoting e-books and improving student's information literacy skills in order to get the maximum from e-books.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study, a part of JISC-funded UK National E-Books Observatory, aims to find out about the perspective of students and academics, the main e-book users, on e-books.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper provides an analysis of two open-ended questions about e-books, contained in a UK national survey conducted between 18 January and 1 March 2008. The survey obtained a response from more than 20,000 academic staff and students; 16,000 free-text responses were obtained to these two questions.\nFindings: - The study discloses that convenience associated with online access along with searchability was the biggest advantage of e-books. The study shows a potential market for e-textbooks; however, e-books have yet to become more student-friendly by improving features such as printing and screenreading.\nOriginality/value: - This is the biggest survey of its kind ever conducted and it improves one's knowledge of what the academic community thinks of e-books.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning academic work practices in discipline, department and university	[ "Universities", "Temporality", "Disciplinary learning", "Social scientists", "Sociomateriality", "University departments", "Academics’ learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nResearching learning and academic work practices: We are interested in understanding academics' learning better through the study of their everyday practices. We are concerned about these issues not only as researchers but also in the context of our \"day jobs\" as social scientists, educators and managers of academics and entities within UK universities.\nMethodology and analytical approach: The study focused on three case universities, (Northside, Southside and Cityside). Data gathering involved work-shadowing 14 individual academics, observation (e.g. of meetings, teaching and research activities, technological, collegial and social interaction, ethos and departmental \"stories\"), recording of both audio and visual data (e.g. meetings, tutorials, artefacts, maps and screenshots), collection of institutional documents/textual objects (e.g. workload allocation models, minutes and staff policies), and finally, interviews. Our primary methodological orientation was that academic activities are enacted in practice, and tracing practice was therefore the focus. The categories of analysis emerged from what Latour calls \"following the actors\", i.e. observing what is present in a situation and what work it is doing. We sought to identify the actors and practices (social, material, technological, pedagogic, symbolic) observed in each setting and trace their connections and interactions - including those extending beyond the institution through disciplinary networks, organisations and media. So tools and artefacts might be significant actors, and actors might be physical, human, textual, virtual, etc.\nFindings: Here we use work-shadowing and observational data on four academics, all early in their careers, albeit with differing lengths of experience. Although the three institutions in which they work are quite different, the departmental work practices are unexceptional and many are to be found in other social science departments in British universities. By investigating these work practices in detail, we can trace how the \"workplaces\" of discipline, department and institution interact and sometimes compete.\nConclusions: In this paper, we have tried to open the lid of academic practice, not to reflect a complete picture, but to begin to understand how academics negotiate the \"workplaces\" of discipline, department and institution in their daily work and learn academic practices. We focused on a single social science, but the practices here are unremarkable and would be recognized in many other disciplines, including in the humanities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the everyday practices of academic work in social science to understand better academics' learning. It also asks how academic work is enacted in relation to the discipline, department and university, taking temporality as its starting point.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study sought to trace academic activities in practice. Within three universities, 14 academics were work-shadowed; social, material, technological, pedagogic and symbolic actors were observed and where possible connections and interactions were traced (including beyond the institution). This paper reports on a subset of the study: the academic practices of four early-career academics in one discipline are analysed.\nFindings: Email emerges as a core academic practice and an important pedagogic actor for early career academics in relation to the department and university. Much academic work is \"work about the work\", both in and outside official work time. Other pedagogic actors include conferences, networks and external Web identities. Disciplinary work happens outside official work time for the most part and requires time to be available. Disciplinary learning is therefore only afforded to some, resulting in structural disadvantage.\nOriginality/value: By tracing non-human and human actors, it has emerged that the department and university, rather than the discipline, are most important in composing everyday work practices. A sociomaterial approach enables researchers to better understand the \"black box\" of everyday academic practice. Such an approach holds the promise of better support for academics in negotiating the demands of discipline, department and university without overwork and systemic exploitation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Good times and bad: responsibility in brand alliances	[ "Brand alliance", "Cobrands", "Attribution", "Product-harm crises", "Responsibility", "Cobrand" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A brand alliance is a strategy in which two or more brands are intentionally presented jointly to the consumer (Rao et al., 1999). Brand alliances abound such as The Amazing World of Gumball toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, Ikea and Dreamworks animated films, Volkswagen's special edition Trek Jetta featuring a Trek bicycle and rack, EVA Air and Hello Kitty themed aircraft, UNICEF and Target, Uber rides featuring Spotify playlists and Fusion activity-monitoring apparel jointly developed by Adidas and Polar. These examples span different product categories, services, for-profit and not-for profit companies and durable and non-durable goods. Additionally, the nature of the partnership varies in each of these examples from codevelopment such as the Trek Jetta bicycle rack, to cross-ruff promotions as in The Amazing World of Gumball toys in McDonald's Happy Meals.\nBackground: Research on brand alliances and brand extensions provides insight about how the new offering effects the parent and partner brands. Table I highlights research in the area of brand alliances and extensions in positive and negative contexts. Brand alliances are a nuanced and multi-layered concept with the potential to provide positive returns including stock increases (Swaminathan and Moorman, 2009) and marketing efficiencies (Samu et al., 1999) if the outcome is positive. If the outcome of the partnership is perceived poorly, brand dilution can occur to one or both of the parent brands (Votola and Unnava, 2006). Because of the downside risk of forming a brand alliance, research has sought to understand consumer perceptions of brand alliances. Both fit (Simonin and Ruth, 1998) and brand strength (Radighieri et al., 2014) impact consumer attitudes toward the brand alliance.\nConsumer responsibility attributions and brand alliance integration: Assigning credit or blame for an outcome is a psychological process called attribution (Folkes, 1988). Consumers often attempt to assign responsibility (good or bad) to an outcome. Two dimensions of attribution - locus of causality and controllability - are central to consumers' responsibility assessments of product and brand performance (Klein and Dawar, 2004). Locus of causality represents whether the cause of good or poor performance is perceived as internal or external to the source (Teas and McElroy, 1986). Controllability refers to whether a brand is in a position to direct the outcome (Weiner, 2000). Locus of causality and controllability often point to the same source and, together, locus and control form the construct of responsibility (Tsiros et al., 2004; Weiner, 2000). Simply put, responsibility is the attribution of credit or blame to an outcome based on the dimensions of locus of causality and controllability.\nChanges in responsibility attributions because of lead status: Because brand alliances vary in type, one of the partner brands may be perceived as the \"lead\" or leader based on the presentation of the offering (Park et al., 1996; Radighieri et al., 2014; Tsai et al., 2014). Each of the brands contributes to consumer perceptions of product quality and brand image (Aaker and Keller, 1990; Keller, 1993) but a lead brand is perceived as the leader within a brand alliance and may be evaluated as more important to the offering than the partnering brand. Consumers use their knowledge of brands, transferability of expertise and lead status when judging new branded offerings (Desai and Keller, 2002).\nAttributions of responsibility during a harm event: Attribution is especially relevant to product-harm events because of the importance of understanding the causes and implications of threatening situations (Peeters and Czapinski, 1990; Weiner, 1985). Consumers spend more time processing negative compared to positive or neutral event information to arrive at the attributions of responsibility (Feldman, 1981). Research shows that in solo-brand settings, strong brands can be insulated from harm due to poor brand extensions and negative events (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000; Gurhan-Canli and Maheswaran, 1998; Keller and Aaker, 1992). For example, Lei et al. (2012) find that if a negative event is inconsistent with the consumer's existing schema for a strong brand, it is judged as an exception. In the solo-brand context, consumers attribute the unexpected negative event to the brand and, all things being equal, strong brands receive less blame than weak brands.\nDiscussion: Developing and managing a successful brand alliances involves many strategic choices. Perhaps, no decision beyond partner selection (Bucklin and Sengupta, 1993; Van der Lans et al., 2014) is more important than the type of brand alliance to offer. Our research connects strategy to consumer-level responses, showing that as consumer perceptions of integration increase and brands are believed to be more tightly fused in form or function, consumers perceive that responsibility is shared more equally between brands. As perceptions of integration decrease and brands are less tightly fused in form and function, consumers discern differences in responsibility depending on the leadership status of the brand. In low-integration offerings, brands in the lead position are attributed to greater responsibility than their partners. These findings hold across valence, ranging from the positive context of introducing new brand alliances to the negative fallout associated with harm events. These findings also hold across a spectrum of alliances ranging from low-integration joint promotions, to moderately integrated bundles, to high-integration composite offerings where separating components is difficult.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Marketing managers have strategic choices when forming brand alliances. One such choice is integration, defined as the extent to which the offering is a fusion in the form and function of the partner brands. The paper aims to investigate how integration affects consumer attribution of responsibility to brand alliance partners.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper builds on the previous study on brand alliances and attribution theory. Multiple experiments are used to test three hypotheses.\nFindings: This research shows that consumers are sensitive to the level of alliance integration, which, in turn, affects attributions of responsibility for the joint offering. Consistent with attribution theory, results show that responsibility for each brand varies systematically by integration and lead brand status vis-a-vis the alliance: while consumers perceive both brands as equally responsible for higher integration brand alliances, responsibility attributions diverge in lower integration alliances based on whether the brand is the alliance host. This pattern also holds for product-harm events.\nResearch limitations/implications: It is important to explore brand alliance characteristics and to date, the level of integration between the partners has not been considered from a consumer standpoint. Consumers are sensitive to the level of partner brand integration and this perception influences perceptions of responsibility.\nPractical implications: Managers should be aware that the level of brand alliance integration and lead brand status lead to different attributions of responsibility, which is strategically important, as brands seek to take credit in positive contexts and avoid blame for negative events.\nOriginality/value: This paper explores brand alliances via the level of integration and leads brand status, which are key determinants of consumer attributions of responsibility.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Actionable knowledge: consulting to promote women on boards	[ "Consultants", "Women", "Change management", "Knowledge capture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Women's access to corporate boardrooms in US companies lags far behind their increasing roles in the economy as consumers, employees, investors and business owners. While women outnumber men in the population, they are responsible for over 80 percent of all purchases of goods and services (Popcorn & Business Women's Network, 2001). Women make up over 45 percent of all investors (National Association of Securities Dealers, 2001), and comprise over half of all financial managers, and of all accountants and auditors in the US (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1999). They also own over ten million companies, which account for over 45 percent of all US firms (Center for Women's Business Research, 2003). Yet, despite the increasing number of women in the pipeline for director seats, progress is slow (Catalyst, 2003).Likewise, research concerning the advancement of women on corporate boards is in its infancy and making slow progress. The bulk of research has been benchmarking studies to measure progress (Board of Directors Network, 2003; The Boston Club, 2003; Burke, 2000a; Catalyst, 2003; The Chicago Network, 2003; Comptroller General, 1998; Conroy, 2000; Daily et al., 2000; The Forum of Executive Women, 2003; Holton, 2000; Judge, 2003; Korn/Ferry, 2002). Other studies compare characteristics of men and women directors (Burgess and Tharenou, 2002; Catalyst, 2003; Kesner, 1988), report factors affecting the advancement of women to the director level (Bilimoria and Piderit, 1994; Burgess and Theranou, 2000; Burke, 2000b; Frankforter, 1996; Holton, 2000; Kaplan-Leiserson, 2003; Vinnecombe et al., 2000), examine the value of women on boards (Bilimoria, 2000; Daily and Dalton, 2003), and report change efforts (Izraeli, 2000; Juntunen, 2004; McGregor, 2000). Though such studies are helpful and still necessary, theoretical descriptions of advancement efforts are needed. Case studies can provide an understanding of the issues in further detail and are a logical next step to build theory to guide change efforts (Burke and Mattis, 2000).A promising intervention strategy to promote women on corporate boards is springing up in a number of areas of the US and elsewhere. Organizations such as The Boston Club, The Chicago Network, the Board of Directors Network in Atlanta, The Forum of Executive Women in Philadelphia, and regional and international organizations of Corporate Women Directors International spend time actively promoting women on corporate boards. Examining the activities of one such organization, The Boston Club, we describe how actionable knowledge is used to initiate consulting and ultimately, to promote social change through the use of consulting relationships designed to promote changes in the composition of corporate boards. Data for the case study presented here are drawn from participant observations, interviews, document analysis, secondary research, and our work conducting the research for the Boston Club's (2003) Census of Women Directors and Executive Officers.In the next section, we highlight the work of The Boston Club, describing how the organization and its Corporate Board Resource Committee (CBRC) move through the consulting process, facilitating the creation of appropriate actionable knowledge during each phase. Then we analyze the process used by The Boston Club and present a process model of actionable knowledge creation for the different consulting phases. Actionable knowledge, as opposed to information or other types of knowledge, refers to knowledge that is useful in guiding behavior in that it tells us how to create or produce something we believe to have external validity (Argyris, 1993, 1996). For example, knowing that the sun rises in the east is information with external validity for gaining one's bearings when lost in the woods. Knowledge that informs a hiker how to monitor the sun in the sky in relation to a desired destination is actionable knowledge because it provides the link between the general knowledge and setting specific knowledge to make sun location knowledge externally valid. The actionable knowledge created by The Boston Club's CBRC provides knowledge that is useful for the advancement of women on corporate boards in that it links knowledge about women's qualifications and availability to companies with open board seats. Implications of the process model drawn from The Boston Club's work are offered and we conclude with a discussion of the relevance of the model to other parties.\nExpanding the presence of women on corporate boards: The Boston Club, started in 1976, is a not-for-profit organization of more than 475 of high-achieving professional and executive women dedicated to promoting the advancement of women in business. (See Appendix 1 for Membership criteria). The organization holds regular breakfast and lunch meetings for social networking and for knowledge sharing about leadership, current events, and political issues of relevance to its members.There are several committees on which members participate; one of which, the CBRC, is devoted to increasing the role of women on corporate boards. The CBRC helps identify opportunities for placing women on corporate boards with its research and priority list, suggests potential candidates for vacant seats, and when asked or contracted, introduces women to leaders in companies. For several years the committee has worked one-on-one with companies to identify women as potential board candidates who meet the specific requirements of the company. More recently, the CBRC spearheaded the development of The Boston Club's annual census of women directors and executive officers to help track the progress, or lack thereof, of women in these high-level positions in Massachusetts public companies.The CBRC supplements the reach of its approximately 20 members with an Advisory Board comprised of approximately 25 prominent male and female leaders in the business community. The leaders provide valuable reality checks, advice and personal connections. Through these efforts, The Boston Club serves in a consulting capacity to organizations wishing to increase the number of women on their boards and actively solicits a consulting relationship with organizations that have a poor representation of women on their boards and in their executive ranks. The length of an engagement varies from a few days to months, as the CBRC works with company executives and board members to identify women candidates for an open board seat. At any one point in time, the number of cases varies according to the number of open board seats which is very sporadic, but typically ranges from three to four.In its consulting to corporations, the CBRC follows the natural flow of consulting phases described by Block (2000) and others: entry and contracting; discovery and dialogue; feedback and decision to act; and engagement and implementation.Phase one: entry and contracting\nAnalysis and model presentation: Change management and consulting\nConclusion: In this paper, we described how The Boston Club acts as a consultant to organizations to facilitate the creation of actionable knowledge, leading to the social change of greater inclusion of women on corporate boards. The push/pull model captures the flow of actionable knowledge created in a paced and systematically supported fashion. Lessons from the case are applicable to students and practitioners of general change management and consulting.The consulting model depicting how actionable knowledge is created in a consulting approach is likely to be useful to practitioners who may not consider themselves consultants but certainly act as such by targeting specific audiences with a message or service. For example, NGOs and non-profit organizations such as Green Peace, PETA, NOW, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and a host of others with social missions may already follow the consulting process of creating actionable knowledge similar to The Boston Club in some of their interactions. This study suggests that they evaluate the use and sequencing of push and pull techniques being used in their change efforts.Further research is needed to understand the prevalence of the model as described and its level of success beyond the case from which it was drawn. A corollary research avenue emerging from this case study is to identify consulting factors related to actionable knowledge. This case suggests that a consultative process involving change management techniques to reduce resistance to action is a fruitful, though limiting, approach to social change because of the need to address structural barriers. Further research is needed to unpack the particular factors or sequences of factors that promote action from knowledge creation. For example, it is conceivable that the successes of The Boston Club and other similar organizations are due to a social desirability effect or negative avoidance based on the legal and regulatory environments that enforce equal opportunity employment. Other organizations with lesser regulatory muscle behind their social missions may not find success in the same manner seen by The Boston Club. However, this case study provides a glimpse of an attempt to facilitate change on a larger level through the use of localized efforts.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Describes how actionable knowledge is created to successfully initiate consulting relationships designed to promote changes in the composition of corporate boards and, ultimately, social change to eliminate exclusionary practices that are keeping women from consideration for board seats.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Examines the work of The Boston Club in promoting women on corporate boards to build needed theory to guide change efforts.\nFindings: - Concludes that no one theoretical perspective supplies the necessary guidance. Presents a model that combines psychodynamic, organizational learning, open systems, and critical management studies views.\nOriginality/value: - Presents the push/pull approach taken by The Boston Club that addresses perceived social constraints and psychological needs involved in changing behavior to create commitment to adding women to boards. Suggests that the sequencing of push and pull techniques may be an important consideration in designing change efforts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Development of a three-tier assessment model: a case study	[ "AHP", "Case study", "TOPSIS", "MCDM" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: It is well known that running a business is a risky game. Moreover, no one can say for sure what will be the future of the world given the existing volatile situations of the world economy and political instability in some countries. The worldwide conflicts among different countries and the wide spread of terrorism suggest that companies need to ensure that they are flexible and agile enough to cope with uncertainties and potential risks in order to remain competitive in this ever-changing marketplace.\n2. Literature review: In supply chain and logistics areas, scholars and researchers have proposed different typologies and/or taxonomies of uncertain scenarios (Christopher and Peck, 2004; Cucchiella and Gastaldi, 2006; Juttner, 2005; Juttner et al., 2003; Spekman and Davis, 2004; Svensson, 2002; Tang, 2006; Wagner and Bode, 2008). In particular, risk management plays a vital role in effectively operating supply chain activities to mitigate the damaging consequence of uncertainties (Ho et al., 2015). In order to manage supply chain operations, metrics to measure performance and level of competiveness are essential (Akyuz and Erkan, 2010). The competitive advantage of companies can also be identified through empirical study (Raghavendra and Nijaguna, 2016). In addition, value creation of companies through socially responsible supply chain management is also recommended (Mehta, 2016). In this research, we have further developed some well-known techniques to identity the criteria related to competitiveness level and their various weightings which indicate their level of importance. Primarily, the model does not confine to supply chain and logistics area and can be customized to suit different industrial settings of various natures.\n3. Methodology: In this paper, a TAM is introduced. The case example in this paper demonstrates the comparison of several companies in terms of their capability to compete in a volatile market. These companies are supposed to be involved in similar business nature such as manufacturing or service sectors. However, it should be pointed out that this approach does not confine to any particular sectors. In fact, the same procedures and steps illustrated in the following context can be customized to suit different industries such as the change of some criteria to suit different circumstances. The important procedure is that the appropriate criteria must be selected otherwise the result will not be reliable. As such, this paper proposes the first step to use this methodology is to identify the correct criteria using HHM which is a wholistic approach considering all aspects of conditions. The proposed TAM is basically an integrated model encompassing various techniques to provide better result than traditional MCDM tools due to the fact that TAM capitalizes on the benefits of both computational intelligence and quantitative techniques as shown in the following context.\n4. Conclusion: The research gap identified based on literature review indicates that competitiveness level of companies need to be assessed in order to remain vigilant in the ever-changing marketplace where unpredictable events happen without any prior warning. To address this issue, this paper proposes an assessment model to identify and evaluate the competitiveness level of companies, providing a clear picture of the position of their companies in the global market. The proposed model comprises three different techniques which have their inherent distinct features and are now seamlessly integrated to form an unified model. This proposed model can be deployed to obtain the final assessment of the overall ranking of relevant companies in terms of the level of competitiveness, thereby benchmarking the potential of various companies with similar nature of business. With the aim to provide easy-to-follow guidelines and instructions to practitioners to work out the result, a case study using simulated data has been included in the paper, indicating the pragmatic approach to compute the answer. Practitioners can follow the steps and guidelines to derive the final answer without going through tedious mathematical analysis.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a three-tier assessment model (TAM), aiming to identify and evaluate the competitiveness level of companies. The existing problem is that companies find it difficult to choose a proper model which can be deployed to benchmark with competitors in terms of their competiveness level in the marketplace. Most of the available models are not appropriate or easy to use. The proposed assessment model is able to provide an insight for better planning and preparation so as to gain a better chance of success comparing with their competitors. Most importantly, the proposal model adopts a pragmatic approach and can be implemented without going through tedious mathematical calculations and analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: TAM embraces three different approaches deployed in various stages of the application process. The first stage is to identify the relevant criteria using hierarchical holographic modeling and the second stage is to assess the associated weightings of these criteria used to rate the potential competitiveness of related companies. The technique used in stage two is known as fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) which is a combination of two well-established methods including fuzzy logic and analytical hierarchical programming. In stage three, a technique known as technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) is adopted to benchmark the level of competitiveness covering several companies in the same industry.\nFindings: In this paper, a case study is conducted in order to validate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed model. Results indicate that TAM can be easily applied in various industrial settings by practitioners in the field for supporting operations management practices.\nResearch limitations/implications: Significant amount of work is needed to ensure that the proposed model can be practically deployed in real industrial settings.\nPractical implications: This proposed model is able to capitalize on the benefits of the HMM, FAHP and TOPSIS methods and offset their deficiencies. Most importantly, it can be applied to various industries without complex modification.\nOriginality/value: This paper suggests a hybrid model to assess competitiveness level embracing three different techniques with the unique feature which is able to provide an insight for better planning and preparation in order to excel competitors. Companies may be able to follow the procedures and steps suggested in the paper to implement the model which is proven to be pragmatic and can be applied in real situations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The CURE scale: a multidimensional measure of service recovery strategy	[ "Service failure", "PLS", "Index", "CURE scale", "Formative", "Service recovery strategy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue.\nIntroduction: Service failure occurs when the delivered service does not meet customers' expectations (Andreassen, 2000). Various types of service failure exist:\nService recovery - literature review: Service recovery consists of \"all the actions an organization may take to rectify the failure\" (Andreassen, 2000, p. 40). Service failures and failed recoveries are a crucial reason for customer switching behaviour in the service sector. Successful service recovery is therefore essential for preventing switching behaviour (Keaveney, 1995), as well as building long-term customer relationships, increasing profit and improving customer satisfaction (Kanousi, 2005; McCollough et al., 2000).\nMethod: Sample\nDiscussion of results: The results of the structural model are shown in Table III. As the CURE scale is an index, each dimension in the scale receives its own beta weight and therefore is assessed analogously to the results of regression analysis. The results show that mainly five service recovery actions influence consumers in their service satisfaction: problem-solving (b = 0.237, t = 3.07, p < 0.01), speed of response (b = 0.227, t = 3.30, p < 0.01), facilitation (b = 0.176, t = 2.06, p < 0.01), effort (b = 0.167, t = 1.68, p < 0.05) and apology (b = 0.136, t = 1.66, p < 0.05). As can be seen in Table III, the other service recovery actions did not have a significant influence over and above these five components. This means that firms have to consider only five of the nine available recovery actions when creating a successful service recovery strategy, and can pool their resources to excel in these five dimensions.\nImplications and conclusions: Service managers need to answer several questions to guarantee that service failures and subsequent recovery are successfully managed, namely:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to address the gaps in service recovery strategy assessment. An effective service recovery strategy that prevents customer defection after a service failure is a powerful managerial instrument. The literature to date does not present a comprehensive assessment of service recovery strategy. It also lacks a clear picture of the service recovery actions at managers' disposal in case of failure and the effectiveness of individual strategies on customer outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on service recovery theory, this paper proposes a formative index of service recovery strategy and empirically validates this measure using partial least-squares path modelling with survey data from 437 complainants in the telecommunications industry in Egypt.\nFindings: The CURE scale (CUstomer REcovery scale) presents evidence of reliability as well as convergent, discriminant and nomological validity. Findings also reveal that problem-solving, speed of response, effort, facilitation and apology are the actions that have an impact on the customer's satisfaction with service recovery.\nPractical implications: This new formative index is of potential value in investigating links between strategy and customer evaluations of service by helping managers identify which actions contribute most to changes in the overall service recovery strategy as well as satisfaction with service recovery. Ultimately, the CURE scale facilitates the long-term planning of effective complaint management.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study in the service marketing literature to propose a comprehensive assessment of service recovery strategy and clearly identify the service recovery actions that contribute most to changes in the overall service recovery strategy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Acciona: a process of transformation towards sustainability	[ "Sustainability", "Strategic management", "Organizational change", "Renewable energy", "Leadership" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the spring of 2010 Jose Manuel Entrecanales could look back with satisfaction to the last six years since he had become president and CEO of the global infrastructure and renewable energy group Acciona. The company had successfully transformed itself from a traditional construction group to a pioneer in sustainability. Yet the economic context in Spain and beyond presented some uncertainties and threats, which would need to be taken into account when discussing the strategic plan for the next years.The financial crisis of 2008-2009 had severely impacted the developed economies, with special harshness in southern European countries. In Spain, in particular, the burst of the housing bubble and the problems of local saving banks seemed to mark the end of a success story of ten years of uninterrupted growth. Unemployment climbed to 20 per cent unemployment, the budget deficit soared to 11.2 per cent of GDP and growth prospects looked very dim (Financial Times, 2010).Moreover, the failure to close a multilateral deal at the UNFCC Copenhagen Summit in 2009 was putting into jeopardy the legal framework of post Kyoto mechanisms1. This raised additional uncertainties over the willingness and capability of world leaders to fight climate change and guarantee the development of the clean tech and renewable industry. Finally, the concept of \"green business\" was under attack by some politicians who criticized the use of public incentives to support immature and expensive technologies, and by some NGOs and academics suspicious of the sincerity of business commitment and the abuse of greenwashing communication campaigns (Doane, 2005).Jose Manuel Entrecanales was well aware of the complexity of the current situation. He knew that the transformation of Acciona to a pioneer in sustainability was still a work in progress. But he was also convinced there was no way back. In his eyes, it was clear that the new generation of successful businesses would not only focus on private economic gain, but also on bringing innovative solutions to the most urgent social and environmental challenges of society. For Entrecanales, a shift in the business world was necessary and inevitable, and he wanted Acciona to be leading this change.However, how could he continue transmitting such vision to other board members in the midst of external uncertainties? Should he push the company further into a green strategy or wait for calmer times? Should the internationalization and the greening of the company go hand in hand or were they two independent processes? Will the management, employees and financial markets still support his views in the new context of economic and regulatory uncertainty and renewed social pressures?\nHistory: In 2010, Acciona employed more than 33,000 staff across 32 countries and was listed on Spain's IBEX35 blue chip stock exchange index, although 60 per cent of the company was owned by the Entrecanales family (see Table I). However, the history of the company could be traced back to a family business launched almost 80 years earlier. The initial company was named Entrecanales & Tavora (E&T) and founded in 1931 by civil engineer Jose Entrecanales Ibarra, grandfather of the current CEO. E&T became one of the leaders in the Spanish civil construction industry during the 1980s economic boom. During that period, shortly after the arrival of democracy following dictator Francisco Franco's death, Spain entered into the European Union, and huge investments were made by the new socialist government - supported by European funding - to engage in an ambitious program to update the country's precarious infrastructure to the level of other developed countries2. Thanks to large increases in revenues and profits, E&T was able to diversify into real estate, urban waste collection, and even the wine industry.In 1997, as Spain continued privatization of publicly owned companies, E&T merged with the public firm Cubiertas & MZOV, the largest and most important firm in the Spanish construction sector. This merger created a new enterprise with 40 per cent of the shares listed on the Spanish stock exchange at that time. The combined entity was named Acciona, meaning Activate in Spanish, to symbolize its dynamism and spirit of innovation. The leaf of an encina (holm oak), a well-known Mediterranean tree, was chosen as the company logo to express strength and authenticity (see Figure 1).As economic conditions worsened at the beginning of the 1990s, many construction companies began to diversify into other emerging businesses. Acciona made a few investments in infrastructure services (toll road and airport handling), green energy (wind power and co-generation) and mobile telecommunications (Airtel license - now Vodafone Spain). However, by and large, Acciona remained a company firmly rooted in the civil construction industry.\nArrival of a new CEO: On the retirement of chairman and CEO Jose Maria Entrecanales de Azcarate in 2004, Acciona appointed Jose Manuel Entrecanales, the son of the former CEO and grandson of the company's founder, to become the company's new chairman and CEO. Born in Madrid in 1963, Jose Manuel obtained an MA in Economics at Madrid's Complutense University after studying at Madrid's Colegio Estudio, a school renowned for its innovative academic methodology based on the discovery of and respect for the natural and social environments. He started his professional career in 1986 as an associate of Merrill Lynch Europe in London and New York. Prior to becoming CEO, Jose Manuel had served as CFO at Acciona since 1992 and had also chaired Vodafone Spain when Acciona owned significant shares in those companies.When Jose Manuel took the reins of Acciona, he accelerated a process of diversification that had slowly started earlier, with the aim of positioning the company as a leader in industries of the future - renewable energy and water.\nStrategic shift: As new chairman and CEO, Jose Manuel Entrecanales, took the decision not to just diversify, but to shift the balance and start moving from the very profitable real estate and construction sectors into the incipient renewable and water infrastructure industries. Given the pressure put on governments and corporations to address climate change, and the considerable subsidies offered by many governments to promote the development of renewable energy, he understood that this presented a unique combination of a societal trend and business opportunity. However, this decision might have seemed, at that time, quite surprising, since it could represent high opportunity costs. In fact, from the late 1990s until 2009, Spain experienced another big construction boom and the \"traditional\" construction sector was again securing huge revenues and profits. Despite the success the company had enjoyed in real estate and construction, Acciona redefined its corporate mission, which became to \"contribute actively to social wellbeing, sustainable development and the creation of value for its stakeholders\" as well as reformulating its vision as \"meeting the challenges of sustainable development so that the generations of today and tomorrow will have a better life\" (see Table I). By including a reference to future generations and describing the situation as a challenge, the company put forward a compelling vision that suggests the need for change, which as described by Pete Senge is one of the most common first steps towards cultural transformation (Senge, 2008). Furthermore, as pointed out by another author, a sustainability vision creates a shared set of beliefs and common mental images; and, as Acciona's vision does by referring to a better life, it should \"provide an absorbing positive image about the future\" (Doppelt, 2003).New distribution of incomes and profits\nCultural shift: a commitment of top management: When assuming his position in 2004, at the age of 41, Jose Manuel Entrecanales had his own vision about the future of the company. Acknowledging the business challenge to fulfill the social and environmental needs of society and the emergence of a global green consciousness, he was convinced that the only way for Acciona to maintain its position as an industry leader over the long term was to steer its strategy and culture towards sustainability. Juan Ramon Silva, Acciona's sustainability director, emphasizes the argument, claiming that \"sustainability is not philanthropy, but the key driver of future business models in a prosperous society\" (see Appendix 1 for list of people interviewed to elaborate this case study).Once the decision was made to change the strategy of Acciona, the company quickly announced its new plans publicly - placing immediate pressure on management to deliver. The next and crucial step for Entrecanales was to get his team fully committed to achieving deep and fast transformation. As Juan Ramon Silva explains, \"We had to rush to implement what the company was saying publicly\". A sense of urgency seems to have been created and the organizational routines were challenged, to turn the new image into a reality, just as Kotter's portrays in his analysis of organizational change (Kotter, 1996).Internal reorganization to incorporate the new vision\nOpen collaboration with strategic stakeholders: In addition to its internal change efforts, Acciona also invested considerable effort in collaborative initiatives, from reaching out to society through a massive communications campaign on sustainability, to taking part in a number of working groups and sponsorship projects. It is as if the company had become aware that one cannot engage in and or even become a leader in - the transformation towards sustainability by oneself, in isolation, and that it needed the collaboration of multiple parties.An emphasis on communication\nEco-innovation applied to green products and services: Investing in research and development\nThe next steps for Acciona: Without any doubt, Jose Manuel Entrecanales' decision to focus on sustainability in 2004 was both ambitious and visionary. By 2010, clients, investors, employees, regulators and the general public closely associated Acciona with the green economy and eco-innovation. Yet, in the spring of 2010, the context seemed to be changing and there could be some concerns that would need to be discussed at the board level, especially in regard to whether or not Acciona should continue pursuing the same strategy.Not all the business divisions were at the same level in terms of environmental performance and doubts were raised about the impact of the infrastructure and transport portfolio. Sceptics could say that even if the company had started a greening process, it had not yet embedded a true green strategy in all business activities. Some external voices could question if it made sense to claim to be fighting climate change through wind power generation while at the same time developing roads, airports and buildings, all large contributors of carbon emissions. Indeed, according to the IPCC studies (2010), transport accounted for 13,1 per cent of CO2 emissions (see Appendix 3, see Figure A4). But others objected that infrastructures were key to social and economic development and, since they had to be built anyway, Acciona at least could do so in a relatively more environmentally friendly way. So what position should Acciona take on this delicate issue? Should it abandon its services that were not strictly green even if that meant sacrificing growth? Was it a good moment, given the economic circumstances, to push the construction and infrastructure business units more clearly into a green strategy?Moreover, the failure of the UN Copenhagen summit in 2009 brought uncertainties about the continuity of the Kyoto Protocol to cap and trade C02 emissions and, therefore, destabilized companies providing solutions to fight climate change. The Spanish regulatory framework for wind energy could also go under revision because of the economic circumstances of the country. What will be the public policy in the near future? Was there enough regulatory security to invest in large projects with very long-term returns such as water desalinization and offshore wind farms?Finally, Acciona had become a multinational company, with important investments outside of Spain. Thus, one question centered on in which countries and technologies Acciona should develop. Should it enter into developing markets with a strong need for basic energy and water services, or instead remain in the stable and highly subsidized northern hemisphere area? Would it be smarter to stay focused on the wind industry, invest massively in solar power, or take a \"wait and see\" approach to further renewable energy investments? If pursuing further growth in the renewables sector, should it grow organically or by acquisitions?\"If the last six years have been challenging, what is coming next might be extraordinarily more difficult to achieve\". Such were the thoughts that Jose Manuel Entrecanales might have been entertaining in the spring of 2010, as he was about to review the company's strategic plan with his board.\nCase study questions: 1. In your view, what were the most important ways in which organizational change towards sustainability was promoted in Acciona?2. In which sense there is continuity and/or rupture in Acciona's strategy before and after the change of CEO?3. What is the role of Acciona's communication strategy in its overall sustainability strategy?4. What do you think are Acciona's main threats and opportunities in the future?5. What would you recommend for Acciona in the future? Is it time to invest further in renewables and water, to take a step back from the \"green\" strategy, or to take a \"wait and see\" approach?6. How could the internationalization of Acciona strengthen or weaken these different options?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This teaching case seeks to explain the main aspects of Acciona's sustainability strategy and the process of transformation of the company after the new CEO took office in 2004. It also aims to present some possible difficulties of maintaining such strategies in the new economic and political environment. The purpose of the case is to show how three aspects play a relevant role in a company's transformation towards sustainability: cultural change; collaboration with external stakeholders; and the innovations introduced.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents a case study that narrates the process of six years of transformation towards sustainability of a company. The case was constructed through the analysis of company documents and several interviews with key actors in the company as well as external stakeholders.\nFindings: - The paper shows how cultural change, collaboration with external stakeholders and innovation form a vital combination in the transformation process towards sustainability. It also reveals that acquisitions and internationalization can help accelerate or consolidate this process.\nPractical implications: - The paper is presented as a teaching case with discussion questions at the end. The aim is to engage readers and participants in educational and training programmes in discussions about the factors that may contribute to start and maintain a transformation towards sustainability. The practical implication of the paper is to show how cultural factors, collaboration and innovation form a vital combination for changing the way businesses do things.\nOriginality/value: - The value of the case lies in showing how business efforts of embedding sustainability into business practice can be more effective by combining cultural factors, collaboration and innovation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Perspective of Yemeni students on use of online learning: Extending the information systems success model with transformational leadership and compatibility	[ "Individual", "Mobile learning", "DeLone and McLean model", "Leadership", "Partial least squares", "Empirical study", "E-learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Online learning is the utilisation of communication and information technology with regards to education, where it has seen intense research (Aldholay et al., 2018). Since its initiation, it has been recognised with various but comparable terms like \"distance learning\", \"e-learning\" and \"blended learning\". As indicated by Clark and Mayer (2016), online learning is described as conveying directives through the web by utilising digital gadgets such as laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets. World over, governments are deploying it for endorsing technology in the education domain (Alrajawy et al., 2017; Tenorio et al., 2016). Notably, Yemen has to confront troublesome challenges in the education industry. As indicated by The Global Competitiveness Report (2017), the nation is positioned at 116 out of 138 nations as far as the rate of tertiary education enrolment is concerned. Furthermore, there is a gender disparity in tertiary admissions, as per Yemeni Educational Indicators (2015), where female admissions in state-funded universities fall behind male admissions by 50 per cent (M=148,834, F=78,329). Online learning can assume a noteworthy role in addressing such difficulties, as per UNESCO (2013), by growing the span and parity of education. Worsening the issue is the fact that Yemen is at present amidst a severe civil war. This is negatively influencing university buildings and streets. Considering technology infrastructure (especially mobile) is rapid and less demanding to restore, online learning provides an ideal solution for learners in post-crisis territories. UNESCO (2013) underpins the idea that online learning in strife-prone territories can limit the disruption of the educational practice.\n2. Theoretical framework: 2.1 Overall quality (QUL)\n3. Study methodology: 3.1 Research framework\n4. Study results: This research work deployed the structural equation modelling-variance based, the partial least squares (PLS) methodology and the SmartPLS 3.0 software for analysing the research model (Ringle et al., 2015). Two-stage analytical approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) and Hair et al. (2017), beginning with the measurement model evaluation, and then the structural model evaluation. The key reason behind selecting PLS as a statistical approach is that it provides concurrent analysis of the measurement as well as structural model, driving more precise estimates (Barclay et al., 1995).\n5. Discussion: On the basis of extended DMISM, this research gives a better understanding about the part played by compatibility and TL in the course of adoption and use of online learning by students from nine Yemeni public universities, and emphasises relevant repercussions and recommendations for university administration and policy makers to understand the consequences of online learning. Furthermore, there are detailed discussions that follow.\n6. Implications: 6.1 Research implications\n7. Future directions and Limitations: Although this research provides new and useful insights for both theory and practice, the results should be considered with caution as they face constraints in three aspects. First, as the study sample comprised students belonging to nine public institutions, it excluded academicians and administrative staff. Another aspect is that the study was cross-sectional. While having experience in the online learning use will change the beliefs of the students, it cannot be traced using cross-sectional research. The last aspect is that the research relied on self-reported evaluations for testing the proposed model of research since obtaining objective data regarding performance was not viable because of privacy issues that could nullify the significance of the results to other contexts.\n8. Conclusion: The continuing advancement of online technology is having a significant impact on education technology as it is shaping the way future learning will be conducted. In trying to solve the problems faced by the Yemeni higher education sector in terms of growing student population, weak infrastructure, low-quality education and limited resources (Isaac et al., 2016), this research investigated the part played by compatibility and TL as antecedents in DMISM among students from nine public universities in Yemen. The results revealed that the proposed framework was successful in demonstrating the constructs of the impact of online learning on student academic performance. Moreover, the research also revealed that both compatibility and TL play an important role in predicting user satisfaction and actual online learning use. Hence, practitioners should focus on such factors to maximise performance standards. These findings significantly support Yemeni government initiatives in the higher education sector to create an enjoyable environment in which students are more likely to use online learning, enhancing their academic professionalism and ultimately the quality of their working life. The implications of this study from the perspective of research and practitioners have been deliberated, and limitations and some directions for future research have been addressed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Online learning has evolved into a necessary means of learning because of its capability to enhance the education quality with minimum resources and infrastructure. Nevertheless, while academics have studied the espousal and use of online learning in various settings, the effect of compatibility and transformational leadership (TL) still remains to be seen, with regards to the Yemeni context. The purpose of this paper is to forward the Delone and Mclean Information System (IS) success Model by integrating compatibility and TL constructs as precursors to user contentment and actual use for estimating performance of students.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The questionnaire technique was utilised for gathering primary data from 448 students in nine state-funded Yemeni universities. The six variables in the recommended framework were gauged utilising current scales. Data analysis was done by deploying structural equation modelling through SmartPLS 3.0.\nFindings: The outcomes encompassed three key results: overall quality (data, system and service quality), compatibility and TL have a favourable effect on user satisfaction and actual use; actual use considerably estimates user satisfaction; and user satisfaction and actual use have a favourable effect on performance of students.\nResearch limitations/implications: Because the research populace comprised students from nine state-funded universities, it did not include administrative and academic staff. Furthermore, as the study was cross-sectional, it studied the variables at a single point of time. Attaining experience in utilising online learning would transform the convictions of students, and this cannot be traced through a cross-sectional scrutiny. Moreover, the research relies upon self-testified measures for ascertaining the recommended research model. The reason behind this is that obtaining objective information regarding performance was not likely because of the privacy concern.\nPractical implications: Despite the fact that Yemen is a low-income emerging nation with inadequate resources (World Development Indicators, 2017), it can capitalise on online-based learning that provides the advantage of excellent education and that too with limited supplies (Dokhan and Akkoyunlu, 2016; Yang et al., 2016). Additionally, online learning can enhance administration and communication, empower learning anywhere and anytime, and endorse fairness of education.\nOriginality/value: This study supplements the existing studies on information systems by blending overall quality, compatibility, TL, actual use and client satisfaction for estimating the effect of online learning among students from nine state-funded Yemeni universities. Moreover, the recommended model's predictive prowess has a higher capability to elucidate and estimate the performance effect as against those acquired from few of the previous studies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Trainees pick up important signals: How discretion helps in leader behavior	[ "Training", "Motivation", "Leadership", "Signaling theory", "Leader behaviors", "Priority for training" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Given the billions of dollars spent by organizations on employee training, it should go without saying that for a return on that investment, employees need the motivation to transfer to the workplace what they have learned. Something else which seems like stating the obvious - but evidently needs constant repetition - is that employees' attitudes and behaviors are often influenced by the \"signals\" they pick up from their leaders' attitudes and behaviors.\nPersonal motives that originate from the individual, not the organization: Aspects of training can be mandated or discretionary. For instance, an organization might not mandate its leaders to provide special recognition to training performance, while a leader showing discretion might opt to do so. Leaders might not be required as part of the training to support their trainees' efforts to acquire skill-based bonus pay, but a leader might - at his own discretion - provide such support. An organization might not explicitly require all non-training work tasks to be scheduled around training sessions, yet a leader - showing discretion - might decide this was the best way to proceed.\nImportance of informal training policies and practices: In research into the linkages between leaders, trainees and the training undertaken, Dr Annette Towler of Chicago's DePaul University and Drs Aaron Watson and Eric A. Surface of SWA Consulting Inc, Raleigh, North Carolina, studied military personnel within a command in which foreign language is a required job-enhancing skill. In addition to finding that the qualities and behaviors which leaders exhibit do indeed play an important role in how followers interpret those behaviors, they argue that a discretionary nature of the support behaviors that leaders exhibit will be related to trainee perceptions of leaders' true priorities or values.\nComment: This review is based on \"Signaling the importance of training\" by Annette et al. (2014). Surface who use signaling theory to explain how leader behaviors are related to trainee perceptions regarding the importance of training to organizational leaders and, in turn, trainee priority to train.\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: Given the billions of dollars spent by organizations on employee training, it should go without saying that for a return on that investment, employees need the motivation to transfer to the workplace what they have learned. Something else which seems like stating the obvious - but evidently needs constant repetition - is that employees' attitudes and behaviors are often influenced by the \"signals\" they pick up from their leaders' attitudes and behaviors.\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" } ]
Entrepreneurship education: a need for reflection, real-world experience and action	[ "Reflection", "Self-efficacy", "Pedagogy", "Intention", "Entrepreneurship education", "Real-world experience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Entrepreneurship is a discipline, and thus can be learned, as is being done in increasing quantity and quality across the globe (e.g. Drucker, 1985; Henry et al., 2005; Kuratko, 2005; Krueger, 2007). Because entrepreneurship and innovation have been recognized as critical drivers of sustainable economic development and competitive advantage, there has been increasing demand to produce and deliver high-quality entrepreneurship education (e.g. Katz, 2003; Matlay, 2008; Solomon et al., 2002). It has additionally been argued that all individuals should be exposed to entrepreneurship training and development (Gibb, 2002), because entrepreneurship graduates are three times more likely to start their own business, three times more likely to be self-employed, have annual incomes 27 percent higher, own 62 percent more assets, and are more satisfied with their jobs (Charney and Libecap, 2000).\n2. Theoretical foundation and hypothesis development: Across the multitude of universities and colleges offering entrepreneurship education, there exist a wide variety of programs and pedagogies (e.g. Peterman and Kennedy, 2003). There is little uniformity in content and approach, although most educators emphasize some sort of experiential learning (e.g. Falk and Alberti, 2000; Greene et al., 2004).\n3. Methodology: The authors investigated whether certain classroom activities (i.e, starting a business, writing a business plan, interviewing an entrepreneur, playing an online entrepreneurship simulation) enhanced; the outcomes the students expected from an entrepreneurial career; the students' self-confidence in their abilities to successfully carry out certain entrepreneurial tasks; and the students' intention to become an entrepreneur.\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1. ESE: factor analysis\n5. Limitations: While these results are interesting, they must be considered in light of several limitations of this study.\n6. Conclusion: While this study begins to explore the nuances of entrepreneurship education, it does not address the bigger question, which should be \"what is the objective of entrepreneurship education?\" It could be to raise awareness of entrepreneurship as a career possibility, or it could be to increase the number of people considering entrepreneurship as a career opportunity, or it could be to enhance the skills of those who have already chosen entrepreneurship as a career. These are three related, but different, goals that would require slightly different pedagogical approaches; there is not a one-approach-fits-all model of entrepreneurship education. The program examined in this study seems to be effective in enhancing students' opinions of and intention to engage in an entrepreneurial career. However, it also seems to provide them a more realistic assessment of their preparedness in terms of their level of confidence in their ability to engage in critical tasks. Further research is needed to explore cause and effect, and we urge scholars to be cognisant of the research question at hand prior to beginning their research in this regard.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of common undergraduate entrepreneurship classroom activities on students' motivational processes related to entrepreneurial careers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 700 undergraduate students from a variety of majors at a large midwestern university in the USA were invited to take a web-based survey. They were asked to indicate which experiential activities they would participate/were participating in as part of their program.\nFindings: The findings show that students' entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) is a driving force in classroom activities enhancing students' intentions. However, the authors also found that the type of classroom activities that are common in entrepreneurship education negatively impact students' ESE.\nResearch limitations/implications: The generalizability is limited to the US region and the link from intention to behavior goes untested, but results strongly supported the adoption of social cognitive career theory to the entrepreneurship domain.\nPractical implications: This study lends support to the argument that promoting the learning process in entrepreneurship education should focus on real-world experience, action, and reflective processes to engage students in authentic learning, which should lead to greater entrepreneurial abilities and propensity, and eventually to enhanced entrepreneurial performance, which benefits individuals and societies.\nSocial implications: This study suggests that the goals and pedagogical approaches to teaching entrepreneurship are issues that educators may need to revisit and update if the economic benefits of entrepreneurship are to be fully realized.\nOriginality/value: While the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship activity is well documented in extant literature, this study found that activities that are common in entrepreneurship education may negatively impact students' ESE and need to be further explored.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Financial constraints for investment in Brazil	[ "Investment", "Brazil", "Cash flow", "Emerging market", "Financial constraints" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Literature on financial constraints is mainly focussed on developed countries, while developing countries, with growing importance in the international economy, have received minimal attention, as is the case of Brazil. Important publications by the Goldman Sachs Economics Research Group point out the relevance of Brazil in the global economy. Brazil, Russia, India, and China are crucial emerging markets with the potential to be among the six largest economies by GDP in the world by 2050 (Goldman Sachs, 2007; O'Neill, 2001; Wilson and Purushothaman, 2003).\n2. The Brazilian market, financial constraints, and hypotheses: Relevant international research has reported that investment and growth, at the micro and macroeconomic level, benefit from financial development (Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic, 1998; Rajan and Zingales, 1998; Darrat et al., 2006; Levine, 2002).\n3. Models, econometric method, and sample: 3.1 Models and variables\n4. Results: Table IV contains a summary of descriptive statistics of the sample variables. Average investment intensity, in the period of study, of 10.97 percent is lower than in other markets: 12.9 percent in the USA (Chiao, 2002), 13.9 percent in Germany (Harhoff, 1998), 12.5 percent in Belgium, and 11.7 percent in the UK (Bond et al., 2003). Brazilian firms present an average (CF/K) ratio of 50 percent with an average output ratio (Y/K ) of 262 percent. The mean leverage ratio is about 112 percent.\n5. Conclusions: In recent years, the Brazilian government has carried out far-reaching policies of economic liberalization. In the framework of firms' greater access to capital markets, we analyze the extent to which investment of Brazilian non-financial firms is affected by financial constraints.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to verify the existence of financial constraints for investment in Brazil, an emerging market with growing international visibility.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using panel data methodology and generalized method of moments (GMM), the paper estimates dynamic investment models based on the Euler equation and Tobin's q for a panel data set of 199 Brazilian non-financial firms for the time period 1995-2006.\nFindings: Results show that Brazilian firms face financial constraints since their investments depend on internally generated funds. Results are robust to different investment models based on the Euler equation, also controlling for growth opportunities. Significant investment-cash flow sensitivity has been found for the whole sample of firms. Subsamples of firms considered as under financial constraints, according to dividend payout and equity issuance policies, have higher investment-cash flow sensitivity. Investment-cash flow sensitivity of financially constrained firms in Brazil is higher than that in the UK and in Romania, a transition economy.\nOriginality/value: The results extend empirical evidence of financial constraints in Brazil. The paper contributes to the literature by assessing the firms' financial constraint status on an annual basis, and by using panel data methodology and GMM to estimate dynamic models of investment that take into account the proposals of the hierarchy of finance theory. In addition, the paper controls for growth opportunities. Capital market imperfections affect firm investment in Brazil and such effects are even stronger for financially constrained firms.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Assessment of the healthy dietary diversity of a main meal in a self-service restaurant: A pilot study	[ "Meals", "Restaurants", "Dietary assessment", "Dietary diversity", "Food choices" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The high prevalence of overweight, obesity, and non-communicable chronic diseases is considered important public health issues throughout the world (Drewnowski, 2000; Popkin, 2004; Popkin et al., 2012). The World Health Organization reports that economic growth, modernization, urbanization and food globalization are related to what may be seen as an obesity epidemic. Furthermore, as rural populations migrate to cities, diets rich in complex carbohydrates are replaced by diets that at first seem more varied, but are in fact high in total and saturated fats and sugars (World Health Organization, 2003, 2006; Malik et al., 2013).\nMethod: An analytical cross-sectional pilot study was conducted with consumers having lunch in a restaurant serving buffet-by-weight, located in the southern region of Brazil. In this type of foodservice, consumers serve themselves from a buffet. Then, they weigh the plate containing the chosen foods on a scale that is tarred for the weight of the plate, paying only for the weight of the food chosen in relation to a kilogram price. This type of restaurant is common throughout Brazil (Rodrigues et al., 2012).\nResults: Description of the participants\nDiscussion: The study has some limitations. First, the pilot study was restricted to a single restaurant. However, as the chosen restaurant was considered to be representative of the other restaurants surveyed, their consumers may also be seen to represent the characteristics of the population of interest, indicating data generalizability. Second, only the food choices of a single meal were analysed, which may not coincide with consumption or dietary habits. However, considering that the food choices were self-selected by the consumers who were familiar with this type of restaurant, the meals analysed are likely to represent their usual intake in such a commercial situation. Considering that there are many dishes to choose from, a diverse meal may indicate that the diner has healthy food habits. Previous studies demonstrate that more dietary variety and/or diversity reflect the potential for a healthier choice and are related to diet quality (Kant et al., 1993; Drewnowski et al., 1997; Dixon et al., 2001; Volp et al., 2010; Azadbakht and Esmaillzadeh, 2011). DDS show promise as a rapid and efficient means to estimate nutrient adequacy of the diet. Although the link between increasing diversity of the diet and increased nutrient intake has been made, the relationship between dietary diversity and adequate micronutrient intake has not yet been sufficiently validated across different cultural settings and in different age groups (Steyn et al., 2006). In this sense, the validation of our study is necessary to confirm this hypothesis.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a first proposal of a healthy dietary diversity index to evaluate meals in self-service restaurants.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive pilot study in a Brazilian buffet-style restaurant. The study group was selected by systematic sampling and consisted of 678 individuals aged 16-81 years, who were regular diners at a selected restaurant during lunchtime. Photographs were used to assess food choices and a sociodemographic questionnaire was administered to the subjects. A healthy dietary diversity model was created following WHO recommendations and the Brazilian Food Guide. A consensus workshop was conducted with experts to discuss and classify certain dishes as more or less healthy (high/low energy density). The model attributed negative (-3.0-0.0) and positive (0.0-12.0) scores to different food groups. Higher scores meant greater diversity on the plate, and therefore a greater chance of a healthy meal (=9.0), while a lower score reflected a higher variety of energy-dense foods, such as fried dishes (=6.0).\nFindings: Most diner's plates (65.3 per cent) obtained low diversity score indexes (=6) and were considered inadequate, represented the dishes where intake should be controlled from a nutritional viewpoint (over caloric meal). There was a significant association between healthy diversity scores (=9.0) and low variety of high energy density dishes on the plates.\nOriginality/value: This method of assessing the healthy dietary diversity of a main meal could be tested as an innovative model for investigating the food choices of individuals who eat away from home.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"In sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth?": Economic crises and CSR change management in difficult times	[ "Sustainable performance", "Corporate social responsibility", "Sustainability", "Environmental management", "Change management", "Economic crisis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Economic crises generate an environment of uncertainty for various social spheres: for people, the public sector, and businesses (Choudhry et al., 2012; Chzhen, 2016; Karanikolos et al., 2013; Kondo et al., 2008; Pavlinek and Zenka, 2010; Perles-Ribes et al., 2016).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 CSR and environmental management\n3. Research method: The research method adopted was an integrative literature review (Huisingh, 2012), following the best practices of similar previous studies (e.g. Jabbour, 2013; Lage Junior and Godinho Filho, 2010; Mariano et al., 2015; Seuring and Muller, 2008).\n4. Results: 4.1 Bibliometric analysis\n5. Discussion: marriage and divorce: The literature does not provide a clear consensus on the relationship between economic crises and social responsibility. There are cases where there is a marriage between the challenges of crises and social and environmental opportunities, in pursuit of gains. In other cases, there is a divorce, where economic crises consequences lead to the abandonment of environmental initiatives by businesses. About 12.77 per cent of the studies analysed report that economic crises tend to encourage environmental and social initiatives; however, approximately 30 per cent of the studies state that periods of economic crisis negatively affect social and environmental initiatives. In contrast, about 47 per cent the studies found that social and environmental initiatives are important in coping with economic crises. Therefore, it can be assumed that two types of relationship exist (see Figure 5), the first an abrupt divorce between economic crises and awareness of the social and environmental benefits; and the second, in which social and environmental investments continue even during economic crises, seen as an opportunity for growth.\n6. Final considerations: In just over two decades, the world has witnessed various economic crises, such as financial crises in Asia, Russia, Argentina, Europe, and more recently, in emerging BRIC countries, especially in Brazil. However, do economic crises affect corporate social and environmental initiatives? Do they damage this relationship? In times of crisis, does the marriage between the corporate world and social and environmental initiatives remain stable, or is there an abrupt divorce of these aspects? All these questions were a part of the motivation for this research. In addition, literature on the issue is scarce and not unanimous, meaning an integrative and systematic review of the issue is required.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: \"Economic crises\" and \"corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives\" are two issues that dominate the modern business agenda. Although related, these issues have been analysed separately, and so a significant gap is perpetuated between the two. What are the effects of economic crises on CSR initiatives? Can organisational social initiatives withstand economic crises? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An integrative literature review was conducted, considering: the economic and geographical context in which the research was conducted; the focus of each piece of research; the adopted research methods; organisational theories of analytical support; the sectors analysed; and the effects of economic crises on CSR initiatives and environmental management.\nFindings: Some of the findings were as follows: most of the studies analysed reported that CSR helps companies to cope with economic crises by increasing the efficiency of investments and establishing better relations with stakeholders and markets; environmental practices are related to negative environmental performance in periods of economic crises; and CSR relates positively to financial performance in periods of economic crises.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first integrative literature reviews to investigate what happens to the relationship between businesses and sustainable change management in periods of crises. This paper also offers a future research agenda for the issue, with 12 questions still unanswered by the latest research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The iPod phenomenon: identifying a market leader's secrets through qualitative marketing research	[ "Product development", "Qualitative market research" ]	[ { "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 iPod phenomenon: In under two years, the stock price of Apple Computer, Inc. has risen nearly 600 per cent (CNN Money, 2005); by the end of 2005 it was valued at twice as much as at the start of 2000. The rise in Apple's stock price is closely linked to the success of a product first introduced four years ago - the iPod digital music player. According to a recent Forrester report (Collingwood, 2005), the iPod accounts for around three quarters of the digital music player market in the USA and has helped Apple increase its third-quarter sales to increase by 75 per cent within a single year (Malester, 2005). For a 30-year old company, this development is not only impressive but also surprising considering that the original iPod, introduced in a difficult market environment at the end of 2001, was neither the first digital music player, nor initially compatible with the majority of personal computers. The first iPod could only be used with Apple's own Macintosh computers, a platform accounting for less than 4 per cent of US computer sales (Belk and Tumbat, 2005). Nevertheless, since this inauspicious beginning the iPod has developed into a whole family of products ranging from $99-399 and has triggered the creation of an accessories industry, such as protection cases and speaker systems, which itself is estimated to be valued $300 million (Mello, 2005).Relevance for product and brand managers\nNew product development and marketing research: Generally speaking, product development can be separated into new product innovation and enhancements of existing products (Norman, 2005b). What makes competing with a market leader particularly difficult is the fact that they often apply a combination of enhancements and innovations to secure their position. In the case of the iPod for instance, Apple is regularly updating existing models and introducing new ones distinct from existing models. For example, the \"iPod shuffle\" introduced in January 2005 was the first digital music player in years that did not have a display, something which is now generally considered essential; from a purely technological perspective, this \"innovation\" might be perceived as a step backwards.Apple is also changing successful models with different variations, such as the \"iPod mini\" that was replaced in September 2005 with a much smaller model called the \"iPod nano\". This move is interesting for two different reasons. First, the new model has a lower storage capacity than its predecessor, even though a higher storage capacity is again commonly considered to be a crucial attribute for newly introduced digital music player. More importantly, however, the replaced model was not just Apple's best selling iPod, but also the best-selling digital music player model worldwide. Many considered replacing such a successful model without noticeable pressure from competitors or other apparent reasons a bold move. Moreover, for product managers, both examples illustrate the fact that there exists a promising additional option beside the traditional view of product enhancements as offering \"the same, but more of it\". Thus, as product enhancements and new product innovations often come hand-in-hand, it is necessary to look at the way product development takes place.Here, two basic routes can be distinguished, which are often referred to as \"technology-push\" vs \"market-pull\" (Valentin, 1994). The technology-push route follows capabilities that exist within firms or even the intuition of its top management (Flores Letelier et al., 2000). Innovation is often associated with the technology-push approach and indeed several organisational aspects have been linked in this regard to Apple. In contrast, the market-pull route is based on the marketing concept emphasising the requirements of the targeted market. These product development approaches assign very different roles to marketing research, playing a dominant role in the market-pull approach but possibly not even being considered in the technology-push approach. Whatever the case, to be successful new products and services have to be accurately responsive to consumer demands (von Hippel, 2001). Thus, the two basic approaches identified by Valentin (1994) should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but rather as extreme ends of a continuum with varying degrees of marketing research contributing to the identification of consumer demands. In fact, Apple's approach to new product development tends more towards the technology-push route but without neglecting what the market actually demands. Again, a combined approach is probably most appropriate for meeting customer needs because it takes into account what customers demand but builds upon this by providing innovative solutions that go beyond stated requirements towards meeting real needs.Research certainly indicates that for a number of industry sectors consumers do contribute meaningfully to the new product development process and that understanding their contribution to the development of goods and services is a goal worth pursuing (Luthje, 2004). Marketing research can contribute to this task but has to overcome several limitations associated with it.Difficulties associated with traditional marketing research\nAim of the study: understanding customer benefits for competitive advantage: The aim of this study is twofold. First, by combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, it aims to reveal consumers' preferred attributes for the iconic brand and market leader, iPod. The research uses the laddering technique (Reynolds and Gutman, 1988) to identify the attributes of the iPod that users value, and to uncover the constructs that underlie these, so as to reveal customers' desired benefits. As will be discussed further the research uses online rather than traditional personal interviews for which the customers of Apple products are well suited being particularly highly involved with the brand. They are distinguished by their \"fierce loyalty to the brand\" (Belk and Tumbat, 2005, p. 205) and can be considered as a subculture of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995).We believe that this research study also contributes more widely to marketing research in that we are investigating a brand that dominates its market. Apple has redefined the portable music market effectively creating an entirely new market segment. An increased knowledge about desired attributes and the underlying benefits could help understand this consumer phenomenon and more generally the understanding of sought after lifestyle products. The study should help to identify whether the laddering technique is a suitable research tool in the quest to learn about what consumers value in innovative products. This could in turn prove useful to those companies wishing to gain consumer insights to develop new products that are of value to these consumers.We aim to provide a more realistic but practical method of understanding a market leader through the eyes of the consumer. This should be particularly helpful for firms that have difficulties competing with the market leader. While following the market leader may not bring success, focusing on gaining knowledge from its customers will help to understand the nature of their success. In contrast to the organisational perspective that was previously discussed, we are primarily concerned with customer input and with a high-involvement product such as the iPod, customers should be happy to discuss their experiences with the product. Such a customer-oriented perspective can contribute to the discussion of a product phenomenon by looking more closely at why consumers have made that product so successful. In particular the investigation will examine the reasons which lead customers to choose products from the market leader instead of other competitors. Such reasons relate to the benefits that products can offer in the eyes of the customer and how these benefits relate to customers' deeply held personal values.To enable this depth of understanding the study uses a semi-standardised qualitative technique called laddering, which to date has not been used for the investigation of the desired attributes of innovative products such as the Apple iPod. As the laddering technique is predominately used to reveal so called means-end chains, the following section describes the principles of the means-end approach in more detail.\nThe means-end approach: Originally used for product or brand positioning issues (Gutman, 1982; Olson and Reynolds, 1983), the means-end approach has since been extensively used in the areas of consumer behaviour (Bagozzi and Dabholkar, 1994; Deeter-Schmelz et al., 2002; Pieters et al., 1995, 1998), sales management (Botschen et al., 1999; Reynolds et al., 2001), and strategic marketing (Norton and Reynolds, 2001; Reynolds and Rochon, 2001). It aims to discover the salient meanings that consumers associate with products or services with the focus being on the associations in the consumer's mind between the attributes of products, which are the \"means\", the consequences of these attributes for the consumer, and the personal values or beliefs, the \"ends\", which are satisfied by the consequences. Importantly, aspects of the consumer are studied in depth but quantifiable results are achieved.The links between attributes, consequences and values produce the means-end chain (Peter et al., 1999). Attributes are the characteristics of a product or service and consequences are the psychological or physiological aspects of why an attribute is important (Gutman, 1982). Values are overarching, reflecting the life goals a person may be striving for (Rokeach, 1973). It is assumed that knowledge is hierarchically organised over levels of abstraction in the memory (Reynolds et al., 1995), with the higher the levels of abstraction having a stronger connection to the self. Thus attributes would be a lower level of abstraction, less relevant than consequences (mid level of abstraction), while the highest level of abstraction are values having most personal relevance (Olson and Reynolds, 1983). The following section describes how the means-end approach can be adapted to an innovative product such as Apple's iPod.\nProduct benefits and consumer requirements: By describing the iPod as \"an elegant method of promoting individual choice, Anderson (2005, p. 29) identifies a particular benefit (\"individual choice\") that results from using their iPod. Two key aspects of researching the consumer perspective should provide important insights. First, understanding how the product is actually used by the consumer and secondly how attributes are evaluated by them. For example, while some competitors have added additional product features, such as a radio tuner, to their products, Apple has been cautious in adding features. This may be because they had a clear understanding of what product attributes customers would value, while their competitors have tried to \"out-feature\" the market leader. Thus, if it is possible to relate product benefits to product attributes, the result could provide companies with valuable insights into Apple's success from a market perspective. Figure 1 illustrates how the means-end approach can be applied to the iPod.Personal values and consumer requirements\nMethodology: The sample\nLimitations and suggestions for further research: While this study resulted in a number of practical outcomes for product and brand managers, there are a number of limitations. A general problem with online research is that it excludes all those individuals who are not online and it is known that these individuals differ from their offline counterparts; the demographic profile of online users does not represent the population at large (Duffy et al., 2005; Lockett and Blackman, 2004). Our results are limited by the nature of our sample; the study was conducted in Germany, where the iPod has a lower market share than in the USA. In Germany, the market share of the iPod is estimated to be around 50 per cent (Kaufmann, 2005). Furthermore, the study applies an online laddering technique and is therefore limited to iPod users that have access to the internet. However, both limitations are not considered to be serious as Apple is still the market leader in Germany, albeit by a lower margin compared to some other countries. Similarly, limiting the study to an online context is acceptable as it was a central aim of the study to identify opinion leaders, rather than a representational group of iPod users. However, it is important to note that the results should not be directly compared to those achieved through an offline study, which might result in a different type of opinion leader. In order to answer this question, a similar study would have to be conducted offline, based on the same opinion-leader selection.As respondents need more time to type than to talk, written messages are normally shorter and more concise than vocal information (Comley, 2002; Reid and Reid, 2005). Folkman Curasi (2001), however, who compared the transcripts of 24 interviews conducted face-to-face with the same number of interviews conducted electronically, discovered that while some respondents provided very short and precise answers, others described \"at length their feelings and experiences, sometimes in more depth than in some of the face-to-face interviews\". Concerning the depth of insights gained from online research, Sweet (2001, p. 134) believes that \"real-time online groups may not always provide the depth of response necessary\". By contrast, Reid and Reid (2005), who compared the contributions of face-to-face focus groups with focus groups conducted via computer-mediated communication, found that both approaches generated the same number of answers/new ideas. Thus, further research should investigate this issue and explore whether online laddering chats provide more or less insights than traditional face-to-face laddering interviews.After having shown that the qualitative laddering technique can be combined successfully with a quantitative survey to reveal the preferred attributes of an iconic brand and market leader we hope that fellow researchers take up our call and develop further studies to test the application of the laddering technique in their investigations of new product development.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to explore the potential for learning from customers of a market leader through qualitative marketing research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents findings from a study that applies a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. An online variation of an existing qualitative research method is proposed.\nFindings: - The results suggest that the proposed method can be transferred successfully to an online environment and combines the effectiveness of qualitative research with the efficiency of quantitative research.\nResearch limitations/implications: - A general problem with online research is that it excludes all individuals who are not online. Moreover, the results are limited by the nature of the sample, which only includes German-speaking respondents. Finally, further research should investigate the differences in depth between responses of online- and offline-conducted interviews.\nPractical implications: - Offers a relatively inexpensive yet effective solution for product and brand managers to uncover the reasons that drive customers to a market-leading competitor.\nOriginality/value: - Compared with many other approaches available to product and brand managers, this paper proposes a more realistic and practical method of understanding a market leader through the eyes of its customers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The right to time off for dependants: Contrasting two organisations' responses	[ "Quality of life", "Family friendly organizations", "Dependants", "Rest allowances", "Line managers", "Employee rights" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The male-breadwinner model of work and family organisation is in decline as women's economic and social aspirations have become increasingly incompatible with a housewife marriage (Crompton, 1999; Gonzalez-Lopez and Solsona, 2000). In 1999, 17 per cent of working-age women in the UK devoted their time exclusively to their home and family. By 2001 this proportion had dropped to 13 per cent representing 600,000 fewer housewives in just two years (ONS, 2002). This trend is actively encouraged by a government who view the maximisation of participation in paid employment as the key to economic prosperity (see DTI, 2000; Bryson, 2003).Women's increasing labour market activity has been coupled by an increasing desire among men to be more involved in family life (Hatten et al., 2002). Since the 1970 s, the amount of time fathers spend with their children has risen steadily but it still accounts for only one-third of all parental contact (Gershuny, 2001). Their role as provider remains a powerful source of identity for men (Warin et al., 1999). Unlike women, few fathers adjust their working patterns to meet family responsibilities (fathers work the longest hours of any group; Kodz et al., 2003) or take the family leave policies they are entitled to (Bradth and Kvande, 2002; Stevens et al., 2004).Work intensification, heightened perceptions of job insecurity and competition for promotion have conspired to make active participation in family life incompatible with career ambition for men and women (Crompton and Birkelund, 2000; Williams, 2000). Governments and organisations have tried to address this problem through \"family-friendly\" employment policies. Holt and Thaulow (1996) describe the \"family-friendliness\" of a workplace as the extent to which it helps employees provide three fundamental needs for their dependants: economic support (e.g. salary); practical care (e.g. looking after a sick child); and emotional care (e.g. spending quality time with family). Historically, the male breadwinner focussed on economic provision, leaving the practical and emotional needs of dependants to a female full-time carer. The labour market and social trends outlined above have rendered this separation of roles inviable. The consequence for employers is that their employees have greater demands on their time with practical and emotional responsibility for dependants in addition to the economic one.This paper addresses ones of the ways in which the employees' dual role of worker and carer comes into direct conflict: when an emergency involving a dependant arises during working hours. According to the nationally representative Second Work-life Balance Study (Stevens et al., 2004), 38 per cent of all employees and 53 per cent of parents had experienced an emergency involving a dependent child or relative which they had to deal with at short notice. How organisations help employees in these circumstances is therefore a crucial element of their approach to work-life balance affecting a large proportion of working population.In recognition of the prevalence of this challenge for working families, the \"Time off for dependants\" provisions in the Employment Relations Act 1999 gives employees the right to unpaid leave at short notice to deal with an emergency involving a dependant. An \"emergency\" includes illness, death or other serious incident and the break down of care arrangements. \"Dependants\" are not limited to children or family members but anyone who reasonably relies on the employee for assistance. The leave is intended to last as long as it takes to deal with the emergency, probably no more than two or three days.This paper contrasts how two organisations in the same corporate group have implemented this legislation. Formal provision in the two companies was broadly similar providing an opportunity to examine how centrally developed, statutory-based policy operates in different organisational contexts. Using qualitative reports from line managers and human resource (HR) managers, the tensions between formal policy and informal discretionary practice are examined. The reasons for the differing approaches which emerged are discussed as well as their impact on employees.\nThe policy journey: Work-family reconciliation was prioritised at EU level several years before featuring in the UK's policy agenda. A number of work-family related Directives, including \"Time off for dependants\", were developed in response falling fertility rates, partly attributed to work-family conflict, which could threaten future economic growth (Duncan, 2002).The belated signing of the Social Chapter saw these Directives translated into UK law representing a considerable increase in entitlements for UK employees. However, the expansion in this and other areas of employment rights has been constrained (Dickens, 2002). British employers have a long tradition of opposing labour market regulation on the grounds that it reduces flexibility and stifles economic growth (DTI, 1995; CBI, 1997). Although evidence of this correlation is scarce (Robinson, 1999; Taylor, 2002), the employer lobby has persuaded government to find alternatives to \"hard\" law. For example, since 2002 employees with young children have had the right to have a request for flexible working seriously considered by their employer but not the right to have the request granted. A government-sponsored \"work-life balance\" campaign supplements the minimum statutory provision, encouraging organisational change through the proliferation of best practice using \"business case\" rhetoric (DTI and Scotland Office, 2001; Work and Parents Taskforce, 2001). There is evidence that this approach could work, that organisations do respond to sociological changes. The feminisation of the workforce led many organisations to introduce policies long before the 1999 legislation (Scheibl and Dex, 1998; Lewis, 2001). However, national data show that despite widespread support for the idea of work-life balance, few employers offer an adequate choice of flexible working and leave options to turn theoretical into practical support (Hogarth et al., 2000; Dex and Smith, 2002).Whether employees actually use policies where they are available has also been the subject of debate. A number of factors that limit policy usage have been identified. First, and most simply, awareness of formal statutory and organisational provision tends to be quite poor (Bond and Wise, 2003; Phillips et al., 2002; Yeandle et al., 2002). Meager et al. (2002) found work-family legislation to be the least well known of the individual employment rights. Only one in ten people could name, unprompted, a work-family related right with a third of these mentioning time off for dependants. Second, there is a policy and practice gap in which line managers play a crucial role. The general trend towards the devolution of HR responsibility means line managers are usually responsible for implementing work-family policies (Lewis, 2001; Kodz et al., 2002; Yeandle et al., 2003). In theory, this allows for quicker, more responsive decisions (Cunningham and Hyman, 1999; Brewster and Larsen, 2000; Sisson and Storey, 2000). Managers often welcome this responsibility but rarely receive the training and support necessary to build the skills to put policy into desired practice (Gennard and Kelly, 1997; Renwick, 2003). Managers in Kodz et al.'s (2002) study of six organisations considered to be \"benchmark\" work-life balance employers reported that they felt abandoned with new policies and had received no guidance on how to operate them. This pattern has also been found in the finance, public and retail sectors (Yeandle et al., 2003). With responsibility for decisions around work-life issues but poor awareness and no training, line managers' attitudes can play a determining role in the employee experience. Biases in granting access to policies can range from employee characteristics (e.g. gender or age), the reason for the request (e.g. the nature of the care responsibility), the relationship between employee and manager, perceptions of employee commitment or that employees' personal lives are nothing to do with the organisation (Barham et al., 1998; Brannen et al., 1997; Bond et al., 2002).The best practice approach advocated by government relies change being initiated through \"bottom-up\" requests for changes to working practices to accommodate non-work commitments. Lewis and Smithson (2001) argue that the likelihood of an employee making such a request depends on how entitled they feel to do so. A number of perceptions can reduce this \"sense of entitlement\" or \"perceived usability\" (Eaton, 2003): a sense that the request is not wholly legitimate (because it challenges the culture of the organisation and/or society); that they will not be treated sympathetically (line managers attitudes); and/or they will suffer career consequences if they demand changes to meet family needs (because the \"ideal worker\" does not take time off for family reasons). Even when requests are granted, over-gratitude for such support can prevent further changes being demanded (Lewis, 1997; Kodz et al., 2002).\nMethodology: The research was conducted in the Scottish financial services sector between June 2000 and March 2001. Financial services was one of the first sectors to introduce voluntary family-friendly policies and was is important local employer representing 17 per cent of Scotland's jobs (Scottish Executive, 2001). The \"Finance Group\" was an established organisation with 12,000 staff worldwide employed across its core life assurance business and subsidiaries in investment management, insurance and retail tele-banking. The first case study unit was the Finance Group's headquarters and core business unit, \"Assure\". A total of 1,800 people were employed in the administration of pensions as well as strategic and management activity for the whole group. The second case study unit was \"E-Bank\", a wholly-owned subsidiary providing banking services on-line and over the phone employing 1,066 staff. Table I below gives some summary workforce statistics.A common-core, semi-structured interview schedule was used in interviews with one senior HR manager from each company, an Finance Group HR researcher, ten E-Bank line managers, eight Assure line managers and four representatives from the in-house staff association from Assure and E-Bank. Quotes are from scribed notes rather than audio recordings. Self-completion questionnaires were randomly distributed to 300 staff in each organisation with a response rate of 60 per cent (n=181) and 53 per cent (n=160) in Assure and E-Bank respectively. Issues covered included awareness, take-up and attitudes to work-family policies, organisational culture and demographic information.\nImplementing time off for dependants: Policy development and provision\nConclusions: As an appraisal of how organisations have responded to the challenges of dealing with the dual role of their employees as workers and carers, the evidence presented here is limited. There are many factors that influence the ability of employees to reconcile their work and family lives besides short-term leave for dependant emergencies. However, this limited focus has demonstrated the complexities of implementing even the most simple of employment policies in circumstances that affect around 38 per cent of employees in the UK (Stevens et al., 2004).Our two companies exemplified the best practice approach to policy development promoted by government (DTI and Scotland Office, 2001; Work and Parents Taskforce, 2001). There was commitment to developing work-family policies to help recruit and retain staff through participation in benchmarking, business case development and government consultation. However, the strategic investment in policy development was contrasted with an ad-hoc approach to policy implementation at the line manager level. In line with findings of research across sectors, few managers had received any training or guidance on the responsibility for policies that had been devolved to them (Kodz et al., 2002; Yeandle et al., 2003). This led to a great deal of variability in understanding of the organisation's time off for dependant provisions and poor awareness of the statutory right itself, not uncommon for family-related employment provisions (Meagar et al., 2002).An examination of how the two sister companies implemented the common time off for dependants policy illustrated an important challenge for organisations: Is it more important to be consistent across the board or fair in individual circumstances? In this regard, our two organisations fell on either side of the fence. Assure's managers were comfortable with discretionary decision making, despite the inconsistencies that arose. They saw time off for dependants as an informal provision to be used as a last resort. The flexitime system encouraged employees to use control over their working time to find solutions to dependant care emergencies, taking time out of holidays, \"banked\" flexitime hours or making time up later. While employee control has been found to have a remedial impact on work-life conflict (Thomas and Ganster, 1995; Hill et al., 2001). However, in this context, control over working hours had a negative impact on what has been described as a \"sense of entitlement\" (Lewis and Smithson, 2001) to additional leave provision they were entitled to under both legal and organization provision. Employee expectations of, and therefore requests for additional leave were low. Assure employees therefore received less additional paid leave overall than E-Bank employees, disadvantaging women who were more likely to take time off for an emergency involving a dependant. In E-Bank the lack of flexitime meant formal leave policies were relied on but the inexperienced management team were unwilling to use their discretion in decision-making because of concerns over inconsistent implementation. This lead to HR intervention, which further reduced the ability of managers to be responsive to individual circumstances, creating friction between HR, managers and employees.More detailed accounts of the employee experience may have helped to advance a definite answer as to which worked best for employees. Assure employees had greater control over how they dealt with dependent care emergencies but less access to additional leave, which eroded annual leave provision. E-Bank employees had pushed for their leave entitlements but were subject to lengthy and sometimes problematic line manager-dependent decision making. Perhaps if Assure employees were actually given the choice of additional leave by managers they would have the benefits of control over working hours without being disadvantaged in accessing the organisational or statutory policy. However, the findings do highlight the inherent tension in work-family policy between consistency of implementation and responsiveness to individual circumstances and how an organisation's response to this challenge (through their line managers, working practices and alternative policies) ultimately determines the success of statutory-based rights.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To examine the factors which influence the implementation of employees' right to time off for dependants protected by the Employment Relations Act 1999.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The responses of two organisations in the same corporate group with identical policy provision are examined. Formal provision in the two companies was broadly similar providing an opportunity to examine how centrally developed, statutory-based policy operates in different organisational contexts. Using qualitative reports from line managers and human resource managers the interaction and tensions between formal policy and informal, discretionary practice are examined.\nFindings: - Line manager attitudes to discretionary decision making and other company policies, especially flexitime, produced very different outcomes for employees highlighting a continuing challenge for governments and organisations: Is it more important to be consistent in implementation or responsive to individual circumstances?\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper uses data from only two organisations, although it complements national research on the usage rates of parents' statutory rights to leave.\nPractical implications: - Factors which can influence and detract from the effective implementation of statutory-based employment rights are highlighted.\nOriginality/value: - In focusing on parent's right to time off for dependant emergency an important element of the work-life balance field is examined.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Implementing action research in hospital settings: a systematic review	[ "Change", "Hospitals", "Action research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Hospitals are organizations under considerable stress. In the UK surveys show that continuity of care for the patient is being compromised (Hawkes, 2012). This is not surprising when one considers that health care professionals are expected to handle structural changes and technical developments, are required to be accessible, provide holistic patient-centered and patient-managed care, develop their own evidence-based competence and achieve an appropriate balance between their work and private life. Health care organizations are unique in the sense that \"bad\" physicians/nurses can contribute to medical errors, while \"bad\" patients can contribute to more burnout among staff, again leading to errors. Without too much effort, the purpose of the organization can become self-preservation and not healing (Montgomery et al., 2013), which is reinforced by the way that health care organizations can be organized in silos (Glouberman and Mintzberg, 2001). As noted by (Argyris, 1982) differences between espoused values and actual practice are symptoms of serious organizational dysfunction.\nMethods: Identification of the studies\nResults: Totally, 19 studies were selected for the present review. Detailed information regarding their content, objectives, duration, participants and outcomes can be obtained on request from the first author. The studies included in the review were the ones aiming at bringing some meaningful change in the hospital setting by means of AR.\nDiscussion: The aim of the present review was to synthesize the findings of studies which attempted to improve patients' QoC or bring organizational changes in health care setting by means of AR. The present review adopts a more forensic approach to distinguish between \"real\" AR and studies that merely pay \"lip-service\" to AR. The review revealed the heterogeneity of the studies in terms of objectives, methodology employed and outcomes assessed. The results of the review represent a significant challenge for the field in that AR represents the way forward in terms of organizational change, but the field is hampered by a lack of theory, agreed methodology or standard approaches to evaluation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Health care organizations and hospitals in particular are highly resistant to change. The reasons for this are rooted in professional role behaviors, hierarchical structures and the influence of hidden curricula that inform organizational culture. Action research (AR) has been identified as a promising bottom-up approach that has the potential to address the significant barriers to change. However, to date no systematic review of the field in health care exists. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic review of the literature was conducted. Studies were reviewed with regard to the four stages of AR; problem identification, planning, implementation and evaluation.\nFindings: Only 19 studies were identified that fit the inclusion criteria. Results revealed significant heterogeneity with regard to theoretical background, methodology employed and evaluation methods used.\nResearch limitations/implications: Only studies published and written in the English language were included.\nPractical implications: The field of AR interventions would benefit from a theoretical framework that has the ability to guide the methodology and evaluation processes.\nOriginality/value: This is the first systematic review of AR in hospitals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing knowledge to create customer service value	[ "Absorptive capacity", "Service value", "Knowledge management", "Value creation", "Banking industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the field of knowledge management (KM) (e.g. Brown and Duguid, 2001; Lages et al., 2013; Lavergne and Earl, 2006; Spender, 2006; Spender and Scherer, 2007; Storey and Hull, 2010) and in the field of customer perceived value (e.g. Agarwal and Teas, 2001; Boksberger and Melsen, 2011; Cengiz and Kirkbir, 2007; Mustak et al., 2013; Sanchez and Iniesta, 2006), there has been less research that has taken both into consideration simultaneously.\nTheoretical background: KM in the banking industry\nConceptual model: Service firms are aware of customer demand for superior value and need to understand how to manage knowledge so that they can satisfy these customer demands. A review of the previous literature shows numerous possible relationships between the different KM processes. After a comprehensive analysis of these possible relationships, the authors propose the following model.\nMethodology: Industry selection\nResults: Data analysis\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the services management literature by identifying a sequence of the different processes of knowledge management (KM) to create customer service value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The context for the research hypotheses is the Spanish banking industry. The authors conducted a study including 76 banks and 1,832 customers of these banks. This paper uses the partial least squares method to conduct the data analysis.\nFindings: The authors find support for all the hypotheses proposed in the model. The results show that service firms that are able to apply more knowledge or apply knowledge more effectively are likely to generate more benefits for their customers, and/or reduce their sacrifices, contributing significantly to a higher perception of service value.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study focusses on one particular industry in a single point in time. A longitudinal analysis of a variety of service industries would enrich the study.\nPractical implications: It is argued that KM constitutes a key capability for service firms for the delivery of service value. According to the research, if service firms want to improve the application of knowledge, it is important to focus on knowledge retention while they create new knowledge.\nOriginality/value: Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the fields of KM and customer value, there has been less research that has taken both into consideration simultaneously. This paper addresses this gap in the literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Anytime anyplace anywhere: Mobile information technology devices and the blurring of borders between work and non-work domains	[ "Technology", "Family", "Borders", "Flexibility", "Work", "Balance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The advancement of the internet and the technological revolution since the 1980s has changed the world and has had huge impacts on both business and non-work lives. Reports show that, with six billion people having access to mobile phones in 2013, there are now more mobile devices than people on the planet.\nResults: Crossing the work/non-work boundary\nConclusion: The increasing use of MITDs means a change in the traditional structure of work and family domains. MITDs offer flexibility and accessibility, bringing more balance to work and non-work lives. However, this increasing flexibility means increasingly work is taking place in non-work time, and disrupting non-work activities, potentially causing burnout due to long hours, conflict, and strained relationships. It is important for managers to monitor work done elsewhere, so that employees remain productive but also have time when they are \"switched off\". A good balance means employees are happier and perform better. Employers need to move from work-life conflict and work toward work-life balance.\nComment: The review is based on \"What happened to the border? The role of mobile information technology devices on employees' work-life balance\" by Adisa, T. A., Gbadamosi, G., and Osabutey, E., published in Personnel Review.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint its 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: Mobile information technology devices (MITDs) mean that employees have the flexibility to work anytime, anyplace, and anywhere. This has benefits for work-life balance. However, it also means that there is a blurring of the borders between work life and non-work life. It also means that, because work is done anytime and anywhere, there are long working hours and encroachment into non-work life, which can cause negative health effects and work-life conflict. Balance is needed to ensure that in addition to good work performance and productivity, time remains for non-work activities.\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" } ]
The efficiency of GCC banks: the role of intellectual capital	[ "Performance", "Banks", "GCC countries", "Intellectual capital efficiency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Banks are considered as knowledge-intensive firms; their vital assets are intellectual and their activities are directly related to an intellectual nature which usually involves direct interaction with customers by delivering services related to IC such as human resources, brand building, systems and processes (Ahuja and Ahuja, 2012). There is no doubt that there are many other important factors that contribute to enhance the performance of banks; however, many researchers (Celenza and Rossi, 2014; Inkinen, 2015; Nimtrakoon, 2015; Sarea and Alansari, 2016) have found that intellectual capital (IC) is one of the most important and strategic assets for the success of banks. By the inception of the twenty-first century, the proverb that \"knowledge is power\" has a rising significance than before (Rechberg and Syed, 2013). Knowledge all over the world has shifted innovation and creativities in firms specifically in the value of firms from tangible assets to intangible assets. For the time being, one important research line devotes attention to IC, which plays a crucial rule in enhancing the high-tech or knowledge-based firms, which are mainly based on the knowledge assets that refer to IC:\n2. Literature review and developing: 2.1 Definition and valuation of intellectual capital\n3. Research design and methodology: 3.1 Research paradigm\n4. Descriptive analysis: In this section, we used the descriptive statistics to describe the basic features of the variables. In addition, we adopt cross-country and cross-year analysis. Finally, we adopt path analysis to show more advanced results.\n5. The results: 5.1 Correlation analysis\n6. Conclusion: This study considers the level of IC efficiency in the banks listed in GCC stock exchange and compares the IC components (HCE, SCE, RCE and CEE) and performance. The data was collected as a pooled data during the period 2012-2016. The regression models result deduced from the empirical results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between IC and financial and market performance in GCC banks. When measuring the main components of IC and their individual impact on bank's performance, we found, on one hand, that HCE and CEE in GCC banks has influenced the financial and operational performance. However, the market performance is influenced by the HCE and RCE. On the other hand, we found that the HCE and CEE in GCC banks influence the operational performance; and the SCE and CEE influence the financial performance. However, the market performance is influenced only by the RCE. Finally, we tested the effect of the control variables on the performance of Islamic and conventional banks, we found that financial leverage negatively affects the market performance (TQ) and the total assets positively affect the operational performance (ROA) of Islamic banks. However, the financial leverage and total assets positively affect the financial performance (ROE) of conventional banks. For the macroeconomic control variables, the governance level and GDP in the countries were found to be insignificantly affecting the three performances (ROA, ROE and TQ) in GCC banks. The results of this study will be helpful to decision-makers, regulators, policymakers and scholars to improve their awareness of IC and their differences among GCC banks. Moreover, investors and shareholders want to compare how well GCC banks are performing in terms of IC before potentially investing in them. Finally, it will be useful for banks to place their priorities and financial plans for effective and efficient use of IC. We suggest that banks in GCC to focus more on the role of IC in enhancing the market value of their assets rather than only financial value as the IC in these banks has no effect on the market performance. At the same time, GCC banks should take into consideration the role of IC in enhancing the asset efficiency (ROA). In GCC, the laws associated with protecting IC are weak; therefore, we recommend GCC banks to pay more attention to IC to avoid the gap between banks' value as reported in financial statement and actual market value. Therefore, the financial regulators should have a clear and mandatory law associated with measurement and reporting of IC.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of intellectual capital (IC) efficiency on bank's operational, financial and market performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study examined 59 banks for 5 years to ends up with 295 observations. The independent variable is the modified value added IC component; the dependent variables are performance indicators (return on assets [ROA], return on equity [ROE] and Tobin's Q [TQ]).\nFindings: The findings deduced from the empirical results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between intellectual capital efficiency and financial performance (ROE) and market performance (TQ).\nOriginality/value: The results of this study may give a wake-up call for banks to examine the reasons of imperfect relationship between the IC and asset efficiency (ROA).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leading for sustainability: implementing the tasks of leadership	[ "Leadership", "Economic sustainability", "Corporate social responsibility" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Business organizations are being called upon to take responsibility for the ways their operations impact societies and the natural environment. They are also being asked to apply sustainability principles to the ways in which they conduct their business. Sustainability refers to an organization's activities, typically considered voluntary, demonstrating the inclusion of social and environmental concerns in business operations and in interactions with stakeholders (van Marrewijk and Were, 2003). Organizations have developed a variety of strategies for dealing with this intersection of societal needs, the natural environment, and corresponding business imperatives. In this study, we focus on those organizations striving to operate at the level of sustainability, where sustainability is \"fully integrated and embedded in every aspect of the organization\" (van Marrewijk and Were, 2003, p. 112). Using a grounded theory approach, we use Van Velsor and McCauley's (2004) \"Tasks of Leadership\" framework to explore how organizational leaders implement and maintain practices of sustainability in their organizations. Specifically, our study focuses on leaders in organizations that have formally adopted sustainability principles and integrated these principles in the day-to-day operations of the business. It is our goal to better understand the connection between leadership and sustainability in the hopes that other leaders will learn from the lessons of these pioneers. We begin with a brief review of the concept of sustainability, introduce our guiding frameworks and methodologies, and move to the presentation of our results and the corresponding discussion.What is sustainability and why is it important?\nMethodology: This study utilizes a qualitative methodology, which is appropriate for three reasons: The field of sustainability does not have a single, rigid methodology, and the use of interpretive methods are welcomed (Carroll, 1994); a qualitative approach enables a deeper understanding of the extreme and complex nature of leadership (Bryman and Stephens, 1996; Conger, 1998); and the field of leadership for sustainability is still in an exploratory phase, with little known about the phenomenon, making the qualitative perspective even more suitable (Conger, 1998).Sample\nResults: This study, using Van Velsor and McCauley's (2004) tasks of leadership framework, examines how leaders set direction, create alignment, and maintain commitment in organizations implementing principles of sustainability. Overall, our analysis resulted in: 112 comments coded as setting direction, 87 comments coded as creating alignment, and 60 comments coded as maintaining commitment. The following section discusses the themes and highlights the corresponding exemplars for each task of leadership.Setting direction\nImplications for research and practice: Marshall and Toffel (2005) suggest that robust answers to questions such as \"what is a sustainable organization\" have proved elusive. This study has taken a step toward answering this question by focusing on the tasks of leadership involved in the implementation of sustainability. In the next section, we will address both the theoretical and practical implications of our results.Theoretical implications\nLimitations and future research: As with any study, several limitations of this work should be recognized. The authors suggest the organizations in this study are at the holistic level of sustainability based on their formal adoption sustainability principles. Certainly, the adoption of principles does not insure sustainability practices are adhered to consistently in day-to-day operations. While these organizations are able to exhibit incorporation of sustainability practices in multiple arenas, it would be helpful to apply van Marrewijk and Were's (2003) proposed assessment tool to future studies for a more rigorous measure of an organization's stance on sustainability.Additionally related to principles, this study focused on organizations adopting the \"Natural Step\" and \"MBDC\" principles, thus limiting the organizations included in the sample. Other principles, such as the triple bottom line (Elkington, 1998), ZERI (see www.ZERI.org), and the ecological footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996), may have offered the opportunity to expand the sample size. In addition, many organizations have developed their own principles of sustainability, offering an even larger base of organizations to investigate.As we only interviewed the designated leaders of sustainability efforts within these organizations, it would be informative to gather both a larger sample as well as a broader view from the organizations being studied. Future studies addressing the \"tasks of leadership\" should also collect insights from all stakeholders involved with the organization to provide a whole-system perspective on the organization's sustainability practices. It is also important to note that there is always a limitation to reporting behaviors from self-reporting mechanisms, in this case, the interviews; future studies, in collecting data from a broader set of perspectives (e.g., external stakeholders) would also address the challenges presented when only collecting self-reported data. In addition, our sample consisted of leaders at the executive level of the organization; however, even at this level, there is bound to be a difference in experiences between the CEO and the Director of Sustainability. Future studies should account for the differences of level in the leaders being studied. Finally, our study focused on US based organizations; however, the field of sustainability is active and future studies should include leaders from organizations in other parts of the world, to include Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.\nConclusion: A critical basis for change toward sustainability is a leader's introduction and discussion of sustainability principles, the redesign of an organization's distribution of resources, decision making, and production processes, and the effective and continued engagement of employees and stakeholders. As Hawken (1993) suggests, leaders can achieve this through their ability and capacity to create a remarkably different concept of business - one that can restore and protect nature while still allowing for innovation, profitability, and meaningful work. However, we know that current processes within organizations typically do not include a sufficiently representative set of values, stakeholders, or processes to enable decisions supporting sustainable practices. To move the pursuit of sustainability forward, our hope is for continued studies, as well as increased cross-organizational dialogue, to further understand the practices, challenges, strategies, and motivators of \"leading for sustainability\".\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to expand the field of sustainability/corporate social responsibility research to include a focus on leadership. It aims to present an exploratory study of senior leaders in organizations formally adopting principles of sustainability and how these leaders enact the tasks of leadership: setting direction, creating alignment, and maintaining commitment within the context of sustainability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study uses a qualitative approach, sampling senior executives from organizations formally adopting sustainability practices and using a structured interview to uncover their leadership practices related to sustainability.\nFindings: - Leaders adopting sustainability practices are similar to other \"effective\" leaders and yet they also have additional capacity and mindset to include a wider expanse of stakeholders and a different mindset as to the purpose of organizations.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Limited sample of senior executives/CEOs, as well as a difficulty in attesting an organization's level of commitment to sustainability; this research links the field of leadership to the field of sustainability and calls for a more in-depth investigation into the roles leaders and leadership play in the successful implementation of sustainability practices.\nOriginality/value: - Leaders interested in pursuing a sustainability agenda should pay attention to how the concept is framed and introduced into the organization; they should build capacity in their systems (educational, communication, rewards, performance, etc.) and culture to support sustainability, and broad and deep stakeholders engagement is essential for success.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Opportunities and challenges: Hong Kong as Asia's fashion hub	[ "Textile industry", "Garment industry", "Fashion industry", "Brands", "Hong Kong" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: In dollar terms, Hong Kong (HK) is the second largest exporter of textile and clothing (T&C) products in the world (World Trade Organization, 2001). The T&C industries have been the most important manufacturing sectors in HK since the 1960s, and they are the largest manufacturing employers in HK, with 1,668 establishments employing 32,808 workers as of March 2003. They are also the leading export earners, the textiles, clothing and footwear industries having generated domestic exports of HK$65 billion, constituting 67 percent of total domestic exports, in 2002 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2003). To strengthen the T&C industries, the HK Government has suggested turning HK into Asia's leading fashion hub (Lee, 2003).In the research under discussion, the following objectives were formulated:* to analyze the current situation of the HK T&C industries;* to investigate the influential factors that can assist HK to develop as Asia's fashion hub; and* to plan for the future development of H K as a regional centre for fashion.\nSWOT analysis: The HK fashion industry was analysed according to its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Table I summarizes findings from the assessment of the internal and external environment of the HK T&C industries. The SWOT analysis targeted: products and services competitiveness; economies and regulatory environment; sociological environment; business environment; natural resources; human resources; and technology applications and know-how management.Product and services competitiveness\nFuture plan: Based on the SWOT analysis, a plan was formulated for HK to become Asia's fashion hub. To achieve this goal, four components should be enhanced: government; industry; the education system, and the media.Government\nConclusion: The SWOT analysis indicated that the HK T&C industry players must extend their activities in the value chain in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors, first by means of ODM and subsequently OBM. Intensified competition is anticipated as a consequence of the loss of quota shelter, buyers directly sourcing from Mainland China, the development of regional trade blocs and China's accession to the WTO. In addition, the conclusion of CEPA and expansion of new market opportunities within the region may assist HK in becoming Asia's fashion hub if the industry can enhance the development of OBM (Lee, 2003; Hong Kong Trade and Industry Department, 2000; Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, 2003).However, the formation of Asia's fashion hub is dependent upon the cooperation and effort of four parties: Government, industry players, academic institutions and the media. By enhancing the image of HK fashion, supporting HK designers and SMEs, establishing a regional compliance centre, setting up a textile research institute, strengthening manpower development, enhancing product development, reinventing local production, developing new markets, forming and promoting a virtual fashion community, creating a one-stop shopping fashion centre, cultivating a design culture, setting up specific design institutions, establishing scholarship and academic exchange programmes, all these four parties may achieve the ultimate goal: to make HK Asia's fashion hub.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To analyze the current situation of the Hong Kong textile and clothing industries; to investigate the influential factors that can assist Hong Kong to develop as Asia's fashion hub; and to plan for the future development of Hong Kong as a regional centre for fashion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper provides an overview of the Hong Kong textile and clothing industries by using the SWOT analysis. Based on the findings of the analysis, some recommendations for future development are provided. The sources of this study are from the government publications, journal articles, book reviews and advice of practitioners.\nFindings: - The Hong Kong textile and clothing industries have their strengths and weaknesses. To be a regional centre for fashion, developing an original brand manufacturing (OBM) business is a preferred approach.\nResearch limitation/implication: - This paper provides a general review of the Hong Kong textile and clothing industries. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the industries and to explore some more solutions for the research problems, it is important to further investigate these issues by attempting in-depth interviews with the Hong Kong textile and clothing industrialists.\nPractical implications: - This paper provides a very useful source of information and impartial advice for the Government, industry players, academic institutions and the media. The formation of Asia's fashion hub is dependent upon the cooperation and effort of these four parties.\nOriginality/value: - This paper analyses some of the factors contributing to Hong Kong's success and draws conclusions on strategic directions for the sustainability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Telemedicine in care homes in Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven	[ "Emergency Department", "Telemedicine", "Care homes", "Health economics", "Retrospective observational review", "Cost-effective" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Background to the Telehub at Airedale Hospital\nMethodology: Due to the way in which telemedicine has been deployed in Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven it was not possible to carry out a controlled study. Instead a \"before and after\" observational approach was taken, whereby observation was made of the use of health care resources prior to the deployment of telemedicine and for an equivalent time period after. This was a pragmatic approach with limitations including difficulty in attributing changes to the observed intervention.\nResults: There were 27 care homes included in the intervention group, i.e. those homes that had telemedicine installed, and 21 in the non-telemedicine group. In general, the care homes with telemedicine tend to be larger than those without telemedicine (968 beds vs 557).\nDiscussion: The evaluation was challenging insofar as gathering and analysing available data on the telemedicine intervention was not straightforward. There are a number of potential flaws and confounding factors involved in evaluations of this nature, not least of which is the lack of a robust and consistent control group, against which to compare the results of the observed group. In this case, although there was a set of care homes that did not have telemedicine, it is not certain that they had residents with similar demographic and disease profiles to the residents of the care homes with telemedicine.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to observe and analyse the effects of the use of telemedicine in care homes on the use of acute hospital resources.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was an uncontrolled retrospective observational review of data on emergency hospital admissions and Emergency Department (ED) visits for care home residents in Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven. Acute hospital activity for residents was observed before and after the installation of telemedicine in 27 care homes. Data from a further 21 care homes that did not use telemedicine were used as a control group, using the median date of telemedicine installation for the \"before and after\" period. Patient outcomes were not considered.\nFindings: Care homes with telemedicine showed a 39 per cent reduction in the costs of emergency admissions and a 45 per cent reduction in ED attendances after telemedicine installation. In the control group reductions were 31 and 31 per cent, respectively. The incremental difference in costs between the two groups of care homes was almost PS1.2 million. The cost of telemedicine to care commissioners was PS177,000, giving a return on investment over a 20-month period of PS6.74 per PS1 spent.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results should be interpreted carefully. There is inherent bias as telemedicine was deployed in care homes with the highest use of acute hospital resources and there were some methodological limitations due to poor data. Nevertheless, controlling the data as much as possible and adopting a cautious approach to interpretation, it can be concluded that the use of telemedicine in these care homes was cost-effective.\nOriginality/value: There are very few telemedicine studies focused on care homes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Perpetual succession limits the scope of an individual	[ "Progression", "Insolvency", "Association", "Liquidation proprietor", "Proprietor" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Perpetual succession\nA company survives the death of its members: The Australian case of Re Noel Tedman Holdings Pty Ltd[9] is a striking illustration of the consequences of separate body. Noel Tedman and his wife were the sole shareholders and directors of two companies. They were both killed as a result of a road traffic accident. However, their deaths did not cause the termination of their companies' legal existence. The company survived as owners of property and parties to uncompleted contracts. The representatives of the deceased shareholders sought the court's assistance to enable them to appoint new directors of the companies so as realize their property for the benefit of the deceased estates. (The problem in the case and the solution found by the court depended on the special wording of the articles of the companies and will not be of general application).\nLegal entity distinct from its members: The fundamental principle of corporate personality is that the corporation is a legal entity distinct from its members. Hence, it is competent of enjoying rights and of being subject to responsibilities, which are not the same as those enjoyed or abided by its members. In other words, it has \"legal personality\" and is often referred to as an artificial person in contrast with a human being or a natural person[10].\nMembers of a company have no interest in its property: A company's property is the property of the company as a separate person not the members. This is illustrated by Macaura v. Northern Assurance Co. Ltd[24]. The owner of a timber estate sold all the timber to a company in which he owned almost all of the subscribed shares. Also, he was also the company's largest creditor. He insured the said timber against fire by policies taken out in his own name. The said stock of timber was destroyed by fire and he sued the insurance company. The House of Lords held that to have an insurable interest in property a person must have a legal or equitable interest in the property and not merely a moral certainty of profiting or losing from the property (the so-called \"factual expectancy test\").\nLimited liability: It follows from the fact that a corporation is a separate person that its members are not as such liable for its debts[29]. Hence, in the absence of express provision to the contrary, the members will be completely free from any personal liability. The rule of non-liability also applies in principle to obligations other than debts: the company is liable and not the member. However, the principle applies only so long as we concentrate on the position of members as such, and remains true, even for members, only subject to the particular terms of the shareholding once the company ceases to be a going concern. Members who become involved in the management of the company's business, for example, as directors, will find that separate legal personality does not necessarily protect them from personal liability. Although acting on behalf of the company, they may have done things, which have made them personally liable to the company or to outsiders. The most obvious example is that of a tort committed in the course of directorial duties. The extent to which those acting on behalf of companies are personally liable for their acts to third parties depends on the operation of the doctrines of agency and rules such as assumption of responsibility in tort law and identification in criminal law. For the moment, we confine ourselves to the position of the member, whom the doctrine of separate legal personality normally shields from personal liability so long as the company is a going concern.\nProperty: One obvious advantage of corporate personality is that it enables the property of the association to be more clearly distinguished from that of its members. In an unincorporated society, the property of the association is the joint property of the members. The rights of the members therein differ from their rights to their separate property because the joint property must be dealt with according to the rules of the society and no individual member can claim any particular asset. By virtue of the trust, the obvious complications can be minimized but not completely eradicated. In addition, the complications cause particular difficulty in the case of a trading partnership both as regards the true nature of the interests of the partners[38] and as regards claims of creditors[39]. In contrast, on incorporation, the corporate property belongs to the company and members have no direct proprietary rights to it but merely to their \"shares\" in the undertaking[40]. A change in the membership, which causes inevitable dislocation to a partnership firm, leaves the company unconcerned; the shares may be transferred, but the company's property will be untouched and no realization or splitting up of its property will be necessary, as it will on a change in the constitution of a partnership firm. 2-8 Identification of the company's property is not the only advantage; corporate personality also enables that property to be segregated from the members' personal assets. Thus, the claims of the business creditors will be against the property of the company and the claims of the members' personal creditors against the property of the member. Neither set of creditors is in competition with the other, nor each has to monitor the disposition only of the assets against which its claims lie (Kraakman and Hansmann, 2000).\nSuing and being sued: Closely allied to questions of property are those relating to legal actions. The difficulties in the way of suing, or being sued by, an unincorporated association has long bedeviled English law[41]. The problem is obviously of the greatest practical importance in connection with trading bodies and, in fact, has now been solved in the case of partnerships by allowing a partnership to sue or be sued in the firm's name. Hence, there is now no difficulty so far as the pure mechanics of suit are concerned - although there may still be complications in enforcing the judgment.\nTransferable shares: Incorporation, with the resulting separation of the business (owned by the company) from the shares (owned by its respective members), greatly assists the transfer of the members' interests. Without this formal incorporation of the business enterprise, approximately the same ends can be achieved through the device of the trust coupled with an agreement for transferability in the deed of settlement. But in this case, even after transfer, the member will remain liable for the firm's debts incurred during the time when he or she was a member[44]. This ongoing liability (i.e. the absence of limited liability associated with companies) means that opportunities to transfer are, in practice, much restricted.\nManagement under a board structure: An important feature of company law is that it provides a structure for the pursuit of larger and riskier endeavors by allowing many people to participate, via the purchase of shares, and separating that participation from the management of the company, which is delegated to a smaller and expert group of people who partly constitute and who are partly supervised by a board of directors. This separation of what is conventionally, but controversially, termed \"ownership\" of the company (i.e. shareholding) from its \"control\" (i.e. management) is a feature of large companies, and therefore, it is impiortant that the organizational law-governing companies should deal with its consequences. In contrast, as with transferable shares, this is not a feature of small companies, where \"owners\" and \"managers\" are often identical people, or substantially so. The corporate machinery for separating these roles may be more of a hindrance than a help, but it is crucial in the efficient functioning of large companies.\nBorrowing: So far we have considered only the advantages or disadvantages, which flow inevitably or naturally from the fact of incorporation. But incorporation also has important consequences in respect of borrowing too.\nTaxation: Once a company reaches a certain size, the attraction of limited liability is likely to outweigh all other considerations when business people are considering in what form to carry on their activities. Investors are unlikely to be willing to put money into a company where their liability is not limited, especially if they are to have no or little control over the running of the company. However, with small-scale businesses, where it is feasible to give all the investors a say in management, it is likely that tax considerations will play a major part in determining whether the business will be set up in corporate form or as a partnership, especially as in such cases where, as we have seen, limited liability may not be available in practice vis-a-vis large lenders[60]. This is not the place to examine the tax considerations which may cut one way or another at different times on this issue. What should be noted, however, is that in the case of small companies, the investors' return on their capital may take the form of the payment of directors' fees rather than dividends, so that participation in the management of the company may be the means for the investor both to safeguard the investment and to earn a return on it.\nFormalities, publicity and expense: Incorporation is necessarily attended with formalities, loss of privacy and expense greater than that, which would normally apply to a sole trader or partnership. A sole trader is a person who already exists. A partnership arises out of a relationship and does not need a formal agreement, provided the parties are carrying on a business in common with a view of profit[61]. However, an unincorporated firm can conduct its affairs without any formality and publicity beyond that which may be prescribed by the regulations (if any) applying to particular type of business, but this is now prohibited under the provisions of Indian Companies Act, 2013. If the business is carried on under a name different from the true name of the sole trader or those of all the partners, it will have to comply with the provisions on business names (as would a company trading under a pseudonym), but these are not onerous. The business, unless it is insolvent can eventually be wound up equally cheaply, privately and informally. An incorporated company, on the other hand, necessarily involves formalities, publicity and expenses at its birth, throughout its active life, and on its final dissolution.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to clarify the relationship between perpetual succession and individual perpetual succession is the continuation of a company's or other association's presence in spite of the demise, liquidation, insanity, change in enrollment or a way out from the matter of any proprietor or part, or any exchange of stock.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper opted for a study using the related case studies. Moreover, this paper has all the necessary examples that are required for perpetual succession.\nFindings: The paper provides that any adjustment in participation of a company does not affect the status of the company, death, insolvency, insanity and so forth of any member from a company does not influence the progression of the company. Thus, the life of the company does not rely on the life of its member directors. It may proceed forever, independent of continuity of its members or directors except in case of winding up or liquidation of a company.\nOriginality/value: This paper is to study how perpetual succession limits the scope of an individual.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge-sharing efforts and employee creative behavior: the invigorating roles of passion for work, time sufficiency and procedural justice	[ "Africa", "Passion for work", "Procedural justice", "Knowledge sharing", "Conservation of resources theory", "Creative behavior", "Time sufficiency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In organizational settings, creative behavior involves the generation of new ideas that change or improve the current situation or provide solutions to organizational problems (Oldham and Cummings, 1996). An important enabler of such creative behavior is the extent to which employees engage in extensive knowledge-sharing efforts with their peers (Chiang et al., 2015; Gong et al., 2013; Lee and Choi, 2003; Seidler-de Alwis and Hartmann, 2008). Despite its beneficial effects, applying pertinent knowledge to creative behaviors and finding solutions to organizational problems can be challenging, because organizational members often disagree about the effectiveness of various solutions (Van Dijk and Van Dick, 2009; Zhou and George, 2001) or even resist solutions that create perceived threats (Hon et al., 2014; Sternberg et al., 1997; Yuan and Woodman, 2010). In particular, solutions may appear threatening to the extent that other members worry that they might be blamed for the problem or that implementing the novel ideas will undermine their work privileges (Buchanan and Badham, 1999; Zhou and George, 2001). In light of these challenges, the primary research question that guides this study is as follows: In which circumstances might employees be more likely to leverage insights gained from knowledge exchanges with peers to develop new, useful ideas for organizational improvement?\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Creativity in the workplace: benefits and challenges\nResearch method: Sample and data collection\nResults: Table 2 reports the zero-order correlations and descriptive statistics, and Table 3 contains the hierarchical moderated regression results. Model 1 includes the control variables; Model 2 adds the direct effects of knowledge-sharing efforts and the three moderators (passion for work, time sufficiency and procedural justice); and Models 3-5 add the knowledge-sharing efforts x passion for work, knowledge-sharing efforts x time sufficiency and knowledge-sharing efforts x procedural justice interaction terms, respectively. Previous research indicates that it is appropriate and recommended to estimate multiple interaction terms in separate regression equations, because their simultaneous inclusion in one and the same model might mask true moderating effects (Covin et al., 2006; De Clercq et al., 2016). As suggested by Aiken and West (1991), the variables were mean-centered before calculating the interaction terms, to reduce multicollinearity. The variance inflation factors in each model were below the conservative value of 5.0 (Studenmund, 1992), so multicollinearity was not a concern.\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\nConclusion: With a basis in the COR theory, this study has considered the roles of employees' knowledge-sharing efforts and three resources in explaining their creative behavior. Enhanced knowledge sharing has the potential to spur creativity, but this potential is realized to a greater extent when employees can draw from valuable resources, associated with their personal preferences (passion for work), their job (time sufficiency) and the way decisions are made in the organization (procedural justice). The resources enhance employees' creative behaviors indirectly by increasing their beliefs that it is worthwhile to apply their collective knowledge bases to productive but potentially disruptive activities that invoke change. This study may provide a platform for further investigations, spanning different industries and countries, of how organizations can stimulate creative activities within their ranks, by combining and exploiting valuable resources.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Drawing from the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate the relationship between employees' knowledge-sharing efforts and creative behaviors; particularly, it addresses how this relationship may be invigorated by three resources that operate at individual (passion for work), job (time sufficiency) and organizational (procedural justice) levels.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Quantitative data were collected through a survey administered to employees in a banking organization in Mozambique.\nFindings: The usefulness of knowledge-sharing efforts for stimulating creative behavior is greater when employees feel passionate about work, have sufficient time to complete their job tasks and perceive that organizational decision-making is fair.\nPractical implications: The results inform organizations about the circumstances in which the application of employees' collective knowledge bases, derived from their peer interactions, to the generation of novel solutions for problem situations is more likely to materialize.\nOriginality/value: By detailing the interactive routes by which knowledge-sharing efforts and distinct resources (passion for work, time sufficiency and procedural justice) promote employee creative behavior, this study extends prior research that has focused on the direct influences of these resources on knowledge sharing and creative work outcomes. It pinpoints the circumstances in which intra-organizational knowledge exchange can generate the greatest value, in terms of enhancing creativity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What motivates members to transact on social C2C communities? A theoretical explanation	[ "Social capital", "C2C communities", "Facebook commerce" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social networking sites (SNSs) are increasingly used by companies to interact and engage with their customers. Although companies host online communities to engage with loyal customers and create awareness (Holzner, 2008), customers join these communities for knowing information about products, sharing their experiences and occasionally for doing transactions (Schau et al., 2009).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Facebook and consumer-to-consumer social commerce\n3. Hypotheses development and research model: 3.1 Media richness and social capital\n4. Research method: 4.1 Questionnaire design\n5. Data analysis and results: 5.1 Measurement model\n6. Discussion: In C2C communities on Facebook, customers go through a staged process of interaction and transaction experience wherein a variety of factors influences them. Drawing from MRT and SCT, it was found that the most important factors are the interaction richness of Facebook as a medium and the social capital generated in the community. These factors affect trust and SOVC, which influence purchase intentions. The results indicated that the richness of the medium does not directly lead to the enhancement of trust in the community members; however, trust is developed via two different channels. First, it is developed through the social capital route, where medium richness leads to an increase in the social capital of the community, which then affects trust. Hong and Liang (2015) showed how interactivity and the richness of media positively affect social network characteristics, such as ties and nodes, and extend the application of media richness in strengthening social capital to social media marketplaces such as Facebook pages. Second, if consumers are using Facebook more often, the likelihood of visiting these communities is also very high. Once that happens, they will start developing interactions with both the platform and the people in these communities by sharing their ideas, posting ads of their products and listening to others' experiences. All these interactions will enhance their trust in the community.\n7. Research implications: The contributions to theory and research on C2C social commerce are threefold. First, this paper attempts to extend the application of SCT to Facebook C2C transacting communities. Facebook, as a highly interactive platform, allows the use of SCT to understand some of the underlying psychological processes regarding consumer's buying behavior. Furthermore, by adopting MRT, this research illustrates how the theory can be extended to social media commerce, where both the content and communication are rich and multifaceted.\n8. Managerial implications: As social media transactions are becoming a dominant alternative to other online transactions, the importance of social media community characteristics emerges as critical to consumer trust and experience. This study contributes by offering a detailed investigation of multiple aspects of Facebook C2C communities' functionality, including social capital, trust, usage and SOVC.\n9. Limitations and future research area: This research has provided interesting insights into the C2C transactions done on Facebook communities; however, the study only looked at two types of communities. A study on the impact of media richness on different types of communities should be investigated in the future.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the consumer motivation to buy products on consumer-to-consumer (C2C) communities on social networking sites (SNSs). These transactions involve no intermediation or payment of fees by any party. The phenomenon is in contrast with the traditional C2C transactions, on websites such as eBay, where the company website facilitates the transaction between consumers, charges a fee to sellers and provides limited information about buyers and sellers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing from media richness theory and social capital theory, this paper thus proposes and empirically tests a theoretical model developed using data collected from people making transactions on these communities that synthesize the motivations behind consumers' intention to buy.\nFindings: The results indicate that the media richness of the Facebook platform increases the social capital and sense of virtual community among users, which further impacts the purchase intentions of users. Social capital alone does not lead to purchase intention and indirectly impacts purchase intentions through the trust dimension.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study contributes to theorizing the role of the platform, social capital and sense of virtual community in buying behavior on SNSs and provides valuable new insights into these constructs for the brand managers on social media sites.\nOriginality/value: Existing research on social commerce does not hold true for C2C communities on SNSs. This paper provides a new perspective into these communities through the lens of media richness and social capital constructs as antecedents of purchase intentions on these communities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Assessing the smartness of buildings	[ "USA", "Surveys", "Building evaluation", "Buildings performance measurement", "Smart buildings", "Smartness index" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The concept of \"smart\" building has risen up in the past few decades. Awareness of the importance of developing smart buildings is increasing. Higher competitive pressures force owners and developers to design and construct buildings that can be considered smart in terms of energy efficiency, occupant comfort, development and operating costs. Furthermore, the adaptation to climate change is emerging as one of the main requirements for buildings in satisfying environmental performance (Love and Bullen, 2009), thereby promoting \"smart\" solutions. Also, the concept of smart is an important part of the sustainability movement. Indeed, a green building incorporates building plans, the production, transportation and use of sustainable materials, minimum waste and minimum maintenance (Tsai et al., 2014). The concept of smart is receiving a great amount of attention worldwide not only in relation of the sustainability issue but also because it makes use of interconnected technologies and because it generates a high level of comfort for the occupants (GhaffarianHoseini et al., 2013). Owners and developers seek to achieve and document high-performance buildings to gain competitive advantage, designers are promoting their services based on the performance of their projects, and tenants and occupants are interested in their buildings' performance (Jarvis, 2009).\nIssues in smart buildings: Buildings are increasingly expected to meet higher and potentially more complex levels of performance because the demands of building owners and occupants are changing. While requiring adequate physical space, owners and occupants of a building also require the building to perform well in terms of cost and comfort. Moreover, buildings should use minimum energy, and yet be economical to build, operate and maintain (Kolokotsa et al., 2011). In other words, buildings are expected to be \"smarter\" and there is a whole range of design, managerial and organizational issues that need to be addressed with regard to reliability, operational management and performance to meet users' requirements (Shabha, 2006). Smart buildings are becoming more attractive and viable to potential inhabitants by producing energy savings while meeting comfort requirements (Zhang et al., 2013). In a smart building, different information such as temperature, humidity, air flow, light and sound can be collected from sensors and transferred to the building control system to track the conditions and the human behavior, and in turn achieve savings in terms of energy consumption with an increased level of comfort (Kwon et al., 2014). Cole and Brown (2009) propose a set of key attributes for smart buildings:\nResearch methodology: The research has been conducted in four steps.\nFindings and discussion: The questionnaire was sent to 1,600 professionals that are members of CMAA; 120 responded, yielding a rate of response of 7.5 per cent. Any size of company is represented in the sample evidenced by 41 having fewer than 1,000 employees, 32 with 1,000 to 10,000 employees and 43 with more than 10,000 employees.\nConclusions: This work represents an attempt to structure the main key elements characterizing the notion of smart building that are then integrated and elaborated through a survey. The objectives are twofold:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims at capturing the perspectives of construction professionals into a classified taxonomy of the various characteristics of smart buildings and at developing an index able to define their level of smartness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey has been administrated to construction professionals in the service of designers, constructors and owners. Results have been analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test and they have been used to develop a smartness index.\nFindings: Designers and owners are more focused on the energy issue than constructors. The energy captures the attention of practitioners with less years of experience, confirming that the awareness of the energy topic is rather recent.\nOriginality/value: The main characteristics of smart buildings have been structured in domains and subdomains. Their importance has been rated by construction professional and a smartness index for smart building has been developed to provide with a convenient tool for evaluation and benchmarking.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The twenty-first century multiple generation workforce: Overlaps and differences but also challenges and benefits	[ "United Kingdom", "Demographics", "Employees", "Baby Boomer generation", "Older workers", "Higher education", "Experience", "Graduates", "Higher level skills", "Young workers", "Multi‐generational workforce", "Cross‐generational working", "Generation Y" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A natural response to the challenges facing the UK economy has been to analyse both the profile and skills sets of the current workforce. Inevitably there has been evolution and change within the workforce; one of the most obvious developments is that the UK's workforce is ageing and will continue to age. Between the years 1945-1965 (approximately) the UK birth rate increased dramatically due to postwar affluence and an increase in living standards (this generation of babies became known as the \"Baby Boomers\"). Since 1995 the number of people aged between 50 and 64 years old has increased (Houses of Parliament, Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology, 2011). In the decade 2001-2011 the percentage of workers aged over 65 doubled (Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2011b). Demographic forecasts suggest that these trends will continue and confirm that by 2020 one-third of the workforce will be over 50 years old (Houses of Parliament, Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology, 2011).As the government struggle to cope with the country's financial burden they have sought to encourage individuals to stay economically active as long as possible, for example plans to increase the state pension age from 2018. Interestingly this situation is by no means isolated to the UK; projections for the European Union anticipate a considerable increase in the number of people aged between 50 and 64 in the workplace between 2010 and 2060, with Spain, Malta and Slovenia expected to see the largest increases (28, 25 and 25 per cent, respectively, compared to 12 per cent in the UK):As the European Union tries to tackle its chronic debt problems, the costs associated with ageing have come into focus. Rising life expectancy just as the Baby-Boomer generation approaches retirement means it is becoming harder to fund today's system across most of the continent (Pignal, 2012).The European Commission has been encouraging governments to, either, dispense with retirement ages, and/or, bring them into line with life expectancy, as well as reducing early retirement schemes. In fact the Commission has designated 2012 as the year of \"Active ageing and solidarity between the generations\" (European Commission, 2012).The ageing workforce - the facts\nThe generations: Defining features\nExperience vs qualifications: Experience\nEvolving HE: HE's reputation for developing the whole person means that HEIs now attract students of all ages and background, wishing to undertake HE-level qualifications, the \"traditional pattern of three year, campus-based honours degrees is not the only route to higher skills, not the only way to prepare successfully for modern economic life\" (DBIS, 2009a, p. 26). As the numbers of older; work-based; and other non-traditional, students entering HE have increased (65 per cent of students now fall into these categories - 40 per cent of students were over 25, with 5 per cent aged over 50; HESA, 2010/2011) so too has the need for HEIs to be innovative about the ways in which they acknowledge and build upon the learning which can be gleaned from various non-traditional educational experience. A good example of students working and studying simultaneously is the Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management offered by Teesside University, and developed in conjunction with the North East Chamber of Commerce (winner of a Times Higher Education award for Outstanding Employer Engagement initiative). Teesside University devised a curriculum based on market intelligence to develop leadership capability in the region's businesses and to place business needs within the context of appropriate pedagogical material and assessment.The changes in the HE student population have led to a marked increase in both the use of articulation of this achievement and the accreditation of company in-house training. Sometimes this prior learning is dealt with as an admissions process, where the candidate receives some form of advanced standing but increasingly it is dealt with via a work-based study route and many UK HEIs now offer work-based degree programmes which welcome claims for credit via the accreditation of prior learning process. A total of 31 per cent of employers responding to the Tees Valley research (Helyer and Lee, 2010) indicated that individuals from their company had participated in higher level training in the preceding 12 months, 41 per cent of which was provided by an HEI. Furthermore, many of the HE programmes now include \"employment skills\" modules, options to enjoy placement and internship opportunities and assessments that involve group/teamwork, real-life briefs, giving presentations, networking, researching and so on - all requiring skills sets which are also crucial in the workplace.HE has an impressive reputation and it is claimed that, \"HE qualifications hold a parity of esteem across the learning sector and beyond\" (Helyer, 2010), regardless of mode of study. Higher education is still very much focused on academic learning for the purpose of developing an in-depth knowledge about specific subjects, it also encompasses a good deal more. HE demands critical thinking and intellectual curiosity and it challenges its candidates in a way that develops the \"whole person\". This reputation and ability to develop the whole person will persist as HE continues to change and evolve; within this context universities need to communicate and, \"explain coherently what higher level skills actually are and what they can do for an employee's potential and therefore ultimately for that employer's success\" (Helyer and Lee, 2010, p. 17); making employers much more aware of the benefits of balancing qualifications and experience and building on cross-generational working and learning.\nConclusions: Today's multi-generational workforce embodies a wide variety of different attitudes, values, motivations and beliefs; there is a significant body of academic literature cataloguing these varying characteristics and experiences. However, diversity is a key defining feature of the twenty-first century, and naturally this diversity is reflected in the workplace, \"there is a general school of thought that organisations must recognise the influence and work preferences of different generations to be effective in the future\" (Shaw and Fairhurst, 2008). A cross-generational workforce thrives on cross-fertilisation; both employers and academia must acknowledge this, embracing diversity, whilst building on similarities and maximising from the resultant synergy.Examining the profiles of both older and younger workers, within the context of the education vs qualification debate, debunks a number of misconceptions about HE; however, it also highlights that HE needs to be much more explicit about its \"offer\", with relation to the content, cost and relevance of its programmes. As a Tees Valley employer pointed out, \"the higher level skills landscape is confusing - clarity and communication is needed\" (Helyer and Lee, 2010). Working with a diversity of students who have widely differing profiles, and often also with their employers, means that HEIs are behaving more commercially and taking more risks; this challenges a culture formerly accustomed to behaving in established, and somewhat risk averse, ways, but it assists with the continuous development of HE as a stretching environment. Working with employers and employees makes HE more responsive and therefore more likely to develop and deliver learning opportunities which are relevant in the twenty-first century; programmes of a bespoke, negotiated, adaptable and often multi-disciplinary nature (based on Helyer, 2010).It is not necessary to choose between experience and qualifications, as, through innovatively designed HE opportunities, it is possible to benefit from both. Many universities now see business engagement as a key strand of their mission rather than something marginalised or peculiar; having established, and built, relationships with employers they are now developing a broad range of collaborative activities. Rising to the challenges and opportunities of a hybrid, fragmented future will not always be easy, \"[...] Generation Y will be more difficult to recruit, retain, motivate and manage than any other new generation to enter the workforce. But this will also be the most high-performing workforce in history for those who know how to manage them properly\" (Tuglan, 2009). Stereotyping and rigid categories are not useful; gains and achievements will be made by innovating and collaborating in the areas of overlap and blurred boundaries. Successful companies and institutions will be those that are forward thinking and accept that this multi-faceted approach, where differing profiles and skills sets are blended to offer a range of continuing skills and expertise which is capable of creating exceptional results.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues around a multiple generational workforce and more specifically, the challenges and benefits for education providers and employers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Reviewing research papers, analysing academic texts, interrogating market intelligence and contextualising case studies, the paper examines the \"experience\" or \"qualifications\" debate alongside the similarities, differences and overlaps of the cross-generational workforce, with a view to offering education/training solutions.\nFindings: - Demographic forecasts suggest that the UK workplace will imminently be dominated by older, experienced employees. As the composition of the workplace shifts, examining the inter-relationship between groups of workers of different ages/profiles who have different skills, attitudes, expectations and learning styles is vital. The synergy caused by this inter-mingling cannot help but impact on employers, sectors and higher education institutions.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Data around the \"older\" graduate is not readily available - there is still an implicit belief that \"graduate\" means approximately 21/22 years old. Whilst many general demographic forecasts are produced, the future is still relatively unknown.\nOriginality/value: - The paper builds upon the authors' own original research into the employment market from an HE perspective. Little has been so far published around how the generations might usefully work together, especially the idea of adapting the skills and maximising on the overlaps of different generational profiles. The exploration of the hybrid graduate is also a new area for academic research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Materialism and clothing post-purchase behaviors	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Recycling", "Materialism", "Apparel hoarding", "Clothing disposal", "Compulsive buying", "Environmental attitudes", "Post-purchase" ]	[ { "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.\nReview of literature: Clothing related behaviors\nMethod: A survey questionnaire was developed to measure seven constructs (i.e. materialism, clothing purchase, compulsive buying, disposing, apparel hoarding, participation in recycling, and environmental attitudes) and demographic information. Materialism was measured with six items developed by Richins (1987). The items were indicated on a seven-point Likert-type format (1=strongly disagree; 7=strongly agree). For clothing purchase, one item asked the amount of annual apparel purchases. Compulsive buying was measured with six items adopted from a compulsive buying index (Ridgway et al., 2008). Four of the items (e.g. \"My closet has unopened shopping bags in it\") were measured with a seven-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree) and two items (e.g. \"I buy things I don't need\") were measured with a seven-point scale (1=never; 7=very often). To measure apparel hoarding, ten items were generated and scored on a five-point scale (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree). One example is \"I don't want to get rid of my apparel products because I like the brand\". Disposing was measured with a single item asking \"Approximately how many items of apparel products do you dispose of in a year?\". For the measurement of participation in recycling, nine items (donation, passing on, resale, etc.) were generated and measured with a five-point scale (1=never; 5=very often). Environmental attitudes were measured with five items adopted from Shim (1995). An example of item included \"Environmental issues are very important to me\". All items were scored on a five-point scale (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree). Demographic questions included gender, age, race, marital status, and college credit hours.\nConclusions and implications: Materialistic consumers center on getting possessions and tend to be self-indulgent. Clothing is used express the self, and materialistic consumers are highly involved with clothing to indicate social standing and success. Regardless of the economic downturn in recent years, the US apparel market grew about 5 percent and, on average, individual Americans spent $910 on more than 62 garments in 2011 (American Apparel and Footwear Association, 2012). This results in a high volume of textile wastes. Although consumers are encouraged to participate in recycling, textile waste is easily trashed and ends up in landfill. Little is known about materialistic consumers' clothing post-purchase behaviors. This study compared materialistic consumers and non-materialistic consumers in apparel purchase, compulsive buying, hoarding, disposing, participation in recycling, and environmental attitudes. As expected, materialistic consumers showed higher levels of apparel purchase and compulsive buying than did non-materialistic consumers. This finding was consistent with previous research which noted that materialistic consumers were highly involved with apparel and fashion (Goldsmith et al., 2012; O'Cass, 2001) and compulsive buyers (Xu, 2008; Yurchisin and Johnson, 2004). After purchase, materialistic consumers tended to keep apparel that had perceived value, even though they did not wear or use it. These may be items that were expensive and were worn or used only a few times. It is not surprising that materialistic consumers disposed of more apparel than did non-materialistic consumers, since they tend to purchase more and purchase compulsively. Further, although almost all textile wastes are recyclable, this study showed that both groups of consumers were unlikely to participate in recycling (M=2.35 for materialistic consumers; M=2.41 for non-materialistic consumers on a five-point scale). Consumers may not know that recycling not only saves materials (fibers), water, labor, and energy, but also preserves and protects the environment. They also may not know that recycled clothing can be used in other forms. According to Hawley (2001), after collecting used textiles, the textile recycling industry sorts them and sends to used clothing markets (second-hand stores), exports them to developing countries, or converts them into new products.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate materialistic consumers' apparel purchase, compulsive buying, environmental attitudes, and post-purchase behaviors regarding hoarding, disposing, and participation in recycling.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Clothing is used to express the self. Materialistic consumers tend to be young and highly involved with clothing, and purchase compulsively and more than needed. They are more interested in getting possessions than disposing of them. This study was designed to uncover materialistic consumers' post-purchase behaviors. A survey questionnaire was developed and a total of 333 college students completed it in a classroom setting.\nFindings: Results of a k-mean cluster analysis suggested two groups (materialistic consumers and non-materialistic consumers). Findings of independent t-tests indicated that materialistic consumers had significantly higher scores for apparel purchase, compulsive buying, value-oriented hoarding, and disposing, but lower scores for environmental attitudes than did non-materialistic consumers. No difference was found in participation in recycling between the two groups.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study suggests that marketing media should address benefits and ways to recycle and educate consumers in sustainable consumption behaviors.\nOriginality/value: Due to the nature of fashion, clothing is easily adopted and quickly becomes obsolete. Consumers easily dispose of clothing, which contributes to the increasing volume of textile waste. Although consumers are encouraged to participate in recycling to protect the environment, little research has focused on clothing post-purchase behaviors. Materialistic consumers' post-purchase behaviors regarding apparel hoarding, disposing, and participation in recycling is a new research area.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Introduction: Taking complexity seriously in IS research	[ "Information systems", "Research", "Design and development", "Complexity theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: This Special Issue explores complexity and how it can, or needs to, be addressed in information systems (IS) research. Why should IS scholars take complexity seriously? There are at least three aspects which make complexity an important topic for IS research and practice:1. technical;2. organizational; and3. societal.First, from the technical point of view, increases in computing power, the growing number of systems and their inter-connectivity, together with increases in the speed and range of telecommunications, challenge current software development methods and practices. These are no longer able to \"scale to manage these increasingly complex, globally distributed systems at reasonable cost or project risk\" (British Computer Society, 2004, p. 12), Second, organizations are experiencing dramatic structural and operational transformations due to changing market demands, process reengineering, and increased workforce diversity. These require organizations to improve their responsiveness by learning quickly and reconfiguring flexibly to adapt to new competitive environments (Cohen, 1999). Third, globalization has created a flat world of interdependent organizational activities and social relations across geographical and organizational boundaries where local actions propagate to a global level with unintended side-effects (Urry, 2005; Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1999).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To give an overview of the papers contained in this Special Issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Looks at how each of the papers reflects the theme of the Special Issue, \"Complexity and IT design and evolution\".\nFindings: - The collection of papers in this Special Issue addresses complexity, drawing on multi-faceted, multi-theoretical lines of inquiry.\nOriginality/value: - Frameworks from complexity science, institutional theory, social science, philosophy, and recent thinking in science and technology studies (STS) are used as theoretical lenses to conceptualize and analyze complexity in IS and to offer ways to mitigate it.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A structural equation modelling approach for adoption of e-book amongst mathematics and statistics (MAS) students at higher education institutions in Libya	[ "Technology acceptance model", "Structural equation modelling", "E-book", "Extrinsic variables", "Intrinsic variables" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Due to the advent of technology and its use in many fields such as industry, economy and communications, it has become an urgent need to integrate technology in the education sector (Rhema, 2013; Duhaney and Zemel, 2000). Information and communications technology (ICT) provides new possibilities that can revolutionise traditional learning environments (Gutierrez-Santiuste et al., 2015). Technological development has created a boom in the education sector, where the teaching methods have developed and become heavily dependent on the use of technology in developed countries (Hashim, 2011; Anuradha and Usha, 2006). The educational application of computers has evolved from being basic stand-alone data processing machines in computer labs, to be able to access the internet, and to where computers are being used in a number of integrated web services that have applications in learning and teaching (Gerry, 2005). The use of ICT in teaching and learning, which is commonly referred to as education technology, has quickly grown to become an essential method used in the general delivery of education, especially in developed countries.\nLiterature review and theoretical framework: Recently, many researchers focus on the role that technology plays in the development of the educational process, and specifically in the factors determining technology adoption and usage. Many models have been developed to aid in predicting technology acceptance. However, there are only a few studies that measure the effect of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on the acceptance of the e-book, especially in developing countries. There are two types of challenges facing the acceptance of the e-book. The first type represents the issues related to extrinsic factors. These challenges are either related to the e-book itself, i.e. Mobility (M) and Facilities (F); or those related to the institution that is responsible for providing the e-book, such as universities, i.e. the Library Service Quality (LS). This kind of challenge is very common in developing countries. The second type involves intrinsic factors such as RC and SE.\nTheory research model and hypotheses: According to previous research of technology acceptance, five external factors have been selected to measure the acceptance of the e-book. Believe that the best method to determine the external variables is the review of literature because it provides a theoretical framework that can explain the relations between the variables of the model. The method of literature review can also assist in the development of a theoretical rationale for the causal relationships between the model variables, leading to the research hypotheses formulation (Al-Aulamie, 2013). The selection process undergoes two conditions (Al-Aulamie, 2013). First, the external factors should address the unique context of the e-book. Second, the external factors must have the ability to explain the acceptance of the e-book. The selected factors in this study came about after a thorough study of some experimental evidence and previous forecasts derived from existing literature.\nMethodology: SEM process\nData analysis and the model results: The structural equation modelling (SEM) process is carried out through two approaches, namely, the measurement model and structural model analysis. Many researchers have recommended using these two approaches to building models (Mulaik et al., 1989; Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). The developed model was measured and tested by SEM using AMOS (22.0). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to examine the reliability, construct validity, convergent validity and goodness of fit of an individual factor and measurement models. The testing of the structural model is the step that comes after the completion of the evaluation of the measurement model (Hair et al., 2010; Khodabandelou et al., 2014).\nTotal effect: There are two types of effects in the path model: direct and indirect. The total effect is the sum of the direct and indirect effects. When the independent variable or even the dependent variable does not have an indirect effect on the dependent variable through the mediator variable (i.e. LS-PEOU, PEOU- PU), the total effect is equal to a direct effect. Otherwise, some of the indirect effects are equal to the total effect, when there is no direct impact of these variables (i.e. PEOU- BI, PU- BI and SE- BI). Based on Table VI, AU, PEOU, PU and SE are identified as the important predictors to students' BI, according to the total effect estimates. PEOU, PU and SE also appear as good predictors to the students' AU. F only has an indirect effect on students' AU. Although the total effect of F on PEOU is good, the direct effect of F is insignificant, while PEOU is a good predictor to PEOU. There are no indirect effects to the factors on PEOU; therefore, the total effect of F and SE factors is the same as the direct effect.\nDiscussions and conclusion: The results of TAM were shown that PU played an important role in affecting attitude towards adoption of e-book and students' BI to use e-book. Students' feeling that the e-book opens a wider field to understand the different topics in mathematics and statistics (MAS) makes them more optimistic about the use of an e-book in the future. Our results were consistent with studies done by Park (2009). Park (2009) pointed that PU is an important factor in affecting on attitude towards e-learning.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that may impact on the acceptance of the e-book amongst mathematics and statistics (MAS) students at higher education institutions in Libya.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A theoretical model has been developed based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The factors divided into three groups: intrinsic variables represent the first group of factors that are related to the user or the potential users itself, such as Self-Efficacy and Resistance to Change. Second, extrinsic variables include all the factors that reflect the characteristics of the e-book and the infrastructure for universities, which are Mobility (M), Facilities (F) and Library Service Quality (LS). TAM constructs from Perceived Ease Of Use (PEOU), Perceived Usefulness (PU), Attitude (AU) and Behaviour Intention (BI) represent the last group. Data relating to the constructs were collected through a self-administered survey in 2014. The developed model was measured and tested by structural equation modelling using AMOS (22.0).\nFindings: The result confirmed that the structural model fits the data well. According to the results, TAM constructs have a significant impact on the acceptance of e-book among MAS students at universities in Libya. In addition, the intrinsic variables play the important role to predict students' BI. Although the extrinsic variables were less important, Facilities was the strong factor in this group.\nOriginality/value: The adoption of e-book amongst higher education students in Libya is still quite low. Hence, identifying the factors that may contribute to e-book adoption is crucial. The contribution of this paper is to determine the factors that effect on the acceptance of e-book amongst MAS students at higher education institutions in Libya.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Corporate governance implementation rating in Indonesia and its effects on financial performance	[ "Corporate governance", "Corporate governance index", "Accounting-based performance", "Market-based performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Awareness of the importance of corporate governance (CG) is on the rise after the crisis in mid-1997 in Asian countries, including Indonesia. Iskander and Chamlou (2000) stated that the economic crisis is not only due to macroeconomic factors but also because of weak CG in these countries, such as the lack of legal and accounting standards, financial audit has not been established, the capital markets are under-regulated, lack of a supervision commissioner and disregard for the rights of minority shareholders. This means that the implementation of good corporate governance (GCG) will give a positive impact on both shareholders and national economic growth.\nCorporate Governance Perception Index: CGPI is the result of research and rating programs conducted by the IICG. The IICG was established on 2 June 2000 by the Indonesian Transparency Society and community leaders to promote concepts, practices and benefits of GCG. IICG is one of civil society's roles to encourage the establishment of an Indonesian business atmosphere that is reliable, ethical and dignified. As an independent and non-profit organization, IICG has a commitment to encourage the implementation of GCG in Indonesia and to support and assist companies in applying the concept of CG.\nLiterature reviews and hypothesis developments: Agency theory\nResults: CGPI profile\nConclusions and suggestions: The companies participating in CGPI rating always experience an increase in both quantity and quality each year. It means that their awareness on GCG has improved. The CG rating of go-public companies in Indonesia influences companies' accounting-based performance, such as ROA, ROE and EPS. This study also found that there is no significant effect on CGPI rating and company growth. Meanwhile, CG rating does not affect stock market prices. Investors do not respond to CGPI rating quickly, and thus, it seems there is no increase in stock prices. Research on CGPI rankings conducted by IICG every year is not very useful for investors or prospective investors in making their investment decisions in the stock market. Therefore, IICG should publish CGPI rating widely and easily accessible to the public. The government is expected to support IICG to improve the quality of its research and results published. For instance, the government can provide funds for IICG, as they are a non-profit organization. In addition, the stock exchange authority in Indonesia is suggested to create policy for the company to join the CG rating program, as the results of this study indicated that the CG rating could improve performance (Berthelot et al., 2010; Mishra and Mohanty, 2014).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance (CG) implementation rating conducted by the Indonesian Institute for Corporate Governance (IICG) on the financial performance of the selected companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is a hypothesis testing study to analyze CG implementation of 88 firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange. The samples are companies that participated in the Corporate Governance Perception Index (CGPI) Awards in 2008-2012. A panel data regression analysis is conducted on the data collected from IICG reports and its financial statements.\nFindings: The awareness regarding good corporate governance (GCG) enforcement in Indonesian companies has already increased. The listed companies that participated in CGPI Awards during 2008-2012 always experience an increase in both quantity and quality. CG rating of go-public companies in Indonesia affects their accounting-based financial performance, such as return on assets, return on equity and earnings per share. However, CG implementation rating is not directly responded by the Indonesian stock market and has not yet been able to increase the company's growth in the short term.\nResearch limitations/implications: In this study, CGPI rating in a related year is linked to market performance in the same year. Thus, further research may link CGPI rating to market performance in the next year, as the findings of this study show that GCG implementation is not directly responded by the market.\nPractical implications: GCG implementation is required by stakeholders, as it may give a long-term positive impact. Thus, the government needs to stipulate regulations to increase the commitment of the company in implementing GCG. The company can improve the internal factors of the organization that does not support the establishment of GCG based on the findings during the survey of CGPI. Finally, investors and creditors may consider the CGPI rating for their investment decisions.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, this study uses the comprehensive CG rating in Indonesia. Previous studies on CG rating focused on internal mechanism; in this study, the rating was assessed using four stages of continuous assessment: self-assessment, document evaluation, paper assessment and company visit, which was conducted by an independent team. Second, this study uses the CG index (compliance, conformance and performance) associated with a variety of accounting-based and market-based performance variables: financial performance, market value and growth.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Risk assessment of mining projects in Ghana	[ "Ghana", "Risk assessment", "Risk factors", "Mining projects" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Mining has contributed immensely to the development of many nations (Down and Stocks, 1977; Madeley, 1999). Nevertheless, with growing local and global competition in the often complex industry, the likelihood of achieving desired economic performance is becoming challenging due to risk of mining failures. It is very critical that governments and firms develop adequate plans to mitigate the effects of these risks. Industry stakeholders need to identify potential mining risk factors, their likelihood, consequences and severities of occurrence. This will enable risk management plans to be developed in order to avoid, mitigate, contain or control these risk factors.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Definition of terms and stages in risk assessment\n3. Methodology: The following research methodology was used in identifying and quantifying the critical risk factors in the mining sector of Ghana. This session presents an overview of the research design.\n4. Discussion of results: This section discusses the results obtained from the analysis of data. The five most critical risk factors as shown in Table V and Figure 2 were unstable commodity prices, inflation/exchange rate, land degradation, high cost of living and government bureaucracy for obtaining licenses.\n5. Conclusion: Risk assessment and management are necessary elements of mine planning and production. This paper has investigated the risks factors associated with mining projects in Ghana by examining the contribution of various risk factors to project failure. The study identified the five most critical risk factors in mining projects to be unstable commodity prices, inflation/exchange rate, land degradation, high cost of living and government bureaucracy for obtaining licenses. Though, the study aimed at identifying mining sector-specific risk factors, we observed that the five risk factors listed above were to unique to the mining industry. Earlier studies have identified these risk factors in other sectors of the entire construction industry. Furthermore, the study found that risk assessment in the mining sector has a direct link with mining project sustainability. This implies that risk assessment helps to eliminate certain obstacles that may become a hindrance to the effective operation of mining activities. Mitigation measures for addressing the identified risk factors were discussed. The key findings emphasize the need for a comprehensive risk management culture in the entire mining sector of the country. There is the need to develop country-specific risk management processes and methods informed by analytical research into the sectors operations. To reduce mining companies' exposure to risks, government should support the establishment of data collection, analysis and reporting systems as well as a platform for sharing risk information among players in the industry.\n6. Study limitations and implications for future research work: The information gathered through this research can be utilized in identifying and understanding risks during the early stages of mining project implementation. The findings should guide mining practitioners and policymakers in developing appropriate risk mitigation measures for Ghana's mining sector.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the critical risk factors affecting mining projects in Ghana.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A purposive sampling approach was used in selecting the respondents for the study. These were practitioners working on mining projects in Ghana.\nFindings: The study identified 22 risk factors contributing to mining project failure in Ghana. The five most critical mining project risk factors based on both probability of occurrence and impact were unstable commodity prices, inflation/exchange rate, land degradation, high cost of living and government bureaucracy for obtaining licenses. Mitigation measures for addressing the identified risk factors were identified.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper is limited to data collected from practitioners working on mining projects. Due to geographic and logistical constraints, the study did not include the perception of local communities in quantifying the risk factors.\nPractical implications: This paper has documented the critical risk factor affecting the mining industry in Ghana. Though the identified risk types are also prevalent in other sectors of the construction industry, the key findings of this paper emphasize the need for a comprehensive risk management culture in the mining sector. From an academic research perspective, the paper contributes to a conceptual risk assessment framework.\nOriginality/value: The information gathered through this research can be utilized in identifying and understanding risks during the early stages of mining project implementation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of thriving at work and overall fairness in the future work self-employee creativity relationship	[ "Employee attitudes", "Employee behaviour", "Employee involvement", "Work psychology", "Employees" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Employee creativity promotes continuous organizational innovation, which is crucial for the development and survival of organizations in today's volatile environments (Zhou and Hoever, 2014). Over the past 30 years, research focused on creativity has become increasingly prominent in the most renowned academic journals (Liu et al., 2016). The componential theory of creativity suggests that motivation is an important mechanism underpinning the relationship between personal and contextual factors and employee creativity (Amabile, 1983a, b, 1996). Research on future orientation demonstrates that possible selves provide evaluative and interpretive context, enabling the current view of the self (Markus and Nurius, 1986), and, therefore, that they may affect the current behavior of and outcomes for employees (Hoyle and Sherrill, 2006).\nTheory and hypotheses: The future work self and employee creativity\nMethod: Sample and data collection\nData analysis and results: In this study, SPSS 22.0 statistical software was used to analyze variables, then the main effect and moderating effect were tested by hierarchical regression analysis.\nDiscussion and conclusions: From the perspective of the self-determination theory, this paper explores the relationship between the future work self and employee creativity. The main conclusions are detailed next.\nLimitations and future research: This study has some limitations. First, although the study variables were collected at two time points with a one-month lag, reverse causality may still exist. For example, employees with higher levels of creativity may be more likely to thrive at work. Therefore, we hope that future research will replicate and extend this study by using a vertical design to enhance the causal direction of the model. Second, this study collected data from 171 supervisor-employee dyads in four Chinese enterprises, and all data came from collectivist contexts. This may limit the generalizability of our findings to other cultural contexts. Moreover, the definition of the future work self varies across different cultural contexts. As such, future research should expand the sample size, and investigate whether the conclusions of this study can also be applied to cross-cultural backgrounds. Third, a finite number of variables cannot rule out the possibility that an unmeasured variable will produce spurious relationships. Although some appropriate controls were established in this study, there is still a possibility that unmeasured variables may have created spurious relationships. For example, personality is a key factor influencing creativity. Future research might use empowering leadership as a control variable. Fourth, our research indicates that thriving at work has a partial mediating influence on the relationship between the future work self and employee creativity, that is, other potential mediating mechanisms underlying this relationship have been excluded from this research. Therefore, future research could explore a broader range of mediating mechanisms through which employee creativity might be increased. We call for future research to extend this study and address these problems more thoroughly.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze why and when the future work self affects employee creativity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Survey data were collected from 171 supervisor-employee dyads in four Chinese enterprises.\nFindings: The results indicate that the future work self has a positive effect on employee creativity. Further, thriving at work mediates the links between the future work self and employee creativity. The authors also theorize that overall fairness moderates the positive effects of the future work self on thriving at work and employee creativity.\nOriginality/value: The study supports the self-determination perspective regarding the future work self and strengthens the application of this perspective in an effort to understand the relationship between the future work self and employee creativity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Implementation, communication and the benefits of corporate codes of ethics in Taiwan and Turkey: A comparison across contexts	[ "Business ethics", "Taiwan", "Turkey" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As we approach the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, against the backdrop of the near collapse of the world financial system, due in no short measure to an unrelenting desire for profit at all cost by corporations, driven by the personal greed of corporate boards and executive decision makers, the need to identify and understand the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics (CCE) is all the more important.CCE have been the focus of numourous studies since the early 1980s, across a large number of, predominantly western, countries including the private sector in the USA (Cressey and Moore, 1983; Mathews, 1987; Weaver et al., 1999; Berenbeim, 2000; Chonko et al., 2003), in the UK (Schlegelmilch and Langlois, 1990; Le Jeune and Webley, 1998), in Ireland (O'Dwyer and Madden, 2006), in Canada (LeFebvre and Singh, 1992; Schwartz, 2002; Singh, 2006) in Sweden (Svensson and Wood, 2004; Svensson et al., 2006), and also in Australia (Kaye, 1992; Farrell and Cobbin, 1996; Wood, 2000; Wood and Callaghan, 2003). CCE-studies have also been conducted on the largest multinational corporations operating across a range of jurisdictions in the world (Bethoux et al., 2007; Carasco and Singh, 2003; Kaptein, 2004; Singh et al., 2005; Wood et al., 2004). There have been a number of efforts centered on corporate governance that have been recently published on Turkey. These include, but are not limited to: Ararat and Ugur (2003), Aksu and Kosedag (2006), Ugur and Ararat (2006) and Orbay and Yurtoglu (2006). In Turkey, the implementation, communication and benefits of CCE by companies is still unclear as previous research appears not to have been conducted in the area of CCE prior to this study. This appears also to be the case regarding Taiwan in that no previous studies have been undertaken in this area.CCE are not a new phenomenon in either the business world or within the literature, just one that now has become more prevalent as corporations, in particular, strive to ensure that they are seen as ethical in the marketplace and the society. This need to be perceived as being ethical has emerged from the increasing incidence of well publicized and analyzed debacles of corporate scandals played out around the world by companies from major developed economies. No major developed business jurisdiction in the world has been immune from the application by degree of the \"Enronesque\" approach to business, where ethics becomes one of a number of casualties in the grab for commercial glory ultimately driven by personal greed. We again have witnessed such behaviours in the current meltdown of the global economy where executives of now defunct and near defunct companies have paid themselves millions of dollars in bonuses for captaining the corporate equivalent of the Titanic.Stajkovic and Luthans (1997) see codes of ethics as one of the key antecedent factors that interact together to influence the ethical standards of people and organizations. Berenbeim (2000) sees codes of ethics as having a pivotal importance in making an organization more ethical. Nijhof et al. (2003) suggest that a code once written is not enough by itself to ensure a responsible ethical organization. They go onto say that ensuring that the code values are embedded in the organization can one hope ensure not only responsible individuals but also responsible organizations, therefore codes of ethics artifacts have a major part to play in enhancing the ethical performance of organizations (Wood, 2002) and never before has this been more desirable than in the current economic climate.Based on the \"Partnership model of corporate ethics\" (Wood, 2002), this study examines the codes of ethics artifacts that are put in place by organizations. In particular, this study examines the use of CCE among the top companies in Taiwan and Turkey. In fact, this study is a replication (with these authors' permission) of a study performed in Australia, Canada and Sweden (Wood et al., 2004; Svensson et al., 2009). Subsequently, it is performed in a different cultural context than previous research and as such it is expected that the findings of this study may well differ from those studies performed in Western countries. This study makes a complementary contribution to the accumulated knowledge in this area of research, particularly given the cultural and historical differences these countries possess in comparison to those previously studied and documented in the literature.\nTaiwan and Turkey - a comparison: Taiwan and Turkey are both geographically located on the periphery of major economies. Turkey is an emerging economy (Table I) that aspires to become a full member of the European Union (EU) (Ugur and Ararat, 2006). Taiwan is a dynamic economy (Table I) rivaling many Western-based economies. The Government of Taiwan runs a large trade surplus, and its foreign reserves are among the world's largest. Like Turkey, Taiwan realizes the importance of establishing a link to the nearby major economy and its reliance on this neighbor for its continued development, growth and prosperity. With the recent change of government in Taiwan there is an overt desire to increase its dealings with the People's Republic of China. Both Turkey and Taiwan have a commercial life that historically has been heavily influenced by the national government and its investment strategies and policies (Ararat and Ugur, 2003; CIA, 2008). Each country knows that it must be cognizant of developments in its neighboring economies in order to fashion business systems that allow it to be a trading partner in future dealings with these economies.Taiwan and Turkey were among the countries studied by Hofstede in developing his dimensions of national culture. In that seminal study, the following four dimensions of national culture were identified: individualism versus collectivism (IC); large or small power distance (PD); strong or weak uncertainty avoidance (UA); masculinity versus femininity (MF) (Hofstede 1983b, p. 78). Hofstede's research, involving a data bank of 40 countries and 116,000 questionnaires, allowed him to assign an index value (between 0 and about 100) on each of the four dimensions. Scores on these dimensions for Taiwan and Turkey are shown in Table II.On \"Individualism versus Collectivism\", a measure of the relationship between an individual and his fellow individuals, Taiwan and Turkey have scores that are fairly close. On \"Power Distance\", a measure of the unequal distribution of power in society, Turkey is stronger than Taiwan. \"Uncertainty Avoidance\", which is a measure of how a society deals with uncertainty, is related to the propensity of a culture to establish laws and formal rules such as codes of ethics. Societies strong on \"Uncertainty/Avoidance\" are more likely to establish formal rules to deal with unpredictability. On the \"Uncertainty/Avoidance\" index, Taiwan and Turkey have exact values implying that both societies similarly establish formal rules to create security. The final of Hofstede's dimensions of national culture, \"Masculinity versus Femininity\", is a measure of the division of roles between the sexes in society. Scores for Taiwan and Turkey are similar where both countries have a masculine dominance.Based on the socio-economic and national culture indicators, the similarities among the two countries in this study should provide interesting and valuable comparisons, especially given that they are geographically at the opposite ends of Asia.A further point of interest is that both of these countries have persistently and actively developed their presence in the international marketplace and such involvement may well have tempered their cultures toward a more global (nee: Western Capitalist) style of corporate behaviour. When Hofstede (1983a) carried out his study, the degree of internationalization by these countries would have been much less than it is today, more than 20 years later, when this research was conducted. As such, it will be interesting to see if the dimensions for national culture do still hold for Taiwan and Turkey, not only in positive terms, but also in relative terms.This paper does not seek to claim that both countries' societies and cultures mirror each other, but proffers that the similarities and differences that exist between them may well be of great interest and value to both practitioners and scholars in the field of corporate ethics. As such, this situation provides an interesting platform for this research in its effort to describe and compare the implementation, communication and benefits of both corporate societies in respect to business ethics. It makes a contribution to knowledge in the field, especially given that the two societies have not previously been examined in this field of research.\nMethodology: This section describes and summarizes, the research method used in both the Taiwan and Turkey surveys performed in 2007. The figures reported are the responses of those companies that specifically answered each question in either the affirmative or the negative.Questionnaires that were non-sponsored and unsolicited were sent to the top companies operating in Taiwan and Turkey. Companies were asked to answer up to 30 questions, dependent on responses to previous questions within the survey. This paper focuses only on one specific part of the survey in order to maintain its primary focus.About 46, out of the 330 companies contacted in Taiwan, responded to the survey and returned a completed questionnaire. It should be stressed that whilst the response rate appears to be low (14 per cent), when considering the cultural context and the tradition of using surveys in corporate Taiwan, such a response rate is deemed to be satisfactory. Interestingly, the empirical findings of top Taiwanese companies show many similarities with top companies in Australia, Canada and Sweden. In fact, it would appear that this study provides a unique insight into Asian companies and their CCE as research in this area has not been previously conducted in this part of the world. Consequently, this study provides a valuable point of reference for further studies in other unexplored regions in the future.In 2007 in Turkey, a three-stage research procedure was used and conducted in order to evaluate the use of CCE in the largest companies of the country. First, a questionnaire was sent to the top 500 companies (based on revenue) (Istanbul Sanayi Odasi, 2005): companies that for several reasons such as size of turnover, employee numbers and profile, are more probable to have developed a formal code of ethics (Brytting, 1997).The aim of the questionnaire was also to obtain from the participants a copy of their code of ethics, if they had one. These private sector organizations were asked to answer up to thirty questions (dependent on responses to previous questions) about the methods used by their organizations to inculcate an ethical ethos into the daily operations of the organization, its leadership and its employees. The second stage involved content analyses of the codes of ethics supplied by the survey participants. The third stage involved a more detailed follow-up of a smaller group of companies that appeared to be close to, or to represent, the best practice in respect to codes of ethics. Findings from stage 1 of the research are reported in this paper. The results will be presented in the remainder of this paper in the format: (Taiwan: Turkey) so that responses are directly comparable within the text.The respondents upon which this paper focuses comprise those 32 organizations in Turkey with a code of ethics from the 137 that replied (23.4 per cent). The Turkish response is small but one must be cognizant of the fact that this area is a new and emerging one in a rapidly developing economy. The interesting fact is that 45 out of the remaining 105 companies (42.9 per cent) in Turkey suggested that they would have a code within two years. This study appears to be at the forefront of the investigation of the development of the phenomenon of the usage of codes of ethics in large Turkish organizations.\nEmpirical findings - Taiwan and Turkey: This paper reports on those 19 (out of 46 or 41.3 per cent) top Taiwanese companies and 32 (out of 137 or 23.4 per cent) top Turkish companies that reported having a code of ethics (Table III). This section will focus on summarising the empirical findings of the surveys conducted in Taiwan and Turkey over the period of the study. Tables III-VII summarize the characteristics of corporate samples used in the two surveys. Tables VIII-XI summarize the empirical findings for the implementation of CCE. Tables XII-XVII summarize the internal and external communication of CCE. Finally, Tables XVIII-XXI summarize the companies' perceived benefits of CCE. Note that the total population (n) that did possess a code and filled in the questionnaire, minus the total number of individual responses for each question, equals the number of non-responses in the tables. Generally, the non-response is low on reported items. Significance testing, consisting of Z-tests for proportion, were undertaken on salient responses and p-values are reported within each relevant table.The first notable observation at this point is that a much lower frequency of companies possess a code in both Taiwan and Turkey when compared to the top companies in Australia (89 per cent), Canada (96 per cent) and Sweden (61 per cent) (Svensson et al., 2009). Companies in Turkey are significantly less likely to have a code, when compared to Taiwan. In isolation, this would suggest that the adoption of formalised codes of ethics is more progressive in Taiwanese companies than in their Turkish counterparts (Table III).Characteristics of cross-cultural samples\nConclusion: The present study has provided some interesting insights into the differences between large Taiwanese and Turkish companies and their implementation, communication and benefits of CCE. This study is considered a valuable contribution to the area as these countries have not previously been reported in this field of research and its findings contribute to our understanding of the differences in implementation, communication and benefits derived from CCE in each country. Whilst similarities exist between both countries and previously reported countries, many differences were also identified that are of particular importance when considering the cultural differences that exist in relation to previous research conducted in Western countries such as Australia, Canada and Sweden.Implementation of CCE\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the corporate codes of ethics (CCE) that are put in place by companies in Taiwan and Turkey.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study examines the use of CCE among the top companies in Taiwan and Turkey. It is a replication of a study performed in Australia, Canada and Sweden and a follow-up study.\nFindings: - The empirical findings show many similarities with top companies in Australia, Canada and Sweden, but more importantly identify key differences distinctly unique to each of the two countries under investigation. Statistical analysis suggests that the implementation, communication and benefits of CCE are paramount to Turkish companies operating in a domestic environment where the aspiration to participate globally and join the European Union is high, whereas in Taiwan it is low in favor of more traditional business practices (similar to the Chinese concept of guanxi) that focus on individual relationships in favor of formalized regulatory frameworks (such as CCE).\nOriginality/value: - This study makes a complementary contribution to the accumulated knowledge in the area of CCE, particularly given the cultural and historical differences these countries possess in comparison to each other and those previously studied and documented in the literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Principals leading successful organisational change: Building social capital through disciplined professional collaboration	[ "Leadership", "Transformation", "Improvement", "Change" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Without question, leadership is an integral and powerful contributor to successful change and improved organisational performance (Leithwood et al., 2009a). In their work, Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) reinforce that leadership is pivotally important in the process of organisational renewal and regeneration. They highlight that the best principals not only generate \"professional capital\" but invest heavily in building the social capital for organisational change. This is also the case in other sectors. Evidence shows that successful leaders, who improve the fortunes of an organisation and sustain that improvement, have entrepreneurial instinct, are relentlessly innovative and most importantly, build \"social capital\" (Hargreaves et al., 2014).\nSocial capital: But what exactly is meant by social capital? The World Bank describes it as the \"norms and social relationships embedded in structures that enable people to co-ordinate action to achieve desired goals\". In an alternative definition, Prusak and Cook explain social capital as the \"stock of active connections between people, the trust, mutual understanding and shared values and behaviours that bind the members of human networks and communities together and make co-operative action possible\". At the heart of \"social capital\" is equitable participation in a joint enterprise, implying shared or distributed leadership and inter-dependent or collaborative working (Adler and Kwon, 2002).\nProfessional collaboration: The idea of professional collaboration has become commonplace in the research and professional literature, in particular in the shape of \"professional learning communities\" (PLCs). As an organisational arrangement, the PLC, when it operates within a school, has been shown to be a potent strategy for organizational change and improvement. Evidence highlights that within PLCs improvement in student achievement is accomplished as teachers and leaders collaboratively address issues of instructional improvement (McLaughlin and Talbert, 2001, 2006). The evidence is clear and compelling, PLCs when they operate \"within schools\" have the potential to positively change teachers' beliefs and behaviours. They can change classroom practice if teachers work collaboratively on a specific issue and have collective responsibility for the outcomes of their work. It is this reciprocal accountability and commitment to conjoint learning that is also a core feature of distributed leadership and social capital.\nLeading change and improvement: A quick scan of the international league tables of educational performance shows that teacher quality remains the central focus in the highest performing educational systems (Mourshed et al., 2007; Jensen, 2012). In some countries, the drive to improve teacher quality has been accompanied by high stakes testing and inspection regimes, in others by intense prescription and standardisation. While standards can set an important benchmark for the profession, the operationalisation of these standards is what matters most of all. As Cordingley (2012) notes that \"standards, especially inspiring ones, do help to raise the bar but the fulfilment of their potential depends upon teachers individually and collectively and as a profession pushing beyond what standards can encompass, towards the development and mastery of a body of both professional evidence and theory as a guide to action\" (p. 7).\nCoda: As the pressure to achieve better educational outcomes and to raise performance increases, so does the imperative for principals to find school improvement approaches that actually work. Improving school performance is an expectation placed squarely on the shoulders of principals but often this comes without any guaranteed solution, ready-made blueprint or failsafe model of improving organisational performance. So where do principals locate improvement strategies that actually make a difference, where it matters most in the classroom?.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the way in which principals in different countries are securing successful organisational change through systematically building social capital. It argues that how a school works as a cohesive unit and how people collaborates will ultimately define organisational performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws upon the international literature to explore how principals are building the social capital for organisational improvement but is not a review of the literature. It adopts a cross-cultural perspective and explores collective capacity building for organisational improvement.\nFindings: This paper concludes that \"disciplined\" professional collaboration is an important way in which principals can create and sustain the social capital for organisational change.\nOriginality/value: The paper is a conceptual piece that proposes that creating social capital, rather than individual or professional capital, is now an essential task for principals seeking successful organisational change and improved outcomes. It explores the idea of \"disciplined collaboration\" as a methodology for building social capital in a rigorous, effective and sustainable way.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Barriers to social support among low-income mothers	[ "United States of America", "Women", "Social isolation", "Social networks", "Individual psychology", "Low income mothers", "Social support", "Psychological distress", "Health" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Making ends meet is a daily struggle for low-income mothers in the USA. Many of them are sporadically employed or not employed at all, and those mothers who do find work typically hold low pay non-standard jobs in the service and retail industries, which provide limited or no social benefits, stability, and opportunities for advancement (Blank and Shierholz, 2006; Corcoran et al., 2000; Pavetti and Acs, 2001) and make it difficult for them to meet family demands (Hennessy, 2009; London et al., 2004). Nor can low-income mothers easily obtain official aid in the post-welfare reform era. Under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a block grant program no longer based on individual entitlement, nearly all mothers are required to engage in work-related activities in exchange for cash benefits and they can be sanctioned and have their cash benefits reduced or terminated altogether for failure to comply with program requirements. Moreover, TANF has a severe five-year lifetime limit receipt of benefits (Abramovitz, 2006; Corcoran et al., 2000).Facing the serious challenge of providing the basic needs for themselves and their children, low-income mothers often turn to their social network for support. Treated as private safety nets, research shows that relatives, friends, and neighbors help low-income mothers supplement their income (Edin and Lein, 1997; Harknett, 2006), take them into their households when they cannot afford rent (Hogan et al., 1990; Roschelle, 1997), and provide them with goods and services, such as childcare and assistance with transportation, which allow them to work or participate in work-related activities (Brewster and Padavic, 2002). Yet, although reliance on personal networks for support constitutes an important coping strategy, recent studies indicate that many low-income mothers receive insufficient or inadequate assistance (Belle and Dodson, 2006; Dominguez and Watkins, 2003; Edin and Lein, 1997; Henly et al., 2005; Howard, 2006). Oliker (2000) argues that welfare reform, by pressuring low-income mothers to find whatever job is available, has undermined their ability to meet network obligations and thus weakened the communal ethos of care and accelerated the demise of support networks.Social support is not merely a byproduct of social relationships but rather the result of individuals' successful negotiation and mobilization of their personal network. The social exchange literature suggests that individuals associate because of the profit they can gain from their interactions with others and that they are evaluated on the basis of their contribution to the network (Blau, 1986). Consequently, those who have a limited ability to share resources with others and those who are (or perceived to be) incompetent, unreliable or inaccessible are likely to be socially rejected. Recent ethnographic studies provide evidence and demonstrate how support networks are purposely constructed by identifying and screening potential members. In her study of the networks of care of children, for example, Hansen (2005) describes how parents take into consideration the emotional and physical health of potential caregivers before tapping them into their network. This process is referred to by Nelson (2005) as the \"work of sociability\", which consists of locating others who can meet required needs and negotiating with them terms of support. Nelson (2005) who interviewed low-income mothers in Vermont, further finds that mothers who were considered a burden and a net drain on others' emotional and material resources were often denied assistance and excluded from the network (see other examples in Dominguez and Watkins, 2003).This study contends that participation in support networks is particularly challenging for low-income mothers not only because they have many needy people in their networks and are therefore highly vulnerable to relational stress, as has been previously argued (Belle and Dodson, 2006; Goldstein and Warren, 2000; Roschelle, 1997), but also because they are likely to suffer from conditions that can make them unattractive network members. The major goal of this article is to reveal what these conditions are. Using a sample of predominantly minority low-income mothers living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, this study treats perceived support as a proxy for embeddedness in support networks and examines the extent to which poor health and adverse life-events, such as domestic violence, substance abuse, and engagement in illegal activities, constitute barriers to support.\nPerceived support and embeddedness in social networks: Social support pertains to the functional aspect of social relationships and constitutes a resource flowing between interconnected individuals through their social network (Berkman and Glass, 2000; Thoits, 1995). Two major approaches to the study of social support are prevalent in the literature. Received support focuses on the transactional character of support and examines the acts of receiving from and providing support to a range of people in the network (Sarkisian and Gerstel, 2004; Wellman and Wortley, 1990). This approach has several limitations. First, it does not account for the complex processes through which support is generated from the network. Second, by measuring the actual support obtained from network members, received measures of support conflate the need for support with its receipt (Dunkel-Schetter and Brooks, 2009; Garcia and Herrero, 2004; Thoits, 1995). For instance, an individual may have a supportive network but if she did not need support, and consequently did not receive any, measures of received support will fail capturing it.By contrast, perceived support refers to the cognitive appraisal, or belief, that support would be available from network members in the event that it is needed (Dunkel-Schetter and Brooks, 2009; Sarason et al., 1990). Unlike received measures, perceived measures of support are not endogenous with need and are more stable over time. The problem with measures of perceived support is that they may confound the availability of support with personality traits and coping styles and lead to inaccurate perceptions of support (Pierce et al., 1997; Sarason et al., 1990). Prior research, however, shows that although individuals tend to evaluate their social network in light of present and past experiences (Dunkel-Schetter and Bennett, 1990; Garcia and Herrero, 2004; Norris and Kaniasty, 1996), received and perceived support refer to two distinct and weakly correlated concepts and that the latter are more consequential to well-being and functioning than the former (Dunkel-Schetter and Brooks, 2009; Meadows, 2009; Sarason et al., 1990). Hence perceived support is more appropriate for tapping embeddedness in supportive networks.\nPotential barriers to support: Poor health\nData and measures: Sample\nResults: Testing direct and mediated associations\nDiscussion and policy implications: Consistent with prior research, the low-income mothers in this study reported overall high levels of perceived support (Harknett, 2006; Henly et al., 2005). This finding indicates that most mothers do have private safety nets on which they can rely in the case of an emergency. Certain conditions, however, were found to constitute serious barriers to support. As predicted, mothers who suffered from poor physical health and psychological distress had significantly lower support than their healthier counterparts. Findings further suggested that psychological distress was more detrimental to support than poor physical health (for similar results see Harknett, 2006). Could the relationship observed between health and perceived support, however, be due to the reverse effect of support on health? Numerous studies have underscored the beneficial effect of perceived support to physical and mental health and there is no reason to assume that it will not be the case in this study too. The results of this study do not preclude this possibility but they provide sufficient evidence to suggest that the opposite path is also likely to occur. Future qualitative research is recommended to reveal the mechanisms by which poor health is detrimental to support. That is, the extent to which mothers who suffer from impaired health tend to withdraw from social relationships and the extent to which others exclude them from their networks.Findings further revealed that domestic violence constituted a barrier to support. Interestingly, this association was found to be driven by poor health. Mothers who experienced domestic violence reported lower support than their non-abused counterparts mainly because they were likely to suffer from poor physical health and psychological distress. The causal order concerns described above with respect to health and support are also relevant to domestic violence. Supportive networks may allow women to resist and escape from abusive relationships (Johnson and Ferraro, 2000). In fact, welfare reform has been criticized for exacerbating low-income women's dependence on abusive partners (Raphael, 1999). Research indicates that facing severe time limits and sanctions, low-income women with limited or ineffective personal networks are inclined to rely on abusive men for instrumental and financial support (Scott et al., 2002). The results of this study do not disqualify this causal path, and there is no reason to believe that they would, but they suggest that because it is detrimental to health, domestic violence can constrain the ability of low-income mothers to participate in social support networks and to negatively affect their appraisal of support.Interestingly, neither the association between health and support nor that between domestic violence and support was mediated by socioeconomic disadvantage, as hypothesized. The reason for this lack of effect is that none of the socioeconomic status variables was significantly related to support, in itself a surprising finding. One possible explanation for these results could be related to the restricted nature of the sample. The fact that the sample included only poor and near-poor mothers may leave differentials in perceived support by socioeconomic status unrevealed. Another explanation relates to the scale of the support index used. In this study support was measured on a 0-2 scale, which may have been too limited for detecting effects. Harknett (2006) who used a more refined scale of perceived support, ranging 0-50, did find that low-income mothers who perceived their network to be supportive were more likely to be employed and had higher earnings and reduced chances of relying on welfare compared to mothers with lower levels of support.Finally, the findings of this study speak to pressing policy concerns, which are relevant to low-income mothers not only in the USA but also in other industrial nations that have implemented welfare-to-work programs aimed at getting low-income mothers off the welfare roll and into the labor market, such as Canada (Gazso and McDaniel, 2010), the UK (Paz-Fuchs, 2008), and Australia (Shaver, 2002). Welfare reform, which has pressured low-income mothers to become self-reliant and substitute official aid with other means, typically employment, has implicitly assumed that these women will have private safety nets to fall back on in times of need. But this may not always be the case. This study clearly showed that the most disadvantaged and vulnerable women, those who suffered from poor health, psychological distress, and domestic violence, did not perceive their networks to be supportive. It should be noted that these mothers are also those most likely to become chronically disconnected from both employment and welfare and, consequently, to endure particularly acute hardship (Danziger et al., 2000b; Turner et al., 2006).These findings, which highlight the double-edge sword of deprivation by demonstrating how those in greatest need for support are the least likely to have it available to them, call for establishing formal channels of support in the community. As research demonstrates, social service agencies and community-based organizations constitute an important alternative to family- and friends-based support networks (Dominguez and Watkins, 2003). Non-profit institution, when they view clients from a strength perspective, can be highly effective in providing basic needs, such as food and clothing, emotional support, counseling, and professional guidance. They can also facilitate socializing and link low-income mothers to other mothers in the community and encourage them, through their ties with professionals and social service providers, to generate personal connections outside the community. Considered weak ties (Granovetter, 1983), these \"bridging\" connections have been shown to significantly enhance the well-being of low-income populations by providing them novel information and opportunities (Briggs, 1998; Small, 2009). Hence, institutional-based support can both fill the social void in the lives of those mothers whose personal networks are lacking or ineffective and help them better deal with poor health, psychological distress, and domestic violence.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The literature on personal networks suggests that individuals who have a limited ability to contribute to their network run the risk of being socially excluded and are often denied assistance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which poor health and adverse life-events constitute barriers to support from personal networks among low-income mothers in the USA.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using survey data from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study (n=1,910), this study estimates a series of ordinary least squares regression and change models to test direct and mediated associations between poor health, adverse life-events, and perceived support.\nFindings: - Both the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses show that mothers who suffer from psychological distress report lower support than their healthier counterparts, so do mothers with poor physical health. Domestic violence is also found to be negatively associated with support, but its effect is mainly driven by poor health. No effect is revealed for either substance abuse or engagement in illegal activities.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The restricted character of the sample may leave differentials by socioeconomic status unrevealed.\nSocial implications: - The most vulnerable and disadvantaged mothers, those in greatest need for support, are the least likely to have it available from their networks. Hence this study highlights the need of providing support through formal channels in the community.\nOriginality/value: - By treating support as a dependent variable, this study sheds light on the factors related to low-income mothers' social well-being and helps reveal the conditions that can impede their participation in support networks.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cost efficiency among rice millers in Southwest Nigeria	[ "Efficiency", "Cost efficiency", "Normalized quadratic cost analysis", "Rice millers", "Southwest Nigeria" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Studies have shown that there has been a shift in consumers' preference for other traditional food to rice which makes it to feature regularly on the daily menus of most Nigerians (USAID, 2009; Ayanwale et al., 2011; Inuwa et al., 2011; FAO, 2013). The cost of rice, ease and time of preparation are some of the factors responsible for changing preference for rice (Yumkella, 2011). Globally, rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a very important food crop. It is an ancient crop consumed as a healthy and staple food by more than half of the world population. In Nigeria, rice is the fourth major cereal crop and is the sixth major crop in cultivable areas, after sorghum, millet, cowpea, cassava and yam (USAID, 2009). Average annual paddy production in Nigeria is about 4.4 million tonnes and the milled production is about 2.8 million tonnes, whereas national consumption is estimated at 6 million tonnes of milled rice leaving a shortfall of more than 3 million tonnes that is bridged by importation (GAIN Report, 2014).\nLiterature review: The concept of efficiency\nResults and discussions: Profile of rice millers and mills\nConclusion and policy issues: The study estimated the cost efficiency of rice millers in Southwest Nigeria using the normalized quadratic cost function model and linked the results to millers and mill characteristics. According to the results from the normalized quadratic cost function, cost efficiency levels among rice millers are low. This ranges between 1 and 57 percent. The mean cost efficiency stood at 20.2 percent while the large-scale rice millers are the most cost efficient with mean cost efficiency of 25 percent. The coefficient explains the cost elasticities of variable inputs to total production cost and it was observed that 1 percent change in paddy, transport and diesel prices increases the total cost of production by 2.5, 17 and 10 percent, respectively. The coefficient of the output is 0.1 which shows that it is an inelastic and decreasing return to scale in production.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency of rice millers and determine factors influencing cost efficiency in Southwest Nigeria using the cost route approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper analyses cost efficiency of rice millers using primary data collected from 62 respondents through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed for this purpose. The profile of rice millers and mills were derived using the descriptive analysis. Cost efficiency of the millers was obtained using the quadratic cost function analysis, and Tobit regression was used to determine factors that influence cost efficiency.\nFindings: The results showed that cost efficiency indexes range from 1 to 57 percent averaging at 20.2 percent. Large rice mills were found to be most efficient with the mean cost efficiency of 25 percent. Paddy, transport and energy costs contributed positively and significantly (p=0.05 and p=0.01) to cost efficiency. Milling capacity and machine age increase cost efficiency while the distance to purchase paddy and quantity of diesel used reduces cost efficiency.\nSocial implications: The paper shows that there is enough potential for rice millers to improve their cost efficiency based on the available technology. This has a direct implication on the economy through the increased domestic production and processing of rice to meet the increasing demand for locally produced rice.\nOriginality/value: The paper attempts to bridge the gap in the literature of cost efficiency among rice millers in Nigeria, and specifically in the application of the normalized quadratic cost function in estimating cost efficiency in the rice milling sector in Nigeria.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Flexible working times: effects on employees' exhaustion, work-nonwork conflict and job performance	[ "Flexible working hours", "Time‐based management", "Performance management", "Personal health", "Germany" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Flexible working time (FWT) models have become an increasingly widespread phenomenon in all areas of business. In Germany, more than 75 percent of the workforce no longer has standard work schedules (Nachreiner and Grzech-Sukalo, 1997) and more than half of the working population (58 percent) seems to have some flexible components in their work schedules (e.g. flextime, bank of hours). Due to employers' demands to react to changes in the market and to use their workforce efficiently, FWT is becoming more and more popular. For employees it has also become more important to balance and organize job tasks and nonwork-activities with each other because a broader individualization of lifestyles (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2003; Statistisches Bundesamt, 2005) requires more individualized time planning. Employers should mind such interests of employees, in an attempt to optimize the use of human capital. It thus might seem that everybody advocates FWT models as a means of adopting working times to changing demands from both sides. However, flexibility on behalf of the employer does not mean flexibility on behalf of the employee and vice versa, it can even counteract each other. Therefore the scope of the present study is to conceptualize FWT from the employee's point of view regarding the extent of autonomy and its boundaries due to restrictions and employer-oriented flexibility to predict individual (i.e. exhaustion and work-nonwork conflict) and organizational outcomes (in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior).The current literature has invested little effort in differentiating the impact of single flexibility aspects. The findings regarding the effects of working time flexibility on employees' well-being are relatively scarce and rather controversial, ranging from negative to zero to positive effects (Costa et al., 2003; Geurts and Demerouti, 2003). Reported outcomes for employees' satisfaction and work-life balance are predominantly positive (Geurts and Demerouti, 2003; Thierry and Meijman, 1994; van Rijswijk et al., 2002). Nevertheless, in the majority of the cases the character of the tested FWT models is not specified. Another limitation is that most of the studies are case studies or evaluations without theoretical background and quasi-experimental controls that fail to use appropriate statistical methods (Costa et al., 2003; Baltes et al., 1999). Due to the enormous number of different FWT schedules nowadays, some theoretical understanding is important to evaluate their effects accurately and purposefully.Conceptualization of flexible working time\nTheoretical framework: The job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti et al., 2001) explains burnout symptoms on the basis of constellations of workplace aspects. The basic premise of the JD-R model is that employees may work in different work environments, but the characteristics of these work environments can be classified into two broad categories:1. job demands; and2. job resources that are differentially related to specific outcomes (Demerouti et al., 2001).Job demands are those aspects of the job that require intense physical or mental effort and are therefore linked with certain physiological and/ or psychological costs (Demerouti et al., 2001; Demerouti et al. 2009). High or badly designed demands in the job lead to energy depletion (or exhaustion) and in the long-term to diminished health. Examples include high work pressure, an unfavorable physical environment and emotionally demanding interaction with clients (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007).Job resources in contrast are those physical, social or organizational features of the job that:* are instrumental in attaining work-related goals;* decrease job demands and the physiological and psychological costs linked to these demands; and* cultivate personal growth and development.Examples of job resources include job autonomy, social support (from supervisors and colleagues), performance feedback, and collegiality.Based on this differentiation, the JD-R proposes two processes (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). The first is the health impairment process, which begins with persistent job demands, that may diminish employees' energy resources and may thus lead to burnout and weakening of health (Hakanen et al., 2006). Demanding aspects of work can lead to constant overtaxing and exhaustion. The second psychological process is the motivational process, which starts with the availability of job resources and is likely to lead to work engagement and positive outcomes such as greater organizational commitment and enhanced job performance (e.g. Bakker and Demerouti, 2008, Salanova et al., 2005, van Emmerik, 2004). When the external environment lacks resources, individuals cannot cope with the negative influences of job demands. Emotional withdrawal from the job is one essential self-protection mechanism (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007).Originally, working time flexibility is not explicitly covered by the JD-R model but the following hypotheses are based on the idea that aspects of flexible working times can be classified into the two categories of working conditions - demands and resources - as recognized by the JD-R model. Since variations of working time are affecting not only work content like the factors \"autonomy\" and \"work pressure\", but the overall framing of the working-time and the time off, it should provide additional explanatory value for exhaustion and disengagement.Autonomy is a central motivator for intrinsic work engagement and job satisfaction (e.g. Hackman and Oldham, 1980). Since flexible working-time models have only recently become popular the term autonomy in general refers to the latitude of arranging tasks and actions within a given time-frame but not to the autonomous handling of working-time and the possibility of varying working time duration and distribution according to one's own needs itself. However, such a time-autonomy can be classified as a job resource according to the definition mentioned above as it supports the employee in coping with everyday efforts on the job and during the time off.Time restrictions, i.e. time bureaucracy and unpredictable time variations, can be interpreted as a job demand because it requires effort and energy and therefore can be related to psychological costs. On behalf of time-restriction this leads to our first hypothesis that is directly deduced from the health-impairment process:H1. Time restrictions will be positively related to exhaustion.Work-nonwork conflict\nMethod: Procedure\nResults: Dimensionality of FWT\nDiscussion: Due to the growing variety of working time arrangements, a more general and multidimensional understanding is needed to categorize the various arrangements of flexible working times and to anticipate or evaluate specific outcomes for the company and the working staff. Therefore, the primary rationale for this study is to examine a useful differentiation of working time flexibility components and to take a closer look at the effects of these kinds of flexibility. Conceptions and hypotheses are based on the Job Demands-Resources Model and its implications for time flexibility in work arrangements. According to the Job Demands-Resources model and its separation of work aspects into job demands and job resources, the present study is based on a differentiation of FWT into time-autonomy and time-restrictions from the employee's point of view. Although several authors have argued for a multidimensional approach (Pierce et al., 1989), this study is one of the first to examine such a differentiation and to deduce and test specific outcomes from each dimension empirically. Our hypothesized two-dimensional structure of flexibility is supported by a principal component analysis. Our findings are thus consistent with some other recent studies introducing a multi-dimensional approach (Costa et al., 2003; Hyman et al., 2003; Janssen and Nachreiner, 2004b). We do not expect this two-dimensional approach to represent the whole nature of working time flexibility but to provide a useful differentiation for classifying their effects and for organizational decision-making. This study provides evidence for the need to consider a broader range of working time-aspects, not just the employee's (perceived) flexibility but also his or her temporal restrictions, imposed by others, e.g. the employer, in order to obtain to an adequate evaluation of the effects and their causal pathways. Interpreting the two time factors as job demands and job resources, hypotheses regarding their effects on psychological well-being, job performance and the work-nonwork conflict of the employee are examined using conventional job demands and job resources as control variables.Exhaustion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this study is to provide a useful conceptualization of flexible working times and to examine the relationships between flexible working times and employees' well-being and peer ratings of performance. It is supposed that an employee's \"time-autonomy\" would be positively related to performance and well-being. On the contrary, an unfavorable effect of \"time restriction\" on well-being is expected.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A questionnaire-study was conducted among 167 German employees from 17 different organizations. Information about in-role and extra-role performance was also obtained via peer evaluations.\nFindings: - The data support a two-factor structure of flexibility. The time restriction factor adds to the degree of exhaustion and the work-nonwork conflict, while time autonomy diminishes these outcome variables. However, the flexibility dimensions are unrelated to performance.\nOriginality/value: - The multidimensional conceptualization of flexibility allows for the detection of advantages and drawbacks regarding the effectiveness of flexible working time models.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modularization and the impact on supply relationships	[ "Supplier relations", "Economic cooperation", "Product specification" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The impact of product type on buyer-supplier relationships is well established in the supply management literature. Product characteristics such as component function, complexity, and novelty are core concerns for managers seeking to manage the design and delivery interface with suppliers, and their effects on relationship portfolios are well known (Kraljic, 1983; Clark and Fujimoto, 1991; Olsen and Ellram, 1997). More recently, studies have indicated a shift towards increased levels of variation and fragmentation in customer demand (Holweg and Pil, 2004; Gunasekaran, 2005) suggesting the configuration of product architecture is also now critical to supply chain management.Yet, the impact of product architecture on buyer-supplier relationships is less clear. System sourcing is receiving increasing attention where many industry sectors are relying on full service suppliers to design and build entire subsystems or \"modules\" (Gadde and Jellbo, 2002). The decisions-governing modularization apply not only to products, but also to organizational design, where the product development process is specified and partitioned into tasks, and performed autonomously and concurrently by a loosely coupled structure of organizations (von Hippel, 1994; Araujo et al., 1999). The academic literature presents two conflicting views regarding modularisation and supplier relationships. On the one hand, the introduction of modularisation suggests that buyer and supplier firms should move towards greater collaboration in order to co-develop products and hence reduce interface constraints (Hsuan, 1999; Hsuan-Mikkola, 2003). A considerable range of studies present the benefits of closer buyer-supplier working relationships (Lamming, 1993; Sako et al., 1994; Olsen and Ellram, 1997), which includes the positive impact on firm performance and new product development (Croom, 2001). In the case of the DaimlerChrysler SMART car plant in Hambach, for example, the product architecture is designed around an assembly consisting of five principal modules: the platform, powertrain, doors and roof, electronics, and cockpit. The modular configuration of SMART extends to the organization of the production plant where a small number of first tier suppliers are integrated into the facility and take responsibility for their operations in final assembly. SMART supports the idea that the impact of modularisation increases collaboration in buyer-supplier relationships.On the other hand, the standardisation of interfaces due to the effects of modularization suggests that buyer firms could effectively introduce a \"black box\" approach to component design, holding suppliers at arm's-length and reducing dependence (Muffato, 1999; Gadde and Jellbo, 2002). \"Black box parts\" refers to the splitting of product development between assembler and supplier where, typically, an assembler generates the basic design information in terms of exterior shape, cost, and interface details, and passes responsibility to deliver the detailed component design, prototyping, and production to the supplier (Clark et al., 1987; Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). The black box system is not without risk where assemblers who rely on supplier's capabilities may lose negotiation power (Caniels and Gelderman, 2005), lose design ideas to competitors, and become more vulnerable from the drain of technological capability over the long term. Further, as platform sharing is increasingly deployed to cope with product complexity, this leads to more integration of different products and the requirement for parts standardisation, suggesting that the importance of joint development between firms is reduced (Muffatto, 1999).These conflicting views represent uncertainty that lead us to develop the following research question:RQ1. Under what conditions does modularity lead to increasing collaboration?We examine the impact of product modularization on supplier relationship management and more specifically identify the mediating conditions that lead to collaboration between buyer and supplier firms involved in modular exchange. We identify two critical conditions, namely relationship specific assets and information sharing, which mediate the relationship between product modularization and collaboration. These conditions explain integration and interdependence between firms where product architecture is central to customer responsiveness (Ward et al., 1995; Sanchez, 1995).The structure for the remainder of the paper is as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on modularization, collaboration, relationship specific assets, and information sharing. Section 3 describes the methods and Section 4 presents the results. Section 5 discusses the results, concluding in Section 6 with the contribution to theory/practice and limitations of the study.\n2 Literature review: Sections 2.1 and 2.2 hereby review modularization and collaboration, respectively. Section 2.3 reviews relationship specific assets and information sharing as potential mediating variables.2.1 Modularization\n3 Methods: 3.1 Sample and procedures\n4 Results: Table III presents the means, standard deviations and correlations for each of the variables in the study. The correlations between the independent and dependent variables were positive, as consistent with expectations. All statistical tests are underpinned by a series of assumptions that when seriously violated may lead to errors (both Types I and II) in analysis. Here, we examined the individual variables and the variate for assumptions of linearity, homoscedasticity, and normality (Hair et al., 1998). The analyses did not reveal any significant violations of the three assumptions. Furthermore, regression diagnostics revealed a lack of serious multicollinearity among the variables. Specifically, the variance inflation factors (VIF) associated with each regression coefficient ranged from 1.01 to 1.34.The results of the survey data are analysed using multiple regression analysis. The objective of regression is to establish a set of regression coefficients (b-values) for the independent variables that bring the predicted values for the dependent variable as close as possible to the dependent variables obtained by the measurement model (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2001). The hypothesised relationships were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Hierarchical regression enables the researcher to maintain control over the variables entered into the model while simultaneously assessing the extra contribution of new blocks of variables. This enables the researcher to analyse the proportion of variance that is shared with each individual variable (Licht, 2003).Two regression models are tested. The first model examines the mediating effect of asset specificity and the second model the mediating effect of information sharing. In Step 1, the control variables are entered into the regression equation. Step 2 includes the controls and modularity (the independent variable). Finally, in Step 3, the mediation variables, asset specificity and information sharing, are added. The models are shown in Table IV.As suggested we adopt Baron and Kenny's (1986) three-step hierarchical regression analysis procedure. Three conditions must be fulfilled for a significant mediation effect. First, the independent variable should be significantly related to both the mediator and dependent variables. Regression analyses indicate that supplier modularisation (the independent variable) has significant positive effects on both mediating variables; asset specificity[2] (b=0.47, p<0.001) and information sharing[3] (b=0.21, p<0.05). As shown in Table V, supplier modularisation also has a significant impact on collaboration (the dependent variable) (b=0.24, p<0.05). These results thus fulfil the first condition.Second, the mediator variable should be significantly related to the dependent variable. Table V shows that the first mediating variable, asset specificity, has a significant positive effect on collaboration (b=0.38, p<0.001). Furthermore, Table VI indicates that the second mediating variable, information sharing, also has a significant positive effect on collaboration (b=0.41, p<0.001). These results therefore fulfil the second condition.Third, the previously significant relationship between the independent and dependent variables should no longer be significant when the mediator is controlled. Table V shows that the addition of the mediation term (Step 3) significantly improved the results from step 2 (p<0.001), and the previously significant relationship between supplier modularisation and collaboration became non-significant (b=0.06, ns). These results support asset specificity as a full mediator of the relationship between modularisation and collaboration, providing substantial support for H2. Table VI indicates that the addition of the mediation term (Step 3) significantly improved the results from Step 2 (p<0.001), and importantly, the previously significant relationship between supplier modularisation and collaboration became insignificant (b=0.15, ns). These results provide support for information sharing as a full mediator of the modularisation-collaboration relationship, thus supporting H3.\n5 Discussion: This study began by asking under what conditions modularity leads to increasing collaboration. The results provide support for the notion that product modularization will lead to greater levels of buyer-supplier collaboration, but that this relationship is mediated by relationship specific assets and information sharing. These findings extend previous case-based research (Hsuan, 1999; Hsuan-Mikkola, 2003) that shows collaboration can reduce interface constraints during the development of modular products. This is reflected in industries such as automotive, where traditional single component sourcing is increasingly replaced by modular architecture and where joint responsibilities over design, production, and delivery, require closer buyer-supplier functional integration. Here, the shift in responsibility from OEM to suppliers, provides opportunities for joint investigations into new technologies and parallel development of product and process innovation. In other words, modularity is more likely to lead to collaboration under conditions of co-developmental partnership. This appears to contradict the view that increased product modularization will lead to an arm's-length, black box approach to buyer-supplier relationships, where the outsourcing of design and delivery of component sub-assemblies leads to increasing supplier independence.The findings of the study also suggest that the product modularization-collaboration relationship is mediated by the presence of relationship specific assets and information sharing. This means that the design of a front end module for a passenger vehicle, for example, requires not only considerable investment in capital intensive equipment such as computer design software, thermoplastic injection mould tools, presses, paint booths and curing ovens to design and build each unit to customer specification, but also investment is needed in proprietary information systems for collaborative planning and forecasting, production scheduling, and parts call-off to respond to daily variations in customer demand. Hence, the trend towards modularization has resulted in increased relationship specific assets in all areas of tooling, staff training, quality accreditation, data exchange, and component packing and shipping. In sectors such as aerospace, computers, and automotive, however, increasing component standardisation has not been followed through to the module level. Tyres, processors, and oil filters are often generic across models and manufacturers, yet landing gear, chassis, and powertrain are still specific to manufacturers and in some cases even models. This means that suppliers, especially at tier one level, must tailor specific processes such as tooling to suit individual customers. Consistent with the expectations of TCE (Williamson, 1975, 1985) this increase in asset specificity leads to greater integration.The relationship between product modularization and collaboration is also mediated by information sharing. Modularization increases information sharing between buyer and supplier at all phases, from design to delivery, not just initial product specification. Hence, modularization is not a process of specifying an interface and product dimensions, but involves ongoing consultation after the initial brief has been set to ensure the product architecture functions together as a whole. This requires joint cooperation using tools such as web-enabled 3D surfacing and engineering design software, and training for suppliers to use private OEM portals to share product labelling, production alerts, and scheduling information.This study supports, therefore, the idea of modularization as being closely tied to collaboration and information exchange during all phases of the design to delivery process. However, while the example of the SMART car plant amply illustrates the co-development/partnership concept during design and manufacture, this same level of flexibility and responsiveness does not so readily apply after production during the delivery process. After the vehicle has left the assembly plant, it often spends weeks or even months in the distribution pipeline, similar to the traditional \"push production\" approach which persists at many of the more conventional volume vehicle manufacturers today (3DayCar, 2002; Holweg and Pil, 2004). If build-to-order supply chains are to become a reality in automotive and other manufacturing sectors, then similar levels of integration and dependence must develop between the OEM and downstream partners (e.g. logistics) as have already developed between buyers and suppliers, as shown by this investigation.\n6 Conclusion: The impact of product modularization on buyer-supplier relationships has been somewhat confused within the literature. On the one hand, it has been suggested that increased modularization will lead to increased independence and arm's-length relationships (Muffato, 1999; Gadde and Jellbo, 2002). Yet, this study provides empirical evidence that contradicts this assertion showing that product modularization leads to greater collaboration because of two mediating factors: asset specificity and information sharing.6.1 Contribution to theory and practice\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the role of product architecture in supply chain design. Specifically, it seeks to resolve confusion over the impact of modularisation on supplier relationship management. On the one hand, the introduction of modularisation suggests that buyer and supplier firms should move towards greater collaboration in order to co-develop products and reduce interface constraints. On the other hand, the standardisation of interfaces suggests that buyer firms could introduce a \"black box\" approach to component design, holding suppliers at arm's-length and reducing dependence. These conflicting views form the focus of the research: under what conditions does modularity lead to increasing collaboration?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The data are drawn from UK manufacturing firms across eight industry sectors using a sample from the Conquest Business Media database. Three hypotheses are tested through a three-step hierarchical regression analysis.\nFindings: - The findings provide support for the notion that product modularization will lead to greater levels of buyer-supplier collaboration, but that this relationship is mediated by relationship-specific assets and information sharing.\nOriginality/value: - The paper supports the argument that modularised components require collaborative sourcing practices in order to co-develop products and reduce interface constraints. This suggests that outsourcing requires a high level of integration, creating dependencies between firms representing considerable investment in equipment and sharing through proprietary information systems. As interest in build-to-order supply chains and flexible product architecture grows; this emphasizes the importance of specifying the exact nature of relationship processes without stifling product innovation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sustainability in university campus: options for achieving nearly zero energy goals	[ "Energy efficient lighting", "Energy management systems", "Energy storage", "Photovoltaic energy", "University campus sustainability", "Zero energy buildings" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: University campuses are normally constituted by large buildings responsible for significant energy demand. Furthermore, in the time being, universities face several challenges owing to the shrinking budgets and rising energy costs. These pressures are a clear motivation to implement energy-efficiency programs. Furthermore, university buildings are also suitable as demonstration sites of sustainable renovation because they will be directly visible examples for the students who will soon use their knowledge in the community.\n2. Methodology: 2.1 General methodology\n3. Reduction of energy demand: Based on light energy audits, recently carried out, including a walk-through lighting assessment audit of types of lamps, power and use profile, on the smart metering data delivered by the electricity company operator and on the existing BMS, it was possible to make a better diagnose of the electricity demand within the building and obtain a better picture of the energy efficiency potential. A rough estimation of the disaggregation of end uses indicates that ICT loads represent more than half of the building demand, followed by lighting. The study did not consider any envelope renovation because the actual envelope presents a good performance, and because there is no central HVAC system and the energy demand with HVAC devices is low, any improvement measures in the building envelope would not be cost-effective.\n4. Raising awareness and behavioural aspects: Education has played and continues to play an important role when it concerns to sustainable energy demand (Fisher and Rieckmann, 2010). Promoting an efficient behaviour towards energy reduction by advertising campaigns based on the display of current energy use, online information, printed signs close to elevators and lighting switches have long been implemented within the DEEC building. Besides acting on reducing own energy demand, the universities can also act at a larger scale by introducing cross-curricular teaching modules designed to promote environmentally aware patterns of demand (Alvarez-Suarez et al., 2014). At the DEEC, the inclusion of sustainability issues in engineering curricula is in place for more than a decade, with a significant number of students carrying out their Master thesis on energy and environment-related subjects.\n5. Integration of renewable energy sources and storage: 5.1 Renewable energy generation\n6. Impact assessment: There are several strategies underlined with the future objective to progressively transform the DEEC building into a shining demonstrator example. Among the several strategies to manage and control the electricity demand in the building, the current practice consists on the electricity demand assessment and preliminary operational monitoring, by means of collecting raw data from telemetering load diagrams, which are available for the past six years (2010-2015). Based on such data, the main cost-effective identified measures to be implemented in large scale were the lighting retrofit and the installation of PV panels.\n7. Economic assessment: The building has a TOU tariff with four periods (peak, half-peak, normal off-peak and super off-peak) and a daily cycle with public holidays. During workdays, the morning is peak period and the afternoon is half-peak period. Saturdays do not have peak period, and Sundays and public holidays do not have peak nor half-peak periods. In a way similar to several European countries, the Portuguese regulation for self-consumption of locally generated electricity allows for a paid price of the energy injected to the grid of 90 per cent of the average monthly price of the Portuguese spot electricity market. The prices for the TOU tariff and for the energy injected into the grid (average prices in 2016) are presented in Table XI.\n8. Conclusions: The best way to improve the performance of existing buildings towards zero energy performance is an integrated approach of different energy strategies, running in parallel, that tackle behaviour, efficiency of equipment, in-site RES generation and energy storage (Ferreira et al., 2016). Innovative systems to reduce energy demand, generation and storage, as well as smart monitoring, automation and control are key drivers for improving energy performance in existing buildings. This case study shows how the EU energy policy, in particular eco-design, positively impacts the energy demand and how the adoption of an integrated approach can facilitate the achievement of nearly zero energy targets. The intervention carried out in the DEEC building indicates that if a suitable mix of strategies (energy efficient technologies and renewable energy) is considered, it is relatively easy to convert existing buildings into nZEBs, while at the same time improving the indoor comfort conditions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to design a renovation plan for a university campus building (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) with the aim to achieve nearly zero energy performance, ensuring a low specific demand (lower than 44 kWh/m2) and a high level of on-site renewable generation (equivalent to more than 20 per cent of the energy demand).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The baseline demand was characterized based on energy audits, on smart metering data and on the existing building management system data, showing a recent reduction of the electricity demand owing to some implemented measures. The renovation plan was then designed with two main measures, the total replacement of the actual lighting by LEDs and the installation of a photovoltaic system (PV) with 78.8 kWp coupled with an energy storage system with 100 kWh of lithium-ion batteries.\nFindings: The designed renovation achieved energy savings of 20 per cent, with 27.5 per cent of the consumed energy supplied by the PV system. This will ensure a reduction of the specific energy of the building to only 30 kWh/m2, with 42.4 per cent savings on the net-energy demand.\nPractical implications: The designed renovation proves that it is possible to achieve nearly zero energy goals with cost-effective solutions, presenting the lighting renovation and the solar PV generation system a payback of 2.3 and 6.9 years, respectively.\nOriginality/value: This study innovated by defining ambitious goals to achieve nearly zero energy levels and presenting a design based on a comprehensive lighting retrofit and PV generation, whereas other studies are mostly based on envelope refurbishment and behaviour changes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Linking global consumer culture and ethnocentric consumerism to global citizenship: exploring the mediating effect of cultural intelligence	[ "Global consumer culture", "Global citizenship", "Cultural intelligence", "Ethnocentric consumerism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The conventional wisdom of globalisation states that international trade helps countries to enhance their income-generating capacity, which becomes an essential prerequisite for achieving sustainable development (United Nations, 2015). Global citizenship (GC) provides an opportunity for sustainable development by allowing individuals to get involved in global civic engagement (Goodier et al., 2018). GC education becomes the main framework for the implementation of the fourth sustainable development goal by ensuring \"inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all\" (UNESCO, 2015).Integrating sustainable development into the academic-community partnership is an ethical responsibility to promote global citizens (Upvall and Luzincourt, 2019).The concept of GC argues that everyone on Earth needs to develop a worldwide network to vow the value to meet their specific condition as humans (Lianaki-Dedouli and Plouin, 2017). The activities of GC attempt to promote global awareness, cultural diversity, social justice and environmental sustainability (Reysen and Hackett, 2017). The private sector needs to support the initiative for the sustainable development goal through behavioural changes of individuals and organisations, which become a prerequisite for sustainable development (Dobson, 2007; Hahn, 2009). Hence, international business research calls for further discussion to develop the concept of both positive and negative dispositions towards globalisation (Bartsch, Piefler and Diamantopoulos, 2016).Previous studies still concern on GC in developed countries and call for further exploration in emerging countries (Scott and Cnaan, 2020).The ethnocentric consumerism (EC) seems to become a counterpart of global consumer culture (GCC), which raises a series of paradoxes that spring from the crisis of neoliberal politics (Lekakis, 2015).Primary literature suggests that ethnocentric consumers support the protectionism and reject the globalisation by avoiding foreign products and service (Sharma et al., 1995; Okazaki et al., 2010; Feurer et al., 2016). On the contrary, some consumers face conflicting emotion whether to support the national economy by purchasing domestic products or discourage to buy the local products due to quality or price that does not meet their expectation (Siagmaka and Balabanis, 2015). Baruk (2019) argues that EC comes to various level, which one of them, hence, the empirical study is required to provide a solid foundation to understand the global consumer behaviour towards GC (Goodier et al., 2018).The article aims to understand the nature of global and consumer culture by examining the role of cultural intelligence (CQ) in the relationship between GCC, EC, and GC. The second section of this article involves a literature review with the proposed hypothesis, followed by research method where we provide how we collect data and conduct the analysis. This study provides empirical evidence, which involves a proposed model and sample data from an online survey. The last section concerns the theoretical and managerial implication derived from the literature and empirical results.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Enabling global citizenship for sustainable development\n3. Research method: 3.1 Research design\n4. Results: Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the latent variables. All the observed variables are concerned at the medium level with various levels of the mean. GC is the lowest variables with an average rate of 3.96, while the highest level occurred at global cultural consumption and EC. CQ behaviour is more moderate level than the other variables with an average level of 4.08, and the standard deviation is also the lowest if we compare to other variables (see Table 2).Initially, there were seven items of GCC, four elements of EC, eight elements of GC and five items of CQ behaviour. The reliability assessment relies on Cronbach's alpha (CA). The results indicate that all coefficients of CA of the latent variables are higher than 0.70, which suggest that the internal consistency of the standard range is quite high. The GC has 0.800, which is the highest level of reliability values that are followed by EC with 0.784 and CQ with 0.782 of CA coefficients. GCC has the lowest level of reliability value with 0.737 (Table 3).The Keiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) values indicate the degree of each variable in predicting without error by the other variables, which this study uses. The results show that the values are between 0.7 and 0.8, which suggest that factor analysis is likely to be appropriate. The GC has the highest KMO value of 0.857, which is followed by EC and CQ with 0.764 and 0.827, respectively. The lowest level of KMO value occurs with GCC, which is 0.733. Bartlett's test also confirms that the variances of each latent variable are equal, which are also consistent with the CA values.Framework analysis begins with the proposed structural equation model and hence followed by revised with confirmatory factor analysis. The results indicate that Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) value is 0.071, which is less than 0.08, that suggests an acceptable fit. However, the proposed model has Normed Fit Index (NFI) value 0.757, which means less satisfactory fit. The NFI test shows that the revised model has better goodness of fit. This result also similar to those of Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) test, which suggests that the proposed model has TLI less than 0.765, while the revised model has TLI value higher than 0.90. Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) values suggest that the revised model is better than the proposed model. Hence, this study uses the revised model (Table 4).For EC, Table 5 shows that EC has a significant impact on GC. There is also a considerable impact of EC on CQ and CQ has a significant impact on GC. The coefficient of the direct effect of EC on GC (0.263) decreases in the presence of CQ. Table 5 shows the results of regression without a moderating variable, which indicates that EC has a significant impact on GC. The results suggest that direct, indirect and total effects are positive and significant. The overall effect of EC on GC is 0.201, which come from the indirect effect of 0.070 and direct impact of 0.131. The results suggest that variation of 0.201 units difference in GC explains a unit difference in EC. Hence, the value of 0.070 shows the effect of EC, which turns into CQ. By rejecting the null hypothesis that the indirect effect is equal to zero, this study indicates that the indirect impact of EC on GC through a mediating effect of CQ.For GCC, Table 5 shows that GCC has a substantial impact on CQ and CQ has a significant effect on GC. However, GCC has no direct impact on GC. According to Baron and Kenny, there is nothing to mediate, as the direct effect is not significant (Baron and Kenny, 1986). The approach is debatable since the analysis is encouraged to move forward if there is an excellent theoretical background about the relationship (Shrout and Bolger, 2002). The regression without moderating variable shows that both GCC has a significant impact on GC (t = 7.584 and p = 0.00) and (t = 6.043 and p = 0.00) (Table 6). Hence, if GCC has no considerable effect on GC, CQ provides the full mediating effect on the relationship between GCC and GC.Figure 1 shows that among the three constructs, CQ has the most substantial effect on GC (0.44), followed by EC and GCC. Therefore, it is advisable for any efforts to promote sustainable development to focus on CQ that positively influences GC. Figure 1 also indicates that some items with indicators weights that need to be taken into account. For GCC, CC2 that shows that \"lifestyle is almost the same as the people of my social class in other countries\" has the highest coefficient of 0.88. \"I purchase products manufactured in Indonesia instead of letting other countries get rich off us\" EC2 (0.78) is the highest coefficient for EC. GC6 indicates that \"helping others no matters what country they are from\" becomes an essential element of GC. Hence, the CQ has an item of \"change non-verbal behaviour when a cross-cultural interaction\" (CQ4) is the most influential element with a coefficient of 0.73.\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical implication\n6. Conclusion: This study extends the discussion on achieving sustainable development by questioning the conventional wisdom of globalisation, which states that international trade helps countries to enhance their income-generating capacity (United Nations, 2015). The combination of sustainable development and consumer culture theory leads to a better understanding of GC, which demonstrates the institutional conditions. The results do not only extend the concept of sustainable development goals but also the theory of consumer culture by testing some possible points of intervention in applied work. The mediating effect of CQ reveals possible causal mechanisms between GCC and GC.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This article attempts to understand the impact of global consumer culture and ethnocentric consumerism on global citizenship by identifying the mediating effect of cultural intelligence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed structural equation model explains the relationship between global consumer culture, ethnocentric consumerism, and global citizenship. The empirical analysis involves an online survey targeted young people in Indonesia context.\nFindings: The empirical evidence broadly supports the view that cultural intelligence strengthens the impact of global consumer culture and ethnocentric consumerism on global citizenship. There is a strong tendency in this study to suggest that global consumerism will not be able to contribute to global citizenship unless cultural intelligence provides as a mediating variable. However, the results do not support the mainstream literature, which suggests that ethnocentric consumerism harms global citizenship.\nOriginality/value: This study extends the discussion on achieving sustainable development by examining global citizenship leads to a better understanding of consumer culture theory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How the document got its authority	[ "Behaviour", "Philosophy", "History", "Theory", "Cognition", "Documents" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: I swear with my hand on this room's most sacred book, the alphabetized telephone directory, to speak the honest truth (Derek Hartfield[1], 1973).\nIntroduction: The dictionary\nThe authority of documents: Authoritativeness has always been part and parcel to documents. The English word document itself comes from the French document, which in turn came from the Latin documentum, which was derived from the verb docere\nPitfalls: Like all generalizations, the phenomenon of nomothetic document authority can be exploited. The Onion, for example, is a satirical news organization that touts itself as \"America's finest news source\". The Onion began circulating in 1988 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in the ensuing decades it grew into a full-fledged newspaper that was available freely in several US and Canadian cities, and worldwide via subscription. Since 2013, it is an online-only publication. As satire, The Onion draws on the format of traditional newspapers in order to generate humour. The crux of its humour is in The Onion's similarity to real, authoritative newspapers; its stories are funny precisely because, though they are framed as documents, their headlines cannot possibly be taken seriously. Still, occasionally people not privy to the organization will mistake its headlines as trustworthy - again, because of how closely The Onion mirrors the familiar newspaper format.\nNon-authoritative documents: Of course, not all documents are authoritative. A tattoo on the forehead of an American college student that says \"I'm 21\" is certainly documentary in some respects. Being a tattoo, it is certainly persistent and visual. And yet, the bouncer at the door of a bar is unlikely to find the tattoo an authoritative, trustworthy, reliable testament to the student's age. Similarly, a political cartoon may not hold the weight of an erudite essay, and nor might an e-mail message compared to a notarized letter.\nConclusion: This has only been a brief foray into the nomothetic authoritativeness of documents, and its chief purpose is to invite further consideration. Future research could help us better understand how documents come to be authoritative - and trusted - which is related to information literacy and seeking. What sorts of documents are authoritative? What sorts of documents are not? If persistence and visuality really are key contributors to document authority, then what about digital documents, which are sometimes less persistent, and oral documents, which may not be visual? Lankes (2008) discusses a shift in the assessment of credibility in digital documents from looking for authority to looking for reliability; is this merely a reflection of the availability of more sources, or does it have to do with the material qualities of digital documents themselves?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to invite further consideration of and research into the authoritativeness, reliability and trustworthiness of documents. How do documents come to be trusted? Why are some more trusted than others?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The cases of the Oxford English Dictionary and Wikipedia policies are explored from a historical perspective, and other cases are considered.\nFindings: Authoritativeness seems inherent to documents because of a cognitive metaphor that says \"what is persistent is trustworthy\".\nPractical implications: This feature of documents exposes users to a number of pitfalls related to trusting illegitimate documents. This has important implications for document literacy.\nOriginality/value: New insight into documents is achieved by applying cognitive metaphors and prototype theory to documents.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identifying the key process factors affecting project performance	[ "Performance", "Knowledge management", "Communication", "Success factors", "Failure factors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The construction industry experiences a high number of unsuccessful projects (Zwikael and Globerson, 2004), even though several studies have documented the factors that affect project success, often called the critical success factors. According to Zwikael and Globerson (2006), one explanation can be found in the very general formulations of critical success factors, and Murphy et al. (1974) found a direct relation between success and clarity on the one hand and consensus regarding success criteria on the other. It follows that site managers need more specific guidance to fulfill the criteria and thus to achieve successful projects (Zwikael and Globerson, 2006).\n2. Literature survey: Cost and time are directly measurable, unlike quality or beauty, which exist in the eye of the beholder and are therefore complex to measure. Definitions of quality include \"meeting customer requirements\" (Chase, 1998) or \"reduced defects and rework\" (McKim and Kiani, 1995), and quality has even been related to cost and time and defined as \"completion on time and budget\" (Hoonakker et al., 2010). Quality can also be divided into internal quality, emphasizing requirements (Voss and Blackmon, 1994), and external quality, emphasizing customer satisfaction (Fynes and De Burca, 2005). Numerous studies have looked into the factors that create success or failure, often referred to as critical success factors (Chua et al., 1999) or critical failure factors (Jha and Iyer, 2006). Ensuring success can be seen in two ways: the factors creating failure should be avoided, while the factors creating success should be achieved.\n3. Research method: According to Rossi et al. (1983), the purpose of doing research using a questionnaire survey is to gather information and explore underlying structures in a social context or in relation to individuals in that context. A questionnaire survey is appropriate for our study because the research objective is to collect data from individuals within the construction industry, focusing on factors affecting internal process performance. The questionnaire is based on the literature review presented in the Introduction section, where 25 factors were identified, and was in relation to the context divided into five topic-related categories: project coordination, communication, trust and shared objectives, alternative forms of cooperation, and sharing of experience (see Table II). Chan et al. (2004) identified a comparable amount of topic-related categories in developing a generic framework related to critical success factors. In addition, Zhang and Ng (2013) applied a similar approach to divide factors relevant to knowledge-sharing behavior in construction teams. The generated categories were an outcome of the context in which the factors were identified. To measure the impact of the factors, an ordinal five-point Likert scale was used (1=agree, 2=partially agree, 3=neither nor, 4=partially disagree, and 5=disagree).\n4. Results: The survey was sent to 190 potential respondents distributed between the three respondent groups (owners, consultants, and contractors). Table III presents the response frequency. In total, 87 of the respondents completed the survey, giving a respondent rate of 45.8 percent, which is just below the 50.0 percent acceptance rate suggested by Flynn et al. (1990) but far above the 20 percent limit set by Malhotra and Grover (1998). Even though a respondent rate above 50.0 percent would have been optimal, the rate of 45.8 percent is considered sufficient. To ensure the high quality of data, outliers were removed before the data analysis was started. In total, four variables had one outlier, and all four outliers were removed.\n5. Discussion of findings: Success in a construction project requires the consideration of a number of underlying process factors which affect performance (Kivrak et al., 2008). This enables construction managers to carefully consider and allocate limited resources. The ranking of process factors has been calculated and is shown in Table V. Because success is experienced differently by the various project participants (Sanvido et al., 1992), the ranking is divided into three groups: owners, consultants, and contractors.\n6. Conclusion: In order to help construction managers to allocate effort and resources, the key process factors to ensure high performance have been ranked using the RII. The study was designed as a questionnaire survey and included 25 factors divided into five key areas: project coordination, communication, trust, and shared objectives, alternative forms of cooperation, and sharing of experience. The respondents to the questionnaire survey were divided into three groups: owners, consultants, and contractors. The creation of a ranked list of process factors has revealed that project managers need to focus on knowledge sharing and communication to improve cost, time, and quality performance. Owners, consultants, and contractors alike identified knowledge sharing and communication as the most important focus areas. Improved communication and knowledge sharing will reduce the risk of project failure and increase the likelihood of project success.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A construction project traditionally involves a variety of participants. Owners, consultants, and contractors all have diverse opinions and interests, but they all seek to ensure project success. Success is habitually measured as performance output regarding cost, time, and quality. Despite previous research mapping the success and failure factors, construction managers seem to have difficulty in attaining success. To provide clearer guidance on how to fulfill success criteria, the purpose of this paper is to identify the underlying factors that affect performance and thus project success in construction processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey based on a literature review provided 25 key process factors divided into five key categories. Based on the responses from commonly involved construction parties, the factors were ranked and tested for significant differences between the parties.\nFindings: The top five most important process factors were found to relate to the sharing of knowledge and communication. Moreover, testing the ranking for significant differences between owners, consultants, and contractors revealed five differences. The differences related to the interpretation and importance of trust, shared objectives, project coordination, and alternative forms of coordination.\nOriginality/value: All respondents identify improved knowledge sharing and communication as the key to improved cost, time, and quality performance and are therefore the areas where construction managers need to focus their resources. Thus, improved experience sharing and communication will increase the likelihood of project success, through improving competences, commitment, and coordination.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Multi-skill project scheduling with skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness	[ "Organization", "Optimization", "Scheduling", "Construction planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Nomenclature\n1. Introduction: Human resources are the core of enterprise competitiveness. Their uniqueness and irreplaceability help a company maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in a market (Liker and Convis, 2012; Malachowski and Korytkowski, 2016). Developing multi-skill staff can greatly reduce the loss and threat caused by the departure of core employees and can provide flexible and efficient task assignments in project management. Furthermore, it makes full use of limited human resources and increases the flexibility of management. Thus, the development of a multi-skill workforce becomes especially important not only for human resources management practices but also in related studies, such as project scheduling problems.\n2. Related studies: 2.1 RCPSP and MSPSP\n3. Basic mathematical models: In this research, the characteristics of a heterogeneous workforce, multi-skill evolution and cooperation among team members are all taken into account in the MSPSP problem. Here, the MSPSP problem is to determine the start time of each activity and assign a multi-skill workforce to finish each activity to maximize the objectives of project effectiveness and skill development simultaneously, subject to project relations, project deadline limitations, skill qualification and amount requirements for each activity and skill evolution based on a LC. According to previous related studies, the models are based on three assumptions: precedence relations among activities are finish-to-start relationships without lag times, and when an activity starts it cannot be interrupted; the assigned employee can use only one skill for each activity; an employee can perform no more than one activity at a time. Next, mathematical models are formulated for the MSPSP problem investigated here. Then, linearization techniques are introduced to convert the non-linear model into a linear one.\n4. Model improvements: 4.1 Linearization\n5. Case study: In this section, a real project case is analyzed. The models were coded and compiled in MATLAB R2016a. CPLEX was used to solve the LIPs. All experiments were conducted on a PC with Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5200U CPU @2.20 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM.\n6. Conclusions: Enterprises are currently becoming increasingly aware that developing multi-skilled staff can be a great benefit. For example, such staff can provide flexibility and efficiency in terms of task assignment and help to avoid or reduce the adverse effects of core employee turnover. Learning by doing relevant project tasks is a good way to nurture the development of multiple skills in employees. Therefore, integrating multi-skill development with a project scheduling problem would be very promising for project management and human resource management. In this study, we investigated the MSPSP with skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness. The research extends the current MSPSP by considering the evolution of skill based on the \"learning effect\" and the influence of cooperation on activity-based team simultaneously; this is a very common phenomenon in practice that has not been studied previously. Three types of skill development measures are used for the skill development objective. A bi-objective non-LIP model for each measure is introduced, then several linearization techniques and the e-constraint method are applied to convert these models into single-objective LIP models that can be solved directly using commercial programming optimization solvers. The proposed model was validated by case study of a real project. The results indicate that our research has practical benefits, such as better utilization of human resources and improved project effectiveness. In the future, the assumption of start-to-finish precedence relations can be relaxed, a model will be developed to treat generalized relations, including start-to-start, start-to-finish and finish-to-finish relationships. Besides, a meta-heuristic algorithm needs to be designed to cope efficiently with larger and more complex cases. Finally, the optimization models and algorithms should be embedded into project scheduling platform or software for easy access and management of project manager with limited exposure to operations research techniques.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Recently, there has been increasing focus on the development of multi-skilled workforce in project management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a multi-skill project scheduling problem (MSPSP), which combines project scheduling and multi-skill personnel assignment. The distinct features of skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness are considered in the problem to maximize the total project effectiveness and skill development simultaneously.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The Bi-objective non-linear integer programming (LIP) models are formulated for the problem using three types of skill development objective function: number of experts, total skill increment and \"bottleneck\" skill increment. Non-linear models are then linearized through several linearization techniques, and the e-constraint method is used to convert the bi-objective models into single-objective models.\nFindings: A construction project case is used to validate the proposed models. In comparison with models that do not consider skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness, the models proposed in this paper offer more realistic solutions and show better performance with regard to both project effectiveness and skill development.\nOriginality/value: This research extends the current MSPSP by considering skill evolution based on the \"learning effect\" as well as the influence of cooperation in an activity-based team, which are common phenomena in practice but seldom studied. LIP models formulated in this paper can be solved by any off-the-shelf optimization solver, such as CPLEX. Besides, the proposed LIP models can offer better project scheduling and personnel assignment plan, which would be of immense practical value in project management applications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Wine-related lifestyle segmentation in the context of urban Indian consumers	[ "Market segmentation", "Product experience", "Product quality", "Consumption ritual", "Consumption practice", "Theory of planned behavior", "India", "Critical success factors", "Wines", "Developing countries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: India's wine market has been growing with a CAGR of 25 per cent over a period of six years. Increase in social acceptance of wine, burgeoning urban middle class, increase in disposable income and projection of wine as a healthy drink are the prominent reasons cited for this growth (India Wine Market Outlook, 2018). Indian society is seeing a major transformation with respect to customs, habits and lifestyle of metropolitan citizens, particularly in the youth population, especially women. Women in India represent an important segment for the wine industry. Indian women consider wine as a stylish, elegant and healthy beverage. A set of people favor wine for the perceived health benefits and women have a preference for wine, as it does not have a bitter taste like other alcoholic drinks. Previous survey indicates that the millennial generation offers the largest and promising market segment for the wine industry (Vinexpo/IWSR, 2015). India has one of the largest millennial population in the world. They are informed buyers and use of technology facilitates them to act faster (Mamula, 2016). The consumption model of a country also depends on liberalization of policies. There was positive intervention from the Indian Government toward the wine sector. The Food and Safety Standards Act of 2006 has incorporated \"alcoholic drink\" in the category of food. Several Indian states have permitted sale of wine via department/retail stores. Wine is also considered as a status symbol and people serve expensive, exotic wine in social gatherings to impress others. Improved information base and health awareness have encouraged the consumption of wine as a substitute for hard liquors (Sharma et al., 2010; Joseph and Singh, 2013). A study conducted in China refers to wine as a healthy beverage, based on traditional Chinese medicine theories (Somogyi et al., 2011). Interestingly, some older women consider drinking red wine good for youthful good looks (Zhang et al., 2008). Moreover, the lesser proportion of alcohol in wine is considered good for health as compared to the high alcohol content of Chinese liquor (Liu and Murphy, 2007).\nLiterature review: This section presents a review of previous studies conducted in consumer research with respect to factors influencing wine preference and purchase intention. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) has been well used in behavioral studies with respect to youth and alcohol consumption (Jamison and Myers, 2008; Huchting et al., 2008). TPB is built on belief and attitude. The behavioral intention concerning a product/service is based on subjective and normative beliefs. The attitudes are determined by an individual's belief about an object or behavior. As per studies conducted in the UK and Australia, both attitude and subjective norms predict the intention to drink wine (van Zanten, 2005; Thompson and Vourvachis, 1995). Consumer knowledge about a product explains their behavior (Guo and Meng, 2008). Subjective norms are dependent on perceived social pressure wherein individual behavior depends on what other people think (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). Wine is perceived as a social drink and in many cases, the choice of wine in a social gathering is also related to indication of social status (Liu and Murphy, 2007). Both theory of reasoned action and TPB have wide-ranging empirical evidence for food and beverage consumption (Petrovici and Paliwoda, 2008; Eves and Cheng, 2007). The present study relates TPB to wine consumption patterns (social/at their home) and consumer beliefs with respect to different aspects of wine-related lifestyle (WRL). The means-end chain (MEC) explains the impact of values on selection of wine on different occasions (Hall et al., 2001; Cavicchi et al., 2008). The present study refers MEC, as it is more applicable for segmentation studies, particularly in case of high-involvement products such as wine. The study focuses on consumer values and beliefs rather than product attribute. As wine is considered a social drink, thereby values, particularly those related to society, influence wine consumption (Agnoli et al., 2011). Wine selection is a complicated process and comprises both external and internal factors (Batt and Dean, 2000; Lockshin and Hall, 2003; Higgins and Llanos, 2015). Factors, where there are no changes made in the actual product or service, are considered as external factors. Examples include brand building, pricing and packaging. Internal factors may be defined as attributes directly related to the product/service (Holbrook and Corfman, 1985; Monroe and Krishnan, 1985; Zeithaml, 1988). Traits such as flavor, color and composition of the wine constitute internal factors for wine (Hollebeek et al., 2007).\nResearch method: Sample selection\nResults: Exploratory factor analysis\nDiscussion and conclusion: Earlier studies related to wine marketing has recognized several factors impacting wine buying intention (Lockshin and Hall, 2003; Lockshin and Corsi, 2012). Indian wine market is developing as a result of urbanization, changing lifestyles, rise in disposable incomes and having one of world's largest youth population. These factors have contributed to wine's popularity in India, particularly among the upper middle-class urban consumers. The first objective of the study is to identify and explore factors with respect to WRL approach in the Indian context. As per the EFA results, six factors were extracted. The first factor was identified as drinking ritual. Drinking ritual, as an attribute, characterizes rituals related to wine consumption, as they help to restate the current drinking practices within culture. The factor is important to understand people's perception about how the wine is presented and served as well as their knowledge about the wine. As wine is considered a social drink, drinking ritual plays an important part. The second factor was identified as consumption reason (social). This factor explains preference for wine on special occasions and social gatherings. This is more specific in the Indian context where popularity of wine as a social drink is increasing among the females and youngsters (Mehta and Bhanja, 2018). Previous studies indicated that the young generation recognizes wine as a social drink (Olsen et al., 2007; Teagle et al., 2010; Treloar et al., 2004), as it is mostly served in public places such as restaurants and is preferred to be consumed on social occasions. Studies using younger participants have consistently reported that social motives are given the highest priority toward behavioral intention (Kuntsche et al., 2008; Kuntsche and Stewart, 2009). The third factor was identified as consumption reason (mood, enjoyment and relaxation). This factor explains fun, enjoyment and relaxation as a motive to drink. The factor has been explained as positive reinforcement in many studies (Cooper, 1994; Cox and Klinger, 1988). The fourth factor was identified as consumption practice that includes frequency of drinking and shopping practice. Consumption practice for wine has also been discussed in previous studies (Demoissier, 2001; Rossel and Pape, 2016). The fifth factor was identified as consumption planning. The factor recognized wine as a high-involvement product wherein considerable thought is involved in wine purchase decision and the consumer considers a number of reasons before purchasing a wine (Seghieri et al., 2007). The sixth factor was identified as quality aspects wherein quality indicators are important for deciding the type of wine. Quality variables are used to impact the wine purchase decision, comprising wine type, brand, COO and price (Quester and Smart, 1998).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand consumers in the emerging wine market of India to ensure the best services. To this end, factors were identified to describe Indian wine consumer behavior and further segments for consumers were created based on the factors identified.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research design is descriptive in nature and based on primary data. Data was collected by a structured questionnaire from 232 respondents in five major cities of India (Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad). The scale was mainly adopted from wine-related lifestyle approaches.\nFindings: The principal component factor analysis resulted in six factors, namely, drinking ritual, consumption reason (social), consumption reason (mood, enjoyment and relaxation), consumption practice, consumption planning and quality. Cluster analysis resulted in a three-cluster solution. These clusters were named as cautious social drinker, loner regular drinker and highly engaged drinker based on the attributes possessed.\nOriginality/value: The segmentation of urban Indian wine consumers will be helpful for marketers to identity and describe the differences in attributes and behaviors, to create customized promotions to match the needs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Homelessness and access to the informational mainstream	[ "Homelessness", "Social interaction", "Identity formation", "Information provision", "Personal needs", "Information services", "United Kingdom", "Libraries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The centrality of information to human experience is undeniable; from individual concerns over identity and social interaction, to societal shifts and political decision-making, it is information that forms, influences and redefines many of the thoughts and actions that are considered uniquely human. The importance of information to human society and individuals has, throughout history, driven technological developments that have impacted on people's ability to record, store and transmit information. However, although technology has greatly increased the capacity to store, process and transmit information, there are still significant economic, educational and social barriers facing many people in terms of information access.As well as throwing up new barriers for some people, technological developments have also impacted upon the mass media as the popularity of old technologies has waned and new information seeking behaviours have emerged. However, although it is in a state of flux, the current information environment is still fairly centralised and, in terms of both content and major providers, limited in coverage, size and scope. This creates what has been described in this paper as an \"informational mainstream\" that is accessed by a significant proportion of the population and in many situations lends content to social interaction. The existence of an informational mainstream coupled with potential barriers in accessing it raises the question of social exclusion; namely, how a lack of access to the informational mainstream may feed into the \"multi-dimensional cumulative disadvantage\" (Daly and Silver, 2008, p. 549) discussed in the academic literature on social exclusion.In response to this question, our research aimed to address the effects that homelessness has on access to information sources that are pertinent to identity formation and social interaction, such as newspapers, television, radio, books and the internet. That is, we sought to investigate whether being homeless presents obstacles to accessing information pertinent to identity formation and social interaction, and secondly, whether this would compound existing difficulties of social exclusion for an already marginalised group. This was considered significant as it would negatively affect people's ability to meet higher-level needs such as belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation.Overall, the research aimed to address a perceived gap in the library and information science literature concerning higher-level needs among people who are homeless. There is an understandable tendency within the library and information science literature that addresses homelessness to focus on information required to meet basic physiological needs. Although this focus on practical information is understandable when considering such a physically vulnerable group of people, it was felt that this may cause important higher-level needs, and the information that serves these needs, to be neglected.In the following section (section 2), we outline what we see as the current information environment and present definitions of homelessness and the homeless experience. This section provides an overview of these conditions to provide the context for our study. Section 2 closes with a description of literature about the potential impact of homelessness on access to information services and the research questions we hope to address. In section 3 we outline our study, including a discussion on the nature of the methodology and analysis. In section 4 we present our findings grouped under four main research questions. We conclude with a discussion and possible implications of our research.\n2. Related work: 2.1 The current information environment\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Nature of research\n4. Findings: In this section we present our findings with respect to the four main research questions. Participants will remain anonymous and be identified numerically rather than by name, e.g. \"participant 1\".4.1 To what extent are homeless people excluded from mainstream sources of information such as newspapers, radio, television, books, and the internet?\n5. Discussion: From our interviews it appears that homelessness does not necessarily affect access to the informational mainstream. Therefore, although homelessness can be socially isolating in other ways, it does not appear that exclusion from mainstream sources of information will generally compound this experience. Again we acknowledge the likely emphasis on more confident, resourceful individuals, who also happen to live in a city with relatively good provision for the homeless. Further research in a different locale and among less confident individuals would therefore be necessary to corroborate findings in this regard. However, what we see arising in discussions with the participants in this study is the ability to find ways to cope with restricted access to mainstream information sources. Many participants stressed the importance of maintaining contact with mainstream news events and were able to do this largely through free or inexpensive newspapers and access to television or the internet. Although social contacts and informal sources may change if a person enters into a homeless situation, most participants stated that their main interests remained unchanged by their circumstances; new practical information needs often arose and a new sense of perspective may have emerged, but this generally did not represent a fundamental shift in identity formation or the kind of information that was of interest.Similarly, it became apparent during interviews that homelessness itself is definitely not the defining characteristic of a person in that situation. This is not to deny that homelessness represents a set of circumstances that is alien to anyone who has never experienced it, as recognised by several of this study's participants. However, it is easy to subconsciously assume a degree of \"otherness\" which does not exist. Specifically, and in line with what has already been said, the participants in this study unquestionably sought to service higher-level as well as physiological needs, which coheres with the discussion undertaken in section 2.A number of the findings in this regard are pertinent to library and information science. Firstly, various information sources facilitated escapism and relaxation for a number of participants. In the context of social isolation, unpleasant living conditions and traumatic life events, both past and present, the ability to switch off and distract oneself can be a vital corollary of serving more basic needs for food, clothing and shelter. However, this can also be very problematic with meagre financial resources; as participant 12 put it, \"It's pretty hard to pass time when you're homeless and skint.\" The relative inexpensiveness of radios, newspapers and books makes these useful sources of escapism that are often accessible even in a difficult economic position. Moreover, even for people whose financial resources will not stretch that far, internet facilities in service agencies and public libraries, and the ability to borrow newspapers and books without charge, can fulfil this role. However, this is obviously contingent on people having functional and/or ICT literacy.Secondly, for a number of reasons, people who become homeless often lack confidence. As well as facilitating escapism, education in the use of, and access to, information sources such as the internet and books may partially address these issues. The internet can obviously open up access to huge amounts of information as well as fulfil social functions, such as allowing people to keep in touch with others on their own terms. Books can widen a potentially curtailed information environment and give people more confidence about themselves, challenging possible prejudice and perhaps addressing more deep-seated self-esteem issues.With regard to both these points - facilitating escapism and addressing self-esteem issues - public libraries can and do play an important role. For many of the participants in this study, as described in the Findings section, public libraries were an important place to spend the day, get access to the internet, and read books and newspapers. As mentioned previously, broad generalisations about \"homeless people\" are extremely problematic and this research supports Hersberger's dismissal of prejudicial public library policies based on arbitrary and inconsistent criteria (Hersberger, 2005).In terms of assisting people who are homeless, greater collaboration with service agencies may be desirable to extend adult literacy and ICT training programmes. As well as providing important employability skills, this will open up greater opportunities for people to make use of library stock and ICT facilities to service higher-level needs such as escapism and boosting self-confidence.In summary, our research concentrated on high-level needs of people who find themselves homeless. We have indicated the importance of such information for socialisation, self-esteem and, in some cases, coping with difficult life experiences. In many ways these uses of information are similar to those in settled housing. What is different is the context in which such needs arise and the context in which they need to be managed. By focussing particularly on higher-level needs we hope to reassert the importance of understanding these important needs in homeless populations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to explore how homelessness affects access to information serving higher-level needs such as identity formation and social interaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A multi-disciplinary literature review informed the design of 18 semi-structured interviews as well as their subsequent analysis. The interview data were intended to be qualitative and exploratory since they addressed a perceived gap in the information and library science literature.\nFindings: - Findings present the ways in which interviewees managed to access information and the way such information helps socialisation and well-being.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study focused on individuals who were potentially more confident and resourceful. The study is also limited to Glasgow which has relatively good provision for the homeless. Further research in a different locale and among less confident individuals would be necessary to corroborate findings in this regard.\nPractical implications: - The findings confirmed a fundamental research assumption that homeless individuals would pursue higher-level needs alongside more basic physiological needs. This has practical implications for public libraries' service provision to homeless populations, and also suggests there is greater room for collaboration between libraries and homeless service agencies.\nOriginality/value: - The paper addresses a gap in the literature concerning homelessness and higher-level needs. This has implications for the provision of information and services within both public libraries and organisations serving the homeless. Findings also challenge widespread assumptions regarding the \"otherness\" or distinctiveness of people who are homeless.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Assessing the effectiveness of a national resource sharing system	[ "Italy", "Interlibrary loan", "Document supply", "ILL", "User satisfaction surveys", "NILDE" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: The NILDE (Network for Inter-Library Document Exchange) system was initially developed at the Italian National Research Council Bologna Research Area Library with the aim of improving ILL services and promoting cooperation among Italian libraries (Mangiaracina, 2002; Mangiaracina et al., 2008). At present, 830 libraries belong to the NILDE network, of which 77 per cent are university libraries, 9 per cent health research institutes and hospitals, 8 per cent public research institutions and 6 per cent other public and not-for-profit organizations.\nEarly efforts to assess NILDE effectiveness: NILDE's success is illustrated by the steadily growing number of NILDE users, both libraries and end users, as shown in Table I. However, in 2011, less than one-third of networked libraries accepted requests directly from their end users; such a low use of the user-initiated mode seemed to place doubt upon its real usefulness.\nAssessing user satisfaction: Survey methodology\nSurvey results and discussion: The data gathered by the 2013 survey make it possible to build a profile of the users who are loyal to NILDE. The term \"loyal users\" is applicable because the respondents to the survey were the most intensive users: 70 per cent requested more than four articles in the first six months of 2013, 38 per cent more than ten. This is even more apparent when compared to the figures extracted from the NILDE database (see Table IV).\nConclusions: Assessment of the NILDE service over the past few years is based on a comparison between the quantitative data gathered from the NILDE databases and the qualitative data collected through user surveys. The results turned out to be particularly interesting and a source of hints for planning future improvements.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on the surveys, carried out during 2011 and 2013, regarding the functionality of and possible improvements to Italy's nationwide resource sharing service NILDE (Network for Inter-Library Document Exchange).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology comprises both an analysis of quantitative data about ILL transactions initiated during a 2011 study and a qualitative assessment of the system based on information obtained from the surveys and a SWOT analysis. This proved to be an effective methodology, and a new survey was launched in 2013 to verify whether the choices made and the projects undertaken were in line with user expectations.\nFindings: The results turned out to be particularly interesting and a source of hints for planning future improvements.\nOriginality/value: Italian studies for assessing user satisfaction of library services, based on user surveys, often relate to a single library or a single University. The NILDE survey was delivered nationwide to all the registered users of NILDE. This is the most extensive survey for the number of libraries and the various types of end users involved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Harmonising training and development across an industry: the case of Australian rail	[ "Australia", "Meta-analysis", "Risk management", "Training and development", "Harmonisation", "Rail industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The concept of harmonisation can be traced back to early legal history. In modern times, it is used to describe processes creating common standards across similar markets, industries or products - though each contributor retains primary responsibility for the regulation of matters within its jurisdiction (Andenas et al., 2011). The attainment of an aligned environment among organisations operating in sectors of common interest features regularly in strategic reports calling for adjustment of differences and inconsistencies among different measurements, methods or systems to make them uniform or mutually compatible (Risktec Solutions, 2016; Australian Government, 2014; BTRE, 2006; WRMC, 2008). Harmonisation may be motivated politically, for example, pursued by the European Union to promote commonalities across member countries (European Parliament, 2016; European Commission, 2015) or organisationally such as collaboration on education and training.\nThe economic and industry context: The Australian rail industry is a complex organisational system of public and private sector railway operators, infrastructure companies and service providers. The interstate rail network is not large in volume by global standards, but it provides a means of moving people and freight across a large continent. Rail has been a major contributor to the socio-economic development of Australia, with the first railway systems built when the country consisted of sparsely settled colonies. While the continent remained a colonial patchwork, a national rail system was not envisaged. As a result, at least three different track gauges were installed in different parts of the country, and this expanded later. Perhaps not surprisingly, each network created its own rail operations and technical systems in isolation, with significant variations in train signalling technology, operating rules, safety legislation and administrative processes. Indeed, variations in track gauges have become part of Australian legend and are still seen as a major disadvantage to the economic development of the nation - especially in a new, globalised era of mass transportation, greater mobility of people and the need for organisations to create competitive advantage (Banks, 2004). Thus, the patchwork of rail gauges and rail companies operating their own way remains an apt metaphor for viewing how that industry nationally conducts its business currently.\nResearch methods and participants: The approach taken for this paper was a meta-analysis. While \"there is, as yet, no unanimously accepted strategy for performing a meta-analysis\" (Fagard et al., 1996), it generally involves four basic steps: identification, selection, abstraction and analysis (MSU, 2008). There were three main criteria for the identification and selection of the case studies. The first was identification of those undertaken within the CRC for Rail Innovation that focused specifically on training and development. The second was the selection of those able to provide sufficient and relevant information relating to the phenomenon of interest, in this case harmonisation. The third was that they needed to be studies in which one or both of the authors of this paper were involved so that we were not using other researchers' work. These were six research projects, involving semi-structured questionnaires and interviews in rail organisations located in five Australian States. The projects varied in duration from 12-24 months and focused on leadership and management (104), track safety awareness (105), skills recognition (111), incident investigation (113), rail infrastructure work (114) and coaching and mentoring (119) (The particular findings of these projects can be found in Harris and Short, 2014; Short and Harris, 2014). Between 2009 and 2013, rail employees in varying roles and levels of seniority, including middle managers, front-line supervisors, rail incident investigators, track workers and drivers, were interviewed (n = 176) and surveyed (n = 341). Table I reflects the extensive scope of these projects.\nFindings: From these six research studies, we identified a range of positive and negative characteristics associated with the concept of harmonisation. We discovered how local business strategies and practices held a powerful influence on the likelihood of achieving harmonisation. Importantly, the intended goal in this rail context was to facilitate an overall improvement in the development and deployment of best practice rather than regulate it. We acknowledge that in some areas, particularly concerning safety and employment practice, rail organisations had no alternative but to comply with State laws, even when a national approach seemed more appropriate. These pockets of local compliance were non-negotiable regulations that could not be harmonised without major changes in policy or legislation. Notwithstanding legal limitations associated with harmonising across States, we further recognised that harmonised initiatives could be perceived as the displacement of local autonomy. Our research findings identified that some national agreements asked for changes intended to make things easier for rail organisations, yet appeared to bring greater external control.\nImplications and conclusions: This paper has aimed to analyse the challenges in achieving harmonisation on aspects of training and development across an industry - in this case, the rail industry in Australia. Meta-analysis of six research projects, each of which were undertaken as discrete projects and their reports accepted by the industry, identified a range of positive and negative characteristics associated with harmonisation. The paper has specifically focused on three major themes emerging from the meta-analysis. First, three categories of harmonisation were identified, each influenced by the important factors of degree of risk involved and ease of implementation. Second, seven risks were singled out, which have been arranged in a hierarchical pyramid from the operational through the tactical to the strategic such that these building blocks can serve as a risk mitigation strategy. Third, the research highlighted key barriers to achievement of harmonisation, and these have been clustered into the categories of structural, environmental and organisational.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore why harmonisation, given its potential, is so difficult to achieve. It analyses the issues and challenges in achieving harmonisation of training and development across an industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach was a meta-analysis of six research projects undertaken in the Australian rail industry. These projects varied in duration from 12-24 months. Between 2009 and 2013, rail employees in varying roles and levels of seniority, including middle managers, front-line supervisors, rail incident investigators, track workers and drivers, were interviewed (n = 176) and surveyed (n = 341).\nFindings: The meta-analysis identified a range of characteristics associated with harmonisation. It uncovered three categories of harmonisation, seven types of risk modelled in a layered risk pyramid and analysed key structural, environmental and organisational barriers to harmonisation. The paper concludes that harmonisation struggles to gain strategic significance and is hampered by operational pragmatism.\nResearch limitations/implications: There are few published papers examining harmonisation across companies or based on meta-analyses, especially qualitatively. Despite limitations of insufficient detail to allow close analysis, potentially variable quality data across projects from which to develop a meta-analysis and the danger of comparing apples with oranges, more attempts using this approach would be helpful in gaining nuanced insights into an industry.\nPractical implications: Achieving industry harmonisation requires significant change in the mindset of executives. To enhance the chances of harmonisation, there is need for a strong national entity with overview of the entire industry, high-quality training and development resources and activities and cost-benefit analyses and active campaigns. A major outcome of this research is the risk pyramid, which can be used by managers as a strategic evaluation tool. By using such tools based on sound research, leaders can be equipped to make informed decisions and reduce downstream risks.\nOriginality/value: This research has value in extending the literature in two main ways: through examining the notion of harmonisation across an industry as distinct from within organisations that has been the focus of most studies and through using qualitative meta-analysis in a field dominated by quantitative approaches. It analyses the grey areas between rhetoric about its potential and difficulties in its achievement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Caring for baby: what sources of information do mothers use and trust?	[ "Healthcare", "Information sources", "Channel trust", "Credence services", "Maternal and child health" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Information and advice assist people to make informed decisions helping them understand the advantages and disadvantages associated with various choices (Thompson, 2013). In relation to services that are high in credence qualities such as maternal health services, it is important that customers choose the service themselves, as this can have a positive impact on both the quality of the service delivered and their satisfaction with that service and can thereby (potentially) improve service outcomes (Rundle-Thiele and Russell-Bennett, 2010). If we can better understand the relationship between the use of and trust in information channels as inputs to such customer decision-making, then there will be scope to increase the effectiveness of reliable information provision and limit the effects of misinformation to improve service outcomes.\nThe role of information in services: Drawing from communication theory, the C-HIP model is a framework for structuring the stages involved in the flow of information from a channel to a receiver, who then processes the information, which in turn shapes their behaviour (Conzola and Wogalter, 2001). Within this model, the focus is on understanding individual cognitions, assuming a staged sequence of decision-making following traditional decision-making models (Lye et al., 2005 for an extensive discussion of consumer decision processing models). The C-HIP framework, in line with other communication models such as AIDA (Elnaga and Abunayyan, 2016), proposes that attention is first required, followed by comprehension which should lead to attitude formation and then motivation, resulting finally in the desired behaviour.\nInformation channel trust: Knowledge of the information channels used by consumers during the decision-making process is important to understanding how they gather and organise information and, ultimately, how they make a purchase decision (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987). Consumers can access information from multiple channels, and this may indicate some degree of complementarity in the channels used (Koch-Weser et al., 2010). For example, \"information obtained from the Internet might be compared [...] [with] other channels [...] to 'cross check' consistency\" (Gray et al., 2005, p. 1473), for reassurance or confirmation (Bikhchandani et al., 1992; Karrh, 2002) or to gather more detailed information (Kostagiolas et al., 2013). There is also evidence that the choice of a particular channel, such as the internet, may be linked to the number of other channels used (Cotten and Gupta, 2004).\nHealthcare information channel use and trust: Conceptually, the decision to seek professional healthcare (and how much to acquire and where to acquire it) results from patients comparing the perceived benefits with the perceived costs (Alvarez and Vera-Hernandez, 2013). Some patients may be largely passive recipients of care (Ham and Alberti, 2002). This can be because of a number of factors, including: an entrenched culture that believes that \"doctor knows best\" (e.g. in Turkish culture doctors are viewed as authority figures, Kilicarslan-Toruner and Akgun-Citak, 2013) or that health professionals, particularly physicians, are the most trusted channel for health information (Hesse et al., 2005; Dorsey and Songer, 2011). A domineering attitude taken by the medical professional (Laing and Hogg, 2002) encourages patients to defer to the opinion of professionals (Neuberger, 2000). Another explanation for passively receiving care are situations where the patient has no choice or control, for example, from limited availability of health professionals or access to information and/or services, or from restrictions in the patient's personal finances. Such factors constrain the choice set from which information is sought.\nMethodology: This study involved collecting and analysing survey data on the use of and trust in information channels by pregnant women and mothers of young children.\nData analysis and modelling results: After presenting some descriptive statistics, information use and trust, and the extent to which they align, are examined. The modelling results are reported, and the relationship between trust and the number of channels used by two groups of women in the sample is further explored.\nDiscussion: The current study contributes to the services marketing literature in two main ways. First, in empirically examining information channel trust, it provides insights that can enhance the predictive capability of communication theory. In the past, models such as C-HIP have focused on individual cognitions, based on a staged sequence of decision-making in line with traditional decision-making models, and have thereby ignored channel attributes such as channel trust.\nLimitations and conclusions: Overall, the aim of the current study was to explore whether communication models could benefit from the inclusion of channel trust and certain additional individual factors (such as demographics) to extend understanding beyond individual cognitions. A review of the literature revealed limited focus on information channels and channel trust, suggesting a considerable opportunity for future research on this within services marketing.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A broad array of information channels exists for service customers. The purpose of this study is to better understand the relationship between the use of, and trust in, information channels, so that there is scope to increase the effectiveness of reliable information provision and, hence, to change behaviour.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study empirically explored whether customers use channels they trust, and trust what they use, and examined the association between individual (demographic) factors and that trust. A total of 472 mothers completed an online survey.\nFindings: The current study empirically explored channel trust and individual factors, finding that individual factors (such as education level) and trust warrant inclusion in traditional communication models such as Communication-Human Information Processing. The findings revealed that the more highly educated a customer is, the more likely it will be that a health professional is their most trusted channel, but the less likely it will be that they consider family the most trusted channel. Magazines are the least trusted information channel. Further, while informants' most trusted information channel was healthcare professionals, this was not the most common information channel used.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study was limited to a female consumer sample focused upon one service (maternity and child health) and five key information channels, which limits the generalizability. Further, the data were collected via an internet survey, which have biased may the results on use and trust of the internet.\nPractical implications: The findings showcase the importance of demographic factors and the relationship between trust in information sources and use. The insights developed provide a useful research agenda for the future. This study was limited to a female consumer sample focused upon one service (maternity and child health) and five key information channels, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The data were collected via an internet survey, which may bias the results on use and trust of the internet. Additionally, the data were collected over five years ago, which may have some impact on factors such as the role and importance of internet usage. However, these limitations do not detract from the primary focus of this study and the main findings remain new and relevant.\nOriginality/value: This study undertook an empirical exploration to examine information channel trust and individual factors, thereby extending the research focus beyond current traditional communication model approaches. Models such as Communication-Human Information Processing focus on individual cognitions and assume a staged sequence of decision-making following traditional decision-making models and ignoring channel attributes such as channel trust, thereby limiting understanding. The current study indicates that communication models will benefit from the addition of channel trust and additional individual factors (such as demographics) to extend understanding beyond individual cognitions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
GPA as a predictor of helpful behavior: an accounting student sample	[ "Performance", "GPA", "Helpful behaviour", "Predictor variable" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: During the past several decades many studies have identified the positive relationship of college student grade point average (GPA), a cumulative indicator of general academic performance, with several important variables to include job performance, emotional intelligence, career advancement and career earnings. Often, studies focus on the predictive value of GPA. Few studies have examined the relationship of college graduates' GPA with specific components of individual performance on the job. One important area of job performance that could benefit from additional study in relation to GPA is contextual performance (CP), or helping behavior that goes beyond fulfilling the technical or core requirements of a job.\nThe value and influence of the GPA: GPA is a broadly researched topic. A Google Scholar search identified more than 500,000 citations related to all levels and forms of mostly college/university academic GPA. Overall GPA as contrasted with GPA in certain groupings of college courses, or courses in one's major discipline, has been found to be the covariate that explains most of the variance in academic performance (Bacon and Bean, 2006). This paper makes use of this overall distinction when mentioning GPA. In today's world of work GPA is important. Adams (2015) identified several features regarding the uses of GPA. For example, the National Association of Colleges and Employers in a survey of more than 200 employers found that 67 percent of the firms surveyed screen job candidates by GPA. Adams reports that Ernst and Young, a large professional services firm, says that grades absolutely matter in hiring. She quotes Dan Black, director of recruiting for Ernst and Young as saying GPA is \"[...] one of the only indicators we have of a student's technical ability or competence to do the job.\" Many large corporations such as GM, John Deere, Ford and others see GPA as a threshold to manage their recruitment. Adams (2015) goes on to report that the career services directors she spoke with want to see a GPA of 3.0 or higher (this assumes a 4.0 scale); and many of them put the floor at 3.5. The 3.0 threshold is reinforced by the US Job Outlook of 2010, which reported that 75 percent of employers included in surveys indicated that they did use GPA information and that 3.0 was a cut-off point.\nVoluntary, helpful organizational behavior (v-hob): In an era of great organizational competition and a highly competitive job market, many managers are expecting more from employees and expectations are likely to increase in the coming years. Employees who are helpful, who offer suggestions and who step-up to do things that are not necessarily identified in their job description are valuable to the manager and organization. Of much interest to managers and to HR practitioners is helpful employee behavior that is not linked to some reward such as incentive, pay, or bonus and is given voluntarily and freely. The behavior is related to concepts of employee motivation, work performance, and job satisfaction and has been the subject of much research over the past several years.\nConsequences of employee voluntary, helpful behavior: This section is an attempt to make clear that voluntary, helpful behavior matters greatly in terms of positive outcomes which managers and others find valuable. A review of literature has revealed that, on average, over the past three decades approximately 40 research studies directly or indirectly aimed at the behavior have been reported annually. It is not reasonable to comment here on the bulk of that research, however, it is possible to briefly describe some research that demonstrates the value and consequences of helping behavior. For example, Mostafa et al. (2015) found that helping behavior within government organizations was related to the intrinsic motivation of employees who chose public service as a career. In a related study, Esteve et al. (2015) found a strong and positive linkage between helping behavior and individual motivation for public service. They also found that this positive relationship is moderated or strengthened when others in the group demonstrate helpful, pro-social behavior.\nThe current study: Background\nLimitations, conclusions, suggestions: Limitations\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of student grade point average (GPA) as a predictor of pro-social, helpful behavior. This voluntary behavior has been shown to be highly valuable to managers and co-workers. GPA is not only predictive of success in core tasks on the job, it is also predictive of voluntary, helpful behavior.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The review of literature on predictive value of GPA, in general, as well as that of contextual and helpful behavior on the job is followed by the report of a study with accounting students. The study helps to explain the predictive value of GPA and identifies measures useful in identifying helpful behavior.\nFindings: Findings indicate that two, brief, reliable surveys (contextual performance, job dedication), grounded in several research studies are highly related to voluntary, helpful behavior on the job. The relationships are based on observations of the supervisors of the employees. Regression analysis also provides relatively strong prediction equations.\nPractical implications: Studies of GPA have focused almost exclusively on the relationship of GPA with job longevity, financial compensation, and technical skill performance. This paper helps demonstrate the positive relationship of the GPA metric with contextual, pro-social, helpful employee behavior.\nOriginality/value: In the past 35 years research has illuminated the concept that voluntary, helpful employee behavior is as important or even more important than technical skill performance when it comes to unit and/or organizational performance. Very little research has been completed to date to demonstrate that GPA, as a predictor variable, does more than predict skill performance and success on the job. The present study helps to extend the value of GPA as a predictor of success.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Fuzzy based appraisement module for 3PL evaluation and selection	[ "Decision support systems", "Supply chain management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A third-party logistics (3PL) is a logistics service provider, usually asset-based, which focuses on specific elements of the supply chain in order to optimize the physical movement of goods from the point-of-origin to the end-user (Stock and Lambert, 2001) and the customer return of defective products to their supplier (Meade and Sarkis, 2002).\n2. State of art and problem formulation: Yan et al. (2003) postulated a case-based reasoning model framework for a 3PL evaluation and selection system. Zhang et al. (2004) formulated an analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-based model and applied to a case study towards examining the function in 3PL vendor selection. So et al. (2006) applied AHP to evaluate the service quality of 3PL service providers. The authors first conceptualized five dimensions of 3PL service quality (i.e. tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy); and applied the AHP method to determine the relative weights of the aforesaid service quality dimensions and eventually selected the best 3PL service provider. Karagul and Albayrakoglu (2007) presented an AHP based multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) model for outsourcing logistics services in the Turkish automotive industry. In the paper, the logistics requirements of the automotive companies and the role of the 3PL services in the automotive industry was reviewed.\n3. Fuzzy logic: theory of interval-valued fuzzy numbers (IVFNs): Fuzzy logic provides a useful tool to deal with problems in which the attributes and phenomena are imprecise and vague (Zadeh, 1965).\n4. Proposed fuzzy based appraisement module: procedural steps: Procedural steps of 3PL providers' appraisement module have been highlighted below:\n5. Case study: Aforesaid appraisement module has been adopted as case application in an Indian famous automobile part manufacturing industry in Eastern part of India. Two different models (criteria hierarchy), for 3PL provider appraisement have been explored. A three-level hierarchy consisting of 1st level evaluation indices, 2nd level attributes and 3rd level criterions has been designed as Model 1 (Table I). Model 2 encompasses a two-level hierarchy, consisting of 1st level evaluation indices and 2nd level attributes (Table II).\n6. Managerial implications: In today's business world, most companies cite greater flexibility, operational efficiency, improved customer service levels, and a better focus on their core businesses as part of the advantages of engaging the services of 3PL. Once the decision has been made to work with a 3PL, the next step is to determine which provider to choose. Thus, the selection of an efficient and potential set of 3PL that can meet the particular requirements of the customer and with whom the customer can strengthen its relationships becomes a crucial decision (Aguezzoul, 2008).\n7. Conclusions: Across the world, 3PL or logistics outsourcing has become an important business affair for the corporate due to inability to manage their complex supply chains. Therefore, enterprises are outsourcing logistics activities to the 3PL or logistics service providers. By outsourcing logistics activities, enterprises can concentrate on their core business operations, achieve cost-efficiency, and improve delivery performance as well as customer satisfaction. Proper evaluation and selection of appropriate 3PL service provider is indeed a challenging task. 3PL selection is basically a MCDM process; often experiences uncertain-vague data which is really difficult to analyze. Fuzzy logic has the capability to overcome such imprecise linguistic human judgment.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In today's' highly competitive market, outsourcing logistic activities have become a global trend as it offers wide range of services including transportation, distribution, packaging, labeling, warehousing, freight forwarding and order fulfillment. The demand of third-party logistics (3PL) provider becomes an increasingly important issue for corporate seeking improved customer service, operational efficiency, logistics costs as well as capital expenditure reduction. However, choosing a proper 3PL provider is a kind of multi-criteria decision making problem under consideration of complicated criteria hierarchy. Therefore, it seems necessary to develop an efficient appraisement module towards performance evaluation as well as selecting the best 3PL provider. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The present paper proposes a fuzzy based appraisement platform for evaluation and selection of 3PL providers. The theory behind interval-valued fuzzy numbers (IVFNs) has been utilized to aid the said decision-modeling. Based on two appraisement modules for 3PL evaluation; empirical data have been analyzed to validate case application.\nFindings: The proposed method has been found efficient for solving the group decision-making problem under uncertain environment due to vagueness, ambiguity associated with decision-makers' subjective judgment. The proposed appraisement platform has been explored by an Indian automobile part manufacturing company at eastern part of India. 3PL providers have been evaluated individually to check their performance level with respect to various evaluation attributes. Apart from estimating overall performance metric, the model presented here can identify ill-performing areas which necessitate future attention.\nOriginality/value: The major contributions of this work have been summarized as follows: First, development and implementation of an efficient decision-making procedural hierarchy to support 3PL evaluation and selection. Second, an overall performance metric has been introduced. Third, concept of IVFNs has been efficiently explored to facilitate such a appraisement cum selection decision making. Final, the appraisement index system has been extended with the capability to search ill-performing areas which require future progress.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Linking supply chain management with mass customization capability	[ "Mass customization", "Supply chain management", "Service dominant logic", "Structural equation modeling", "Manufacturing industries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, enhanced manufacturing technologies and information systems have made it possible for companies to rapidly develop and manufacture products to meet customers' specific needs. The new production paradigm of mass customization has emerged as a result and it has supplemented, or in some cases, replaced mass production in industry. Mass customization can be defined as the ability to manufacture a relatively high volume of product options for a relatively large market that demands customization, without substantial trade-offs in cost, delivery, and quality (McCarthy, 2004). Firms adopting mass customization strategies aim to supply an increasingly turbulent marketplace with products customized according to individual customer requirements with minimal loss of production efficiency. Meeting these conflicting demands places a premium on organizational agility and flexibility.While Pine (1993) suggests competitive strategies emphasizing mass customization depend upon the creation of a dynamic extended enterprise, extant empirical research on mass customization has focused tightly upon internal firm characteristics of mass customizing firms. For instance, Liu et al. (2006) adopted a socio-technical perspective in emphasizing the importance of key work design features in facilitating mass customization. Other operations management researchers have concentrated upon the adoption of organizational strategies, such as agile manufacturing (DeVor et al., 1997) and modularity-based manufacturing technologies (Tu et al., 2004). As mass customization strategies feature the use of new information technologies, it is not surprising that operations and MIS researchers have advanced the benefits resulting from the use of CAD (computer-aided design), CAM (computer-aided manufacturing), computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM), EDI and FMS (flexible manufacturing systems) systems (Da Silveria et al., 2001).While these internal factors are indeed critical in promoting firms' mass customization efforts, the significance' of supply chain and logistics management practices in driving mass customization strategies has been comparatively under-researched (Chandra and Kamrani, 2004). In mass customization, production tasks are no longer narrowly defined and repetitive as in mass production, but rather, become complex and flexible (Pine et al., 1993). Therefore, to successfully mass customize, a manufacturer must be able to accurately assess customer needs, embed this understanding into product designs, and procure appropriate and accurate supplies for the timely manufacture and delivery of individualized product configurations (Zipkin, 2001). As a result, successful implementation of a mass customization approach typically requires a manufacturer to effectively manage supply chain relationships (Duguay et al., 1997; Magretta, 1998; Piller, 2004).In the current study, we define key supply chain processes as operant resources that enable firms' mass customization capabilities. We introduce four hypotheses in building a conceptual framework that links supply chain and logistics management with mass customization capability. This framework is then examined empirically using survey data from 266 global manufacturing plants through structural equation modeling. In the ensuing section, the paper develops the research model, advancing our research hypotheses. Next, we describe study methods and analysis, followed by a summary of the results. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings, acknowledgement of study limitations, and suggestions for future research opportunities.\nMass customization: a service-dominant logic: Vargo and Lusch (2004) developed a comprehensive foundation for a service dominant (SD) logic in marketing, one which adopted the rendering of service to be the common denominator in exchange. Central to this perspective is their consideration of value as phenomenologically determined (Vargo and Lusch, 2008); that is, value is created when a customer uses a product or service as opposed to when the output is manufactured. So, rather than traditional conceptions in which the supplier and customer had distinct roles of production and consumption, the SD logic suggests these parties engage in an ongoing dialog that results in value co-creation. As the manufacturer is also a customer of its suppliers, this value co-creation dialog may be thought of as extending from the end-user to the manufacturer and up the chain to the manufacturing firm's suppliers.Based upon this logic of value co-creation, the SD logic serves as a natural foundation for discussing the processes through which supply chain management enables successful mass customization strategies (e.g., Kasouf et al., 2009; Kumar, 2007). While traditional perspectives have depicted the supply chain as chiefly involving the flow of physical goods, or operand resources, the S-D logic depicts the real source of wealth and value creation resulting from supply chain processes as embedded within the organizational knowledge, or operant resources, used by its members to jointly overcome discrepancies of quantity, assortment, space, and time (Vargo, Lusch and Wessels 2008). As opposed to a linear supply chain conception, the S-D logic advances a network-based view in which members reconfigure their operant and operand resources as needed in order to resolve specific business problems.Over the past two decades, advances in manufacturing and information technologies have enabled the development of processes through which manufacturers may more easily interact with customers and suppliers in mass producing individualized goods, services and experiences.More formally, Pine, Pepper and Rogers (1995) refer to customization as the manufacture (delivery) of a product (service) in response to a particular customer's needs. By extension, mass customization capability refers to a firm's competence at designing, producing, and delivering a high volume of differentiated products that meet specific customer needs in a timely manner at close to mass-production prices (Tu et al., 2001). Thus, mass customization capability is facilitated by the possession of operant resources through which supply chain network members support customer value co-creation processes.Several notable examples of mass customization capability have been detailed in the literature. For instance, Michael Dell's \"direct-to-customer\" approach propelled Dell Computers from its University of Texas dorm room origins in 1984 to becoming one of the world's largest computer manufacturers. Dell's mass customization strategy was based upon:* enabling business customers to specify their exact computer configurations from a wide variety of choices, including memory size, processor speed, hard disk size, software, and other peripherals; and* minimizing inventory costs associated with highly depreciable computer components (Selladurai, 2004).Paris Miki, a Japanese eyewear retailer, introduced its Mikisimmes design system, which digitally accounts for customers's facial features as well as their stated preferences in terms of desired look to craft individualized lenses and frames (Kalaignanam and Varadarajan, 2006). Other examples include National Industry Bicycle Company of Japan customized bicycles (Kotha, 1996), Levi's individualized design of denim jeans, and Acumin's personalized vitamin formulations (Wind and Rangaswamy, 2001).Supply chain management and value co-creation\nCustomer focused product design and mass customization capability: The aim of mass customization strategies is to effectively and efficiently balance the needs of a diversified target market. A key consideration in achieving this aim is to ensure that firm offerings are customizable on attributes that truly matter to the customer. This entails a strong customer focus in the course of product design. Customer focused design is widely regarded as a cornerstone of total quality management (Flynn et al., 1995; Samson and Terziovski, 1999; Sousa, 2003). It addresses how well the organization determines current and emerging customer requirements and expectations, provides effective customer relationship management, and assures customer satisfaction (Samson and Terziovski, 1999). Customer focused practices include building strong customer relationships, involving customers in new product development, collecting and maintaining customer demand information, disseminating customer demand information within the organization, and responding to the information (Sousa, 2003).Customers' idiosyncratic knowledge structures and receptivity toward the firm affect their ability to contribute to the value creation process (Kalaignanam and Varadarajan, 2004). Additionally, these preferences may change over time. Due to the inherent demand uncertainty facing mass customizing firms (Hart, 1995), managers must regularly assess customer desires and adjust their operations accordingly (Pine, 1993). By offering direct and indirect feedback customer, the S-D logic suggests that organizations influence the development and modification of products and services offered by suppliers, and as such inadvertently influence product and service design (Flint and Mentzer, 2006). More overtly, some key customers may even become directly involved with supplier product development efforts.In accordance with the S-D logic, the efficacy of mass customization strategy depends upon the technological skills and resources at the firm's disposal that enable it to harness a vast amount of information about customers, tailor market offerings to the needs of individual customers, and deliver customized products and services (Kalaignanam and Varadarajan, 2004). Mass customizing firms that are more attuned to market changes and customer differences should garner greater rewards from their mass customization efforts (Carson et al., 1998). Since customers are the central element of mass customization strategies, having systems that enable the firm to maintain a strong customer focus is critical to the design, production and delivery of mass customized product offerings. Thus, we advance:H1. Customer focused product design will be positively associated with mass customization capability.\nSupplier lead-time reduction and mass customization capability: Relative to mass production approaches, the provision to customers of a myriad of customizable product and service attributes entails added costs to the customizing firm. Inventory is one of the major sources of cost increase typically associated with the implementation of mass customization strategies. Supplier lead time reduction reduces uncertainty and is used to improve the efficiency of inventory control. As the various formulations of Jay Forrester's famous beer game have illustrated, long lead-times tend to increase the bullwhip effect across the supply chain system, causing more inventory buildups and less efficiency (Lee et al., 1997).Rapid delivery of the customized product offerings is a prominent feature of the mass customization value proposition. Mass customizers may achieve this end only by developing joint operant resources that serve to incorporate suppliers's products, information, support personnel, logistics and other services into specific customer processes, operations and facilities that constitute varied use situations (Woodruff and Gardial, 1996). Indeed, supply chain managers report that supplier delivery performance was among the top challenges they face in implementing mass customization (Ahlstrom and Westbrook, 1999). As such, supplier lead time reduction reflects the ability of a focal manufacturer to efficiently integrate suppliers into its mass customization efforts.Long supplier lead-times delay production and shipment of products to customers (Anderson, 2004). When supplier lead-times are shortened, companies are able to provide customized products more cost effectively due to lower levels of safety stocks required in the supply chain (Womack et al., 1990). In an exploratory survey, a case study of a Swedish mobile phone company revealed that significant gains in efficiency could be attained through reducing lead-times and error (Comstock et al., 2004). As reducing lead-times through the supply chain is critical to improving the timeliness of producer responses to customer demands (Pine, 1993), we propose:H2. Supplier lead-time reduction will be positively associated with mass customization capability.\nSupply chain planning: Supplier lead-time reduction and customer focused product design represent operant resources that help to integrate separate supply chain entities into a cohesive operating system. However, such integration does not occur by happenstance. A comprehensive, systems-based approach to supply chain planning is essential if the company seeks to position its entire chain as a source of strategic competitive advantage (Lummus et al., 1998; Maloni and Benton, 2000).Supply chain management activities can be successfully implemented only when inter-firm activities are planned and implemented with mutual action and agreement between the parties (Hill and Scudder, 2002). For instance, practices such as the use of joint performance measures and collaborative forecasting encourages greater levels of collaboration and coordination among different supply chain entities (Narayanan and Raman, 2004). On the supplier side, better supply chain planning could emphasize the importance of short lead-times and help the company to strive for further supplier lead-time reduction. On the customer side, better supply chain planning could encourage more focus on customer needs in all related supply chain activities. Therefore, we suggest:H3. Supply chain planning positively impacts supplier lead-time reduction.H4. Supply chain planning positively impacts customer focused product design.The theoretical model shown in Figure 1 illustrates the four hypotheses about the relationships among supply chain planning, supplier lead-time reduction, customer focus, and mass customization capability.\nMethods and results: Sample\nResults: Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the model shown in Figure 1, using statistical software package AMOS, version 7.0 (Byrne, 2001). The model fit statistics are provided in Table II. RMSEA for the structural model is 0.040, indicating very good fit (Byrne, 2001). The kh2/df is 1.427, which is between one and two. IFI, TLI and CFI were all well above 0.9. Therefore, we concluded that the overall fit of the structural model was very good.After establishing the good model fit, we used the path coefficients to test the research hypotheses. We first considered the control variable, plant size. As shown in Table III, the path from plant size to mass customization capability was not significant at p<0.05, so we have concluded that within our sample, plant size did not have a significant impact on mass customization capability. Hypotheses H1 and H2 are supported by the data. The standardized path coefficients from customer focused product design and supplier lead-time reduction to mass customization capability were 0.22 and 0.34, which were statistically significant at p<0.01 and p<0.05, respectively. These results indicate that both enhanced customer focus and supplier lead-time reduction facilitated mass customization capability.Hypotheses H3 and H4, which proposed that supply chain planning would positively impact supplier lead-time reduction and customer focus, respectively, were also supported. The standardized path coefficients, 0.53 and 0.76 and, were both statistically significant at p<0.001, indicating that supply chain planning efforts, such as the use of joint performance measures and collaborative forecasting, help align incentives along the supply chain and thus facilitate supplier lead-time reduction and customer focus.In order to investigate whether the mediation effects were full or partial, we examined an alternate model, in which a direct link was added from supply chain planning to mass customization capability. The fit statistics of this alternate model are also reported in Table II. The model fit statistics for this alternate structural model were very similar to those of the hypothesized model. In comparing the two models, however, the kh2 difference (201.161 - 200.774=0.387) was not statistically significant at p<0.05 with only one degree-of-freedom difference, indicating that the additional link from supply chain planning to mass customization capability does not add any additional explanatory power to the model. Moreover, the path coefficient from supply chain planning to mass customization capability was not significant in the alternate model. Consequently, we concluded that the original structural model provided a more parsimonious and appropriate fit to the data than the alternate model, indicating that supplier lead-time reduction and customer focus fully mediated the relationship between supply chain planning and mass customization capability.\nDiscussion: Academic and practical contributions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of supply chain management in enabling manufacturers' mass customization capabilities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper is based upon survey data from 262 manufacturing plants, spanning nine countries and three industries. Responses from multiple employees were aggregated for each item. Hypothesized relationships between variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling.\nFindings: - The results generally indicate that plant mass customization capabilities are driven by customer-focused product design and reduced supplier lead times. In turn, these factors are driven by management's emphasis on supply chain planning. Post hoc tests show that the effects of supply chain planning on mass customization capabilities are fully mediated by customer-focused product design and reduced supplier lead time.\nOriginality/value: - While the literature suggests that mass customization depends upon a dynamic extended enterprise, extant empirical work has focused on internal firm characteristics. The paper is among the first to examine the significance of supply chain management upon the development of mass customization capabilities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An integrative approach to improving patient care pathways	[ "Lean thinking", "Quality improvement", "Care pathways" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Globally, healthcare managers continue to struggle with increasing demands for their services with limited or shrinking resources. Systems, processes and practices need to change to meet these challenges (Burgess and Radnor, 2012). For some time, we have seen improvement technologies, originating and maturing in other sectors, being used to improve healthcare. Although we have seen some positive results, some managers continue to struggle to make and/or sustain improvements. With patients increasingly coping with complex and multiple conditions, there is a need for a more integrated approach to improvement and technologies. Currently, it is unclear how different technologies can be aligned to ensure that improvement efforts are maximised and sub-optimising the healthcare system parts is avoided.\nQuality improvement and healthcare: Healthcare quality improvement (QI) can be described as better meeting customer needs (Shortell et al., 1998) by focussing on work processes and systems. Berwick (1989) states real change can only be achieved by system change. Healthcare QI has been widely adopted, particularly by hospital staff (Brennan et al., 2009). One QI healthcare literature review found that success included clinician participation, feedback to individual clinicians and a supporting culture. Determinants that led to failure were described as topics/areas chosen (e.g., heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression led to many implementation problems), disagreement with national guidelines on best practice and vague feedback (Shortell et al., 1998). Failure determinants are mainly related to the infrastructure required to support QI rather than the approach itself (Grol et al., 2013).\nLean in healthcare: Since 2001, in the UK and 2002 in the USA (Radnor and Osborne, 2013), Lean is one improvement method that has become a prominent approach to reforming healthcare services. Popularity is confirmed by Brandao de Souza's (2009) 90 academic publication reviews (ten countries) since Lean's inception in 2001. More recently, D'Andreamatteoa et al. (2015) reviewed 243 articles related to Lean in healthcare. Growing interest is associated with Lean's double focus on customer satisfaction and employee involvement, which suits most cultures. Other similarities between Lean and healthcare are the focus on customers (patients), quality, safety and staff (Bohmer and Ferlins, 2006).\nIntegrated care pathways: The same review process was used for the ICP literature. The initial search found 46 publications, reduced to 29 after filtering. Six key themes emerged, providing a useful insight into how ICPs are defined, designed and implemented:\nLean and ICPs: Rechel et al. (2010) suggest that Lean offers insights in patient flow but there is a need to be cautious with overly rigid implementation. For relatively predictable care trajectories, ICPs can be effective (Allen et al., 2009). For variable patient trajectories, however, they may be less effective, e.g., ICP management in stroke rehabilitation may not be flexible enough to meet the patient's diverse needs (Furaker et al., 2004). Recently, Malmbrandt and Ahlstrom (2013) developed an instrument for assessing Lean in service organisations. They identify three main items that need to be considered: Lean adoption enablers, Lean practices and operational performance. The authors also provide an emergent Lean definition consensus. From reviewing the top ten most cited Lean service publications, they identify ten Lean service principles. We used these principles to identify the commonalities with care pathways in our endeavour to identify potential overlaps and differences (Table II).\nDiscussion: Synthesising the literature enabled us to raise several questions in relation to integrating Lean and ICPs. Framework development has shown how this integration might take place and its benefits. From the ICPs review undertaken by Allen et al. (2009), it is evident that the contextual elements associated with ICP design and implementation are critical. Lean is one improvement technology that helps us to understand the context before the ICP design is finalised. Asking patients, carers/relatives and staff about what they value in the service or pathway gives insights to how existing systems operate and where frustration or dissatisfaction lie. However, often it is unclear who is involved in care pathway design and development. It appears that technical care, often recommended by clinical guidelines, are a priority in relation to the design. Although it is important to ensure that such guidelines are incorporated, there is also a need to design pathways that will deliver value to patients.\nConclusion: Our aim was to assess whether linking Lean and ICPs can bring healthcare benefits. Key themes were identified within the academic literature for Lean and (integrated) care pathways and from this analysis a conceptual framework proposed. Further research is required to understand how this framework responds to different medical conditions. Similarly, the debate around process standardisation in healthcare needs further examination and empirical data to demonstrate clinical areas where it works well and examples where it has been problematic. Hence, the main limitation is missing empirical data. There are several areas for future research that arise from our conceptual thinking. Exploring how Lean and care pathways can be employed within co-morbidities and complexities these might bring provide further insight to operationalising this framework. We identified the overlaps and synergy between two improvement approaches, which will undoubtedly assist practitioners in their improvement efforts. Both ICPs and Lean are designed to deliver benefits to patients.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Globally, healthcare managers continue to struggle with increasing demands for their services being delivered with limited or shrinking resources. It is, therefore, clear that systems, processes and practices need to change to meet these challenges. The purpose of this paper is to assess how integrating two improvement technologies, Lean and integrated care pathways (ICP) might help.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Lean and ICP in healthcare provide a platform to develop conceptual frameworks for integrating two approaches.\nFindings: A conceptual integrated framework is provided to assist care pathway designers and implementers to consider the synergistic benefits of combining approaches to improvement.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors provide a conceptual framework that requires empirically testing.\nPractical implications: This research provides a conceptual framework to aid practitioners to improve healthcare design and delivery.\nOriginality/value: For the first time, the authors bring together two approaches to improving patient care pathway design and consider how these are linked in relation to improving healthcare delivery.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Pertemps retains a family feel despite a decade of expansion: Small-company mentality helps to drive the business forward	[ "Organizational culture", "Growth", "Employee involvement", "Communications", "Training", "Rewards", "Recruitment", "Motivation", "Awards" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A company with more than 1,000 employees has managed to retain the family-business ethos with which it started out more than 50 years ago.\nVision and values permeate throughout the organization: Carmen Watson, Pertemps Network Group managing director, said: \"A successful company is one where the vision and values of the business permeate throughout the organization. Our goals are ambitious and represent a wonderful future for our staff to enjoy further personal development and career opportunities.\"Although we plan to become much larger over the next five years, we still wish to keep our 'small company' mentality in the way we support our staff. It's the ethos our company was built on and will help to drive Pertemps forward.\"Despite significant growth and transition over the last 10 years, we have strongly protected our family values. This has given us the strength, purpose and integrity to forge so many successful working partnerships.\"A mixture of government-approved share-incentive plans places the ownership of the company in the hands of its employees, through gifted shares (for example, Tim Watts, the founder of Pertemps, gave away 25 percent of his holding to employees in 1994) and purchased shares. Therefore employees have a vested interest in ensuring the company's continued success. Currently employees own 25 percent of the company. This will increase over the next five years to 40 percent.\"Pertemps was thirty-second in the 2012 Sunday Times list of the top 100 employers. It was also named a top employer by the Corporate Research Foundation (CRF). \"These are two separate awards, but both recognize our employee benefits, working conditions, training, career development and company culture,\" explained Carmen Watson. This was the second consecutive year in which Pertemps featured in these awards.She continued: \"A place on the list recognizes the strong emphasis we place on the well-being and prospects of staff. The DNA of our success has been the hard work they put in, often beyond the call of duty.\"Pertemps was founded as a small family business 50 years ago. Even though the staff numbers in Pertemps Network Group have increased to more than 1,000, at the heart of our operation is still the close-knit community of workers that has been the key to our success.\"\nTop quality, industry-accredited training: The company prides itself on offering top quality, industry-accredited training. One example is the pilot apprenticeship scheme which seeks to help people to obtain the skills they need to gain employment. Property and facilities-management company Mitie sponsored the scheme in association with training provider Pertemps People Development Group (PPDG). The scheme worked to help people of all ages and backgrounds back into the world of work by providing them with placements as administrators in Pertemps branches.All apprentices on the scheme received a skills assessment in week one and then spent four days in the branch and one day in training.Carmen Watson said: \"The pilot was a great success. We are exploring opportunities for rolling it out across all 200 of our branches nationwide. Through the program we have seen the apprentices gain confidence in their abilities while improving their core skills, communications, information-technology and business-administration skills, all of which will help them in the world of work.\"By the very nature of the business, Pertemps is ideally placed to help these apprentices to find long-term sustainable work upon completion of training.\"The training and development programs offered to Pertemps employees include, but are not limited to: induction; legislation; equality, diversity and inclusion; and disciplinary and grievance procedures. Specific job-related training is ongoing.The Pertemps induction program is accredited by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and provides the basis for external industry-related qualifications.\"Most of the training is done in-house and is delivered by professional trainers who have performed the recruitment-industry roles themselves. The trainers are therefore credible, relevant and supportive,\" said Carmen Watson.Senior management and directors take part in the training sessions to share their experiences and keep abreast of the latest developments. Ongoing day-to-day, on-the-job training is delivered through coaching and mentoring by the local senior management to ensure that both business and personal aspirations are achieved.\"Additionally, the company supports external training and development through sponsorship of employees learning subjects of their choice - which may or may not be career related - where there is a business case to substantiate the benefit of the request,\" Carmen Watson explained.\nStaff are empowered and motivated: Pertemps welcomes openness. \"Staff are empowered to act in the interests of their customers and are motivated to put forward their ideas. Their contribution is listened to and taken on board,\" Carmen Watson continued. \"All staff are treated fairly and equally and right from induction stage all staff are made aware that we will not tolerate ageism, sexism, racism or any form of discrimination, either direct or indirect.\"Pertemps employees have many means of communicating their opinions and suggestions and are actively encouraged to do so. Popular channels are newsletters, the intranet, through their line manager, direct communication with the strategy board, local branch meetings, regional meetings, company road-shows, national communication forums, inductions and independently administered employee surveys.Among the benefits that Pertemps staff enjoy are support and mentorship, health-care cover, share-incentive plans and company share-option schemes. Employees receive recognition awards such as flowers, cards, lunches and personal \"thank yous\" from the chairman.\"We run an annual award scheme that publicly recognizes the contribution of individuals and teams and rewards them for their hard work and effort and/or length of service to the business,\" said Carmen Watson. \"Rewards vary subject the level of achievement and include trophies, cash prizes, holidays, cars and a PS4,000 pay-out for the winner of the Connie Watts Founder's Award for the individual who has demonstrated outstanding contribution. Gold watches are given for 10 years' service and a Rolex for 25 years of service.\"The board and all senior managers are responsible for maintaining the \"work hard, play hard\" culture. As well as the more formal rewards and recognitions there are lots of opportunities created to build fun into the environment. It is not unusual for staff to take time out to celebrate success; anything from the sound of a \"clapometer\" to bell ringing, meals after work, pizza and wine in the office at the end of the day and fun prizes including shopping vouchers, spa days and wine and nibbles.\"\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest Editor, wrote this article.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to describe how UK recruitment company Pertemps has retained its small-company mentality despite ten years of growth which have seen its employee numbers rise to more than 1,000.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper explains how the company prides itself on having a business strategy shaped by opinion and feedback from employees, as well as having staff as shareholders, to maintain the strong family values on which it was built.\nFindings: - The paper details the effects of this company ethos on employee involvement, internal communications, training and development and the ways in which employees are rewarded.\nPractical implications: - The paper reveals that Pertemps was thirty-second in the 2012 Sunday Times list of the top 100 employers and was named a top employer by the Corporate Research Foundation (CRF).\nSocial implications: - The paper highlights the significant advantages that flow from having employees who share in the ownership of the company.\nOriginality/value: - The paper explains how a growing company can benefit from retaining the \"feel\" of a family business.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Investigating work-family policy aims and employee experiences	[ "Child care", "Labour", "Participative planning", "Maternity services", "Part time workers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizational work-family policies have been developed to moderate the greater care commitments of employees with family responsibilities, thereby assisting employees to simultaneously fulfill their responsibilities both at work and at home. However, a growing body of literature questions whether the provision of these policies alone, inevitably facilitates the effective blending of work and family. Examples of work-family policies include part-time work, career break schemes, parental leave, flexible hours arrangements and compressed work weeks (Ministerial Task Force on Work and Family, 2002). To date, women with dependent children have been by far the largest demographic group to utilize these arrangements (Charlesworth, 1997), notwithstanding the availability of these options to all workers.Although detailed and generous formal work-family policies are available in many organizations, little previous research based on systematic policy evaluation data has addressed whether the stated aims of these policies are being achieved. This gap limits the capacity to make statements about policy effectiveness and prevents the systematic implementation of such policies as part of an overall strategic business approach (Russell and Bourke, 1999). This paper empirically addresses whether the documented aims of work-family policies in an Australian University are being achieved, based on the perceptions of a group of employed mothers (N=20). The paper firstly outlines the impetus for work-family policy development and reviews literature identifying the benefits and limitations of relevant programs. A contemporary snapshot of organizational policy and employment statistics in the Australian tertiary education sector will provide the context within which the research was undertaken. Identifying how policy and practice intersect is a necessary pre-requisite for facilitating the effective blending of work and family responsibilities.Impetus for work-family policy development\nMethods: This study was carried out with the knowledge and support of the University, but was not commissioned by it. The interview data reported are part of a larger study exploring salient issues affecting maternal LFP, including financial, domestic, childcare and public and organizational policy issues. The document analysis was conducted for this study exclusively.Participants\nResults: Phase one: aims of formal work-family policies\nDiscussion: This study explored the extent to which documented aims of formal, work-family policies were being achieved, based on the experiences of a group of female employees with dependent children. The results suggest that while many reported experiences are positive and consistent with policy intentions, there is room for improvement in other areas. The research also allows for the identification of strategies which promote a closer alignment between what is formally intended and what occurs in practice.Experiences of flexible hours arrangements consistent with several policy aims\nNote: 1. The total fertility rate for any year is the number of children the average woman would bear during her lifetime, if she experienced the birth rate of that year (Norris, 1996). Australia's current fertility rate is 1.73 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study seeks systematically to investigate the extent to which the documented aims of formal work-family policies are being achieved at the level of individual employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Consistency between policy and practice in the case study organization was explored via an analysis of organizational documents which described work-family policies and 20 interviews with employed women with dependent children.\nFindings: - Results show that the use of flexible work arrangements was consistent with aims related to balance and productivity. However, women's experiences and perceptions of part-time employment conflicted with policies aiming to support the same career opportunities as full-time employees.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The nature of the organization and its policies as well as certain characteristics of the sample may limit the generalizability of findings to other sectors and groups of employees.\nPractical implications: - The research highlights the need to assess whether work-family policies are experienced as intended, a process which may contribute to future policy development and assist human resource specialists to promote genuine balance between work and non-work responsibilities.\nOriginality/value: - The results inform the current understanding of how organizational policy translates into practice.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Creating public value in the care at home sector: a mixed-method study about expectations of primary stakeholders using a social exchange perspective	[ "Social exchange theory", "Mixed-method", "Multiple stakeholder perspective", "Creating public value", "Expectations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The ultimate goal of public organizations is to create added value for society (Moore, 2000) and, therefore, all organizations benefit from developing a well-developed strategy. The most well-developed strategies come from organizations in the private sector and focus on markets, customers and competition. However, these models fail to take account of two important characteristics of non-profit organizations, such as organizations in the care at home sector focused on in this study: \"(1) the value produced by nonprofit organizations lies in the achievement of social purposes rather than in generating resources; and (2) nonprofit organizations receive revenues from sources other than customer purchases\" (ibid., p. 183). Public value creation is one of the key issues that are formulated for governmental managers in the light of an alternative strategy model, next to, first, sources of legitimacy and support, and, second, operational capacity to deliver the value (Moore, 2000).In line with the scholarly literature on public value creation (Bennington, 2011; Moore, 1994, 2000; Bennington and Moore, 2011), we define performance in the care at home sector as creating public value for both current users, for instance in terms of quality of care, and for society at large, for instance in terms of long-term sustainability. The World Health Organization's definition of quality of care is \"the extent to which healthcare services provided to individuals and patient populations improve desired health outcomes. In order to achieve this, healthcare must be safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and people-centered\". Long-term sustainability of public value for society implies that quality of life does not decrease over time for all humankind. This demands the healthcare sector to operate both in a people-centered and in an efficient way (Van Rijn, 2013; Van Rijn and Blok, 2014).The concept of public value is often portrayed as a macro-level concept focusing on the national government, political parties and national interest groups (Moore, 1994, 2000; Bennington and Moore, 2011) while, in general, the individual, team and group level of public value creation is ignored (Bryson et al., 2017). However, in this paper, we argue that abstract notions and beliefs of public value creation in the care at home sector are actually expressed and executed at the individual level, more specifically in the social exchange between different stakeholders involved in the care delivery process. As Alford (2011) theoretically describes, public value creation can be seen as a social exchange process between citizens and governmental organizations in which the citizens are seen as co-producers of public value. In a similar vein, the evaluation of public value creation depends on the evaluation of individuals (Bryson et al., 2017), such as clients, care professionals and managers, as these can be seen as agents of public value (Leisink et al., 2013). Therefore, the overarching aim of the current study is to contribute to the scholarly debate around public value by outlining an individual-level theoretical framework for public value creation and evaluation that builds upon a social exchange perspective.As different stakeholders in the care at home sector might have different views on what \"added value\" regarding the \"process of care delivery\" means (Drake and Davies, 2006), it is crucial to explicate which stakeholders are taken in account (Bennington, 2011; Bryson et al., 2017; Moore, 1994, 2000; Bennington and Moore, 2011). In this study, we focus on the primary stakeholder groups, i.e. those who are directly involved in the organization and execution of the care delivery process in the care at home sector, being the professional care providers (in short professionals), managers, clients and informal care providers surrounding the clients.For organizations in the care at home sector, to gain support and legitimacy for their way of operating (Bryson et al., 2017; Moore, 2000), they, and particularly their professionals working at the shop floor level, need to meet the primary stakeholders' expectations regarding the actual process of care delivery. In order to assess what these expectations are, the professionals continuously have to interact with the primary stakeholders by means of exchanging verbal and non-verbal communications (Clark, 1996; Remmerswaal, 2003) that are effective. Effective communication relays information that gets a point across. It implies that the person whom one is communicating with actively absorbs the point of the other and understands it, and vice versa. By building on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), we argue that the multiple expectations held by the different primary stakeholders are shaped and influenced by their \"normative frames\". These frames are used to evaluate the public value creation resulting from the social exchange with the professionals with whom they actually engage with during the process of care delivery (Alford, 2002, 2011). The concept of \"normative frames\" refers to primary stakeholders' personalized sets of norms and values, which they use in order to give meaning to events and to evaluate and explain their judgments regarding the world surrounding them (Perry and Vandenabeele, 2008; Scott, 1987; Thornton et al., 2012).Based on the outline above, the following research questions were formulated: What normative frames, made tangible in their expectations regarding the care delivery process, do primary stakeholders in the Dutch care at home sector (i.e. professionals, managers, clients and clients' informal care providers) use to evaluate the creation of public value? and To what extent can differences herein be found across stakeholder groups?This study contributes to the scholarly debate on public value creation in three ways. First, our mixed-method approach, combining a qualitative interview approach and a quantitative survey, allows us to explore and measure concrete expectations that primary stakeholder groups in the care at home sector hold regarding the process of care delivery. Based on the insights from the in-depth interviews, a questionnaire was developed to examine the extent to which the primary stakeholder groups differ in these regards.Second, employing social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) as an individual-level theoretical lens in the debate on public value creation (Alford, 2002, 2011), this study allows us to gain insight in the normative frames of primary stakeholders in the care at home sector. Although this study specifically focuses on public value creation in the Dutch care at home sector, the obtained insights are interesting to the broader (international) debate on public value creation in general as they further develop the theoretical foundation of public value creation at the individual level (Bryson et al., 2017).Third, in earlier work in this field so far there has been a lack of empirical support for the public value theory (Bryson et al., 2017; Hartley et al., 2016). This study contributes to the existing literature by gathering empirical data on public value evaluation. By statistically and methodologically exploring the different expectations' scales that are developed, we intend to work toward a measure for public value creation, which can be used in future empirical work.\nTheoretical framework: The process of care delivery: interaction and social exchange relationships\nMethodology: The qualitative interview approach\nResults: Qualitative interview approach: exploring the primary stakeholder groups' normative frames reflected in their expectations regarding the process of care delivery\nDiscussion and conclusions: Using a mixed-method design, we aimed to provide insight into the normative frames of four primary stakeholder groups in the Dutch public care at home sector, that is, professionals, managers, clients and informal care providers, and the similarities and differences herein, by focusing on the expectations on the process of care delivery of individuals in the different stakeholder groups. Their expectations focused on comprised both aspects of public value: quality of care for the current user, on the one hand, and the long-term sustainability for society at large, on the other hand. The most important findings of our qualitative and quantitative studies are summarized and further discussed.Stakeholders' normative frames: evaluating public value creation\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This mixed-method study aims to contribute to the scholarly debate by outlining an individual-level theoretical framework for public value creation and evaluation that builds upon a social exchange perspective. It provides insights into the normative frames of primary stakeholders in the Dutch care at home sector, that is professionals, managers, clients and informal care providers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mixed-method design comprising a customized survey among 349 stakeholders, preceded by 31 in-depth interviews was used.\nFindings: This empirical work shows differences and similarities in the stakeholders' normative frames revealed via three dimensions of expectations regarding the process of care delivery: personal contact, impact of rules and procedures and communication.\nSocial implications: These differences in interpretation have implications for the measurement and evaluation of public value creation.\nOriginality/value: By statistically and methodologically exploring the different expectations' scales that are developed, we intend to work toward a measure for public value creation, which can be used in future empirical work.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Higher education curriculum for sustainability: Course contents analyses of purchasing and supply management programme of polytechnics in Ghana	[ "Procurement", "Curriculum", "Sustainability", "Higher education", "Ghana", "Higher National Diploma" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The period spanning 2005-2014 was declared the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2005). This declaration is a manifestation of the recognition of the critical importance of education as a means of promoting sustainable development in every sphere of human endeavour. Education for sustainable development (ESD) currently enjoys substantial momentum and commands strong international attention. To build on achievements of the United Nations Decade of ESD, which ended in 2014, and also accelerate progress towards sustainable development beyond this decade, UNESCO has developed a Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD (UNESCO, 2014). In more specific terms, GAP on ESD focused on advancing policy; integrating sustainability practices into education and training environments; increasing the capacity of educators and trainers; empowering and mobilising youth; and encouraging local communities to develop community-based ESD programmes (UNESCO, 2014). Kagawa's (2007) suggestion that ESD enjoys the political will and commitment internationally to integrate sustainable development at all levels of education is a notion that needs to be investigated because it appears that there is a disconnect between the declarations in support of sustainability and the implementation of these declarations (Grindsted, 2011).\nSustainability and higher education: Higher education has over the years been seen as catalyst for transformation and a solution to problems confronting humanity (Cortese, 2003; Tilbury et al., 2005). Over the past three decades, higher education has been actively involved in creating awareness and attempting to find solutions to the challenges of sustainability (Shephard, 2008; Grindsted, 2011). Some research findings have, however, revealed that efforts of higher education institutions have been more about signing of declarations and less about implementing the declarations' principles of sustainability (Grindsted, 2011). Though higher education has experienced challenges over the years in addressing problems of sustainability, institutions of higher learning continue to hold a unique and critical position in the society to influence change towards a more sustainable development (Stephens et al., 2008; Chatterton and Goddard, 2000). Higher education has the potential to change the world through training, research, practical sustainable initiatives and effective incorporation of community participation (Tilbury, 2011).\nSustainability and higher education curriculum: A curriculum has been defined by Alberta Education (2012) as the foundation of the teaching and learning process. Not only that, some have come to the perception that the curriculum is of central importance to everyday life and, as such, needs to be the responsibility of the society as a whole (De Coninck, 2008). This underpins the critical importance of curriculum to the educational delivery process, including the delivery of education for sustainability in higher education institutions.\nStrategic role of procurement in sustainable development: Procurement has the potential to contribute significantly to the achievement of sustainable development. In recognition of this, the Dutch Government has prioritised sustainable procurement as one of the key strategies for addressing the problem of sustainable development and has also developed a sustainable public procurement programme for this same purpose (Melissen and Reinders, 2012). Since the 2002 World Summit on sustainable development, environmental goals have become an integral part of procurement (Preuss, 2007; Walker and Brammer, 2009). The Marrakech Task Force on Sustainable Public Procurement has also developed an approach for implementing sustainable public procurement (UNEP, 2013). Procurement is currently one of the major innovative means by which sustainable development is being promoted; the issues of environmental management and corporate social responsibility are some of the strategies that are being deployed to promote sustainability.\nHigher education and sustainability in Africa: The African continent is currently faced with numerous sustainability challenges, and these pose serious threats to both the natural environment and the socio-economic well-being of the people on the continent (GUNi et al., 2011). Higher education has been identified as key to the promotion of sustainable development on the continent; however, there are few studies available to demonstrate what has been done by higher education institutions on the continent to promote sustainability (GUNi et al., 2011). There is, however, evidence to demonstrate the commitment of African higher education institutions to addressing the challenges of sustainability faced by the continent. For example, the theme for the 12th General Conference of Association of African Universities (AAU), 2009, was \"role of higher education in promoting sustainable development in Africa\". Prior to the 2009 general conference, the 2006 and 2008 editions of the African Universities Day celebrations were all dedicated to the promotion of the continent's sustainable development (Association of African Universities, 2015). The main problem now is how to translate the good intentions of the higher education institutions into tangible results that address the challenges of sustainability.\nMethodology: The documentary research method is the research approach used in this study. Bailey (1994) describes the documentary research method as the analysis of documents that contain information about the phenomenon that the research seeks to study. The focus of this study is to analyse the curriculum of the programme HND Purchasing and Supply Management to determine whether it is sustainability oriented or not, and one of the best methods to do this is to analyse the curriculum document. This method was chosen for its suitability for the study, for the fact that it is a respected scientific method and also because it is cost effective (Mogalakwe, 2006). The curriculum, which is the main document analysed in this study, met the quality control criteria for handling documentary sources, namely authenticity, credibility, representativeness and meaning, as advocated by Scott (1990).\nDiscussion of findings: The findings of this study are discussed relative to the presence of sustainability issues in the learning experiences guided by the curriculum of HND Purchasing and Supply Management programme for Polytechnics in Ghana and the nature of the sustainability issues addressed by the curriculum.\nConclusion and recommendations: In summary, this study reveals that sustainability-focused courses are absent from the curriculum of the HND Purchasing and Supply Management programme. However, sustainability-related sub-topics constitute 3.5 per cent of the total number of sub-topics of the curriculum. This percentage indicates a very low treatment of sustainability in the curriculum. The study also reveals that the curriculum touches on all three inter-related issues of sustainability. The majority of the issues of sustainability covered are about social justice, and the least represented are those concerning economic well-being.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the degree of attention to and the nature of sustainability issues in the curriculum of the Higher National Diploma (HND) Purchasing and Supply Management programme of Ghana.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Documentary research is the approach used to analyse the curriculum document for the programme of study.\nFindings: Findings of this study reveal a low presence of sustainability in the curriculum, and most of the sustainability sub-topics address issues of social justice, while economic sustainability issues feature the least.\nPractical implications: Deliberate and greater efforts should be made to integrate sustainability in the curriculum; all three dimensions of sustainability need to be well represented in the teaching and learning experiences; and there should be training and sensitisation of all relevant stakeholders in issues of sustainability.\nOriginality/value: This study provides an analysis of a higher education curriculum in terms of attention given to sustainability and the nature of sustainability issues addressed therein. It sets the research agenda for the study of curricula of other programmes for sustainability, as research literature on higher education curricula for sustainability in Africa, especially Ghana, is scarce (GUNi et al., 2011).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Common usage as warrant in bibliographic description	[ "RDA", "Cataloging", "Warrant", "Knowledge organization", "Bibliographic description", "Common usage" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Among knowledge organizing institutions, libraries have developed a distinct system of organization known as bibliographic description, more commonly referred to as cataloging. The chief goal of bibliographic description is the creation of a catalog of records representing the resources in a library's collection. Beyond traditional bibliographic resources such as books, maps and periodicals, this description process also entails the representation of other entities of interest, including persons, groups and works. Representation here is focused on controlling the labels (i.e. names and titles) that are used both to refer to these entities and as a means of accessing records in the catalog in a consistent manner. Identifying entities of interest and redirecting various name forms to one preferred label reflects a kind of terminological classification task. Previous literature has noted a relevant design principle that ostensibly guides this task within standards for bibliographic description: common usage, which dictates that certain vocabulary in a description should reflect the predominant usage of these terms (Svenonius, 2000).\nBackground and literature: In examining the relationship between common usage and warrant, the present study draws on background and literature concerning both concepts. Below, literature covering warrant in knowledge organization is presented first, followed by a brief historical outline of the role of common usage in bibliographic description.\nRDA: a case study in common usage: Since its publication, RDA has come to serve as the de facto bibliographic standard for many libraries worldwide. Though RDA's committee of authors drew on the existing text of AACR2, thus placing RDA within the Anglo-American lineage of standards, they intended this standard to appeal to an international audience. The text of RDA is now available in a number of translations, and has been adopted or tested by an array of non-English libraries (Poulter, 2012). In accommodating a wider range of descriptive practices, RDA may also hold appeal for information institutions beyond libraries, such as publishers and booksellers. In these attempts to broaden coverage, RDA's scope is wider than any of its predecessors, covering descriptive procedures for over 20 different content types including cartographic data sets, notated movement and three-dimensional moving images. Thus, as the implementation base of RDA grows, more institutions and materials are united under the same descriptive standard than ever before. RDA's depictions of common usage stand to influence data generated by a growing body of libraries and other information institutions. RDA thus serves as a timely and meaningful site of investigation in further exploring the current relationship between common usage and warrant.\nFindings: Certain references to usage within the text of RDA may be seen as appeals to the concept of common usage; as was discovered during analysis, however, \"common usage\" was found here to carry a variety of meanings. Content analysis resulted in a framework of six distinct kinds of usage that were referred to as indicators of commonality within the examined portions of RDA, each prescribing usage found in a different setting or source. Within the text, these various forms of usage were called upon as warrant in determining both preferred and variant names for persons, groups (i.e. families, corporate bodies, conferences) and works. Table I shows the types, along with sample text from RDA, and the number of sentences coded for each type of usage broken down according to entity being described. In some instances, a kind of usage was promoted without referring to a specific entity or element of metadata; these occurrences are reflected in the \"General\" column of Table I. Each of these six types of usage is described in further detail below.\nDiscussion: Historical review of common usage in bibliographic description, along with a case study of the current standard RDA, shows the multiple ways in which usage has been defined and delineated as \"common\" within this knowledge organization practice. These varying interpretations hold implications for bibliographic metadata, as well as the broader issue of warrant in knowledge organization. Discussion below examines the ties between bibliographic entities, metadata and types of usage, before proceeding on to a comparison between notions of common usage and conceptions of warrant from the knowledge organization literature.\nConclusion: In analyzing common usage in bibliographic codes, this study revealed the varying meanings that this concept has come to take on in current descriptive practice concerning the naming of entities such as persons, groups and works. These differing interpretations reveal the presence of multiple types of warrant, including literary warrant, scientific/philosophical warrant, use warrant and autonomous warrant. The relative priorities of these warrants in RDA place heavy emphasis on formally published and authoritative sources while relegating user perspectives and language to secondary roles, despite the user's close ties to the traditional intentions of the concept of common usage. That common usage in contemporary bibliographic description has moved so far away from the language of the users may demonstrate the necessary operationalization that must occur in striving for consistency across so many resources and environments: concrete, empirical references of usage are easier to explain and replicate than cataloger intuitions. Still, the scant, explicit consideration given to user language in the text of RDA shows that common usage, as traditionally presented, is a less influential design principle than was perhaps intended. In future development, standard designers have the opportunity to more conscientiously utilize and combine varying warrants in order to more fully represent and leverage different common usages.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Within standards for bibliographic description, common usage has served as a prominent design principle, guiding the choice and form of certain names and titles. In practice, however, the determination of common usage is difficult and lends itself to varying interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and role of common usage in bibliographic description through an examination of previously unexplored connections between common usage and the concept of warrant.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A brief historical review of the concept of common usage was conducted, followed by a case study of the current bibliographic standard Resource Description and Access (RDA) employing qualitative content analysis to examine the appearances, delineations and functions of common usage. Findings were then compared to the existing literature on warrant in knowledge organization.\nFindings: Multiple interpretations of common usage coexist within RDA and its predecessors, and the current prioritization of these interpretations tends to render user perspectives secondary to those of creators, scholars and publishers. These varying common usages and their overall reliance on concrete sources of evidence reveal a mixture of underlying warrants, with literary warrant playing a more prominent role in comparison to the also present scientific/philosophical, use and autonomous warrants.\nOriginality/value: This paper offers new understanding of the concept of common usage, and adds to the body of work examining warrant in knowledge organization practices beyond classification. It sheds light on the design of the influential standard RDA while revealing the implications of naming and labeling in widely shared bibliographic data.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Suppliers' power relationships with industrial key customers	[ "Perception", "Customer relations", "Business-to-business marketing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Before implementing any decision that will affect a significant customer, such as a \"key customer\", a supplier needs to consider the likely reaction of that customer. A \"key customer\" is considered to be any customer, who offers suppliers the potential of substantial turnover (Stevenson, 1980) and/or they are of strategic importance to them for other reasons such as the reputational benefits of being a supplier to a major customer (Millman, 1994).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Bases of power in supplier - key customer relationship\n3. Research design: 3.1 Methodology\n4. New power framework from bilateral points of view: As was pointed out above, a supplier cannot assume when considering making changes to its relationship with a key customer that it can act in what it thinks is an appropriate manner. This is obvious when the proposed changes (e.g. price increases) will have a negative impact on customers. Yet, even when a customer might be expected to either welcome or to be indifferent to the proposed change, due to factors not known to the supplier, a customer might find it unacceptable[3]. Changes are frequently only implemented following negotiations, but the supplier's ability to achieve its aims without \"giving away\" too much is arguably a reflection of its \"power\" relative to the customer. As a supplier considers imposing changes in its supply arrangements, it must therefore assess its power relative to its customers. This is far from being a simple exercise because the power of one party relative to another is dependent on both the perceptions of both parties of their power relative to the other and also the assumptions that the supplier and the buyer (and possibly other parties) are making.\n5. Discussion and managerial implications: For a supplier, a key factor in successful negotiations with a buyer is a careful assessment of its power situation relative to the buyer. The more equal the balance of power between the supplier and the buyer, the less adversarial the negotiations will be. But the more powerful the supplier perceives itself to be, the greater the probability that it will decide to use its power to obtain the desired customer response. Similarly, the more powerful a customer perceives itself to be, relative to its supplier the more assertive it will be. However, whether the supplier or the customer believes that they are dominant, it is not uncommon to find that their power is limited. A well-known example is Ford's behaviour towards Navistar (a diesel engine supplier) where, without negotiation, Ford imposed price reductions on Navistar - apparently assuming that they were powerful enough to do this. Navistar's response did not make Ford completely retract the decrease but caused Ford a lot of trouble and bad publicity (Flynn et al., 2008).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to incorporate material derived from four case study analyses of industrial business-to-business relationships. Although there is a substantial amount of literature on the concept of power, there is little academic research studying the \"perception\" of power - especially that of key customers' suppliers - relative to that of the buying company. This paper develops a framework, which provides a different set of perceptions regarding the nature of supplier-key customer relationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case studies involve four firms that have been long-term suppliers to a number of global industrial companies and who have set up key account programs to work with them. Three suppliers are in the corrugated cardboard industry (two large and one medium-sized company) and one supplier (a medium-sized company) is in the coding equipment industry.\nFindings: The study develops a power framework, which can be used in the analysis of buyer/supplier power and points out the risk that can arise when one or more of the parties involved operates on the basis of perceptions that are incorrect.\nOriginality/value: The results suggest that the actors' power perceptions are important constructs, which have so far been neglected in the academic literature, and stress the role of \"subjectivity\" in the actors' analysis of power.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
In touch with the softer side of MBAs: But importance of hard skills subjects emphasized	[ "Careers", "Higher education", "Students", "Education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Are Master of Business Administrations (MBAs) worth the paper they're written on? Is getting an MBA worth it? Is an MBA a waste of money? Those are just a few of the prolific number of website links to sites which debate the pros and cons of the qualification. It doesn't always make very pleasant reading for students who have worked hard to get their degree, or are currently working toward it, to have their efforts and their likely outcome questioned.\nSelf-confidence boost when encountering new situations and environments: In a study of part-time MBA programs in Brazil, Julia Fernandes Personini Cruz and Thomaz Wood Jr noted that, among the subjective effects of MBAs on careers, the most strongly perceived was increased self-confidence. The interviews revealed that evolutions in people's positions within companies were strongly related to their increasing self-confidence, expanded vision and changes in work practices. All of these changes resulted from the development of intellectual and cognitive skills, the development of critical capacity and the application of knowledge in work situations. The authors say: \"Respondents mentioned increased confidence in their technical skills and their abilities to accept new challenges and responsibilities. This increase in confidence appears to be reflected in professional performance, particularly in the ways in which individuals act in the workplace and in their confidence in handling job or career changes\".\nBridging the gap between theory and practical application: The importance of hard-skill subjects reflected in the findings may suggest the need for a reassessment or re-contextualization of the criticism that MBA programs place excessive focus on hard skills over soft skills. Indeed, soft skills are in great demand by companies. However, the findings of this study lead the authors to question whether MBA programs should include specific subjects that develop soft skills or whether they could be developed through peer interaction, group dynamics or other relational activities within programs rather than considered separately as specific subjects.\nComment: This review is based on \"Perceived effects of part-time MBAs on careers\" by Cruz and Wood (2015) who investigate the objective and subjective effects on careers experienced by part-time MBA students and graduates.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Considering that Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs have been the focus of many evaluations and much criticism in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the objective and subjective effects on careers experienced by part-time MBA students and graduates.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conducted an empirical research, involving more than 700 students and graduates of three part-time MBA programs in Brazil.\nFindings: The authors found that students and graduates experience more subjective than objective effects of such programs in their careers, and that the subjective effects are primarily related to self-confidence, employability, expansion of business view and ability to \"play the game\".\nOriginality/value: This study makes three contributions to the knowledge of the effects of MBAs. First, it provides insight into students' perspectives. Second, it increases the knowledge of the subjective effects of MBAs on the careers of students. And third, it focuses on part-time programs in a developing nation rather than on full-time programs in a developed nation such as the USA, as is often the case.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Market orientation: relation to structure and performance	[ "Market orientation", "Organizational structures", "Organizational performance" ]	[ { "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: Kohli and Jaworski (1990) theorized a market orientation model that includes organizational structure-related constructs as antecedents to a market orientation and business performance as a consequence. Prior studies that include tests of these theorized relationships have produced inconsistent results. The inconsistencies are primarily associated with the structure and orientation links indicating that the theorized impact of organizational structure on an organization's degree of market orientation has not been sufficiently established.The primary purpose of this study is to further test the impact of structure on orientation and the subsequent impact of orientation on performance. Because the results relating to structure and orientation from the previous studies described in the following literature review section are inconsistent and inconclusive, it is believed that use of the alternate set of organizational structure measures from the organizational design literature will contribute significantly to testing the general proposition that structure impacts orientation.Data were collected from a sample of US manufacturers using a combined internet e-mailing and traditional e-mailing methodology. The market orientation model illustrated in Figure 1 was assessed using a structural equation modeling approach, and Figure 2 presents the results of the structural assessment. The contributions of this study include:* a detailed description of the inconsistencies in the results from prior studies;* an additional general testing of the structure-orientation-performance model using a different set of measurement scales; and* a specific testing of the relationships between formalization, orientation and marketing performance as recommended by Jaworski and Kohli (1993).\nReview of literature: Kohli and Jaworski's (1990) market orientation model\nHypotheses: The market orientation model in Figure 1 incorporates seven constructs and illustrates the hypothesized relationships among the constructs. The model proposes that a firm's structure directly impacts its degree of market orientation and that the firm's degree of market orientation enhances its performance. Integration, formalization, specialization and decentralization are specified as constructs related to organizational structure. The model proposes that increased integration, formalization, and decentralization and decreased specialization support increased market orientation. Further, the model proposes that increased market orientation results in improved financial and marketing performance.Construct definitions\nResults: The sample\nConclusions: Kohli and Jaworski (1990) theorized that the structure of an organization may either enhance or impede the implementation of a market orientation and that a market orientation enhances the organization's performance. Subsequent studies provided inconsistent and inconclusive results particularly in the case of the impact of structure on a market orientation. In an attempt to resolve these inconsistencies, different measures of the orientation, structure and performance constructs than those previously used were adopted to again test the antecedent and consequence relationships. Of the structure related constructs, only formalization was found to significantly impact market orientation. As expected, market orientation significantly impacts both financial and marketing performance.While the objectives of the study were successfully accomplished, limitations of the study should be noted. First, the study utilized a survey methodology that resulted in a relatively low response rate raising concerns of potential non-response bias. While the two waves of responses were compared and no evidence of bias was noted, a more direct assessment of the potential bias utilizing data from a third wave and an intensive follow-up on non-respondents would have strengthened the study. Second, all the data were collected from single informants raising the concern of common method bias. Although a test for the bias alleviated the concern, collection of independent and dependent variable data from multiple respondents would also have served to improve the study.\nManagerial implications: Eight significant studies incorporating nine separate samples have now been conducted with the purpose of assessing Kohli and Jaworski's (1990) proposition that organizational structure impacts a firm's ability to implement a market orientation. This substantive body of evidence does not support the proposition. None of the structure-orientation links were consistently significant across the samples. This conclusion implies that it is not necessary for practicing managers to organizationally adopt a particular structural combination in preparation for implementation of a marketing orientation. Organizational structure neither enhances nor impeds adoption of a market orientation.Certainly, the evidence is conclusive related to the positive impact of a market orientation on organizational performance. A significant, positive relationship between market orientation and performance was found in this study and all prior studies. The implication for practicing managers is clear. Implementation of a market orientation leads to improved financial and marketing performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Organizational structure dimensions have been theorized as antecedents to and organizational performance as a consequence of market orientation. Multiple studies have investigated the theorized relationships and returned inconsistent results. The purpose of this study is to identify and resolve the inconsistencies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Results from prior studies were summarized and a structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze new data collected from 173 manufacturing organizations.\nFindings: - Of the structure dimensions (formalization, specialization, decentralization, integration) tested, only formalization was found to be a positive predictor of market orientation. Market orientation was found to be a positive predictor of both financial and marketing performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The body of evidence assembled does not support the proposition that organizational structure impacts market orientation. It does, however, support the proposition that a market orientation positively impacts organizational performance.\nPractical implications: - It is not necessary for practicing managers to adopt a particular structural combination in preparation for implementation of a marketing orientation. Managers can, however, expect improved financial and marketing performance following the adoption of a market orientation.\nOriginality/value: - Past inconsistencies related to the antecedent impact of organizational structure on a market orientation and a market orientation on performance are resolved. The evidence indicates that structure does not have the impact originally proposed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring barriers of enterprise search implementation: a qualitative user study	[ "Information retrieval", "Information systems", "Information management", "Knowledge management", "Enterprise search" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction and motivation: Google responded to 1.2 quadrillion search queries from users around the globe in 146 languages in 2012 (Google, 2012). By ranking web sites in search result lists based on the importance of incoming links (Page et al., 1999), Google steadily, over the past decade, became the archetype of an easy-to-use search tool known for excellent results. It also revolutionized the way users acquire and organize their information, and many innovations in information systems (IS) originated from the web since then.\n2. Enterprise search background study: Enhancing knowledge workers' productivity is recognized as one of the biggest challenges in management (Drucker, 1999). A plethora of knowledge management initiatives have therefore been launched to handle organizational data, information, and knowledge in a better way by implementing knowledge management systems (Maier, 2007). Many knowledge management projects have primarily focussed on data warehousing and document repositories linked to search engines supporting the digital capture, storage, retrieval, and distribution of an organization's explicitly documented knowledge (Hahn and Subramani, 2000).\n3. Enterprise search literature review: The results of the preliminary background analysis on enterprise search presented in Section 2 motivated the execution of a more comprehensive literature study with a bigger scope. Because this research is focussed on exploring barriers of enterprise search implementation, we limited our search to the keywords \"enterprise search\" and \"intranet search\", using the Google Scholar Search as a starting point for their literature review. This resulted in ten interesting papers, which we considered a starting point for a forward and backward reference search[1] to identify further important papers that could extend their coverage. We also extended our corpus to include papers outside the three big repositories of the scientific communities - AIS, ACM, and IEEE - to retrieve a higher number of scientific studies (see Table I).\n4. Research approach: Though quantitative approaches have dominated research in information retrieval, we apply a qualitative approach, including observations and semi-structured interviews, to learn more on how knowledge workers in an R\n5. Study results: barriers of enterprise search implementation: This section includes the presentation of findings on enterprise search implementation barriers. In a first step, the participants had to find suitable keywords and formulate a meaningful search query, optionally using the faceted search to narrow down the result set, while recalling a concrete information need of the past (Barrier 1). When the hit list was shown, they had to judge the relevance of their search results by using the available information and navigation (Barrier 2). Availability and adequacy of metadata was an important aspect for both, finding documents (i.e. through metadata in the document content) and filtering search results (i.e. through metadata as document property) (Barrier 3). Because the piloted enterprise search is a new tool for information seeking, participants had to compare the perceived benefits of enterprise search to their usually practiced information-seeking strategy (Barrier 4). At the end of the observations, each participant had to evaluate the overall usefulness of enterprise search from what they experienced (Barrier 5). Figure 1 is a visualization of these five barriers, along with their relationships. The following subsections outline the identification of the user-centric implementation barriers in more detail.\n6. Discussion: The results show how engineers use a newly introduced enterprise search tool, and how they may satisfy their demand for information with search. During observations, we let the participants think aloud about the meaning of their actions. We got detailed insights in how participants selected keywords and formulated their search query, how they judged the relevance of search results by the help of available and adequate metadata, and how they perceived the overall relevance of search results against their practiced information-seeking strategies. All participants were performing their job in a knowledge-intensive environment with restricted access to project-relevant information located on a file server. Their roles ranged from junior roles with limited access upto senior roles, having access to more than one project folder.\n7. Conclusion: We conducted a study on enterprise search implementation barriers by exploring an enterprise search pilot in a small and medium R\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Despite a growing demand for enterprise search from practice, little is known about its implementation from an academic perspective. As the few available practice-oriented investigations show, enterprise search user satisfaction is rather low. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore user-centric barriers of enterprise search implementation in order to increase user satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Results are built on a qualitative user study in an R\nFindings: Findings illustrate barriers that knowledge workers have to overcome when adopting enterprise search to find project-relevant documents. Implementation barriers relate to selection for keywords, search query formulation, availability and adequacy of metadata, relevance judging of search results, current search strategies, and overall perception of enterprise search usefulness.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations address the piloted enterprise search software, along with its specific configuration and scope, the chosen research approach of generating qualitative findings from a single case, and the size of the involved sample of engineers. Implications address measures to increase enterprise search adoption.\nPractical implications: This study provides project managers with knowledge to take appropriate actions in the early phases of enterprise search implementation, and even prior to that, to raise the success of enterprise search projects. It contributes to a better understanding of enterprise search engine user needs and assists in concretizing user requirements.\nOriginality/value: While existing studies primarily focus on advancing the technical perspective of search in organizations, the author elaborate on the under-investigated social and organizational aspects. The author furthermore stress the importance of user-centered approaches for enterprise search adoption.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Parents' and kids' eating away from home cognitions	[ "Focus groups", "Parents", "Children", "Social cognitive theory", "Eating away from home", "Nutrition education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: American adults report eating away from home (e.g. at school, work, restaurants and vending machines) nearly four meals per week (Kant et al., 2015), with meals and snacks purchased at these venues accounting for 19-26 percent of total daily energy intake (Tiwari et al., 2017; Drewnowski and Rehm, 2013). Compared with foods eaten at home, foods consumed outside of the home tend to be higher in calories, fat and sodium as well as lower in micronutrients (Kant et al., 2015; Mcclain et al., 2018). Intake of whole grains, fruit and dietary fiber is lower among individuals who eat away from home as are serum levels of numerous vitamins (e.g. Vitamin A, D, E, C, B-6, B-12 and folate) (Kant et al., 2015; Kant and Graubard, 2018). Additionally, frequency of eating away from home positively correlates with LDL cholesterol levels and negatively correlates with HDL cholesterol levels. Individuals who frequently consume meals away from home are at greater risk of chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Furthermore, there is a positive association between the number of meals consumed in restaurants and body mass index (Kant et al., 2015; Bhutani et al., 2018; Seguin et al., 2016; Krishnan et al., 2009; Zong et al., 2016).\n2. Methods: The Institutional Review Boards at the authors' universities approved the protocol for this investigation. Parents gave informed consent for themselves and their children. At the start of each focus group, children confirmed their willingness to participate by giving verbal assent.\n3. Results: Parents (n=37) participated in 1 of 12 parents' focus group discussions about eating away from home. Three of these focus groups were in Florida (n=13 parents), five in New Jersey (n=12 parents) and four in West Virginia (n=12 parents). Parents were aged 36.30+-5.13 SD years and had 2.42+-0.91 SD children under the age of 18 living in their homes. Most were female (97 percent), had some post-secondary education (81 percent), and completed the focus groups in English (65 percent).\n4. Discussion: This study aimed to identify the cognitions of parents and school-age children have about eating away from home as well as associated barriers and facilitators. Recommendations arising from these findings, discussed below and summarized in Table I, are designed to be applied to the development of educational programs, grounded in SCT (Bandura, 1989), to improve family behaviors when eating away from home.\n5. Conclusion: School-aged children are beginning to make their own health-related decisions, but are still reliant on their parents to set guidelines and make decisions (Satter, 2018; Eneli et al., 2008). For this reason, understanding the attitudes and beliefs, outcome expectations and perceived barriers and facilitators of both groups is important for the development of interventions aiming to improve family nutrition and prevent childhood obesity. The findings of the present study set a broad, informed and meaningful foundation for future studies and nutrition programs aimed at improving habits and behaviors related to eating away from home in families with school-age children.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Eating away from home frequency is increasing and is linked with numerous adverse health outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to inform the development of health promotion materials for improving eating away from home behaviors by elucidating related parent and child cognitions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Parents (n=37) and children (n=35; ages 6-11 years) participated in focus group discussions, based on social cognitive theory. Data were content analyzed to detect themes.\nFindings: Many parents were concerned about what children ate away from home, however, others were less concerned because these occasions were infrequent. Lack of time and busy schedules were the most common barriers to eating fewer meals away from home. The greatest barrier to ensuring children ate healthfully away from home was parents were not present to monitor children's intake. To overcome this, parents supervised what kids packed for lunch, provided caregivers instruction on foods to provide, and taught kids to make healthy choices. Kids understood that frequently eating away from home resulted in less healthful behaviors. Barriers for kids to eat healthy when away from home were tempting foods and eating in places with easy access to less healthy food. Kids reported they could take responsibility by requesting healthy foods and asking parents to help them eat healthfully away from home by providing healthy options and guidance.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first to qualitatively analyze parent and child eating away from home cognitions. It provides insights for tailoring nutrition education interventions to be more responsive to these audiences' needs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The spirituality@work protocol	[ "Team working, Organizational culture, Employee attitudes, Employee behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: As the call for meaning and fulfillment at work increases, comprehensive theoretical foundations for spirituality at work develop. Although these theories are helpful for academics with an interest in the topic, they may be a bit too abstract for members of the workforce, and therefore fail to gain the interest of this group.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to provide a practical, easily understandable protocol toward implementing spirituality in the workplace for business and non-profit executives and the workforce.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using the initial letters of the words \"Spirituality at Work\", the paper outlines the main characteristics of the phenomenon that can bring individual and organizational benefits.\nFindings: - The paper describes, with organizational examples, how the protocol can promote elevated human satisfaction, increased return on investment and enhanced quality and quantity of output.\nPractical implications: - The paper advances the view that the protocol can be used for every work environment and at every level.\nOriginality/value: - The paper argues, quoting Mahatma Gandhi, that people who live by the principles of spirituality at work can \"be the change they want to see in the world\".\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
School discipline, school uniforms and academic performance	[ "Academic performance", "Confucianism", "PISA", "Geographic clusters", "School discipline", "School uniform" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The purpose of this study is to explore the association of everyday school operational discipline and academic performance. \"Generally, school discipline is defined as school policies and actions taken by school personnel with students to prevent or intervene with unwanted behaviors\" (Cameron, 2006, p. 219). The focus is very intentionally not on school pedagogy or \"in the clouds\" philosophy, but instead on the actual everyday operation in the classroom. Our study is designed to reveal differences in discipline among various geographic clusters of countries, given that school operations differ markedly among different regions in the world (Baumann et al., 2012). Could it be that the diverging approaches to education in geographic clusters result in different academic performance?\nDetermining factors of academic performance: While the role of education as a driver of economic welfare is undisputed, the actual input factors that contribute to academic performance are less clear cut. We have categorised key input factors examined in the literature into the follow eight groups (more or less in order of importance):\nTheory development and hypothesis formulation: Conceptual framework development\nMethodology: This study focuses on school discipline, a dimension that does not appear to be getting the attention in the literature it deserves. We have previously offered a few definitions of discipline, and as for most constructs, there is a variety of understandings. Yet, a common denominator may be that discipline is about \"effective classroom management\" (Haroun and O'Hanlon, 1997, p. 237), the \"management of student behavior\", and we align our understanding and conceptualisation of discipline with that notion. Data on discipline is available from the OECD's PISA testing for 2012, and that forms the basis of our cross-sectional study.\nDiscussion of results: This study sought to investigate the associations of everyday school operation, discipline and school uniform in relation to academic performance. It intended to shed light on what really the effect of uniforms on discipline is, and what good discipline means for academic performance. Particular focus was on the possible differences in discipline between various geographical clusters and the findings of this study revealed that indeed different parts of the world run schools differently when it comes to discipline, with equally varying academic results.\nImplication for theory: As we have outlined at the onset of our paper, the literature has pointed in the direction of a link between discipline and performance (Pellerin, 2005a; Cohen et al., 2009). What was less clear, however, was the specific association of school discipline and academic performance. We have contributed to a better understanding by empirically verifying that indeed discipline dimensions such as students listening to teachers, noise levels in the classroom, teacher waiting time, students working well and classes starting on time are significantly associated with academic performance. As such, we establish the importance of good discipline in the classroom since we have now shown that for the highest level of academic performance, high levels of discipline are essential. Specifically, we also demonstrate that there may well be a non-linear association (which we have not tested per se) since the results indicated a stark and marked difference for the top performing students with equally top discipline levels in contrast to the medium and lower performing students. While we have thus established the clear link between discipline and performance, the detailed nature of the association may have to be further verified in future research.\nImplication for practice: From a practical perspective, it is important for teaching staff to focus on good discipline in the classroom. Students peak perform when teachers create a disciplined atmosphere where students listen to teachers, where noise levels in the classroom are low and they do not have to wait to start class and teach. Good discipline allows students to work well, and non-surprisingly, this ultimately leads to better academic performance. When classes start on time, no time is wasted to restore order first - teaching and learning can begin right from the start.\nFuture research: Based on an interview with the former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Zakaria (1994, p. 116) reported that East Asian schools share \"strict discipline, respect for teacher, no talking back to the teacher and rote learning\". As we have shown in our study, East Asian academic performance is highest in global comparison, and we have linked that strong performance to strict discipline in the classrooms. What our study does not probe, however, would be the actual source of that celebrated discipline in East Asian classrooms. Yet it would be reasonable to conclude that the common cultural denominator in that region is Confucianism.\nConclusion: This study makes three unique contributions. First, we have demonstrated clear differences in school discipline across five geographic clusters, with East Asia and the rest of Asia leading the way. For four discipline components of students listing well, noise levels, teaching waiting time and class start time, East Asia ranks first, followed by the rest of Asia. Second, our study demonstrates significant differences in discipline for low, medium and high performing students. Students who peak perform academically are also the ones with the highest level of discipline. We found that only a high level of discipline is associated with a high level of performance; very different from lower performing students with much lower discipline. Finally, we established that students who wear a school uniform are also the ones with significantly higher levels of discipline, and that was the case for four discipline dimensions tested in this study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of school discipline in achieving academic performance. The study aims to clarify the role of permissive vis-a-vis authoritative teaching styles with an overarching hypothesis that better discipline leads to better academic performance. The authors also probe whether uniformed students have better discipline.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors analyse Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment data on school discipline dimensions: students listening well, noise levels, teacher waiting time, students working well, class start time. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc analysis on five geographic groups established by Baumann and Winzar (2016) was applied to test for geographic differences (Europe, Americas, Far East Asia, Rest of Asia, Anglo-Saxon cluster) in school discipline. ANOVA was further used to test for school discipline and academic performance. Third, t-tests on five discipline dimensions were run to test for differences between students who wear uniforms and those who do not.\nFindings: The results demonstrate differences in school discipline across five geographic clusters, with East Asia leading the way. The authors demonstrate significant differences in discipline for low, medium and high performing students. Peak-performing students have the highest level of discipline. Students wearing a uniform listen better with lower teacher waiting times.\nOriginality/value: Students peak perform when teachers create a disciplined atmosphere where students listen to teachers, where noise levels in the classroom are low and they do not have to wait to start class and teach. Good discipline allows students to work well and this ultimately leads to better academic performance. Uniforms contribute to better discipline in everyday school operations. The findings support that in general, implementing school uniforms at schools might enhance discipline and allow for better learning. The authors recommend keeping uniforms where they are already used and to consider introducing uniforms where they are not yet common.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How organizational stressors affect collective organizational citizenship behaviors in the French Police: The moderating role of trust climate?	[ "Stress", "Police", "Organizational citizenship behaviours", "Collective level", "Organizational stressors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In occupational health psychology, there is a growing interest in understanding employee stress in the workplace (Demerouti et al., 2014; Siu et al., 2012). While its definition has long been debated, \"stress\" is generally defined as an aversive emotional and physiological state resulting from adverse work experiences (Hart and Cooper, 2001). Such work experiences that give rise to stress are often referred to as \"stressors\", while the effects of stress in terms of health are referred to as \"strain\". Stress has been found to be especially relevant in public organisations (Nicholson-Crotty and O'Toole, 2004; Rainey, 2003) - such as in law enforcement, which has long been recognised as a highly stressful profession (Brown and Campbell, 1994; Toch, 2002). Stress can have deleterious effects on individual employees' health and on their attitudes towards their employer organisations which ultimately affect their job performance (Demerouti et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2012). For Kuo (2015), the success of any law-enforcement organisation depends largely on a comprehensive understanding of the stressors within organisations and on the efforts to identify and mitigate their impacts on job performance. In the police context, there are generally two accepted sources of stress on police officers: \"job content\" (operational stressors) and \"job context\" (organisational stressors) (Kop et al., 1999; McCreary and Thompson, 2006; Shane, 2010; Violanti and Aron, 1995).\nLiterature review and hypotheses development: The JD-R framework\nMethods: Participants and procedure\nResults: Confirmatory factor analysis\nDiscussion: Despite the vast amount of research on stress, relatively little is known about the relationships between stressors, strain, and performance in organisations (Beehr, 1998; Demerouti et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2012). In addition, little attention has been paid to the collective strategies that might weaken the negative effect of workplace stressors. The present study contributes to the literature on stress, performance and public-management, and its findings offer several theoretical contributions and practical implications.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Stress issues are a major concern for public organisations, especially in law enforcement. Organisational context is to blame for high levels of stress and low performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the authors aim to understand how one contextual variable - organisational stressors that emanate from the police station's characteristics - affect organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). The second research aim is to assess how promoting trust in the police station can help mitigate the negative effects of these stressors. Based on the job demands - resources framework, the model posits that organisational stressors initiate a health-impairment process through an emotional-exhaustion climate, that can ultimately damage collective OCBs. The authors also propose that fostering a trust climate, as job resource, buffer the undesirable and negative impact of organisational stressors on exhaustion climate and collective OCB.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper opted for a quantitative study. Based on a sample of 718 police officers from 70 French Police stations, the authors follow the procedure outlined by Preacher (2013) to test the moderated-mediation model.\nFindings: The study show that organisational stressors initiate a health-impairment process through an emotional-exhaustion climate, that can ultimately damage collective OCBs. The authors also demonstrate that fostering a trust climate, as job resource, will not decrease negative effects of organisational stressors but only contained them. Low-trust climate and moderate trust climate will, on the contrary, amplified the negative effects of these organisational stressors.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfils an identified need to study stressors-strain-performance relationship at the collective level in a large sample of police officers. The paper includes implications for the development of interventions at the collective level.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Production, infrastructure, bribery decisions, and corruption control: A dynamic analysis applied to the case of China	[ "Bribery", "Investment", "Chinese manufacturing firms", "Infrastructural obstacle", "Production capacity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Corruption and acts of bribery are widely considered as disturbances during business operations as well as the economic development of a nation. As shown in Svensson (2005), there is a significantly negative relationship between one country's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and its corruption control level. Corruption has long been both cause and consequence of poverty and various other societal problems around the world, especially among developing economies. Corruption can take different forms, permeating all levels of society and deeply affecting people's lives, and can range from underground exchanges inside or between businesses, to judiciary or police functions and municipal or national government departments. By undermining both political and economic development, corruption can worsen income polarities and cause the most harm to society's poorest members.\n2. Literature review: There are plenty of works studying the causes of bribery and corruption, but most of them focus on the briber receivers - the government. The concept of \"rent-seeking\" has been providing insightful implications on understanding and predicting the decisions made by politicians, bureaucrats and the authorities. There are studies considering corruption and briberies from the perspectives of development and resource allocation. Corruption is considered as a factor that can alter the production costs. As a result, it affects the decision-making process of the corrupt authorities as well as the producers (firms). Accordingly, the corrupt government officials who control the public goods will then change their \"rent-seeking\" behavior (Rose-Ackerman, 1978; Shleifer and Vishny, 1993).\n3. Data and empirical motivation: We acquired data on Chinese manufacturing firms in 2012. The data come from the Enterprise Surveys, which were conducted by the World Bank. The surveys use standardized survey instruments to minimize measurement error and yield data that are comparable across the world's economies. The questionnaire used in the surveys includes each firm's age and ownership, as well as necessary production information such as annual sales, employment and inputs. More importantly for this case, it includes firms' unreported and unaudited activities such as bribes. Thus, these surveys present a highly interesting and valuable opportunity for us to study business climate indicators across global economies.\n4. Model: A competitive firm begins each period either as a bribing firm (i = 1) or non-bribing firm (i = 0), with a pre-determined production capability q, as well as an infrastructure obstacle f. The firm observes these three state variables at the beginning of each period, and must then decide whether to bribe (j = 1) or not (j = 0) for the current period, and, if it bribes, what percentage z [?] [0, 1] of its production q to bribe, selling the remainder. The firm must also decide how much to invest x 0.\n5. Model parameterization: We parameterize our model in order to replicate the stylized facts we observe among the Chinese manufacturing firms in 2012. The results are reported in Table IV. We normalize the price for a non-briber P0 as 1, and all the other prices and costs are estimated relative to it. Following Costantini and Melitz (2007), we set the discount factor d to 0.95. The remaining parameters are estimated under three groups. First, several parameters are directly observed from the data. The average depreciation rates of production capacity and infrastructural obstacles are obtained from the data of Chinese firms observed from Enterprise Surveys. Second, several parameters are estimated econometrically from the data. These include the production cost parameters d0 and d1, which are estimated based on equation (3), the bribery cost parameter b based on equation (4), the investment cost parameter v and exponential b based on equation (5), the infrastructural cost parameters c0, c1 and exponential a based on equation (6).\n6. Simulation results: We begin with an analysis of the representative firm's optimal export and investment policies and the evolutionary path taken by an individual firm that follows these policies. The Bellman equation (4) is solved using the method of collocation (Judd, 1998; Miranda and Fackler, 2004). The collocation method calls for the value functions Vi(q, f) to be approximated using a linear combination of n known basis functions phj(q, f):(8)\n7. Counterfactual policy analyses: Following our benchmark simulation results, we then conduct two counterfactual policy analysis. Assume that the government wants to control the corruption and effectively cut down the number of bribing firms. There are two ways to suppress firms' bribing motivation. One is to increase bribery costs, of how much a firm needs to pay to \"get things done.\" We therefore raise the bribery cost parameter b in equation (4). As a firm pays one more percentage of its production on bribery, it has to bear more costs. Besides increasing bribery costs, the other way of suppressing bribing motivation is to eliminate the benefits of bribery. The second option that we propose is that after bribing, a firm cannot have a lower infrastructural cost, as indicated in equation (6).\n8. Conclusion: In this paper, we acquire data on Chinese manufacturing firms in 2012, and develop a dynamic model of a firm's joint decisions to bribe and invest. Then the model is extended to the industry level and allows for heterogeneous firms with respect to age, production capacity, infrastructural obstacle and bribing status. We calibrate our model to replicate stylized facts that we observe from the data. Our model explains the dynamic decision-making processes as well as the growth paths on both the firm and industry level.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the reasons and decision-making processes of heterogeneous firms' bribery behavior, and how they will affect an aggregate economy's development and corruption status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors build a dynamic model to study a firm's joint decision to bribe and invest, and how the decision is determined by its production and infrastructure status. The authors simulate the firm-level decision and development paths, and then build an aggregate economy consisting of heterogeneous firms. The authors then also simulate the development and corruption growth paths of the economy, by calibrating the model according to Chinese manufacturing firms in 2012.\nFindings: Following the simulation results, the authors conduct counterfactual policy analyses. By comparing between the simulation results of two different counterfactual scenarios, the authors study how a government could control bribing better - as to decrease the number of bribers, and the average amount of the bribery payments. It is found that directly raising the bribery costs works more efficiently in controlling corruption, compared with reducing the benefits received by the bribers. The finding provides insightful policy implications for the government to clear up its economy.\nOriginality/value: The paper makes a novel and unique contribution to the literature by filling the current theoretical gap. The authors introduce a dynamic firm-level model to interpret firms' bribery decisions and replicate the aggregate stylized facts. The paper innovatively treats bribery as both discrete and continuous decisions. Given both types of bribery decisions, now the authors can successfully simulate and quantify a firm's intertemporal status and growth path.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational buying decision approaches in manufacturing industry: developing measures and typology	[ "Manufacturing industry", "Typology", "Business-to-Business marketing", "Multivariate analysis", "Organizational buying behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: To succeed in business-to-business markets, selling companies need to understand organizational buying behaviour (Bunn, 1993; Johnston and Lewin, 1996), as this significantly affects the overall corporate performance of both buyers and suppliers (Humphreys et al., 2004). This is particularly evident in the manufacturing industry, where companies typically spend 50-75 per cent of their revenues on purchasing materials and services (Lindgreen et al., 2013). It is difficult, however, to arrive at such an understanding because organizational buying is often a dynamic and complicated process (Bunn, 1993), and buying companies have to face a number of issues, including changing economics, raw materials scarcity, political turbulence, price disruptions, intensified competition and accelerating technological change (Kraljic, 1983; Lindgreen et al., 2013).\n2. Theoretical framework: 2.1 Organizational buying behaviour process\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Methodological approach\n4. Research results: 4.1 Factors affecting organizational buying decision-making approaches\n5. Discussion and conclusions: The purpose of this research was to investigate the buying behaviour of manufacturing companies. This study contributes to organizational buying behaviour theory in several ways. First, we identified factors that influence organizational buying decision-making in the manufacturing industry. The findings suggest that there are six distinctive factors that affect organizational buying decision-making. These are supplier flexibility, supplier reliability, interdepartmental communication, top management support, routine purchases and buyer price sensitivity. In line with past research, the choice of a supplier appeared to be a function of four classes of variables: supplier characteristics (flexibility and reliability), individual buyer characteristics (openness of communication, top management support), purchase situational characteristics (routine purchases) and product characteristics (search for low prices) (Cardozo and Cagley, 1971; Bunn, 1993; Wren and Simpson, 1996).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore buying decision factors and approaches of companies operating in manufacturing industry in Croatia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data collected by company survey were analysed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, cluster analysis and cross-tabulation analysis.\nFindings: Results show that manufacturers are influenced by six distinctive factors when making purchasing decisions. These are supplier's flexibility, supplier's reliability, interdepartmental communication, top management support, routine purchases and buyer's price sensitivity. Manufacturers can be classified in four different groups according to their buying decision-making patterns.\nPractical implications: This paper provides a set of factors and approaches which might help selling companies and sales representatives understand the purchasing practices of buying company better, and develop adaptive selling approaches accordingly.\nOriginality/value: Based on a literature review and field research, an instrument of organizational buying behaviour was developed and tested in the Croatian manufacturing industry. The factors of organizational buying behaviour patterns were identified, and the typology of buying decision approaches applicable for manufacturing industry was developed.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Vertical price transmission in the Nigerian cowpea market	[ "Nigeria", "Market structure", "Asymmetric price transmission", "Cowpea" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Cowpeas, widely regarded as \"meat\" for the poor (Kormawa et al., 2002; Odendo et al., 2011), are an important source of protein and a main cash crop in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Cowpeas are produced widely throughout West and Central Africa. The crop is naturally drought tolerant, and therefore, it is an extremely crucial crop in semi-arid areas. Nigeria is the main producer as well as consumer of cowpeas, accounting for 61 percent of the total production in Africa and 58 percent of the global total (Ddungu et al., 2015). The Nigerian market is influential throughout West and Central Africa (Langyintuo et al., 2003; Elbehri et al., 2013).\n2. The cowpea market in Nigeria: Cowpea production is concentrated in the semi-arid areas of West and Central Africa, where the product moves through a well-developed value chain from the inland production areas to the urbanized coastal zones (Langyintuo et al., 2003). In Nigeria, the main production area lies in the north, where there is always a surplus (Figure 1). Cowpeas also enter Nigeria from surrounding countries along the northern boundary. Areas in the middle are \"minor deficit\" regions, while the southern states are \"major deficit\" areas; both these regions buy large quantities of cowpeas from the north.\n3. Survey and data: A market survey was conducted in the urban areas and vicinities of Kano and Ibadan. Kano city, the capital of Kano state located in the north, is the second largest city in Nigeria, while Ibadan, the capital of Oyo state located in the south, is the third largest city. Due to their large populations, both cities consume a considerable quantity of cowpea. Kano is located in the center of the \"cowpea belt,\" and records the highest number of cowpea transactions in SSA. In fact, Dawanau in Kano is the largest cowpea market worldwide. In addition, due to its proximity to the border with Niger, cowpeas from Niger are collected in the wholesale market in Kano and then distributed across Nigeria. Conversely, Ibadan has a deficit of cowpea and purchases from the north.\n4. Methodology: Tests to examine APT, such as the autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) test (Ward, 1982) and the recently developed vector error correction model (VECM) for non-stationary and cointegrated series, have been well-developed in the literature. This study first uses the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test to investigate if the price series are stationary. If so, the ADL will be applied directly; otherwise, a cointegration test will be performed. Finally, the VECM will be used to test asymmetry for the cointegrated series.\n5. Results and discussion: 5.1 Empirical results\n6. Conclusion: The objective of this study was to test asymmetric transmission of cowpea price from wholesale to retail markets in Nigeria and to identify the causes of differences in price transmission by comparing two representative markets. By using the classic ADL test and the recently developed AVECM, we analyzed the price data collected through a market survey from 2012 to 2015. We found that retail prices respond symmetrically to changes in the wholesale price in Kano, while in Ibadan, price transmission is asymmetric. By further comparing the attributes of these two markets, our study revealed that market structure plays a central role in determining price transmission in a food commodity market in developing countries. Differences in competition, inventory behavior and transaction cost can also cause result in contrasting price transmission and affect market efficiency in developing countries. This mechanism explored in our study has not been explored in a similar context in the literature. As Kano is located in the center of Nigeria's cowpea-producing region, purchase sources for both wholesalers and retailers are more diverse here, and hence, Kano's cowpea market is more competitive. In addition, proximity to production sites enables merchants to purchase frequently and reduce the inventory period. Moreover, higher transaction cost from the wholesale to the retail market in Ibadan reduces the integration of the vertical markets and allows for asymmetric price adjustment for retailers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the asymmetry of vertical price transmission (i.e. from the wholesale to the retail market) in the Nigerian cowpea market and identify its causes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors surveyed 19 markets in Kano and Ibadan from 2012 to 2015. The autoregressive distributed lag model and asymmetric error correction model were adopted to test the asymmetry of vertical price transmission.\nFindings: Results suggest that price transmission in Kano is symmetric, but it is asymmetric in Ibadan. This distinction is caused by the differences in the market structure (in terms of competition level, inventory period and transaction cost) of these cities.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to empirically investigate the vertical price transmission in two Nigerian cowpea markets. It is also the first to reveal the role of the market structure in price transmission through a comparison of two markets. The findings provide policy implications and will help create a more efficient food market in Nigeria.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Inter-firm and intra-firm coordination of buyer-supplier collaborations in new product development under conflicts of interest	[ "New product development", "Coordination", "R&D collaboration", "Conflicts of interest", "Supplier involvement", "Industrial markets" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the practice of new product development (NPD) both researchers and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of inter-organizational, collaborative research and development (R&D) projects. As firms cannot be experts in every technology, they increasingly collaborate with other organizations, for instance, suppliers, in their product development. By involving suppliers in NPD projects, buying firms are likely to obtain better designs, especially in high-tech industries, as no single firm possesses expertise in all potentially relevant technologies. The possibility of using specialization and tapping into the knowledge held by competent suppliers supposedly leads to more informed decisions regarding technology and thereby better designs (Ragatz et al., 1997).\n2. Inter-firm coordination between buyers and suppliers in new product development: Suppliers are the important sources of innovation (Bengtsson et al., 2013; Cuervo-Cazurra and Un, 2010). Benefits of collaborating with suppliers in NPD include accelerated speed (Langerak and Hultink, 2005) and improved product innovation (Un et al., 2010). However, there are challenges with regard to supplier involvement in NPD, such as how to organize the collaboration, controlling the supplier and managing potential knowledge spill-over. The decision to set up the collaboration at an arms-length or with close interaction is closely related to the level of conflict of interest in the relationship.\n3. Intra-firm coordination between purchasing and research and development: Previous research suggests that the internal organization of the buying firm influences the relationship between the partners and eventually the outcome of the cooperative venture. For instance, Kafling (2009) showed in a longitudinal study of a large Sino-Western joint venture between the Swedish truck manufacturer Volvo and the Chinese manufacturer CNHTC that one of the main causes of the failure of the joint venture was due to the internal organization of Volvo. A few studies on supplier management have pointed out that the way firms organize internally is related to the way they interact with external firms (Dubois and Wynstra, 2005; Eslami and Lakemond, 2016; Hessel, 2014).\n4. Method: To further analyze coordination mechanisms, we undertook multiple case studies of collaborative NPD projects. A total of four projects were studied at two buying firms and involved four suppliers. The buying firms are called Enerfirm and Telefirm (fictitious names). The choice of the manufacturing industry is based on the fact that the high-tech manufacturing industry is used to and have established processes for, collaborating extensively with suppliers in NPD. Hence, it is an interesting industry to study. The suppliers are called Supplier-1, Supplier-2, Supplier-3 and Supplier-4. We used theoretical sampling to identify our projects (Figure 1), where the level of conflicts of interest varied in the projects. The project sampling was based on finding two cases at each firm, one with high level of conflict of interest and one with low level of conflict of interest. The bearing and battery projects were carried out at Enerfirm and the Antenna and Processor projects at Telefirm. All the projects involved external suppliers that contributed to technology that was new to the firms. All the projects were also successful at introducing a product to the market. Alongside the researchers, the buying firms participated in the case selection to ensure that they were rich in information content (Patton, 2002).\n5. Case studies of buyer-supplier new product development collaborations: Enerfirm and Telefirm are high-tech firms with over 100,000 employees that operate worldwide. These firms are leading within their respective industries and they have plenty of experience in collaborating with suppliers to incorporate new technology into their products. The four projects studied were relatively small: each had fewer than ten members in the project team.\n6. Case discussion: 6.1 Inter-firm coordination\n7. Conclusions: In this paper, we offer some insights into inter-firm and intra-firm coordination by analysing and applying Okhuysen and Bechky's (2009) framework of coordination in the context of supplier involvement in NPD projects. The results contribute to current literature on coordination in inter-firm and intra-firm relationships (Chen et al., 2013; Rampersad et al., 2010; Ritala et al., 2012). In situations of a perceived high level of conflicts of interest related to fear of information leakage, inter-firm integration between the parties was limited to avoid knowledge spill-over. These projects also displayed limited integration and coordination in the intra-firm context. The study points to contractual agreements as important coordination mechanisms, similar to previous studies (Blomqvist et al., 2005). In essence, firms mostly relied on NDAs and IP agreements. However, as contracts were not sufficient to coordinate the collaboration, the firms applied a number of other coordination mechanisms pertaining to the general categories of objects and representation, roles, routines and proximity. To control relationships exhibiting a variety of knowledge sharing, depending on the level of conflict, firms applied multiple coordination mechanisms conjointly.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze coordination mechanisms in buyer-supplier collaborations in new product development (NPD) and the influence of conflicts of interest. Inter- and intra-organizational coordination mechanisms are investigated.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The findings reported are based on a multiple case study consisting of four cases at two firms. Theoretical sampling consisted in selecting two projects with opposite levels of conflicts of interest between the collaborating firms. In total, 38 interviews were conducted with employees in buying and supplying firms.\nFindings: The findings illustrate how inter-firm conflicts of interest affect the way firms coordinate both externally and internally. A high level of conflicts of interest related to information leakage emanated in more distant relationships with limited coordination between buyer and supplier. This restrictive relationship is also reflected in limited coordination between the buyer's purchasing and research and development (R&D) units.\nResearch limitations/implications: Generalizability is limited, as only two large industrial firms have been studied, but with four projects investigated in detail. The study shows that in situations, in which there is a conflict of interest, external coordination affects the firms' internal coordination. Conflicts of interest in buyer-supplier NPD collaborations are managed by limiting information sharing, which is reflected in the way R&D and purchasing are coordinated.\nPractical implications: Managers need to be aware of that a firm's fear of sharing information with its supplier can also transfer to intra-firm unit coordination, as R&D may limit its information sharing with purchasing. On the other hand, in buyer-supplier collaborations with little conflict of interest, firms can form close relationships. Such a close relationship is also mirrored in how R&D and purchasing openly share information and coordinate.\nOriginality/value: This research contributes to an increased understanding of coordination in buyer-supplier innovation collaboration. Firms not only need to consider their external coordination but also how coordination with suppliers may affect the way they coordinate in NPD projects within the firm between purchasing and R&D.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The development of the Distance Education College of East China Normal University: a case study	[ "Distance learning", "Universities", "China" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe overall development of modern distance education in China: In 1999, the Ministry of Education (MOE) of China decided to pilot modern distance education in Tsinghua University and other three universities. Now, 68 universities and colleges nationwide have been approved by the MOE.There has been a rapid growth of distance education in China in recent years. There are more than 140 majors in ten disciplines, including engineering, management, medicine, literature, sciences, agriculture, education, laws and philosophy. At present, a number of online programs are available:* four-year undergraduate programs for high-school graduates;* four-year undergraduate programs for adult high-school graduates;* three-year undergraduate programs for high-school graduates;* three-year undergraduate programs for adult high-school graduates;* four-year undergraduate programs for associate graduates;* four-year undergraduate programs for adult associate graduates; and* postgraduate programs (Lei and Fan, 2007).With the development of internet technology, a new organization, the China Teachers' Educational Online Association (CTEOA) organized by the MOE, was established in 2003. It aims to better integrate the educational resources distributed in the teacher training universities in China, and to set up a life-long education system for Chinese teachers (Ding, 2003). Towards this end, eight teacher training universities with pilot distance centers have joined CTEOA. Its members also include the China Central Radio and TV University, the China Central Electronics Education Center, the China Central Education Television Station and the Higher Education Press. East China Normal University (ECUN) was one of the key members of this organization. In this paper, we take ECNU as an example to explain the development of distance education in China.\nThe past and the present of the DEC: To adapt to the rapidly changing information technology in modern society, ECNU established the Modern Educational Technology Training Center in May 1999. Its main purpose is to train teachers and management personnel from elementary schools, middle schools and universities on how to use modern educational technology and information technology. The students registered in ECNU must also take the training. In January 2001, approved by the MOE, the Distance Education College (DEC) was established based on the Modern Educational Technology Training Center. In March 2008, there were 20,328 trainees studying in 80 distance training centers attached to the DEC, registered in six three-year undergraduate programs, 21 four-year undergraduate programs and four postgraduate programs of education.The DEC has undergone three phases:1. positioning;2. quality improvement; and3. innovating.This paper presents a detailed description of each stage, the problems faced and future directions.The first phase: teacher-focused policy and disciplined management\nStudy mode: Based on the experience gained through practice, the DEC has invented a unique mode for teachers' on-the-job training, which is called the Teachers Distance Study-Centered Mode (Yan, 2004, 2007). The training objectives are jointly decided by the training organization, trainers and trainees based on the trainees' knowledge and preferences in line with the development trend of the subject discipline. Question-oriented training is carried out, aiming to deal with the questions or tasks the trainees have in their practical work. The training strategy is jointly decided by trainers and trainees, subject to further adjustment based on the trainees' individual characteristics and specific conditions.The trainees are allowed to set a schedule for their own study within the general time frame. Various communication channels are available: lectures, case studies, expert instruction, seminars, communication, reflection, online resources, social activities and teaching practice. Qualitative and process evaluation is adopted to evaluate trainees. Their abilities to solve practical problems are evaluated based on their performance. Each training program lasts for one semester to one academic year.\nChallenges and future directions: Since its establishment in 2001, the DEC has achieved commendable progress. To gain further development in the future, the DEC will explore further in the following fields of distance education.Course resources and teaching modes\nConclusion: The DEC has gone through three phases. In the first phase, a teacher-focused policy and disciplined management were formed. It developed a quality-assuring system and relevant regulations to supervise the management of distance training centers, enrollment, entrance exams, and course resource building. In the second phase, the quality-first policy was emphasized, and the DEC developed two training modes, i.e. the human-centered management mode and the trainee-oriented training mode. In the third phase, further innovation was initiated. The new platform used has proved to be useful for management and teaching activity organization. The challenges the DEC faces are universal. The effort made by the DEC showcases well the overall development and growth of modern distance education in China.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to present a picture of the past and the present status of the Distance Education College (DEC) of East China Normal University (ECNU). It describes what the DEC has achieved in each phase, and probes into some essential problems that the DEC has attempted to solve.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This article provides a comprehensive description of the development of the DEC by following a case study method.\nFindings: - The DEC goes through three stages. In the first phase, a teacher-focused policy and disciplined management are formed. In the second phase, a quality-first policy is emphasized, and two training modes are developed: the human-centered management mode and the trainee-oriented training mode. In the third phase, the DEC initiates further innovation and uses a new platform.\nPractical implications: - ECNU has witnessed and participated in the development of modern distance education in China. It remains successful in developing distance education. The effort made by the DEC well showcases the overall development and growth of modern distance education in China.\nOriginality/value: - This article presents the development of the DEC and will help readers understand the developmental process of distance education colleges in China.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Are there asymmetries in fiscal policy shocks?	[ "Fiscal policy", "Asymmetric effects", "TVAR" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In this paper we empirically test the existence of asymmetries that may be associated with the conduct of fiscal policy. In doing so, we try to detect two types of fiscal policy asymmetries. First, whether equal in magnitude contractionary or expansionary fiscal shocks have the same multiplier impact on real output and second whether theoretically equal - in terms of their impact on the government budget fiscal policy tools, such as a tax cut or an increase in government spending, have the same impact on output.\n2. Literature review: Despite this divergence of opinions, the empirical research is too narrow and is divided between linear and non-linear policy analysis. Linear analysis covers most of the research, while non-linear analysis is being implemented only in recent years. Empirical research focused into fiscal policy in the last decade following mostly the seminal work of Blanchard and Perotti (2002) in a VAR analysis which was built upon the innovative work of Sims (1980) in VAR analysis. Blanchard and Perotti (2002) introduced a new method of identification of structural errors using institutional information on tax and transfer system and under the main assumption, among others, that fiscal policy is a rather long process using quarterly data introduce their restrictions and identify structural fiscal shocks that are exogenous to the rest of the VAR variables. They conclude that, the US economy experiences Keynesian effects regarding the sign of fiscal multipliers as well as there are asymmetries between tax and government purchases multipliers but not asymmetries of the effects on the output of a positive vs a negative change in taxes.\n3. The data: In this study we use quarterly data that span the period 1967Q1-2011Q4. The starting range of the data sample is limited by the availability of the monetary aggregates. The data are taken from the St Louis Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) service. These include the real private gross national product, government consumption expenditures and gross investment, government current receipts and the three-month Treasury bill rate[1]. All initial data are in current values and they are transformed - with the exception of the Treasury-bill rate - to real series by using the implicit price deflator of the GNP with 2005 as the base year. The two monetary aggregates used in this study both in real terms and these are the official simple-sum aggregates in the MZM level of aggregation as they are reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis and the Divisia MZM aggregates. The Divisia monetary aggregates series are from the new Divisia monetary aggregates maintained within the Center of Financial Stability (CFS) program Advances in Monetary and Financial Measurement (AMFM), called CFS Divisia aggregates and documented in Barnett et al. (2013). We use both types of monetary aggregates in an effort to see whether our results are affected by the so-called \"Barnett critique\". In this regard, Barnett (1980) argues that official simple-sum monetary aggregates, constructed by the Federal Reserve, produce an internal inconsistency between the implicit aggregation theory and the theory relevant to the models and policy within which the resulting data are nested and used. That incoherence has been coined as the Barnett Critique (see, e.g. Chrystal and MacDonald, 1994 and Belongia and Ireland, 2014), with emphasis on the resulting inference and policy errors and the induced appearances of function instability. Finally, all data with the exception of the Treasury-bill rate are transformed to natural logarithms. To test the integration properties of our data we perform three different unit root tests: an augmented Dickey-Fuller test (1979); a Kwiatkowski et al. test (1992) where the null hypothesis is stationarity and finally the Elliot et al. test (1996). In Table I we present the results of these unit root tests and we conclude that all variables used in this study are I(1). Thus, for the rest of the empirical section we use the first differences of the variables unless otherwise stated.\n4. VAR empirical model and identification: Since we determined in the previous section that all our variables are I(1) we proceed by testing our variables for a commons stochastic trend. Table II, reports the results of the Johansen maximum likelihood cointegration tests on a VAR with lag length p=3. We also report tail areas of residual misspecification tests. Two test statistics are used to test for the number of cointegrating vectors, the trace (l\n5. TVAR methodology: 5.1. Model specification\n6. Conclusions and policy implications: The aim of this paper was to empirically test the effects of fiscal policy shocks on real output and reveal possible asymmetries in fiscal policy implementation. For this reason we employed two alternative methodologies that both can detect asymmetries and non-linearities: Cover's (1992) method of shocks decomposition and the Threshold-VAR methodology. Using Cover's (1992) decomposition methodology we estimated two alternative vector autoregressive systems in order to extract the fiscal policy shocks. These systems differ in the monetary aggregate used as one of the exogenous variables: the simple sum MZM and the CFS Divisia MZM. From each one of these systems we extracted four types of shocks: a negative and a positive government spending shock and a negative and a positive government revenue shock. These eight sets of unanticipated fiscal shocks were used next to empirically examine their effects on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private GNP in two sets of regressions: one that assumes only contemporaneous effects of the shocks on output and one that is augmented with four lags of each fiscal shock. Our results are summarized as follows.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of unanticipated fiscal policy shocks on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private output and reveal different types of asymmetries in fiscal policy implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use two alternative vector autoregressive systems in order to construct the fiscal policy shocks: one with the simple sum monetary aggregate MZM and one with the alternative CFS Divisia MZM aggregate. From each one of these systems we extracted four types of shocks: a negative and a positive government spending shock and a negative and a positive government revenue shock. These eight different types of unanticipated fiscal shocks were used next to empirically examine their effects on the growth rate and cyclical component of real private GNP in two sets of regressions: one that assumes only contemporaneous effects of the shocks on output and one that is augmented with four lags of each fiscal shock.\nFindings: The authors come up with three key findings: first, all fiscal multipliers are below unity but with signs as predicted by Keynesian theory. Second, government expenditures have a larger impact as compared to the tax policy and finally, positive government spending shocks are more significant than negative spending shocks. All these results are in line with previous studies and are robust through many tests using structural identification proposed by Blanchard and Perotti (2002).\nPractical implications: The empirical findings in this manuscript can be used for conducting a more efficient fiscal policy. The importance of government spending shocks is empirically verified along with the asymmetries related to price stickiness predicted by Keynesian theory. According to the results an efficient fiscal policy would: in terms of an expansionary policy, use government spending as a means to stimulate the economy instead of tax cuts and in the case of a contractionary policy use government revenue (higher taxes) so that the costs of this policy in terms of output lost are lower.\nOriginality/value: In this study the authors introduce three main innovations: first, to the best of our knowledge the Divisia monetary aggregates have not yet been used to previous research pertaining to fiscal policy. Second, following Cover's (1992) procedure of identifying monetary policy shocks we extract the unanticipated fiscal policy shocks on government spending and revenue. Finally, the authors explicitly test for the asymmetric effects on the growth rate and the cyclical component of real private GNP of a contractionary and expansionary fiscal policy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of employee learning on staff motivation in Greek small firms: the employees' perspective	[ "Human resource management", "Employees behaviour", "Employee motivation", "Small to medium‐sized enterprises", "Greece" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nForeword: The changing nature of the international business environment has placed an increasing emphasis on the importance of effective human resource practices for firm success, including the importance of the \"psychological contract\" (i.e. the perceptions of the employee and employer of what their mutual informal obligations are towards each other) within the employment relationship (Torrington and Hall, 1998). As Leopold and Harris (2009) argue, human resource management plays a vital role in ensuring the promotion of business success and managing change. This involves paying attention to the \"psychological contract\" and the establishment of expectations and obligations with all groups of employees within the organization.It is frequently stressed by many commentators that there is a need for managers to use more sophisticated reward systems to motivate their staff since the traditional \"psychological contract\" based on lifetime employment and internal promotion has been replaced by employee aspirations for more involvement in decision-making, recognition of contribution, team-working and continuous learning (Mullins, 2005).In this context, the present study comes to explore the impact of various contextual variables on staff motivation from the employees' perspective. More specifically, this research effort tries to understand the main motivational forces from the employees' point-of-view that direct staff behavior in small firms within a country that suffers from a severe financial crisis. The study will identify the main factors affecting staff motivation at a period where the financial rewards are kept to the minimum with the purpose of helping small firm owners create working environments that stimulate employee performance.\nEmployee motivation in small firms: There are many competing theories which attempt to explain motivation at work. Among the most popular are:* Maslow's hierarchy of needs model - the hierarchy is shown as ranging through five main levels, from physiological needs through safety needs, love needs, and esteem needs, to the need for self-actualisation at the highest level.* Expectancy-based model, where performance depends on the perceived expectation regarding effort expended and achieving the desired outcome; equity theory, which focuses on people's feelings of how fairly they have been treated in comparison with the treatment received by others; and goal-setting theory, where people's intentions play an important part in determining their behavioural patterns (Martin, 2001).The existing evidence in the HRM literature shows that organizations can use various financial (e.g. salary, bonus, life insurance, holidays, health care, company car) and non-financial rewards (e.g. interesting work, autonomy, competent and democratic supervision, flexible work schedule, training and development) in order to satisfy individual employee needs (Stone, 2002). Regarding the small business sector, the satisfying social relations with colleagues and superiors has been identified as a major motivational force for workers (Hendry et al., 1995). Similarly, in a study conducted by Bent et al. (1999) on factors affecting staff motivation in 38 small manufacturing firms in Scotland, the management style of the owner was found to be the most important motivational force for workers particularly when it comes to factors such as \"lack of appreciation\", \"poor communication\" and \"training\".\nMethodology: In order to explore the impact of various contextual variables on staff motivation, 65 structured personal interviews were conducted with employees working in Greek small firms that showed an interest to participate in the study. The empirical work took place in Greece during September-December 2011 and the respondents consisted of workers employed in 20 small firms (i.e. firms employing from five to 50 workers) of the Greek services sector, as well as the manufacturing industry. The interview questions looked at various factors affecting staff motivation within firms such as, quality of supervision, financial rewards, job design, training and development opportunities, social relations with co-workers etc. The data analysis involved descriptive, hierarchical coding based on \"a priori codes\" identified from previous theory and grounded codes that emerged from new observations.\nResults: One of the most interesting findings of the fieldwork was that the vast majority of research participants (54 out of 65 that is 83 percent) consider \"staff learning\" as the most critical motivator for directing and sustaining their behavior. All these respondents indicated a very positive attitude towards workforce skills development arguing that it enhances their employability and makes them feel more secure in terms of employment during a state of severe financial crisis in the country. According to the results, staff learning featured as a stronger motivator than direct financial rewards. In particular, most respondents claimed that the financial rewards they currently receive are very low and do not play a pivotal role in determining their desire to work harder. By contrast, on-the-job learning provision such as, continuous coaching by the owner of the firm and more experienced colleagues was mentioned as a key motivational force. As most participants pointed out, workplace learning enables them to develop various transferable skills that are in demand in the Greek labour market and thus, giving them a feeling of protection from long-term unemployment in case they lose their current jobs.The respondents, in particular, showed a strong preference for on-the-job training (i.e. learning undertaken within the workplace, which is frequently unplanned) compared to off-the-job training (i.e. accredited learning that takes place outside of the workplace, it has predetermined learning objectives and it is evaluated formally) arguing that it is cost effective for the owner and more responsive to their individual learning needs. They also added that on-the-job training helps them to transfer their knowledge immediately to their jobs.The findings further pointed to the importance of job design and quality of supervision in stimulating staff motivation. More specifically, a large number of respondents (44 out of 65 that is 68 percent) mentioned that the design of their individual tasks affects their passion towards work since it is closely related to the opportunities they have to apply their knowledge and use their full range of skills at the workplace.As most research participants argued, having a very interesting job in terms of skills variety increases their motivation as it gives workers the opportunity to satisfy their self-esteem needs. As respondents explained, by doing multi-skilled jobs of increased task variety they gradually develop a sense of pride and confidence as they feel that they are capable of performing a complex job instead of a monotonous one that consists of a few simple, routine tasks.In a similar vein, 42 out of 65 respondents (i.e. 65 percent) stressed that the quality of supervision plays a vital role in their motivation. The evidence showed that competent supervisors that adopt a friendly and supportive stance towards employees can have a significant impact on enhancing employee motivation. By contrast, supervisors who adopt an autocratic style and frequently see employee mistakes not as learning opportunities but as a chance to blame staff for poor performance appear to affect in a negative way employee motivation. As several respondents explained, in a period of severe financial constrains, employers try to cut down jobs, which results in increased workload for the remaining staff. However, as their jobs become more demanding than before errors are likely to increase. It is therefore important for them to have a supportive supervisor who understands their concerns and helps them to surmount all the difficulties.A key message of this study is that workplace learning along with job design and quality of supervision can be key motivational forces for workers in the small business context where firms operate under severe resource constraints. As far as staff training is concerned, such results could have a major impact for small firm survival as they reveal that on-the-job learning could act as a major trigger to improved employee performance by raising staff motivation. There seems to be an immediate need for firm owners to train their staff in order to regain employee motivation, which has been lost due to the provision of poor financial rewards.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to try to understand the main motivational forces, from the employees' point of view, that direct staff behavior in small firms within a country that suffers from a severe financial crisis. The study will identify the main factors affecting staff motivation at a period where the financial rewards are kept to the minimum, with the purpose of helping small firm owners create working environments that stimulate employee performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In order to explore the impact of various contextual variables on staff motivation, 65 structured personal interviews were conducted with employees working in Greek small firms that showed an interest to participate in the study. The empirical work took place in Greece during September-December 2011 and the respondents consisted of workers employed in 20 small firms (i.e. firms employing from 5 to 50 workers) of the Greek services sector, as well as the manufacturing industry. The interview questions looked at various factors affecting staff motivation, such as quality of supervision, financial rewards, job design, training and development opportunities, social relations with co-workers etc. The data analysis involved descriptive, hierarchical coding based on a priori codes identified from previous theory and grounded codes that emerged from new observations.\nFindings: - The changing nature of the international business environment has placed an increasing emphasis on the importance of effective human resource practices for firm success, including the importance of the \"psychological contract\" (i.e. the perceptions of the employee and employer of what their mutual informal obligations are towards each other) within the employment relationship.\nOriginality/value: - Human resource management plays a vital role in ensuring the promotion of business success and managing change. This involves paying attention to the \"psychological contract\" and the establishment of expectations and obligations with all groups of employees within the organization. This paper explores the impact of various contextual variables on staff motivation from the employees' perspective.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of education, diversity, professional development and age on personal business ethics of business students in Russia	[ "Russia", "Business ethics", "Ethics training", "Business education", "Organizational interventions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nOverview: Business education plays a fundamental role in positioning ethical behavior. There has been an increased research interest in the area of business ethics, at both national and international levels, during the last four decades. Business ethics issues such as conflict of interest, bribery, accounting fraud, consumer fraud, etc, have become more complex and culturally diverse (Nguyen et al., 2014). In an effort to reduce the amount of unethical behavior in organizations, scholars are increasingly interested in the role of business ethics education (Birtch and Chiang, 2014; Mayer et al., 2010; Nguyen et al., 2014; Nguyen et al., 2015). Many scholars are attempting to better understand how business ethics, diversity and business law education can help limit the possibility of unethical behavior at workplace. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational interventions promoting business ethics and self-reported ethical behavior of business students in Russia.\nIntroduction: There have been extensive studies on business ethics and ethical behavior (Burns, 2012; Carlson and Burke, 1998; Cannon, 2001; Jazani and Ayoobzadeh, 2012; Nguyen et al., 2014, 2015; Wang and Calvano, 2015). Business ethics issues such as conflict of interest, bribery, accounting fraud, consumer fraud, etc, have become more complex and culturally diverse (Nguyen et al., 2014). Managers need to be able to recognize ethical issues, cultural context of the organization and the individual factors that can influence individual ethical behavior in an organization in order to deal with them more effectively and create an ethical organizational culture (Deshpande et al., 2000; Ferrell et al., 2015; Victor and Cullen, 1988; Wimbush and Shepard, 1994).\nLiterature: Business ethics in Russia\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Analysis of the data began by examining correlations between variables studied, as presented in Table III.\nDiscussion: This study advances our understanding of business ethics of business students in Russia and, more specifically, how the ethical and diversity organizational interventions may influence its students' and working adults' unethical behavior. Age and education had significant, positive relationships with perception of business ethics behavior. We found that business students who have higher level of education and experienced diversity professional development were less likely to engage in unethical behaviors.\nLimitations of the study: Like many other studies, this study has been associated with some constraints. One of the main limitations is its small sample size. The sample size is small and includes mainly business students in several cities such as Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Saratov, St Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Samara, and Ulyanovsk. Future studies can expand the sample to include more people from different work backgrounds from other cities and regions in the country. In addition, future studies can examine the personal business ethics perceptions of business students from neighboring countries to see if there is similarity or difference between Russians and them.\nConclusions: Determining the types of business ethics education and training that are the most effective in Russia would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners. To reduce unethical behavior, the results suggest that managers should not only have business ethics code and emphasize the organization's stance on maintaining ethical practices but also communicate the organization's value of diversity to workers. As an organization, being ethical can result in positive public attitudes, which in turn will help the organization succeed in the long run. According to Mayer et al. (2010, p. 13), \"an ethical climate serves a sense-making function for employees so they know how to respond to ethical issues.\" Our findings have practical implications for managers. Our study shows that HR practices, policies, and procedures should emphasize the value of being an ethical employee in organization. HR should provide diversity training as well as improve awareness of ethical issues and employees' ethical behavior. The results from this research suggest that ethics education and diversity training play the critical role in creating an ethical climate on workplace.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how individual differences predict personal business ethics of business students with a particular focus on how these factors moderate the relationship between ethical organizational interventions and personal business ethics perception.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Totally, 488 participants completed Clark's Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) survey. ANOVA analyses were then performed.\nFindings: Significant correlations were observed between personal business ethics and diversity professional development, age, and education. The authors found significant difference on ethical behavior and diversity professional development. Professional development focusing on diversity was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for women but no significant relationship was observed for men. Furthermore, professional development focusing on ethics was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for younger employees but no significant relationship was observed for older employees.\nResearch limitations/implications: Researchers and scholars in cross-cultural management and business ethics fields can benefit from this study as it provides more empirical results in understanding the impact of demographic, educational, and cultural factors on the ethical maturity of business students in different countries.\nPractical implications: Leaders, managers and practitioners, can benefit from this study as it provides managerial implications in managing this workforce in the most effective and efficient manner. The results from this research suggest that ethics education and diversity training play the critical role in creating an ethical climate on workplace.\nOriginality/value: This study fills the gap within the literature and offers a unique analysis of the personal business ethics of Russian business students. Determining the types of business ethics education and training that are the most effective in Russia would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Real estate fund active management	[ "Impact on performance", "Tracking error", "Active share", "Better classification of funds", "Real estate funds", "Sub-period analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The traditional way to measure the active management of a fund is to calculate its tracking error: as measured by the standard deviation of the difference in a fund's returns vs its benchmark returns (see inter alia, Alford et al., 2003; Higgins and Ng, 2009; Higgins, 2010). However, tracking error alone is an inadequate measure of fund active management since even very actively managed funds can in fact have rather low tracking errors. Therefore judging the activity level of fund management based solely on tracking error can be misleading. In addition, there exists plenty of \"closet indexing\" among these so called actively managed funds. Closet indexing is referred to when a fund that claims to be actively managed, and therefore charges high management fees, in fact acts like a passive index fund by closely replicating some benchmark index. Finally while tracking error volatility makes sense and is easy to calculate, it only infers what the manager is doing at the portfolio level and does not tell you how the tracking errors were generated. For instance, Cremers and Petajisto (2009) argue that the two distinct approaches to active management, stock selection or factor risk, can produce substantially different tracking errors.\nActive and passive management: Fund managers have two ways to exercise their business. They can operate an active fund management policy, or, on the other hand they may be more passive. Investors investing in actively managed funds seek expertise from the fund managers who are assumed to have a more comprehensive view of the current market situation than investors themselves. This will be done by analysing individual investments and the market in general and actively trying to differentiate the fund holdings from the benchmark index holdings. Passive management, or \"indexing\", in comparison involves assembling a portfolio of assets that mirrors the performance of a given asset market or its corresponding index. Passively managed funds are often a cheap way to invest in funds and they also offer the advantage of diversification. In contrast, actively managed funds are expected to add value by deviating from their relative benchmark, but as a consequence are less diversified than passive funds and are more expensive to manage.\nThe two dimensions of active management: Tracking error\nResearch design: Our methodology closely follows that of Cremers and Petajisto (2009) and Petajisto (2010) with a few exceptions. First, unlike Cremers and Petajisto (2009) and Petajisto (2010) we used only one index as our benchmark portfolio. In contrast, Cremers and Petajisto (2009) and Petajisto (2010) used the benchmark index self-reported by a manager in the fund prospectus. The benefit of the prospectus benchmark is that it is the index the fund manager has publicly committed to beat, so both investors and the manager are likely to focus on performance relative to that benchmark. However, from an inspection of information that is available on each fund it very soon became apparent that the benchmark used has varied over time and with the changes in managers, leaving us with no consistent way to identify the funds' precise benchmark and so we used the UK property index with the widest coverage, on a quarterly basis, the Investment Property Databank Quarterly Index (IPDQI)[4].\nFund data: Data on 38 UK real estate funds are used in this study, which had complete return and market segment data over the period from Q4:2003: to Q4:2011. All the data are taken from the publications of the Association of Real Estate Funds (AREF) as compiled by IPD.\nFund classification: In this section the level of active management in UK real estate funds is measured by using Active Share and tracking error and the funds are then assigned to the various forms of active management as identified by Cremers and Petajisto (2009). The results presented graphically in Figure 2 with Active Share measured on the vertical axis, while tracking error is on the horizontal axis.\nSub-period analysis: Due to data limitations we have used nine-year average figures when categorising the funds, whereas Cremers and Petajisto (2009) rebalanced the categories after every year. Therefore it is important to see whether the fund categorisation results would have changed if different time periods were used. In this section, therefore, we breakdown the sample period into three sub-periods based on the performance of the market index: Q4:2003-Q1:2007 the period before the GFC; the period during the GFC, Q2:2007-Q4:2009; and the period after the GFC, Q1:2010-Q4:2011. The sub-period fund categorisation results are presented in Figures 3-5.\nActive management and returns: We report in Table II the average return, Active Share and tracking error across our sample period for the various fund groups identified above and for good and bad funds. We define good (bad) performance as being in the top (bottom) five funds in the sample. Following the suggestion of Higgins (2010), that other characteristics should also be evaluated, we also report fund size (PSm) and leverage (Debt to GAV per cent) at the start of each sample period to avoid biasing the results[8].\nConclusions: Tracking error has traditionally been the most common way to measure the active management of a fund. It measures how closely the fund return follows the benchmark index return. Deviations in these returns indicate how actively the fund is managed. However, tracking error alone is an inadequate measure of fund activity since even very actively managed funds can in fact generate rather low tracking errors. Cremers and Petajisto (2009) suggest therefore instead of using tracking error alone a complete picture of active management is better achieved by including Active Share into the calculations. In particular, Petajisto (2010) argues that \"Active Share is a reasonable proxy for stock selection, whereas tracking error is a proxy for systematic factor risk\". Thus, using the dual measures of active management should allow us to identify more easily the type of active management strategy the fund is pursuing to add value.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of UK property funds using the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error, to distinguish between the types of active management styles used by funds.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use data on 38 UK real estate funds and classify them into five active management categories using the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error. Then, the authors compare their return performance against Active Share, tracking error, fund size and leverage. Therefore the paper is able to answer two of the fundamental questions of investment: does active management add value and what form of active management, stock selection or factor risk, is better at adding value to the fund?\nFindings: There are three main conclusions. First, the approach of Cremers and Petajisto (2009) and Petajisto (2010) is able to classify real estate funds in the UK on their management activity into categories that makes intuitive sense and seem stable over time. Second, balanced funds show relatively low Active Shares and particularly low tracking errors, due to the benefits of property-type diversification. In contrast, specialists funds display higher Active Shares and both low and high tracking errors depending on their stock-picking approach; diversified or concentrated. Third, an analysis over different time periods confirmed that funds in the sample essentially remained in the same categories within the sample period, even during markedly different market return periods. This implies that investors need to constantly monitor changes in the market and switch between fund management styles, if at all possible.\nResearch limitations/implications: The analysis was only based on 38 funds with complete data over the sample period and the relationship between fees and active management was not examined, even though ultimately investors are concerned with returns after management fee. It would be instructive therefore if the number of funds and time period was expanded to see if the results are robust and to see whether management fees outweigh the benefits of active manager.\nPractical implications: The findings should enable investors to make a more informed investment decisions in the future.\nOriginality/value: To the best of the author's knowledge this is the first paper to apply the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error, in the UK real estate market.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social network sites: early adopters' personality and influence	[ "Twitter", "Social media", "Personality traits", "Early adopters", "Google+", "Social network site influence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Social network sites (SNS) are one of the most important social phenomena of this century (Dessart et al., 2015; Leonardi, 2015; Naylor et al., 2012; Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). The widespread adoption of networks such as Facebook and Twitter has had a seismic impact on the manner in which consumers discuss and interact with a variety of products and services. According to statista.com, Facebook had 1.5 billion active users, Twitter had 304 million users and Google+ had 300 million users as of August 2015. SNS tools enable consumers to create and share content, network, access information and product samples, interact, give advice or influence others within seconds (Asur and Huberman, 2010; Campbell et al., 2011; Oh et al., 2016). Research also suggests that incorporating SNS into marketing initiatives can increase brand relationship depth and loyalty as well as generate incremental purchase behavior (Holt, 2015; Kim and Ko, 2012; Kumar et al., 2016; Laroche et al., 2012; Matos et al., 2014; Pooja et al., 2012). This represents a significant marketing opportunity for any business that can leverage social participation by facilitating and promoting positive mention of their product or service on such sites (Barnes, 2010; Bughin, 2015; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011; Lipsman et al., 2012).\nTheoretical framework and hypotheses development: This research is embedded in the long history of personality research and in particular in the seminal work of Rogers (1962, 1995) who established the link between personality and consumption patterns, specifically the adoption of innovation. Although the history of personality as an explanatory variable in consumer research has been a long one, its predictive potential remains a matter of considerable dispute. Empirical results have been quite mixed with much of the blame for this inconsistency being attributed to the absence of guiding theoretical frameworks coupled with disagreement over both the number of traits to be tested and the appropriate scales to measure them (Haugtvedt et al., 1992; Kassarjian and Sheffet, 1991). Despite this contested and problematized pedigree, it should still be kept in mind that, from the outset, Rogers (1962, 1995) has consistently upheld the explanatory value of personality in illuminating the behavior of early adopters.\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Descriptive results and preliminary analysis\nDiscussion: Theoretical and managerial implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to provide a social network site influence (SNSI) profile of early adopters. This study explores the relationship between personality traits of early adopters of social network sites (SNS), their propensity to share information and rumors and their general SNSI.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online survey was sent to the first users of Twitter (n = 200) and Google+ (n = 130) to assess their personality traits. Answers of each respondent were matched to their SNSI scores from Klout and PeerIndex, the industry standard for measuring SNSI.\nFindings: Early adopters of SNS, in comparison to market mavens, are more likely to exert influence on one particular topic related to their profession: technology and the internet. Their levels of extraversion, openness and conscientiousness have a positive and significant impact on information sharing, and a negative impact on rumor sharing. Both, information sharing and rumor sharing have a positive and significant impact on the general SNSI of early adopters.\nOriginality/value: Firms struggle to decide whether to invest early in the life of newly created SNS as they are unsure about the characteristics of early adopters of such networks, and, more importantly, whether these sites are effective initial vectors for word-of-mouth. The findings demonstrate that early adopters' influence (SNSI score) is on par with that of the rest of SNS users, suggesting their influence may be somewhat limited. The study also shows that the opinion leadership impact of the more influential early adopters is monomorphic in nature, being mainly confined to the related technology and internet domains.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Building a sense of family at Visa Europe: Leadership development stimulates "ripples in the pond"	[ "Leadership development", "Organizational culture", "Financial institutions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Visa is one of the world's best-known brands, and is a global market leader with more than 315 million Visa cards issued in Europe.\nWork smarter to make Visa go faster: The pace and scope of change in the business continues to increase. Managers must work smarter to make Visa go faster, and the business needs to ensure - more than ever - that it has the right people with the right capability leading and managing the business.As well as tough competitive challenges, Visa Europe has recently chosen to retain its membership structure, while around the world all other Visa regions are merging into a single entity before a public flotation. Visa Europe faces the challenge of continuing to increase its commerciality and competitiveness by leveraging the association model.Greater business need has been met with powerful sponsorship. Visa Europe has a new leader in Peter Ayliffe, who was appointed President and CEO in March 2006. Previously, Peter had been on the board of Visa for six years and before that was a main board director, with responsibility for retail banking at Lloyds TSB. The LDP always benefited from the keen sponsorship of Hans van der Velde - now the deputy chairman of the Visa Europe board. Peter Ayliffe is currently on the board of Investors in People, and continues that tradition of sponsorship from the very top of the organization.\nToo successful? Today's challenges for the LDP: Visa Europe's LDP has everything going for it: it is now very well established and highly regarded; people aspire to be on the program; and it has more than just excellent sponsorship - it has full participation from Peter Ayliffe and members of his executive management committee, who act as mentors to the program's participants.Now, more than in previous years, the program is faced with some unusual challenges. Has the program become so well established that perhaps it is having less of an impact as an aspirational and motivational program in the organization than it had at first? How can Visa keep the program fresh and motivating so that it inspires people to go the extra mile? How can the business maintain the prestige of a well-established program which is almost \"part of the furniture\" so that the highest-caliber participants continue to be selected?A recent company-wide review of the LDP has thrown the spotlight on leadership in Visa Europe and highlighted a powerful appetite for leadership development to help the business to meet its challenges successfully.\nHow the LDP is evolving to meet the challenges: Short-term secondments are a relatively new addition to the LDP. The aim is to get participants out into a part of the business that is quite different from their own, and contributes to their development and understanding of the business. Where the secondments have worked well, they have delivered real benefits.Jonathan Capon had worked in relationship management for three years when he was nominated for the LDP. His secondment was to strategy and planning - an area of the business that he knew very little about. His responsibility during his secondment was to work on Visa's medium-term plan. \"This was a huge shift in my skill set and took me completely out of my comfort zone,\" he said. \"I had the chance to see how Visa operates at senior levels. It was extremely challenging and demanding time. I learned a tremendous amount about Visa's vision, goals and strategy, and had the opportunity to work with some of the most senior people in the business.\"But getting the secondments to work consistently well for everyone has been a real challenge. Success depends on all the right elements being in place. There are always business challenges in releasing high-potential people from their roles to take up secondments. Visa is looking more closely at direct \"swaps\" and at using back-filling as a development opportunity so that managers are confident that they will be not be left with a big gap in their team when they release their person. It has also sometimes been a challenge to get genuine, high-value pieces of work for the LPPs to undertake during their secondment.Sara Bruck, head of organization development and responsible for the LDP, said: \"We all know - and we all agree - that a good secondment can be a powerful development opportunity for someone. We will continue to find ways to support and enable the business to release their people and to create really valuable secondment opportunities.\"\nFrom suppliers to partners: Over the life of the program, Visa Europe's relationship with its suppliers has evolved to become increasingly collaborative, while never losing focus on the business needs. Visa Europe retains two main suppliers for the leadership program: IMD for the business-school program and Stellar for one-to-one development coaching.\nIMD - precisely tailored: Over the life of the LDP, Visa has worked increasingly closely with IMD to ensure that the business-school element of the program is relevant to the business. This year, two participants from the LDP met IMD to co-design and tailor the week's program to meet precisely the requirements of the Visa participants and their project teams. IMD then selected speakers and tutors to focus on the relevant issues, challenges and skills the teams required to deliver their projects successfully. This approach delivered targeted development and support to the LDP participants, which accelerated their delivery of their strategic business projects.\nFrom coachee to coach: From the start, a goal of the LDP was to support the development of a coaching culture in Visa Europe. Alumni from the program are selected and invited to be trained as coaches to Visa's emerging potentials (EPs). Visa designed guidelines and principles about the way internal coaching works in the business, and the company put in place a practical coaching skills program. Ongoing support is available to the internal coaches from an expert coach.The program has just run its first year and is having a positive motivational impact. Annemarie Echevarria, a service manager in customer services, is one of Visa's EP people. She describes the benefits she experienced: \"The coaching gave me the opportunity to see things from a different business perspective and encouraged me to try new ways of dealing with work challenges. It has helped me to become more self aware and to reflect on my actions and the impact that these have on those around me.\"Through the EP coaching program, Visa is beginning to reach further and deeper into the organization to identify and develop people with potential. A huge additional benefit is that the internal coaches have found their coaching skills extremely valuable in the management of their own teams and in their roles as leaders and coaches on major corporate-change programs.Diane Scott, vice-president in corporate communications, took up the opportunity to train and work as an internal coach. \"I have enjoyed coaching motivated people starting out on their careers,\" she said. \"I've learned about the areas of the business I knew very little about and extended my network of contacts. I have also used the coaching techniques I learned in my everyday work - I think that I now get more active buy-in and people take more responsibility - and this frees up my time.\"\nWhat's in it for Visa?: The LDP represents a significant investment for Visa Europe, both financially and in terms of senior-management time. What benefits are there for the business? The return on investment includes:* Building the coaching skills of a key group of LDP alumni has helped to accelerate the growth of a coaching culture. Coaching is increasingly recognized as a key development tool - for line managers as well as coaches - and a key skill that is applicable across the business. As Diane Scott put it: \"The benefits to the company come from the trained coaches using their skills in their everyday working relationships. It starts to foster a coaching culture from a grass-roots basis.\"* The ripple effect across the business - the program links people in a web of internal networks. The informal connections across the business are not just \"nice to have\". Work and projects get delivered more quickly and easily. Organization boundaries are broken down and a sense of \"family\" is created.* Visa develops people with broader management skills and the program helps to break down organization silos because people appreciate the challenges faced by other functional areas.* Individuals are stretched, challenged, and moved out of their comfort zone and into their development zone. The LDP provides an opportunity to test and assess their potential.* The program helps to identify and develop the best people and helps Visa to retain them. In the LDP participants, alumni of the program, and the emerging potential group, the business has a talent pool and is developing a potential leadership pipeline.* The project element of the LDP has helped to ensure the successful delivery of some key business projects.\nWhere next?: In response to the challenges in its environment, the business is reaching strongly for leadership development at all levels in the organization. As Sara Bruck said: \"We are looking much more closely at exactly what we mean by 'leadership', what we need to meet our challenges, and at what that means for development at different levels in the business.\"Visa recognizes that breadth of experience - as well as specialist expertise - is a strong foundation for developing people into senior roles. Secondments will continue and the business will increasingly be looking at inter-regional transfers.The company is also strengthening its people-planning process - the way it manages succession and talent management. The aim is to balance skills across the organization and help to ensure that career moves are right for the individual as well as for the business, making the best use of talents and preparing people for more senior roles.After five years, Visa Europe has the advantage of a substantial alumni group who have a positive impact on the fabric of the organization. Some will continue to develop as coaches and others will become more closely involved in key corporate projects and initiatives. Visa will be looking at the next phase of their development, and considering them as a key part of the talent pool for the future of the business.Peter Ayliffe summarised Visa's position: \"To achieve our stretching objectives we need to continue to invest in our people. They have made us the leading worldwide payments brand and they will enable us to differentiate ourselves further and build on that leadership position.\"The LDP is a great program and one we wish to invest in to build on its success to date.\"\nNote: Derrick Ahlfeldt, Senior Vice-President - HRM, Visa Europe, can be reached by email at: ahlfeldd@visa.com. Jennifer Cramb, Director of Stellar Consulting Ltd, Peterborough, UK, can be emailed at Jennifer.cramb@stellarconsulting.co.uk\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Describes the challenges faced by Visa Europe's leadership-development program (LDP) in its fifth year and the approaches Visa Europe has taken to keep the program fresh, and to accelerate the development of a coaching culture in the business - one of the original objectives for the program.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Details how short-term secondments have been introduced to get participants into a part of the business that differs from their own, and the challenges that have had to be overcome to make the secondments work well. Highlights the roles of IMD, for the business-school program, and Stellar Consulting Ltd, for one-to-one development coaching.\nFindings: - Reveals that building the coaching skills of a key group of LDP alumni has helped to accelerate the growth of a coaching culture. The program has linked people in a web of internal networks, and helped to break down organization silos because participants appreciate the challenges faced by other functional areas. Individuals are stretched, challenged, and moved out of their comfort zone and into their development zone. The program helps to identify and develop the best people and helps Visa Europe to retain them. The project element of the LDP has helped to ensure the successful delivery of some key business projects.\nPractical implications: - Examines how Visa Europe will be looking at the next phase of the development of LDP alumni, and considering them as a key part of the talent pool for the future of the business.\nOriginality/value: - Shows that, after five years, Visa Europe has the advantage of a substantial alumni group who have a positive impact on the fabric of the organization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Attenuating double jeopardy of negative country of origin effects and latecomer brand: An application study of ethnocentrism in emerging markets	[ "Ethnocentrism", "Emerging markets", "Country of origin", "Choice-based conjoint analysis", "Latecomer brands", "Willingness to purchase emerging car brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The dichotomous classification of the \"country of origin\" (COO) effect (Eroglu and Machleit, 1989; Gaedeke, 1973) by the very nature of the construct separates consumers \"likes\" from \"dislikes\" for products based on the perception of the quality standard associated with the COO (typically \"manufacturing\" of physical products). While the dichotomous nature of the COO effect was introduced at the onset of COO research (Schooler, 1965), the subsequent literature established positive COO effects for products from developed countries, yet at the same time negative effects for products originating from less developed countries (Bannister and Saunders, 1978; Hamin and Elliott, 2006; Nes, 1981).\n2 Literature review: The theoretical foundation for our study is grounded in two major concepts: the understanding of latecomer firms, and second the well-established country of origin effect, or COO. While both theories have developed independently over time, as will be outlined next, we combine them in our study.\n3 Methodology: This study uses a two-step approach to achieve its research objectives: first, it performs a choice-based conjoint analysis (CBCA)[1] of a sample of 3,190 respondents in the six countries (China, Germany, India, Russia, the USA, the UK) to reveal respondents' willingness to purchase latecomer brands (the choice-based conjoint analysis CBC is based on the latent class developed by the Sawtooth Software). In order to capture a more representative data set in each of the six countries under investigation, we sampled respondents in the following regions:\n4 Results: The results of this study are discussed in four sections where, first, consumers in emerging markets were contrasted with those in developed markets on their willingness to purchase latecomer brands first (Sections 4.1 and 4.2); and, second, in relation to their experience with latecomer brands (Section 4.3):\n5 Discussion and implications: This study, in essence, found two different patterns in terms of latecomer brands from emerging markets. Developed markets are sceptical, but do show interest in latecomer brands, and there are market segments with substantial potential. In the emerging markets, consumers are keen to purchase their very own country brand such as Great Wall by the Chinese, Tata by the Indians, and AvtoVAZ by the Russians. Emerging markets have shown clear ethnocentrism in this study with consumers displaying strong preferences for their own brands. This is further supported by emerging markets' hesitation to buy latecomer brands from competing emerging markets. Our finding is in line with the literature that has established that \"human values can predict better COO images than other variables\" (Balabanis et al., 2002a, p. 582). In other words, consumer ethnocentrism and human values are in fact closely related (Balabanis et al., 2002b), reflected in our study's clear preference for traditional patriotism found in the three emerging markets under investigation.\n6 Contribution to theory: In essence, this study found evidence that the long established COO effects hold true, i.e. products from developed markets are seen in a favourable light. However, previous research has largely compared positive views on products from developed markets to, of course, generally less favourable views on less developed country products. Our study departed from this paradigm and focused solely on products from less developed countries where consumers predominantly hold negative views. The first contribution of our study is the focus on negative COO effects for products originating from less developed market such as China, India and Russia, and then comparing consumer perspectives in developed (Germany, the UK and the USA) and less developed markets.\n7 Conclusion: The purpose of this study was two-fold: first, to explore consumers' willingness to purchase latecomer brands from emerging markets, and contrast emerging to developed markets, and second, to study consumers' experience with latecomer brands from emerging markets, and again contrast emerging to developed markets.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of ethnocentrism in attenuating the negative country of origin effect and latecomer brands. The literature has established the importance of the \"country of origin\" effect, and this study compares consumers in the Asian emerging markets to developed consumers' response to cars from China, India and Russia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data on consumers' willingness to purchase cars from emerging markets such as China, India and Russia were collected from 3,201 respondents in those three emerging markets and in the three most important Western car markets, the USA, the UK and Germany. The study employed a choice-based conjoint analysis.\nFindings: The results of this study confirmed the hypothesised ethnocentrism in the emerging markets with a strong preference for their own latecomer brands (Great Wall, Tata and AvtoVAZ, respectively). Developed markets in contrast are more sceptical of the Chinese, Indian and Russian car brands, but there is nonetheless substantial potential, especially with consumers who have previously bought latecomer brands from Asia. Utility values per brand, price, brand-partnership, product features, warranties and also place of manufacturing/assembly have been calculated in the study.\nOriginality/value: This paper should prove valuable to academic researchers in establishing strong consumer preferences in emerging markets for their own products, and in establishing the potential of latecomer brands in developed markets.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational culture, innovation and performance: a study from a non-western context	[ "Performance", "Innovation", "Technological innovation", "Organizational culture", "Banks", "Palestine", "Marketing innovation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Nowadays, organizations need to operate in business environments, which are characterized by fast technological changes, intensive international competition and continuous changing client's preferences (Droge et al., 2008). Given these complexities, innovation is seen as one of the critical factors for achieving organizational success and sustaining competitive advantage (Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001). It is well documented in the literature that innovative organizations have more flexibility and can respond quickly to changes, in order to take advantage of business opportunities (Drucker, 1985). Innovation is considered as a competitive mechanism for organizations' performance and success, and is regarded as an important instrument to adapt to a continuously changing business environment (Blackwell, 2006). Furthermore, previous studies provide evidence that innovation can positively affect performance (e.g. Baker and Sinkula, 2002; Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001; Luk et al., 2008; Naranjo-Valencia et al., 2016; Uzkurt et al., 2013).\nTheory and hypotheses: Organizational culture, definitions and models\nMethods: The present study is a quantitative study applied to the Palestinian banking sector with the purpose of examining the hypothesized positive relationships between organizational culture, marketing innovation, technological innovation and banks' performance. Data were gathered using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to the employees of banking sector located in Gaza strip. The distribution and collection method were the drop-off and pick up approach. A total of 320 employees were invited to fill the questionnaire. A total of 186 filled and usable questionnaires were gathered and valid for statistical analysis. The response rate in our study is 58 percent.\nRespondents' profile: Most of the respondents were male (70 percent). In total, 25.8 percent of the respondents were aged higher than 44 years, 25.8 percent were aged less than 30 years, 38.7 percent were aged from 30 to 38 years and 9.7 percent were aged from 38 to 44 years. Regarding experience, 32.3 percent had 5-10 years of experience, 16.1 percent had 10-15 years of experience, 22.6 percent had an experience of more than 15 years and 29 percent had less than 5 years of experience. Concerning education, most of the respondents had a bachelor's degree (87.1 percent).\nMeasures: Organizational culture\nInitial analysis: Table I shows correlations and descriptive statistics of the research variables. The means and SDs for the examined variables were (Mean: 4.15, SD: 0.55) for organizational culture, (Mean: 4.44, SD: 0.48) for marketing innovation, (Mean: 4.56, SD: 0.45) for technology innovation, and (Mean: 4.30, SD: 0.60) for banks' performance. According to the results, correlations were significant between marketing innovation, organizational culture and performance.\nAssessing the measurement model: For the purpose of checking the internal consistency of the items, factor loading was calculated for each variable. Three items of organizational culture were removed from the model due to their low loading. All other items loadings were retained as their factor loading was higher than 0.5 as presented in Figure 1. Furthermore, we have checked for the variables' reliability by calculating the average variance extracted and composite reliability (Hulland, 1999). As presented in Table II, AVE values for all variables were higher than 0.5 and CR values were higher than 0.7 (Hulland, 1999). Hence, all variables in the model can be regarded as internally reliable and consistent.\nAssessing the structural model: Table V shows that the R2 values for banks' performance and marketing innovation exceed the acceptable moderate ratio as suggested by Chin (1998). Banks performance has an R2 value of 0.561, marketing innovation an R2 value of 0.112. Technological innovation had a week value of R2 of 0.055. On the other hand, the effect size f2 for the research variables was also calculated. Results of f2 values presented in Table VI showed medium effects for the following relationships: organizational culture on performance, organizational culture on marketing innovation and marketing innovation on performance. On the contrary, the effect was week for the technological innovation and performance link.\nTesting the hypotheses: direct and mediating effects: For the purpose of testing the research hypotheses H1-H5, we have calculated the direct effects. Table VII shows all the hypotheses were supported expect for H5. Organizational culture is positively related to banks' performance (b=0.596, p=0.000). Organizational culture is positively related to both marketing innovation (b=0.334, p=0.000) and technology innovation and (b=0.234, p=0.000). Marketing innovation was found to exert a positive effect on performance (b=0.297, p=0.000). The relationship between technology innovation and performance was not significant (b =-0.001, p=0.982).\nDiscussion and implications: The purpose of our study was to examine the links between organizational culture, innovation and banks' performance in a non-western context (Palestinian context). The findings of our study provide evidence for the relationship between organizational culture and banks performance, supporting H1. The results of our study are in line with previous studies demonstrating a positive relationship between organizational culture and performance (e.g. Daft, 2007; Fey and Denison, 2003; Kim and Chang, 2019; Krasnicka et al., 2018; Ngo and Loi, 2008; Salimi and Aveh, 2016). The results imply that the values and philosophy adopted within Palestinian banks contribute positively to the banks performance.\nLimitations and future research: Like any other study, our study has some limitations. First, marketing innovation, technology innovation and banks' performance were assessed by subjective measures. Future research might consider using more objective measures of innovation. Second, data were collected only from the Palestinian banking sector and this might restrict the generalizability of the results to other sectors. Hence, future research might replicate and extend this study to other sectors in Palestine and similar national contexts in the region such as Jordan and Lebanon. Future research using larger data and across different sectors will give more insights on the association between organizational culture and performance through innovation. Third, our research design does not allow the researchers to establish cause and effect links between the examined variables, hence, longitudinal research is recommended for future devours. In general, organizational culture research conducted using only quantities techniques provide restricted understanding. Hence, future studies might consider using qualitative methods to provide better explanation of the organizational culture, innovation and performance associations. Finally, our research analyzed only the role of marketing and technology innovation in the banking sector. Future studies might consider examining the role of other forms of innovation. Finally, it would be also interesting for future studies to investigate the different types of organizational culture and their impact on innovation and performance in the Middle Eastern region.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the links between organizational culture, innovation and banks' performance in Palestine.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were gathered from 186 employees working in the Palestinian banking sector. The data gathered were analyzed using the PLS-SEM approach.\nFindings: The findings of the study show that organizational culture and marketing innovation have a positive impact on banks' performance. Moreover, it was found that marketing performance partially mediates the relationship between organizational culture and banks' performance.\nPractical implications: The paper may be of use for banks managers to create an organizational culture, which fosters both innovation and performance.\nOriginality/value: The paper is unique as it examines organizational culture, innovation and performance links in a non-western context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of positive and negative ad-evoked associations on brand attitude	[ "Advertising", "Cognition", "Consumer behaviour", "Memory", "Nostalgia", "Brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A consumer confronted with an advertisement giving information that a beer brand uses only organic ingredients and showing a Munich-Oktoberfest scenery may process that this beer is organic, and might fantasise partying with Bavarian girls dressed in dirndls or remember being sick after having Bavarian beer. This example demonstrates that advertising message recipients can rehearse thoughts mainly reflecting message content and the execution of the advertisement, and thoughts based on the recipient's associations, reflecting previous experiences or imagination (Calder and Sternthal, 1980; Sujan et al., 1993). We use the term stimulus-based thought for the first type of thought and association for the second - associations being ad-evoked memories and fantasies. How do receivers' positive and negative associations affect their brand attitude?The present paper contributes to research on the cognitive capacity theory, which suggests that consumers' cognitive resources are limited (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980; Just and Carpenter, 1992; Kahneman, 1973). Because of these limited resources, processing of information, the elaboration on memories, for instance, and the generation of counterarguments must compete for the resources available (Bettman et al., 1998; Edell and Keller, 1989; Peracchio and Meyers-Levy, 1997). This may have the consequence that consumers miss important information, for instance, product arguments, when generating associations (Coulter, 2005). In the context of advertising, cognitive capacity theory has been studied with informational ads with a large number of product arguments. Coulter and Punj (2007) and Sujan et al. (1993) confronted participants with a list of eight product arguments while Kiselius and Sternthal (1984) provided 14 statements describing the product. These studies report negative effects of receivers' associations on brand attitudes (Coulter and Punj, 2007; Kiselius and Sternthal, 1984) and on the number of product-based thoughts generated (Sujan et al., 1993). In line with the notion of limited cognitive resources, the findings suggest that if consumers generate associations and if they should process a large number of arguments at the same time, they are likely to miss parts of the arguments. Since associations may mostly be less favourable than the product arguments that receivers miss (e.g. Sujan et al., 1993), a negative effect on brand attitude occurs. Also in line with the notion of limited cognitive resources is the finding that if an advertisement presents weak arguments, receivers' associations affect brand attitude positively (Coulter and Punj, 2007). Associations draw off resources from the generation of counter-arguments. Because associations may mostly be more favourable than the counter-arguments they prevent, a positive effect occurs (e.g. Coulter and Punj, 2007).Real life advertisements do often not provide a large number of product arguments and thus processing their message may not utilise receivers' full cognitive capacity. One gap in the existing literature is that effects of associations have not been studied for advertisements that are easy to process. If limited cognitive resources are the relevant explanation for the negative effect of associations on brand attitude found in previous studies using informational ads, the effect should be different if receivers are able to generate associations in addition to processing the message. This paper investigates how associations affect brand attitude if processing the advertisement requires little cognitive resources. Using emotional, picture-based advertisements that are easy to process as an application (Edell and Staelin, 1983), advertisements were selected in regards to the cognitive effort required in a pre-test. Pictures can contain complex information, and interpreting them can require high levels of cognitive effort (Scott, 1994) but those ads are not studied here.Another gap in the literature is that previous studies have not distinguished positive and negative associations (e.g. Coulter and Punj, 2007; Sujan et al., 1993). These studies have not analysed the effects separately because negative as well as positive associations are less favourable than product arguments missed and more favourable than counter-arguments prevented. However, if the advertisement is easy to process and receivers might generate associations and process the message, the favourableness of associations, that is whether they are positive or negative, should matter. Therefore, this paper distinguishes receivers' positive and negative associations and analyses their effects separately.This study focuses on advertisements that are positively framed. Even these advertisements may evoke negative associations in parts of the target group, because individuals' personal experiences and fantasies vary (Braun et al., 2002; Escalas, 2004; MacInnis and Jaworski, 1989). Section 2 of this paper discusses the effects of positive and negative associations on brand attitude for advertisements that are easy to process. In section 3 we present results of an empirical study with print ads.1.1 Associations\n2. Effects of positive and negative associations on brand attitude: 2.1 Associations as part of receivers' ad cognitions and brand cognitions\n3. Study: 3.1 Method\n4. Discussion: 4.1 Theoretical contribution\nNote: 1. H6 is a null hypothesis, and null hypotheses cannot, from a statistical point of view, be supported.Opens in a new window.Figure 1\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on the cognitive capacity theory. The paper aims to examine the effects of advertising recipients' positive and negative associations, that is their memories and fantasies evoked by the advertising stimulus, on brand attitude for advertisements that require little effort to process; focusing on positively framed advertisements.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper suggests a model on the effects of positive and negative association on brand attitude and tests it using partial least square. Advertisements that are easy to process were selected in a pre-test.\nFindings: - It is shown that if advertisements are easy to process, the effects of consumers' associations depend on their favourableness: positive associations have a positive effect and negative associations have a negative effect on brand attitude. These findings are an extension of knowledge on the effects of associations, because for informational advertisements previous research has demonstrated that associations generally have a negative effect on brand attitude.\nPractical implications: - Results of this study suggest that evoking positive memories and fantasies in the target group enhances the effectiveness of advertisements that require little effort to process.\nOriginality/value: - Effects of associations on brand attitude have not been studied for advertisements that require little effort to process. Previous studies have not distinguished positive and negative associations; this study analyses their effects separately.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improving performance in very small firms through effective assessment and feedback	[ "Assessment", "Feedback", "Small enterprises", "Business performance", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Sustainable competitive advantages often come from resources that are valuable and difficult to copy (Barney, 1991; Coff, 1997; Clardy, 2004). These advantages can range from rapid customer response, to economies of scale, to intellectual properties, etc. In a small firm, these resources tend to be the intangibles of human capital, i.e. the knowledge imbedded in the workforce. But possession of these resources is not enough. They must also be managed and developed, as \"knowledge-based resources include all the intellectual abilities and knowledge possessed by employees, as well as their capacity to learn and acquire more knowledge\" (Jackson et al., 2003, p. 9).The growing interest in a firm's human resource practices has developed primarily because many of the traditional sources of competitive advantage that companies have been able to rely on, such as patents, access to capital, market expansion, etc. are being eroded. These assets do not differentiate firms the way they once did (Becker et al., 1997). Increasingly, companies are relying on their human assets - the knowledge, competence and capabilities of the workforce - as a source of competitive advantage. In today's environment, people and how they are managed have become an integral source of competitive success (Becker and Gephart, 1996; Pfeffer, 1998).Overall, it has been noted that the future competitiveness of US firms is related to how well its workforce is trained, and how flexible and adaptable it is (Potter and Youngman, 1995). As a result, the management paradigm has shifted to provide employees greater opportunity to influence the outcomes of work organizations. Organizations offering these opportunities follow high performance work practices (Rowden, 2002), also known as high commitment human resource practices (Kaman et al., 2001).High performance work practices allow people to be involved in decision-making and problem-solving processes of their work activities. Based on previous research, some of the most frequently implemented high performance work practices are quality circles, work teams, job rotation, total quality management, cross-training, employee committees, selective staffing, and information sharing (Rowden, 2002). Many of these practices require the flexibility and informality that is commonly found in smaller firms. However, the prevalent informality also means that on-the-job training is the predominant training method in small firms and that other training methods only gain prominence with firm growth (Kotey and Slade, 2005).A paradox can then exist as high performance/commitment practices should be easier to implement in small firms, given the relative flexibility and informality of these companies (Manoochehri, 1988) but these practices do require more training than merely the typical on-the-job training norm found in these firms. As a result, small firm size does not automatically lead to the firm using high performance practices (Kaman et al., 2001).While the informality of entrepreneurial firms is often praised, as well as their ability to make decisions without a lot of \"red tape,\" that same informality can lead to treating people inconsistently (Kaman et al., 2001). Managers need to formalize managerial expectations and procedures while allowing for employee involvement and empowerment. These formal human resource practices can be referred to as bureaucracy (Kaman et al., 2001; Hornsby and Kuratko, 1990).Small firms can have significant differences in bureaucracy and high performance practices, depending on the number of employees. As a firm grows, informal systems cannot be relied on to be fair and consistent (Baron and Kreps, 1999), requiring more structure. Legal issues also emerge, as firms need to comply with employment laws as they add staff. Simultaneously, many firms recognize the need to provide the flexibility and input to employees so they can contribute to organizational success (Misa and Stein, 1983). Baron and Kreps (1999), p. 189) describe high performance/commitment practices as \"an ensemble of human resource practices that aim at getting more from workers by giving more to them.\"To implement such practices requires a managerial commitment. This is particularly relevant given the notion that if employees are worth hiring and keeping, they are worth training (Employer-provided Worker Training, 1997). However, this commitment is often difficult to obtain as small firms can lack managerial expertise, which prevents them from focusing on necessary human resource issues (Ahire and Golhar, 1996).Focus of paper\nResearch on the benefits of assessment and feedback: While research on training in small organizations is difficult to find, considerable evidence indicates that training employees can boost the profits and value of firms. In a study of 575 publicly traded US firms, Bass et al. (2002) concluded that for each $700 increase in per-employee annual training investment, a firm's total shareholder return for the following year was six percent higher, even after controlling for other important factors. A similar pattern was found for the ratio of price to book value and income per employee. Other studies of US manufacturing firms have associated training with higher per-employee sales (Bartel, 2000) and lower scrap rates (Holzer et al., 1993). Examining the cost effectiveness of various types of training programs provided by a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical firm, Morrow et al. (1997) found that while training in general usually had a positive impact, the most successful programs were those aimed at building sales and technical skills, the likely focus of training in a small company environment.While there are many possible approaches to training, smaller firms tend to emphasize an on-the-job approach as they generally have fewer resources (Kotey and Slade, 2005) and the number of employees makes it difficult to build economies of scale from formal programs. Although participation in formal training courses has benefits, having a mentor and learning from experience can be more appropriate in an entrepreneurial environment as it is more cost effective (Sullivan, 2000). Providing employees with knowledge of what good performance should look like and how their performance falls in relation to that standard through assessment and feedback is a logical and effective way to approach training (Kraiger et al., 1993; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996).A number of different theories and research streams support notion that feedback can motivate and enable workers to do their jobs better, including goal setting theory (Latham and Locke, 1979) and control theory (Carver and Scheier, 1990). The most influential, however, may be Thorndike's law of effect (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). Thorndike (1927) proposed that behavior which results in pleasant outcomes will be repeated, while behavior that results in unpleasant outcomes will not. In other words, when people receive positive feedback in response to their behavior, they tend to do the same thing again, but if they receive negative feedback, they are unlikely to try it again and will probably explore other approaches. The simplicity and practicality of the law has made it a favorite of both managers and researchers over the years.With these solid early beginnings, academic work on how providing feedback can increase performance has been conducted for at least a century, with a majority of writers over the years concluding that this approach does work (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). Kluger and DeNisi (1996) looked at 131 papers, which compared the performance of a group who received training with a similar group that did not. On average, feedback interventions were associated with a 0.4 standard deviation improvement in performance. Similar results were reported by Guzzo et al. (1985), who used meta-analysis to examine 98 reports on psychologically based interventions and found that such programs, on average, increased performance by 0.5 of a standard deviation. While demonstrating that using feedback on performance is an effective form of training, these reviews note that it does not always work as feedback in some studies actually led to a drop in performance. This points to the importance of examining previous research in the field in order to learn how to \"do it right.\" While most training studies been conducted in larger organizations, this stream of research can provide valuable lessons for owners and managers conducting assessment and feedback interventions in small companies.Lessons from training research\nAssessment pitfalls and avoidance techniques: A common problem with assessment is rater errors. A few minor random errors are to be expected with any evaluation (e.g. slight difference of opinion from one rater to another), but systematic errors can threaten the reliability of the evaluation and by default, the validity of the entire assessment process. Typical systematic errors in evaluation and assessment include similar-to-me, contrast, distributional, and halo/horns (Lowe, 1986; Noe et al., 2003).Defining common rater errors\nUsing structured assessment to reduce rater errors: The above errors often occur at a subconscious level. The raters don't intend to stray from the criteria and evaluate based on irrelevant factors (e.g. an employee's race, gender, or appearance), but that's what occurs. Creating a structured evaluation tool that has categories of low, medium, and high performance, as well as behavioral examples of what low, medium, and high performance looks like, can help reduce rater errors.Research in the human resource management and psychology fields has found comparable tools to be effective at reducing common rater errors (Wexley et al., 1972; Latham et al., 1975). An example of such a tool is a behavioral checklist (Reilly et al., 1990; Casio, 1998), where there are examples of low, medium, and high performance that can be checked off as the behaviors are observed.Developing a model of successful job performance\nPerformance feedback based on structured assessment: As mentioned, once the tool is developed, it can now be used to give employees very specific, behavioral feedback with regards to their performance. Employees can be shown their completed form and can see the specific occurrences of successful and unsuccessful performance, as documented by the rater. Thus, the form can provide guidance on which aspects of performance should be encouraged and which aspects of performance need to change (Noe et al., 2003).In addition, the review of the form should also be accompanied by a performance discussion with the employee's rater. This allows the rater to explain the score given to the employee, and to provide detail regarding the specific behaviors observed that led to the rating. The discussion should be used to reinforce examples of good performance, and provide suggestions for improvement when discussing examples of unsuccessful performance (Sherman et al., 1998). This also allows the rater to clarify the rating, and allows the employee a chance to ask questions and gain a better understanding of their evaluation. An important consideration here is to provide feedback that answers both the \"what\" and the \"why.\" In other words, use specific behavioral examples to let the employee know \"what\" specifically was effective or ineffective, and also explain \"why\" the behavior was effective or ineffective (e.g. the behavior made the customer feel uncomfortable, confused the customer, etc.).Avoiding defensive reactions during the feedback process\nConclusion: Given the competitive nature as well as the survival struggle of very small firms, any opportunity to create a competitive advantage could mean the difference between their success or failure. Enhancing the effectiveness of performance evaluation and performance feedback by formalizing the process may provide such an opportunity. The use of a structured assessment approach, like the behavioral checklist provided in Figure 1, is consistent with a movement toward formalizing processes in very small firms that may make the difference between success and failure (Huselid, 1995; Kotey and Meredith, 1997).The methodology proposed allows the owners to communicate to employee's specific behavioral examples of what successful performance entails. It also provides a mechanism for owners of these very small firms to highlight aspects of employee performance that are aligned with the best interests of the organization, as well as those that are not. Clearly, there is substantial evidence to suggest that when done effectively, feedback can be a catalyst for marked jumps in performance improvement (Guzzo et al., 1985; Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). Given the model of performance that employees will be evaluated is created directly from observed examples of successful job performance, the utility of the tool and the feedback derived from it are more likely to be accepted by employees (Alliger et al., 1997).With the numerous problems (e.g. rater errors) that are often associated with performance evaluation (Lowe, 1986), a structured assessment approach like the behavioral checklist can help improve the effectiveness of employee assessment. As suggested, a model of successful performance can be derived by using critical incidents (Harvey, 1992; Casio, 1998), which can then be used as the foundation for a behavioral checklist grounded in examples of successful and unsuccessful job behaviors (Reilly et al., 1990; Casio, 1998). The checklist has the potential to assess employee performance and provide feedback in a very structured and valid manner. Continuing, under the proper conditions for the acceptance of feedback (Kennedy, 1995; Giles and Mossholder, 1990), action plans can increase the chances that the feedback will be transferred back to the job (Gollwitzer and Brandstatter, 1997; Gollwitzer, 1999), thereby providing substantial individual and organizational benefits.In conclusion, the literature reviewed and methods provided offer owners of very small firms a way to enhance the education and training of their workforce by formalizing the assessment and feedback process. Further, the strategies for providing feedback to employees and for creating action plans to increase the likelihood that the performance changes will become permanent. Hopefully, very small firms will use the methods and strategies offered to improve the quality and specificity of their performance feedback, with the end result being increased employee and organizational performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to improve assessment and feedback processes in the training practices of very small firms, thereby improving the firms' human capital.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper reviews research and practice on effective assessment and feedback.\nFindings: - Based on this paper, human resources are increasingly seen as a potential source of sustained competitive advantage, and well-trained workers can boost the performance of even very small firms. Hence, a method is provided which very small firms can use to create and implement a structured assessment tool that builds on observation of critical incidents to illustrate the differences between poor, average, and good performance.\nPractical implications: - The paper shows that readers can use the provided tools to assess and improve employee performance, thereby enhancing their firm's competitive position.\nOriginality/value: - This paper can be used by very small firms to evaluate employee performance and provide employees with both positive and constructive feedback. Additionally, suggestions are provided that allow these firms to use this feedback to effectively set employee performance goals and action plans.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A multi-stakeholder perspective on the adoption of good agricultural practices in the Thai fresh produce industry	[ "Supply chain", "Credibility", "Thailand", "Food safety assurance", "Fresh produce", "Good agricultural practice (GAP)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recurrent food scares have raised awareness of food safety issues among consumers worldwide. Food scandals have not only reduced consumers' confidence in food safety, but also threaten the sustainability of the food industry and trade. When consumers become aware of a food safety scandal and start to consider the possibility that a certain food is unsafe, they generally tend to stop consuming that food and look for substitutes, which can heavily damage a specific food sector (Mazzocchi et al., 2008). In some cases, these events also shake consumer confidence in national food safety regulation and result in significant institutional changes in the food safety management system (Henson and Jaffee, 2008).\n2. GAP implementation in Thai fresh produce supply chain: 2.1. Thai fresh produce supply chain\n3. Methods and data: We adopt an exploratory research approach to identify issues affecting GAP adoption in the Thai fresh produce industry. Therefore, we did not impose a theoretical model or framework on the data collection and analysis. The intention was not to test a particular theoretical perspective, but to examine a relatively under-investigated area and give input for future research based on quantitative approaches.\n4. Results: This section summarises the main findings by supply chain tier. The results focus on how GAP standards are diffused in the supply chain and the standards' main opportunities and challenges. Despite our attempt to reach stakeholders who are aware of different GAPs, the results show that they are knowledgeable mainly about Q-GAP; only few respondents knew about ThaiGAP and GLOBALGAP. Therefore, our results are suitable with regard to Q-GAP situations while the others were mentioned only for comparative reason. Awareness of ThaiGAP and GLOBALGAP was good only in the group of experts, exporters, and producers with connections to exporters.\n5. Discussion and conclusions: Stakeholders and consumers perceived that there is an increasing demand for safer produce because they considered the level of safety in current produce as low. In addition, due to the perceived lack of credibility regarding current verification systems, demand for assurance that the produce is safe has been increasing. Therefore, they perceived GAP as being useful as one of the possible ways to improve food safety levels at the production stage. Among GAP standards implemented in Thailand, according to a majority of respondents, Q-GAP is the most promising because it is the most widespread standard and is supported by the government, while ThaiGAP and GLOBALGAP would be useful mainly for high-end and export markets. The results suggest four main urgent issues that should be addressed to create trustworthy standards and improve food safety in the Thai fresh produce supply chain:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors hindering the adoption of good agricultural practices (GAPs) in the Thai fresh fruit and vegetable industry from the perspectives of key stakeholders in different tiers of the supply chain up to consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were carried out in Bangkok and nearby cities. The key informants were experts, governmental authorities, producers, distributors, exporters, and consumers. A qualitative content-summarising approach was used to analyse the interview transcripts.\nFindings: Stakeholders perceived the credibility of national GAP (Q-GAP) standards implemented in the Thai domestic market as low, due to a lack of reliable verification and traceability and because the system is managed by governmental bodies. Consumer demand could drive the market of safe produce, but retail stores are the main influencers of producers' adoption of GAPs in domestic markets.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings are based on a small group of Thai fresh produce industry players and consumers who operate mainly in an urban context.\nPractical implications: The paper provides relevant information for policy makers and industrialists to find appropriate strategies to sustain GAPs in Thailand. Stakeholder awareness of food safety issues and information provision are crucial.\nOriginality/value: This is the first in-depth study of stakeholders' perceptions of GAP implementation in the Thai fresh produce supply chain as the industry is currently transitioning from a commodity market to a quality/safety-oriented market. The results raise important issues regarding GAP adoption, food safety certification, and labelling in Thailand.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Seeking feedback but unable to improve work performance? Qualified feedback from trusted supervisors matters	[ "Performance management", "Employee behaviour", "Feedback-seeking behaviour", "Trust", "Perceived feedback quality", "Work performance", "Supervisor" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Feedback in organizations indicates whether employees' behavior or performance is appropriate, and how employees can adjust to succeed at their work environment (Ashford et al., 2003; Ashford and Tsui, 1991). In this sense, feedback is a valuable resource that helps employees achieve work goals and improve work performance (Ashford, 1986). Given the instrumental value of feedback, employees are expected to actively seek it from various sources (i.e. a supervisor) and to alter behavior or performance by using it effectively (Ashford and Tsui, 1991; Fedor et al., 1992).\nFSB and work performance: As Ashford and Cummings (1983) proposed, feedback is valuable to employees' work performance because it contains helpful information on how they are performing well, how their supervisors evaluate them, and what employees need to be modified to achieve expected goals (Ashford et al., 2003). The detailed, theoretical reasoning for the relationship between FSB and work performance can be explained in two ways.\nBoundary conditions in the relationship between FSB and work performance: As discussed above, existing research has revealed an inconsistent relationship between FSB and work performance (e.g. Anseel et al., 2013); one possible explanation is that important moderating variables have not been considered. Although previous research has looked at the main effects of feedback quality (e.g. O'Reilly and Anderson, 1980) and interpersonal trust (e.g. Barner-Rasmussen, 2003) on work performance, the interactional effects of feedback quality, trust, and FSB on work performance have not been explored. As such, it is necessary to investigate how feedback quality and trust in one's supervisor influence on the FSB-job performance relationship. In the following section, we will develop hypotheses on the moderating effects of feedback quality and trust in a supervisor.\nMethod: Sample and procedures\nResults: Validity analysis\nDiscussion: Most of the existing research on FSB has assumed that employees' proactive FSB translates into higher work performance (Ashford, 1986). However, contrary to this assumption, a meta-study by Anseel et al. (2013) has shown that some research has yielded inconsistent results on the relationship between FSB and work performance. In this regard, this study tried to examine when employees' FSB is positively related to work performance by considering characteristics of feedback - feedback quality - and the relationship between employees and supervisors - trust in supervisors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the boundary conditions in the relationship between feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) and work performance. The authors hypothesized that the positive influence of employees' FSB on their work performance is influenced by perceived quality of feedback. The authors also expected that employees' trust in their supervisors moderated the interaction between their FSB and perceived feedback quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 202 employees in South Korea. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesis.\nFindings: The results showed that while employees' FSB was positively related to work performance, the influence was stronger for employees who perceived they were receiving high quality of feedback from supervisors. The authors also found that the moderating effect of feedback quality on the relationship between FSB and work performance was stronger when employees had high levels of trust in their supervisors.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that if managers wish to encourage employees to achieve work goal and desirable performance levels by actively engaging in FSB, they should pay more attention to providing high quality of feedback and building trust with employees.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to expand the understanding of FSB-work performance relationship by verifying the boundary conditions, which suggests the importance of examining the moderating factors in the FSB mechanism.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of upstream supply and downstream demand integration on quality management and quality performance	[ "Supply chain management", "Suppliers", "Customers", "Quality management", "Integration", "Supply chain integration", "Upstream integration with suppliers", "Down stream integration with customers", "Quality performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Manufacturing organizations worldwide are progressively recognizing the critical effects of integrating with suppliers and customers in their business operations to gain competitive advantage over its competitions. This stream of management practices, termed ad supply chain management (SCM) is regarded as one of the most significant shift of modern management paradigm by some authors (Chen and Paularj, 2004a). The core concept of SCM has considered integrating with suppliers and customers a competitive strategy to improve operational and financial performance of manufacturers (Li et al., 2006). More integration, better performance is regarded both in researches and practices as an axiom in SCM. Authors believe that by building long-term oriented and trust-worthy relationship with other partners along the supply chain, firms can better understand the need of customer, respond much rapidly to the market dynamics, delivery much faster and reliable, improve customer service level, and at the same time, operate at relatively low cost to guarantee maximum profit.However, does supply chain integration (SCI) really matter? That is, are there substantial evidences that integration with supplier and customer really positively relate to the performance of manufacturers? Unless this underlying question is substantially supported, the new field of SCM is in danger of collapsing into a discredited management fad (Chen and Paularj, 2004b). Although a great number of authors (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001; Rosenzweig et al., 2003; Vachon and Klassen, 2006; Swink et al., 2007) revealed the positive relationship between SCI and organizational performance, the impact of SCI on performance is far from a fact. Zailani and Rajagopal (2005) propose that little is known about the connections between supplier and customer integration and improved operations performance. Power (2005) concludes the apparent contradiction between promised benefits and limited evidence of extensive implementation. Some even argues that integration is more rhetoric than reality (Fawcett and Magnan, 2002). Thus, Fabbe-Costes and Jahre (2008) in their review caveat that evidence cannot be taken for granted and call for more research on the impact of SCI on performance.More surprisingly, extant researches in SCI bountifully shed a great number of lights on performance metrics such as supply efficiency and responsiveness, but neglect the impact of SCI on quality. This may due to the origin of SCI. As most of the researches are from traditional logistics/purchasing function (Ho et al., 2002; Cousins et al., 2006), researchers only focus on narrowed performance metrics. However, there may be a trade-off between supply chain efficiency and customer satisfaction (Zailani and Rajagopal, 2005). As the ultimate goal of SCI is to meet customer need, manufacturing firms should pay more attention to multiple performance metrics, and manage its competitive priorities along the supply chain to satisfy customer (Krause et al., 2001).To effectively manage the supply chain to satisfy customer need, quality is a critical factor to concern in the production and distribution activities. Forker et al. (1997) show that supplier quality management (QM) practices do lead to better performance and encourage firms to continue promoting QM practices throughout the supply chain. During the last several years, product recalls happened in the USA, Japan and China exposed the disruption of quality along global supply chain and markedly accentuated the underlying role of quality as supply chain competency. And more recently, a field of supply chain quality management (SCQM) is emerging to tackle such QM issues along the supply chain (Kuei et al., 2001; Robinson and Malhotra, 2005; Lin et al., 2005; Sila et al., 2006; Foster, 2008). SCQM expands the extent of QM from internal focus to external integration to involve all partners in the supply chain to commit to continuous improvement (Robinson and Malhotra, 2005).To the emerging field of SCQM, some of the basic questions regarding the relationship between QM and SCM and their impacts on organizational performance is far from been explicitly and systematically answered. Foster (2008) pointed out that more scholarly work is needed in SCQM. Kaynak and Hartley (2008) suggest that managers should extend their vision beyond their own firms into the supply chain to manage quality. However, for this to happen, differing firms within the supply chain must each develop interlocking practices that are based in collaboration, communication, and collaborative integration. This includes both upstream and downstream quality improvement processes that must be integrated to provide service and product quality to the customer.This paper examines the relationship between supplier and customer integration and QM practices, and their impacts on quality performance. Specifically, we focus on the impact of upstream and downstream integration affect quality practice and quality performance of the firms. The attempt is to bridge SCI and QM, and test effects of their linkages on quality performance. The paper is organized as follow. Next section presents the literature review and a conceptual model to form the hypotheses. Then, we test the model using a cross-sectional data from international manufacturing strategy survey (IMSS) from more than 500 companies. Discussion of the results and conclusions of the research are provided at the end, with implications and limitations of this research.\n2 Literature review and research hypotheses: 2.1 Supply chain integration\n3 Methods: 3.1 Data collection\n4 Results: To test the hypothesis proposed above, structural equation modeling (SEM) is used. The results of SEM for the hypothesized model on Table III show that the path from upstream integration to quality performance are not significant at 0.05 level. This path is deleted and the model is re-specification and fitted again. The data analysis results of path weights and several goodness fit indexes are presented on Table III. Figure 2 shows the final model. According to recommendation of several authors, goodness of fit index (GFI) (Joreskog and Sorbom, 1984), and comparative fit index (CFI) (Bentler, 1990), Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Hu and Bentler, 1998; MacCallum and James, 2000) are presented. Generally, according to rule of thumb recommended by previous authors, GFI and CFI value above 0.9, RMSEA value below 0.05 are regarded as good fit. RMSEA between 0.05 and 0.08 (Browne and Cudeck, 1993) is also acceptable.First of all, the impact of quality practice on quality performance improvement is 0.37, and is significant at 0.01 level. So HQ1 was supported. This direct effect is agreed by most of the QM literature. The result of our data analysis also supports a direct impact of quality practice on quality performance improvement. The inclusion of upstream integration and downstream integration does not change the underlying effect pattern of quality practice on quality performance. However, the mediating role of quality practice in our final model is different from previous researches, which needs attention in future research.HU1 and HU2 predict the impacts of upstream integration on quality practice and quality performance, respectively. The testing results reject HU2, suggesting that no direct impact of upstream integration on quality performance, but support HU1, implicating an indirect impact of upstream integration. The degree of correlation between upstream integration and quality practice is 0.34.HD1 and HD2 predict the impacts of downstream integration on quality practice and quality performance. The data analysis results support both hypotheses. Contrary to the impact of upstream integration, downstream integration has both direct and indirect impact on quality performance improvement. However, the direct impact of downstream integration on quality performance is only 0.14, much weaker than the impact on quality practice (r=0.31).The different impact pattern of upstream and downstream integration on quality performance might reveal the differential function of suppliers and customers on manufacturing quality improvement. As quality is defined by the needs of customer (Juran and Godfrey, 1998), does this difference unveil the path of quality improvement in supply chain era? We will discuss this further in the next section.\n5 Discussions and implications: 5.1 The critical role of downstream integration\n6 Conclusions and future research: Studies of SCM have focused mostly on the trade-off between the control of inventory level and cost. However, merely concerning about inventory level may be detrimental to customer satisfaction. As inventory is used as buffer in traditional management philosophy to hedge uncertainties of the supply chain such as quality, delivery and demand, trade-off between inventory level and cost fails to investigate and solve the root-cause problems (Forker et al., 1997), thus, might impair both cost-efficiency and customer satisfaction.Recently, the emergence of the research on SCQM calls for more efforts to concern about quality issues along supply chain. This paper is one of such endeavors. The results demonstrate that integration with external partners such as suppliers and customers do affect the quality practices and performance of manufacturer. In global competition, quality is not only the responsibility of a solo finished product producer, the whole chain in supplying the product to the customer should be accountable for the quality to meet the customer satisfaction. The TQM philosophy maintain that quality is not only the responsibility of manufacturing function, but achieved by integration of purchasing, engineering, manufacturing and marketing functions all round a firms, and the responsibility of total personnel and process. The result of this and other similar researches implicate that the concept of total should be extent into all entities and processes in supply chain from the starting end of raw material to the ending point of distributing the product to customers. This extended view of TQM might be more relevant to improve quality performance in SCM era.In relating upstream and downstream integration to internal quality practices and quality performance, the results of this paper have some beneficial findings of different pattern of suppliers and customers in affecting quality performance. The direct effect of customer on quality performance underscores the importance of integration with customers in SCQM. This is also consistent with the definition of quality as meeting customer need. Intensive information exchange or other interactive activities with customer may help firms to understand how quality is defined, thus improve performance in meeting customer needs. By contrary, suppliers only affect quality performance via the mediating role of internal quality practices. Internal quality practices play as relay. The indirect effect of upstream and downstream integration that mediated by internal quality practices indicates the need of synergizing external integration with internal integration. This complementary relationship between different scopes of SCI is source of sustainable competency according to the dynamic capabilities theories.The paper still left some important issues untouched. Two meanings of quality are defined as defect-free and meeting customer needs (Juran and Godfrey, 1998). More future researches may be conducted to explore how different patterns of integration with suppliers and customers affect these two facets of quality. Does integration with suppliers affect defect-free quality and integration with customers affect customer need quality?According to the fit theory, firms may have different strategies to integrate with suppliers and customers (Sousa and Voss, 2008). This requires more contextual variables such as product complexity, marketing dynamics in the research model. How are practices of SCQM affected by the contextual variables? What is the form of fit (selection, interaction or system, Sousan and Voss 2008, p. 706) between external integration and internal quality practices?\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - There are many studies on the impact of supply chain integration (SCI) on performance. However, the definitions, the measurements, the sample sizes, and scope of both SCI and the performance vary significantly from research to research. Conclusions are not consistent either. Researchers still believe that little is known about the impact of SCI on performance and call for more empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact on quality practices and quality performance of upstream integration with suppliers and downstream integration with customers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research is based on the empirical data from a large international survey of over 600 manufacturing companies from 20 countries. An intensive literature review was conducted on the definition and scope of SCI as well as its relationship with quality practice and performances. In total, five hypotheses were formulated and a conceptual model was proposed. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses reflecting and interrelationship among the four variables.\nFindings: - The research reveals that downstream integration with customers influences both the quality management practice and the quality performance of the company, while upstream integration with suppliers only influences the quality practice but not the quality performance.\nOriginality/value: - This research is different to previous research in three aspects. First, SCI covers both the upstream integration with suppliers and downstream integration with customers. Second, integration measurement covers both material integration and information integration. Third, it considers both quality management practices and quality performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
At the heart of controversies: Hybrid forums as an experimental multi-actor tool to enhance sustainable practices in localized agro-food systems	[ "Local development", "Food sustainability", "Hybrid forum", "Multi-actor approach", "Localized agro-food systems", "Democratic dialogue" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Experts can argue over whether organics are slightly or substantially less productive, but they are clearly better for soil and the environment.Marion Nestle Feb 21, 2012 (Nestle, 2012)\n1. Introduction: Disputes among experts and consumer uncertainties are common pillars of local and organic food discussions, as emphasized by the above quotation from the renowned nutritionist Marion Nestle. To a large extent, research on Localized Agro-Food Systems (LAFS)[1] offers an extensive debate field, whereby specific economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability, and their trade-offs, are typically challenged by experts and relevant actors - i.e., from a general perspective (Sanz-Canada, 2016), in relation to the local vs global sustainability of food (Brunori et al., 2016), or the environmental land use and watersheds management (Kim and Arnhold, 2018). LAFS are therefore complex networks of actants[2] (Latour, 2005) which interact in their localized socio-technical and cultural realities. While LAFS have been a central part of the European Common Agricultural Policy in the last 30 years, several studies emphasize the importance of controversies which emerge in the process of definition of the food products (Sylvander, 1995; Barham and Sylvander, 2011; Reviron and Chappuis, 2011; Sonnino and Marsden, 2006; Mariani, 2018; Hegnes, 2012). In those complex networks of actants where scientific experts, policy makers, producers, consumers, intervene and interact with each other, dialogic communication is essential. Adjustment and cultural adaptation work also play a central role in the dynamic construction of LAFS (Mariani, 2018; Hegnes, 2012).\n2. The use of controversies in dialogic democracy - the pathway to HF 2.0.: The role of controversy, or conflict, is one of the major threads in public engagement methods, as it represents a stimulating point for common reflection, as well as a potential outcome in a complex and uncertain environment. In a Western-European context, where issues of uncertainty and potential danger might be eliminated from public debate through the principle of precaution[5], controversies are particularly worth in a democratic approach-and perhaps even more for social scientists who should consider all actants, including perspectives, controversies or hesitations[6] to be able to \"reassemble\" the fieldwork (Latour, 2004, p. 246).\n3. State of the art on public engagement and participatory democracy methods: There are a number of different approaches to participatory democracy currently in use in Europe and in the USA since the last 15 years. Many of these have been developed in order to ensure citizen and/or stakeholder involvement in political discussions, research and innovation, and the introduction of new technologies (i.e. nano technologies, healthcare and genetically modified organisms).\n4. Toward a democratic dialogic process: hybrid forums 2.0. - experimental methodology and practical applications: It may be plausible to question why, in the context of a European project, we should not rely on more classical focus discussion groups or a consensus conference for example (refer to Table I regarding their scope and mechanism). The attractiveness of HF 2.0. comprises their practical use (as communication tool), their theoretical perspective (dialogic discussion not aiming to make compromises by mutual discovering, learning and co-constructing knowledge), and methodological application (data gathering). An HF 2.0. approach offers to map human resources within a local community to address specific controversies and identify the mechanisms and drivers that can stimulate innovations and co-construct knowledge together.\n5. Discussion and conclusions: Beside the usefulness of HF 2.0. in shaping the development of the aforementioned S2F project actions, the experiences from Norway and the UK provided an open and democratic framework to share knowledge, develop potential synergies and build partnerships to improve current practices in the LAFS. Based on Callon's three criteria, the four HF 2.0. had an overall positive degree of democratization, as different types of actors equally participated in the discussions. There was also a high intensity and openness in the dialogue, and in terms of dialogue quality, the rules were clear and all participants could express openly. Transparency is also supported by filming and audio-recording the discussions. Moreover, it is clear that HFs 2.0. can provide an innovative tool for collecting data and building knowledge on local issues.\n6. As a matter of conclusion: enhancing sustainable practices in localized agro-food systems with HF 2.0: is dialogue compatible with the market world?: The ambition to improve the effectiveness of the food system to make it more sustainable and fairer is at the heart of our S2F research project. We attempted to bring the traditionally separated fields of research on common sense and science together, under the hybrid forum umbrella of local representations and use of sustainable resources, to contribute to \"the formation of networks of actors sharing a collective project\" (Callon et al., 2009, p. 34). This type of dialogic democracy involves not only the participation of chosen participants, from the planning to the dissemination of results, through exchanges and common experiments, but also the transformation of perceptions and standpoints of local actors in the long-time perspective through the repetition of several forums.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the role of hybrid forums as tools to address specific controversies related to sustainable practices in localized agro-food systems (LAFS).\nDesign/methodology/approach: In contrast with other conventional public engagement methods, such as citizen juries, consensus conferences, focus groups or deliberative processes, hybrid forums entail a more dynamic and democratic mechanism to reflect and act together, with the aim of constructing a common project around a defined challenge (Callon et al., 2001, 2009). They can offer an enriching and challenging methodological approach in the context of LAFS, especially in the discussion of controversial issues around food chain sustainability. The authors present here a new generation of hybrid forums: HF 2.0.\nFindings: HF 2.0. represent both a methodological tool and a real experience of dialogic democracy, two interactive aspects which are closely interlinked and rest upon each other. The authors argue that the attractiveness of HF 2.0. is notable in at least two ways: first, they provide a solid democratic and reflective mechanism to stimulate effective dialogue and knowledge-exchange among different stakeholders; second, they contribute as an important methodological evidence-based tool, which can be used as a launching pad for shaping local action groups and community partnerships' strategies aimed at fostering local development.\nOriginality/value: This paper attempts to provide a methodological discussion over the experimental use of HF 2.0. in the context of LAFS and assesses their effectiveness in the co-construction of knowledge. The authors explore their pragmatic validity in addressing controversies over local and sustainable seafood via empirical applications in Norway and the UK.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Facilitating weaker firms' market knowledge in asymmetric B2B relationship from structure, process, and strategy aspects - a case of travel industry	[ "Market knowledge", "Complementary capability", "Knowledge integration mechanism", "Specific assets investment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Impacted by telecommunication technologies in a rapidly changing market, many firms tend to seek cooperation with one another to keep abreast of the market trends and to continue to roll out new solutions and services so that they can increase their market performance (Chang et al., 2015; Chollet et al., 2016). This is why scholars have indicated that market knowledge is the core resource in driving market-based firm performance (Chollet et al., 2016; Li et al., 2017; Chen and Lee, 2017) and that this goal can be especially faster achieved through the exchange and integration of knowledge between partners (Jean et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2014). Market knowledge is about know-how and information of a product-market domain (Li and Calantone, 1998; Malhotra et al., 2005). As a result, it appears that to explore what factors accelerate business partners' market knowledge in a business-to-business (B2B) relationship is of vital importance.\n2. Literature: 2.1 Market knowledge and its antecedents\n3. Method: 3.1 Sample\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Sample characteristics\n5. Conclusion, contribution, implication and limitation: 5.1 Conclusion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to explore three critical factors, namely, specific assets investment (SAI), knowledge integration mechanism (KIM) and complementary capability (CC), the antecedents of market knowledge from on structure, process and strategy aspects. This study then tests their effects on the market knowledge-market performance linkage in an asymmetric commerce relationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study identified the asymmetric business-to-business (B2B) channel relationship of travel service industry. A total of 248 responses were received from the two waves of data collection and the data was analyzed by the structural equation modeling method.\nFindings: Based on the managerial theory related to transaction cost, knowledge-based view and resource-dependent, SAI, KIM and CC all affect market knowledge, and had an indirect effect on market performance; market knowledge significantly and positively affects market performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: In addition to relationship marketing or social exchange theory, this study provides an integrated framework with different theoretical studies to supplement the explanation of relationship marketing theory in the non-significant relationship between trust and commitment and their outcomes.\nPractical implications: This study provides answers for weaker firms how to enhance their market knowledge from their stronger partners.\nOriginality/value: No current studies have explored how service firms with weak bargaining power could enhance their market knowledge under an imbalanced B2B relationship. This supports the call for the possible factors as the key antecedents of market knowledge on the asymmetric B2B relationship.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From guests to hosts: immigrant-native wage differentials in Spain	[ "Immigration", "Pay", "Employees", "Spain" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Three decades ago Spain was a country of emigrants, with more than three million workers abroad (around 10 per cent of the total population), whose remittances financed around 10 per cent of imports, contributing to alleviate serious balance of payments constraints (Oporto del Olmo, 1992). Dwarfing all expectations, in barely ten years, this country has witnessed a gargantuan increase in the number of immigrants. According to the Spanish Censuses, the proportion of the population born abroad rose from less than 2 per cent in 1996 to roughly 12 per cent in 2008, which made Spain the country undergoing the third largest increase in non-native population in the European Union during the last decade, after Greece and Ireland (Eurostat, 2006). However, there has been not only a radical shift in migration flows, but also a substantial change in the composition of the immigrant population, which is now predominantly composed of individuals born in countries less developed than Spain. The emergence of such a different reality makes it interesting to look at how immigrant workers are performing in the Spanish labour market, characterized by a high employment creation in construction and low-productivity services but also a high degree of segmentation and fixed-term contracts.The aim of this paper is to analyse wage differentials between native and immigrant workers in Spain across the wage distribution using a nationally representative database. With that objective, we use a recently released earnings survey containing sufficient observations from immigrants, thus overcoming the problems present in previous studies. This feature makes the study the first one to provide a full picture of wage penalties faced by foreign workers in Spain. Furthermore, we improve previous estimations by analytically computing standard errors for wage gaps.The interest of the Spanish case derives not only from the impressive increase in immigration flows experienced by the country during the last decade, but also from the Spaniards' surprisingly rough attitudes towards foreigners according to opinion polls. For example, immigration was considered the most important problem in the country, well above unemployment and housing (CIS, 2006). In addition, most studies on wage discrimination of immigrants are focused on Anglo-Saxon, and Nordic countries, as well as Central Europe and Benelux, which have been the main host countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) during recent decades.In spite of the relative novelty of immigration flows to Spain, there is some literature dealing with the labour market integration of foreign workers. The pioneering work of Dolado et al. (1997) points out a negligible effect of migration on labour market outcomes at the beginning of the nineties, when the intensity of immigrations flows was very low. More recent research exploiting several data sources - among others, the Spanish Earnings Structure Survey (ESS) 2002, which does not offer coverage of small firms- reports similar findings for the second half of the nineties (Carrasco et al., 2008; Gonzalez and Ortega, 2008). Other researchers have focused on employment outcomes and occupational segregation of foreign workers, documenting different patterns of labour market integration among foreign-born workers depending both on socio-economic characteristics and country of origin (Amuedo-Dorantes and de la Rica, 2007; Simon et al., 2008). These relatively poor employment outcomes, however, tend to eventually improve with the years of residence in Spain (Fernandez and Ortega, 2008). Finally, the work of Canal-Dominguez and Rodriguez-Gutierrez (2008) is the only one that, to our knowledge, aims to study wage differences between natives and foreigners in Spain, finding a substantial pay gap not explained by observable characteristics and which does not rise across the wage distribution, as in the case of highly educated women -the so-called glass ceiling phenomenon- (de la Rica et al., 2008). From our point of view, this work has three main limitations. First, it is based on the ESS 2002, which does not include any information on firms with ten or less workers, which accounts for almost half of salaried workers in Spain. Second, in 2002 migration flows were not as important as they would be later and, according to the Spanish Labour Force Survey 2002 (second quarter), less than 3 per cent of employees had a non-Spanish nationality. Finally, this work does not compute any confidence interval for estimates or other mechanisms for determining whether differentials across the distribution are statistically significant.Regarding international case studies, there is abundant of evidence of important wage differentials between locals and migrants once we control for observable characteristics, although there is no consistent pattern across countries. For example, the pay disadvantage faced by foreign-born workers is concentrated mainly on the bottom of earnings distribution in Sweden (Hammarstedt and Shukur, 2006, 2007) and the UK (Hunt, 2008) and increases along with wages in the USA and Australia (Chiswick et al., 2008).Apart from the role of productivity endowments, several theories can explain the existence of wage differentials between locals and migrants[1]. The point of departure is Becker's (1957) view based on employer's tastes: some employers dislike people from other ethnic groups -modelled as a utility loss derived from hiring them - and, in competitive labour markets, if the share of prejudiced employers is sufficiently large, foreign workers might earn a lower wage than locals. Theories of statistical discrimination also offer a framework for understanding the existence of wage gaps between natives and immigrants based on the lack of information or informational asymmetries (Arrow, 1972a, b, 1973; Phelps, 1972). If there is no perfect information on certain characteristics of immigrants (for example, quality of education) or firms have less knowledge about them, employers will tend to base their hiring and pay decisions on observable characteristics of workers, like the ethnic group they belong to. Another interesting perspective of looking at this issue is the idea of monopsonistic discrimination, inspired by Robinson's (1933) work on imperfect markets. Drawing on this framework, Barth and Dale-Olsen (2009) suggest that (apparently) unexplained wage differentials are associated with the existence of monopsonistic employers and different labour supply elasticities across population. Other things being equal, those collectives with more rigid labour supplies earn less than otherwise. If immigrant workers are employed in sectors where firms have some market power and their labour supply is less elastic than the local one (for example, because of a lower access to unemployment benefits and so on), their pay will be lower. This last hypothesis might be especially relevant for the Spanish labour market, characterized by an excess of labour supply for many years[2].The rest of the article unfolds in three parts as follows. Section 2 provides a brief description of the database used in the paper. The methodology and results of the empirical analysis are discussed in the Section 3, while the Section 4 summarizes and discusses the main findings of the research.\n2. Data: Previous studies of immigrant-native wage differentials have been constrained by serious data limitations, which, to some extent, are linked to the novelty of modern immigration in Spain. However, it should not be neglected that Spain is a step behind other OECD countries regarding data sources for analysing labour market and social outcomes.This work is based on the ESS 2006, released by the Spanish National Statistics Institute on December 2008[3]. The ESS has several advantages over previous databases. First, while neither the European Community Household Panel nor the Social Statistics on Living Conditions (SILC) - i.e. the household surveys containing information on labour income from the middle-nineties- provides a large enough and representative sample of foreign workers, the ESS includes a sample of local and foreign-born employees representative at national level and whose size can be considered appropriate for analysing foreigners' outcomes in isolation. For example, we have more than 10,000 employees born outside the European Union, which is a sample size higher than the whole SILC. In addition, the ESS is based on administrative registers of employers, which, as Cowell (1995) points out, increases the reliability of wage data. In the second place, the ESS 2006 overcomes the evident limitations of the previous wave of the survey, carried out in 2002. First, the ESS 2002 only contains information on workplaces with ten or more employees, an important shortcoming considering the undeniable relevance of small firms in Spain, where more than 40 per cent of total salaried workers are employed in firms with less than ten workers, being one of the countries where small and medium enterprises account for a largest share of employment in the European Union (Figure 1).In addition, this shortcoming might be especially problematic, since, according to data from the 2006 SILC, foreign workers are over-represented in small firms: while roughly 40 per cent of native employees work in an enterprise whose size is ten or less, the proportion of immigrants is above 55 per cent. Therefore, it is possible there is a selection bias, which, if it is based on unobservable characteristics or observable covariates not included in econometric analyses of wages, will lead to inconsistent estimation of the effect of human capital endowments on wages. As an illustration of these possible problems, Figure 2, computed from 2006 SILC micro-data, depicts the wage distributions of workers working in firms with ten or less employees and those salaried individuals in the rest of enterprises.Furthermore, even if this non-negligible problem were absent, the considerable increase in the foreign population in Spain from 2002 to 2006 makes it clear that the issue on which this paper is focused deserves a new look anyway, as wage gaps might change with the intensity of immigration. Particularly, according to the Spanish Labour Force Survey, while in 2002 people with a nationality other than Spanish represent less than 3 per cent of the working population aged between 25 and 55, in the second quarter of 2006, this group accounts for more than 7 per cent of the reference group.It is worth mentioning that ESS 2006, though meaning a remarkable improvement over previous sources of information, also presents some shortcomings. In the first place, those people working in the informal sector and employees without a work contract are obviously not included in the survey, since these activities are not legal. The same applies to undocumented foreign individuals. Nevertheless, both problems are probably common to all these sorts of data sources. In addition, agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors are not included by any wave of the ESS, though, according to the Spanish Labour Force Survey they only accounted for 3 per cent of the total salaried population in 2006.One relevant issue involves the choice of the wage measure to be used in the empirical analysis. It is well-documented that immigrants are usually employed in jobs involving harder tasks or worse working conditions (Orrenious and Zavodny, 2009), which can contribute to reducing observed wage gaps if the principle of compensating differentials (at least partially) applies and detailed information on job characteristics is not available for researchers. Therefore, in order to estimate discrimination more precisely, we exclude bonuses associated with dangerous working conditions, night shifts and supplementary hours from our wage measure. In the second place, it should be mentioned that we limit our analyses to men between 25 and 55 years old for two different reasons. The first one is related to the potential double discrimination suffered by foreign women because of their condition as both females and immigrants. This topic is likely to require an specific analysis exploring this issue and probably also offering an analysis of employment differentials using a labour force survey[4]. Second, as our database only contains information on employees, there is likely to be some selection bias based on unobservable characteristics. By restricting our analysis to the group with higher employment rates (that is, males), we try to minimize this bias.An additional point that requires some discussion is the definition of immigrant. The common approach is to consider as immigrants those born abroad, since naturalization rules can differ depending on the country of birth because of special agreements with former colonies and so on. This is, for example, the case of most Latin American workers living in Spain. Unfortunately, this variable is not available in our database, so we have to use citizenship as a proxy for immigrant status. An additional refinement is made: we only categorize as immigrants (and, hence, compare with Spaniards) foreigners with a nationality from geographical regions that, on average, have a lower level of development than Spain. In the ESS 2006, these cases correspond to South America, European countries not belonging the European Union, Oceania, Asia and Africa. There are two reasons for this strategy: first, the rest of the countries are not largely represented among immigrants; second, Spaniards tend to associate immigrants with people from poorer countries, not from other rich EU members or the USA or Canada.As a result, our sample comprises more than 96,000 observations, of which almost 90,000 correspond to Spaniards and approximately 6,200 are foreign workers.Last, it is worth mentioning the existence of an alternative database, the Continous Sample of Working Lives (CSWL), based on Spanish Social Security records. A detailed discussion on the merits and disadvantages of this data source are provided by Gonzalez and Ortega (2008). The last version of this database presents several strengths, like its size and coverage. However, there are also some shortcomings that, from our point of view, make it inappropriate for our purposes. First, the coding of educational levels are taken from local registers in 1996, so there will be problems with at least individuals who did not have finished formal education by then. In addition, such schooling information is provided on a voluntary basis. Because of these facts, the Social Security Administration considers that data on educational levels in this database are not reliable (Seguridad Social, 2009). Second, there are many important job characteristics not available from the CSWL, among others, working hours, firm size and tenure.\n3. Empirical strategy: This section is divided into three parts. The first one describes the Machado-Mata procedure to decompose gaps across the whole wage distribution, while the second one briefly summarizes the main descriptive statistics of the variables used in the analysis. Finally, we present the main results of the empirical analysis and discuss their implications. All statistical procedures are performed using Stata 10.1.3.1. The Machado-Mata decomposition\n4. Conclusions: Immigration has become an increasingly important phenomenon in Spain, a country that had been country of emigrants until few years ago. In this paper, we have analysed the native-immigrant wage gap across the whole distribution using the M-M decomposition. The main contribution of the paper has been to address the issue for first time using a representative survey of the labour force and not limiting the scope of the analysis to large firms, which are not numerous in Spain and among which foreign-born workers are under-represented. In addition, standard errors for counterfactual gaps have been estimated, a task not addressed by previous research on the topic in Spain or in most other national case studies.The main finding of the paper is the existence of an important glass ceiling for foreign workers from developing countries living in Spain, that is, the wage gap significantly grows across wage distribution, reaching around 25 per cent for the last wage decile.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse immigrant-native wage differentials in Spain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper exploits the Earnings Structure Survey 2006, which is the first nationally representative sample of both foreign and Spanish employees. Using the Machado-Mata econometric procedure, wage differentials between locals and foreigners are decomposed into the gap related to characteristics and the one due to different returns on endowments (i.e. discrimination).\nFindings: - The paper finds that, in absolute terms, the latter component grows across the wage distribution, reflecting the existence of a kind of glass ceiling, consistent with the evidence of over-education found in previous research.\nOriginality/value: - The paper for the first time explores earnings differentials between immigrant and Spanish workers using a nationally representative database. In addition, standard errors are computed in order to determine if the gaps are statistically significant, a task not addressed by previous works. Finally, the work is relevant as Spain has become a host country only a few years ago.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The health information seeking and usage behavior intention of Chinese consumers through mobile phones	[ "Information seeking behaviour", "Trust", "Behaviour intention", "Hypothesis testing", "Mobile phones", "Health status" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: According to the statistics released by the China National Committee on Aging (CNCA), people older than 60 constitute 14.8 percent of the Chinese population (CNCA, 2013). Having the largest aging population in the world, China now faces the issue of population aging. Moreover, as society develops, the older population suffers from increasing psychological pressure, and health problems become more serious. Mental disease, obesity, chronic diseases have become more prevalent in China. This older and sub-healthy population will undoubtedly experience grave economic and social challenges in the future. In addition, as a developing country, China faces severe medical problems. Proper healthcare is expensive and difficult to obtain for most people. Nonetheless, the rapid development of information and communications technology can provide better solutions to overcome these problems (Garcia-Sanchez et al., 2012). A report by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China shows that the number of Chinese mobile phone users has reached 1.15 billion, 96.4 percent of which accounts for mobile internet users (MIIT, 2013). Mobile phones have become a necessary part of daily life for a great number of people in China. Internet applications used on computer terminals have spread in mobile phones as well. Particular groups of people, particularly the youth, prefer surfing the internet through handheld devices such as mobile phones or tablets, which they can use anytime and anywhere (e.g. while waiting in line or while riding the bus). Moreover, given the personal nature of ownership, a mobile phone can provide a confidential and safe means of obtaining solutions for gynecological, psychological, cosmetic surgery, and other highly private health problems.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1. MHIS and usage\n3. Methodology: 3.1. Measurement\n4. Results: A two-step approach of structure equation modeling based on Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was used in this study.\n5. Discussion: The main purpose of the study is to explore how the determinants in the proposed research model can predict consumers' intention to seek and use health information through mobile phones. This study is believed to provide insight into the management strategies of providing mobile health information and health knowledge promotion. We have the following findings.\n6. Implications and limitations: This study examines the factors that influence consumers' intention of health information seeking and usage via mobile phone, which is the first study in Chinese MHIS and MHIU context. As mentioned above, previous studies have primarily focussed on online health information seeking behavior, while a few of these studies have examined the seeking behavior intention and the usage behavior intention in a general model. The results indicate that health information usage behavior intention is closely related to the seeking behavior intention in the mobile context, which enriches the research on the relationship between information seeking and its outcomes. Furthermore, this study highlights the significant impact of information quality, perceived value, and trust on the intention to seek, and the significant impacts of information quality and trust on the intention to use, which have been overlooked in previous studies on MHIS. Thus, this study provides a richer understanding of the prediction of health information seeking behavior intention and its outcome. In addition, our results demonstrate that consumers with poorer health status rely heavily on the trustworthiness of the providers and information quality in seeking health information through mobile internet. Similarly, the trust of consumers on the provider influence their decisions on whether they should follow treatment solutions and whether they should share the information with others. Therefore, health information seeking researchers should pay more attention to the importance of trust and information quality.\n7. Conclusion: This study has the following contributions: first, the factors that influence health consumer's intention behavior in a mobile internet context in China were examined, which is significant to this area of research. Second, both the health information seeking behavior intention and the usage intention were examined. Seeking is the tool of obtaining health information, and using this information to improve health is the ultimate purpose. Thus, this study extends health information seeking to usage. Third, we included the current health status as the moderator, which contributed to the research on information seeking and usage behavior.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Although the health information seeking behavior of consumers through the internet has received great attention, limited attempt has been made to integrate both the health information seeking behavior and the usage behavior in a mobile online context. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influence consumer mobile health information seeking (MHIS) and usage behavior based on information quality, perceived value, personal health value, and trust.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted to collect data. A two-step approach of structure equation modeling based was used to test the measurement model and hypothesis model.\nFindings: Information quality, perceived value, and trust were found to have positive effects on both the intention to seek and to use health information, and that the intention to seek affects the intention to use. Among the three components of perceived value, the utilitarian and epistemic values were found to have significant effects on intention to seek. In addition, the current health status of health consumers moderates the relationships between MHIS and usage intention and their determinants.\nOriginality/value: Studies have primarily focussed on online health information seeking behavior, whereas a few of these studies have examined the seeking behavior intention and the usage behavior intention in a general model. The results indicate that health information usage behavior intention is closely related to the seeking behavior intention in the mobile context, which enriches the research on the relationship between information seeking and its outcomes. Furthermore, this study highlights the impact of information quality, perceived value, and trust on the intention to seek, and the impacts of information quality and trust on the intention to use, which have been overlooked in previous studies on MHIS.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is job satisfaction enhancing learning-training transfer relationship?	[ "Job satisfaction", "Public sector", "Malaysia", "Learning", "Transfer of training" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A theme of training research that has continued to receive the attention of scholars is transfer of training. Transfer of training refers to the consistent application of knowledge, skills and attitudes that have been gained during training, to the workplace (Blume et al., 2010). A review of the transfer of training literature reveals that most studies have generally focused on identifying the factors that affect the transfer of training. Researchers in this area believe an adequate understanding of these factors will help organizations enhance the application of the new learned knowledge, skills and attitudes in the workplace (Yamkovenko et al., 2007).\nLiterature review: The learning-transfer of training relationship\nMethodology: Sample\nAnalysis result: Descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, Cronbach's alphas and validity results\nFindings and discussion: This study proposed that learning will be positively related to transfer of training. The argument was made that if employees gain new knowledge, skills and attitudes from the training, they are more likely to apply those training outcomes to their work context.\nLimitations and suggestions for future study: The first limitation of this study is the fact that the data were collected at one point of time, applying a cross-sectional design. Therefore, it is necessary for future research to validate the current findings in a longitudinal study. It is argued that longitudinal design is more appropriate than cross-sectional design in terms of generating causal inferences, based on pre-existing theory and empirical data (Chiaburu et al., 2010).\nConclusion: This study provides essential knowledge and enhances our understanding of the transfer of training issue in a non-Western context, specifically public sector organizations in Malaysia. This study provides empirical evidence for the importance of learning to the success of transfer of training in the workplace. Specifically, this study found those employees who perceived that they have gained and learned new knowledge, skills and attitudes from the training they have attended, are able to apply these facets to their workplace following the training. Although the finding is limited to the context of public sector organizations in Malaysia, it can be a reference to other organizations and assist them to maximize the outcomes from the training investment they make in their employees.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: One important factor that influences the success of transfer of training in the workplace is the employees' learning level following the training. The association between learning and transfer of training has been established by previous studies. However, to date only a few empirical studies have examined the moderating factor that could strengthen the link between these two variables. This study has been conducted to addresses this gap. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between learning and transfer of training.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data for this study have been collected from two sources: the employees of public sector organizations in Malaysia and their supervisors through surveys.\nFindings: The findings reveal that learning has an important role as a predictor of transfer of training but job satisfaction was found to have no moderating effect in this study.\nResearch limitations/implications: The finding illustrate that management in public sector need to ensure that the employee gains new knowledge and skills from a particular training they have attended, in order to maximize return on training investment.\nOriginality/value: This study extends the discussion and understanding on factors that influence transfer of training at public sector organizations in a non-Western context, specifically Malaysia, a developing country in Southeast Asia.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An examination of undergraduates' perceptions on faculty members' and institutional support and its effects on their appreciation of scientific skills and research endeavors	[ "Organizational support", "Undergraduate students", "Structural model", "Professor support", "Research interest", "Scientific skills" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduccion: Societies must advance in scientific development as a means to face the global challenges of the twenty-first century. The Latin American Tuning Project led a search for consensus to identify the competencies college graduates must develop over college experience. The debated that started in 2004 and concluded in 2013 determined that undergraduate students must gain 27 generic competencies, including scientific skills. Unsurprisingly, scientific skills became highly appreciated by students, potential employers and college graduates (Beneitone et al., 2007). Today, a globalized world increasingly requires scientifically-literate citizens to generate knowledge, innovation and technology. The National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT, by its Spanish Acronym) also acknowledges this condition. CONACYT (2016) believes the improvement of scientific work in Mexico will contribute to the economic and social development in the country. Therefore, as several international institutions around the world, CONACYT advocates for the engagement of undergraduate students in high impact practices or undergraduate research (FCCyT, 2006b). Today, scientifically-literate citizens are expected to create competitive advantages for their organizations and contexts (Scientific and Technological Advisory Forum (FCCyT, 2006a), by its Spanish Acronym).\nLiterature review: Positive student outcomes have been documented in the literature; however, it seems that the preparation for academic pursuits through research activities influences undergraduate students' commitment to science (Walkington, 2015). Although higher education institutions have some strategies (e.g. workshops, mentorships, social services, access to databases, publications, participation in research meetings and attending conferences) that have proven to boost undergraduates' research interest, for students, understanding the role of science in real life is crucial to persist in science (Adedokun et al., 2013). Nonetheless, for sociologists (e.g. Goodwin et al., 2004; Hupcey, 1998), there are other factors that deserve more attention such as faculty members' performance (Escamilla, 2015; Estrada-Hollenbeck et al., 2012; Harrison et al., 2011), the epistemic communities (Ghee et al., 2016; Rand, 2016; Savedra et al., 2015), academic mentors (Aikens et al., 2016; Ream et al., 2014; Urquhart et al., 2016) and peers' influence (Gregoric and Wilson, 2015; Toven-Lindsey et al., 2015). Thus, the current body of literature suggests undergraduates' interest in conducting research is primarily associated to both faculty members' performance and their exposition to research activities over college experience (Gray et al., 2015).\nInterest in research: Interest is a psychological state that implies the predisposition to commit to any objects, events or ideas across time (Hidi and Renninger, 2006). Although interest involves people preferences for specific activities and goals (Pena Calvo et al., 2015), the context usually defines the individuals' interests and also contributes to increasing it (Hidi and Renninger, 2006). Since context shapes interest, it is an social ongoing process that lasts, or it is extinguished, throughout time (Ferrell and Barbera, 2015). Therefore, the literature identifies two kinds of interests: situational and individual (Ferrell and Barbera, 2015). Situational interest is spontaneous as a result of interactions with context; on the other hand, the individual interest is the result of a large and stable process which is associated with a lasting predisposition that leads individuals to interact with specific subjects or activities (Hidi and Renninger, 2006).\nAcademic support: Vazquez-Alonso and Manassero-Mas (2015) emphasized that faculty-mentored undergraduate research experiences seem to have an important impact on students' decision related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), especially after conducting research in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Espana and Mexico. Although Maton et al. (2016) believe that academic advising encourages STEM students to persist in science and conducting research, Ream et al. (2014) assert STEM faculty members are key role models influencing their students to do science. Although the scholars acknowledge that STEM programs encourage students interest in scientific research, faculty members' advising helps students to make decisions about the type of courses and which possible research opportunities to pursue (Gandara and Maxwell-Jolly, 1999; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997). In other words, what leads students to engage in research endeavors is not only the academic context, but also their most important role models, their faculty members.\nOrganizational support: The organizational support theory suggests that employees form a generalized perception concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being (Kurtessis et al., 2015). Therefore, organizational support experience is linked to the way institutions cares about individuals' wellness (Ahmed et al., 2015; Eder and Eisenberger, 2008; Eisenberg et al., 2001; Eisenberger et al., 1986; Muse and Stamper, 2007; Rhoades and Eisenberger, 2002). In terms of higher education, research reports that students value the conditions that institutions offer for research activities (Eagan et al., 2013; Kuh et al., 2005). Moreover, it also proposes that organizational support favors students' interest in scientific activities (Ghee et al., 2016; Harvey et al., 2014; Staub et al., 2016; Towl and Senior, 2010; Wiegant et al., 2011). In addition, the literature asserts that infrastructure and economic support are key conditions of institutional support (Aguilar and Magana, 2016; Kizza, 2011). Hence, it is critical that students perceive institutions as providers of scientific mentorship opportunities.\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Table II shows the means, typical deviations and the correlations between variables. Results confirm that the associations of the variables included in the model were significant and fit with the theoretical model. The table also shows faculty members' and institutional support correlates positively with undergraduate students' perceptions of scientific skills and their research endeavors.\nDiscussion: The study analyzes the relationship among undergraduate students' perceptions of faculty members' and institutional support, undergraduate students' appreciation of scientific skills and undergraduate students' scientific research endeavors. Whereas a direct and positive association between both types of support and the undergraduate students' research endeavors was expected, the results obtained confirm the researchers' hypothesis. Our findings provide strong evidence to argue that both types of support positively influence the undergraduate students' appreciation of scientific skills and their scientific research endeavors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship among undergraduate students' perception of faculty members' and institutional support, undergraduate students' appreciation of scientific skills and undergraduate students' research endeavors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structural model was calculated to relate the variables. The sample included 1,882 undergraduate students from a State University located in the Southeast of Mexico. Undergraduate students came from different fields, and all of them that had taken at least 60 percent of their curricular credits.\nFindings: The structural model suggests that faculty members' and institutional support are positively related to undergraduate students' appreciation of scientific skills and undergraduate students' research endeavors. The findings suggest faculty members' and institutional support are key factors to develop scientific research in undergraduate students. Therefore, the researchers argue that science programs taught in Mexican colleges and universities must endorse supportive practices among faculty members and institutions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The cross-sectional design does not allow to set clear causal relationships among the explored variables. In addition, the sample included only one public university. Thus, further empirical research with research participants from different universities across the country is suggested. These improvements may enhance the strength of the proposed theoretical model.\nPractical implications: Currently, there are a plethora of studies looking at students' attitudes toward science. Those studies have also discussed the conditions and contexts that influence research practice among undergraduate students. Nonetheless, there are no studies known by the authors that include the set of variables and relationships considered in the present study.\nOriginality/value: Despite the plethora of studies looking at several conditions and contexts influencing undergraduate students' attitudes toward science, no studies known by the authors have included the set of variables and relationships considered in the present study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Felt accountability: the role of personality and organizational factors	[ "Organizational support", "Accountability", "Affect", "Social exchange", "Organizational structures", "Psychological contracts" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: How employees perceive their accountability can impact a company's success or failure (Frink and Klimoski, 2004). Employees with low felt accountability are more likely to act dishonestly (Hall et al., 2009), whereas those exhibiting higher felt accountability will contribute toward a company's success (Guidice et al., 2016). One example of the effects on employee accountability can be seen in an initiative to decrease absenteeism by the government of Jakarta, Indonesia. After implementing incentive rules corresponding to employee attendance and conducting frequent unannounced inspections, chronic absenteeism was decreased from 10,000 employees in 2015 to 6,072 in 2016, which enhanced citizens' satisfaction with their services (Aziza, 2016; Pratama, 2016; Rosalina and Arumsari, 2016). Such data imply that as employees felt more aware that their performance was being monitored and could be sanctioned, they felt more accountable toward their work and adjusted their performance accordingly.\nLiterature review: Felt accountability\nMethods: Measurements\nResults: The results of the descriptive analysis and bi-correlation analysis for all variables are displayed in Table I. No demographic variables were found to have significant relationships with felt accountability; hence, they were not controlled for further analysis. As shown in Table II, the results of multiple regression analysis indicate that the model explains 48 percent of the variance in felt accountability (R=0.69; F(3, 124)=29.69; p<0.001). All hypotheses in this study were found to be supported, as the results show that all independent variables have significant relationships with felt accountability. Positive and significant relationships with felt accountability were found for positive affect (b=0.28; p<0.001) and perceived organizational support (b=0.29; p<0.001). In contrast, negative affect was found to have a significant and negative relationship with felt accountability (b=-0.37; p<0.001). Organizational structure was also found to have a negative and significant relationship with felt accountability (b=-0.35; p<0.001), implying that employees who work at machine-structured companies tend to have lower felt accountability than those of adhocracy-structured companies.\nDiscussions: The current study contributes to the literature of felt accountability by demonstrating the importance of integrating its influencing internal and external factors. First, the results provide empirical evidence for meso-level theory of felt accountability (Frink et al., 2008). For its internal factor, this study demonstrated that affect trait is significantly associated with felt accountability. Individuals with negative affect are more resistant to felt accountability, whereas individuals with positive affect have higher felt accountability. The consistency of the results with previous findings (Hall et al., 2003) implies that the relationship between affect and felt accountability could be stable across cultures. In a non-egalitarian gender-role culture like Indonesian culture (Riantoputra and Gatari, 2017), researchers tend to assume that gender has some bearing on individual's emotional responses to their environment. However, the current research demonstrates different results, and, thus, calling for more investigations with cross-cultural designs are still suggested to further solidify this conclusion.\nConclusions: This study provides substantial contributions to several theories related to felt accountability. First, it provides empirical evidences for meso-level theory of felt accountability by integrating internal and external factors of felt accountability. The finding of lower felt accountability among employees in mechanistic-structured companies than among those of organic-structured companies shows that perceived organizational support and positive affect have a positive relationship with felt accountability, whereas negative affect and organizational structure are negatively correlated with felt accountability. The result also advances theories of social exchange and psychological contract. Future studies are advised to explore other possible determinants and their interactions in influencing felt accountability. As for practical implications, we suggest that companies should facilitate training that stimulates employees' emotional regulation based on their trait affect. It is also advised that companies establish regulations which enable employees to feel involved in decision-making processes and that reward their positive performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to employ the meso-level theory of felt accountability to investigate the relationships among positive affect, negative affect, perceived organizational support, organizational structure and felt accountability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To avoid common method bias, this study employed a time-lag data collection technique in collecting data from 132 participants. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationships among the variables.\nFindings: The results show a positive association between positive affect and perceived organizational support and felt accountability, whereas negative affect and organizational structure were negatively correlated with felt accountability, in that machine structures constraint the development of felt accountability.\nOriginality/value: This research advances the meso-level theory of felt accountability and social exchange frameworks by integrating personality and organizational factors influencing felt accountability, and demonstrating that that the tangible advantages offered by an organization are reciprocated by employees' accountability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Applying Lean Six Sigma to improve medication management	[ "Lean thinking", "Quality management", "Continuous quality improvement" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Lean/Six Sigma in healthcare\nProject background: Many US veterans, particularly rural veterans, are dual users or use healthcare services within and outside the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Receiving care from VHA and non-VHA systems can lead to uncoordinated care and poorer health outcomes. In this project, we used Lean Six Sigma principles to develop recommendations to improve the current systems and processes for medication co-management for dual care veterans. Our QI project aims were to: assess compliance with the veteran affairs' (VA) dual care policy; collect data and describe the current system/processes for co-managing dual care veterans' medications; and draft recommendations to improve the current system/processes for dual care medications co-management. The key outcomes that the QI project was expected to achieve were to: reduce clinic waiting time for veterans in the VA clinic with necessary, urgent non-VA prescriptions; reduce the time taken to fill non-VA prescriptions; reduce veterans' clinic visits for unnecessary/non-urgent non-VA prescriptions; improve veterans satisfaction with dual care medication co-management; improve provider satisfaction (VA and non-VHA providers) regarding dual care medication co-management; and improve compliance with the VA's dual care policy.\nApproach: This study was classified by VHA managers as a QI or non-research project, hence VA IRB approval was not required. The project team collected data to assess compliance with the VA's dual care policy and to describe the current system/processes for dual care medications co-management at the project site. Data were collected from multiple sources including: surveying care team members; site visit to the VAMC and a focus group with VHA patient care team members; direct observation and data collection on waiting and process times for filling non-VHA prescriptions.\nFindings: The key findings from directly observing the non-VHA prescription filling process highlight delays and inefficiencies in the current system to fill a non-VHA prescription. Most scripts that were tracked during the direct observations conducted by the project team were non-urgent (i.e. not required to be filled the same day). In most cases when the veteran was informed that the script was non urgent, s/he decided to go home and not wait. The median wait time (between walk in and being seen by a VA pharmacist) for walk in non-VHA scripts was 11 minutes. The median time for pharmacist review and script dispensation was 15.2 minutes. The median time for physician review and rewriting the script was 17.48 minutes. The median time for dispensing the script (after physician review) was 16 minutes. The median process time (total time between walk in and script being filled) for a non-VHA script to be filled was one and a half hours. The team also collected data from veterans to examine their satisfaction with the filling a non-VHA prescription process and found that the mean veterans' satisfaction score was 4.58 (good to excellent) on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (1=poor; 5=excellent).\nConclusions and practical implications: Our findings will be valuable to VA providers and policy makers who seek to improve the service quality provided to dual care veterans and to healthcare managers who plan to apply Lean Six Sigma techniques in their organizations to improve service quality. The Lean Six Sigma general principles applied in this project to develop recommendations to improve medication management for dual care veterans are applicable to any process improvement or redesign project. Our project, therefore, has valuable lessons for other VAMCs seeking to improve care for their dual care veteran patients.\nLimitations: This case study applies Lean Six Sigma principles in only one urban VMAC in the Mid-Western USA to solve a specific organizational quality problem. Therefore, the findings may not be generalizable to other organizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A significant proportion of veterans use dual care or health care services within and outside the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In this study conducted at a VHA medical center in the USA, the authors used Lean Six Sigma principles to develop recommendations to eliminate wasteful processes and implement a more efficient and effective process to manage medications for dual care veteran patients. The purpose of this study is to: assess compliance with the VHA's dual care policy; collect data and describe the current process for co-management of dual care veterans' medications; and draft recommendations to improve the current process for dual care medications co-management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Input was obtained from the VHA patient care team members to draw a process map to describe the current process for filling a non-VHA prescription at a VHA facility. Data were collected through surveys and direct observation to measure the current process and to develop recommendations to redesign and improve the process.\nFindings: A key bottleneck in the process that was identified was the receipt of the non-VHA medical record which resulted in delays in filling prescriptions. The recommendations of this project focus on the four domains of: documentation of dual care; veteran education; process redesign; and outreach to community providers.\nResearch limitations/implications: This case study describes the application of Lean Six Sigma principles in one urban Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in the Mid-Western USA to solve a specific organizational quality problem. Therefore, the findings may not be generalizable to other organizations.\nPractical implications: The Lean Six Sigma general principles applied in this project to develop recommendations to improve medication management for dual care veterans are applicable to any process improvement or redesign project and has valuable lessons for other VAMCs seeking to improve care for their dual care veteran patients.\nOriginality/value: The findings of this project will be of value to VA providers and policy makers and health care managers who plan to apply Lean Six Sigma techniques in their organizations to improve the quality of care for their patients.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How rural-urban identification influences consumption patterns? Evidence from Chinese migrant workers	[ "Social marketing", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1. Background\n2. Identity in economics and marketing: 2.1. Identity in utility\n3. Theoretical framework and hypotheses: In order to integrate findings from both economics and consumer value domains, we assume that the utility of consumption for people can be mainly decomposed into basic utility (as an economic subject) and sustainable utility (as a social subject). The former is alienable and only dependent on its own consumption decision and the attributes of goods. In contrast, the latter is inalienable and dependent on the individual identity, its consumption decision and the consumption decision of the surrounding people. This following part concentrates on building a comprehensive model, which takes into account both the social and individual economic utility of consumption and is inspired by Akerlof and Kranton's (2000) and Benjamin et al. (2010). This model has been put forth to simulate the impact of identity on the individual consumption decision which includes weights between the social and individual economic utility. Thus, the utility of the consumption can be expressed:\n4. Method: 4.1. Data collection\n5. Results: The descriptive results of consumption are shown in Table II. Regressions were performed, as put forth in Equation (8), with identity assessed in different questions. The result is shown in Table III. The result shows acceptable explanation effects of tested regressions, where R2 is equal to or >0.4. In modeling the identity, we set two dummy variables with highest score and lowest score on the item concerning identity perception with the ambiguous group as a reference group.\n6. Discussions and conclusion: 6.1. Theoretical contribution\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine spending pattern of Chinese migrant workers from rural regions to urban cities from a social identity perspective, which stems from Chinese Hukou system (household registry system). This study proposes a theoretical model for consumer utility function (a combination of economic utility and social utility) which takes into account the choice of social identification.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study focusses on the influence of rural and urban identification on consumption patterns of Chinese migrant workers. These assumptions were verified based on a survey with 650 samples in Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China.\nFindings: Results indicate that affirmative social identification has a significantly positive effect on the level of consumption for migrant workers. High level of rural identification has a more significant impact than urban identification on survival consumption including food, medicine and family support. On the other hand, high level of urban identification has a more significant impact than rural identification on development consumption including education for children, training and recreation. Besides, there are significant interaction effects between income and identity on consumption, which confirms the identity effect on classical economic model and is in line with identity economics' arguments.\nOriginality/value: This study outlines the importance of social identity in both economics and marketing domains and proposes a theoretical model which advances understanding of a model on similar lines proposed by Akerlof and Kranton's (2000) and Benjamin et al. (2010). Empirical tests with Chinese migrant workers' data present that their consumption patterns are influenced by their level of social identifications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Swedish pig producers and their perspectives on animal welfare: a case study	[ "Agriculture", "Animal husbandry", "Quality assurance", "Sweden" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Swedish study about the pig producers' views of animal welfare in the EU-funded Welfare Quality research project emphasizes the importance of a producer-, consumer-, and retailer-based orientation. The views and experiences of Swedish pig producers, their understanding and practice of animal welfare, their motives for participation in available animal welfare schemes, and their views about retailers and consumers roles in animal welfare have been topics of an interview study. (Prior to this animal welfare study there have been only studies done with a narrow focus on animal welfare, for example about organic production (Lund et al., 2002), and the State Audit Institution's report (RIR, 2003) which focuses on the effectiveness in animal welfare monitoring). By interviewing pig producers, the possibilities and limits of animal welfare under modernised production systems can be better understood. The improvement of animal welfare on the farm is one aim of the Welfare Quality project, as the farm or production unit is the place where pigs spend most of their life.\nRecent developments in Swedish pig production: Swedish farmers producing pigs have faced a dramatic structural change in the sub-sector during the last decades. Whereas the number of Swedish farms diminished by about 30 per cent since 1980 (JordbruksstatistiskArsbok, 2005, p. 101), the number of pig producing farms has diminished by about 88 per cent: There were 26,122 pig producers in 1980, in 2003 only 3,669, and in 2004 only 3,194 (JordbruksstatistiskArsbok, 2005, p. 83). The numbers of pig producing farms have decreased by 70 per cent since 1995 when Sweden became a member of the EU.Pigs in holdings with sows and boars increased on average from 15 pigs to 92 pigs between 1980 and 2004. Pigs in holdings with fattening pigs and piglets increased on average from 81 pigs to 405 pigs during the same time period. The number of holdings with sows has decreased by 65 per cent during 1996-2005 while the number of holdings with piglets increased.A large part of pig production occurs in southern Sweden, especially in the southwestern part of Sweden where population density is relatively high and metropolitan areas are close by. In the counties of Skane, Vastra Gotaland, Halland, Ostergotland, and Kalmar, about 70 per cent of all pigs are produced in Sweden (JordbruksstatistiskArsbok, 2005, p.85, 89). The total number of pigs produced was 1,818,037 in 2004. 5,5 per cent of the total number of farms with more than 2 hectares produced pigs in 2003 (JorbruksstatistiskArsbok, 2005, pp. 31, 39). Between 1993 and 2003 the level of pig meat production was around 300 million kg annually, and the ratio of national production/consumption was nearly balanced. Since then production has diminished and does not meet the nation's consumption levels. In 2003, 288 million kg of pig meat were produced and 324 million kg were consumed in Sweden (79 per cent of the consumed meat is from Swedish production). In 2002, Sweden imported 59 per cent of its meat from Denmark and 24 per cent of its meat from Germany. Denmark has been the main exporter of pork to Sweden since 1995 (Jordbruksverket, 2003, p. 66f). Altogether, this statistical data indicates the limited size of Swedish pig production, which, after recent reduction, still covers about four-fifths of the national demand.Changes in structure have occurred within pig production. The number of pig producers has decreased while the relative size of the remaining producers has increased. The structure for pork processing has undergone a similar development. Since the 1990s, pig production has become more specialised. Systems include stable-group (all pigs arrive and leave simultaneously to facilitate cleaning for the next group), planned production, and groups segregated by age. These systems brought positive effects for both animal health and enterprise profitability. In most cases, piglets were raised in stages with two dominant production systems:1. Inter-farm contracts - piglet producer and producer of fattening pigs buy and sell from each other.2. Integrated breeding - pigs are born and remain on that farm until transportation to the slaughterhouse.\nThe study: The purpose of the interviews with pig producers was to obtain more systematic information about the producers' knowledge and experience regarding animal welfare. Pig producers are practitioners in production with practical knowledge about animal welfare, partly from their own experience, partly from participation in quality assurance schemes, partly from advice. Scientific and bureaucratic experts, such as veterinarians and inspectors with their scientific knowledge of animal welfare tend to outweigh the hands-on experience of pig producers. National authorities may tend to lean towards the scientific side, but both the scientific and practical knowledge of animal production rely on each other.Primary data have been collected through semi-structured interviews, using an interview guide with open questions having no predetermined answers. The questions have been coordinated with the study participants in other countries. All interviews were recorded on tape. The stratified sample included 60 pig producers from all over Sweden, with the following stratification criteria: location, farm size classes, production systems including conventional and organic production, and the main quality assurance schemes for Swedish pig producers. One third of the producers interviewed were female (corresponding to the percentage of females in Swedish agriculture). The farmers were found with the help of address lists from authorities and associations.Although organic producers are less than 2 per cent of the total pig producers in Sweden, they are given a larger sampling (ten organic producers interviewed of 60 total producers). The reason was to catch the differences in views between conventional versus organic pig production. Because Sweden does not have specific animal welfare schemes, the differences between conventional versus organic production types becomes important for the study. Furthermore, the importance of organic farming given in Swedish agricultural policy and the present rural development scheme gave reasons to compare the two productions systems regarding animal welfare. Some interviews have been done on the farm, most by telephone because of the long distances between the farms and because it was easier for the farmers to plan time for a telephone interview. An average interview took between two and three hours. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then coded with QSR N6 software. With this methodology, it is possible to document the views and experience of farmers based on their practical knowledge and experience.As opposed to a more superficial survey of attitudes, this study was designed for in-depth analysis of the farmers' individual knowledge and experience to obtain better-grounded results from which to derive ideas for improving animal welfare on the farm. Although one can compare the answers quantitatively, it is important to point out that the interpretation of knowledge and arguments of the individual farmers is more important. Quantitative presentation of answers is insufficient when comparing results with that from other countries for two reasons: first, the stratified sampling used in this study is not a random sample in the statistical sense; and second, to interpret the views and arguments of the farmers, one needs to put animal welfare policy in Sweden into its context.\nFindings: Farmers' participation in quality assurance schemes\nConclusions, practical and policy-related implications: The results from the pig producer study are relevant in multiple contexts. In a management context, the study results can lead to the improvement of animal welfare practices on the farm in Sweden. As an argument for more compatible criteria within the welfare schemes, the study results are relevant at the national level. At the international level, the results can serve as an argument for practices that are more homogeneous and for the adoption of animal welfare standards within the EU. The results are also relevant in a scientific context both for the improvement of animal welfare practices on the farm and for the understanding of how animal welfare is affected within these various contexts.For the participation in animal welfare schemes, no big differences between groups of specialised producers can be found. Non-participants are not a relevant category in the Swedish study. Most of the farmers interviewed join schemes with demands above and beyond the legal requirements, and they join two or more schemes. Diversity in perspectives was found in the following: between conventional and organic farmers, between male and female farmers, and between farmers with higher and lower levels of education.Most farmers defined a basic level of animal welfare that includes ample amounts of food and water and clean and dry pens. Most of the farmers mentioned a \"physical comfort\" view of animal welfare that places importance on habitat and the technical aspects of the environment. Female farmers generally have a \"natural behaviour\" view of animal welfare whereas male farmers have a \"physical comfort\" view. Most of the farmers with conventional production have a \"physical comforts\" view. A \"natural behaviour\" view of animal welfare is prevalent among farmers with organic production.The relationship towards their pigs is affected by the farmer's production type, gender, and education level. Farmers with production types involving long-term pig contact have an emotional relationship toward their pigs, whereas shorter-term contact results in a more professional/economic relationship. A lower level of education corresponds with a more emotional relationship, whereas a higher level of education corresponds to a more professional/economic relationship for the farmer toward his pigs. Female pig producers describe their relationship toward their pigs primarily as individual/emotional, and secondarily as professional/economic. Male pig producers primarily have an economic-based relationship toward their pigs.The farmers commonly view retailers as having a powerful influence but little or no interest in animal welfare. Over half of those interviewed think that consumer opinion toward animal welfare at pig farms is high and about half think that consumers are unaware of animal welfare. Farmers view the selling of meat without a country of origin label at shops, restaurants, schools, hospitals, etc. as a problem because it does not give the consumer a choice. Unlike the majority of the other respondents, all producers with an on-the-farm shop have positive experiences regarding consumer interest in animal welfare. The main conclusion from the farmers' answers regarding consumers is that the meat needs to be labelled with its origin, and that consumers need more information about animal welfare.To improve the present policy and practice of animal welfare on the farm simplifying the standardised schemes would be advantageous for the farmers, but above all, improving the coordination between the different schemes could avoid repeated inspections and conflicting criteria. For pig producers, complying with animal welfare criteria and administration activities differ from scheme to scheme. SvDhv has historically been the most appreciated and least criticised scheme in Sweden. Since the 1940s, SvDhv has provided animal welfare guidance for farmers and helped to update them on new regulations, changing criteria and good solutions. Many farmers also found the BIS scheme to be one of the most important factors in improving animal welfare, and today BIS has become standard practice within animal welfare. The schemes differ in how they are monitored, by whom, how often, how seriously, and whether there is external control. The schemes with recurring external controls are BIS, BIS-Plus, SvDhv, and KRAV. The other schemes do not require external control, or control is exercised only at the time that the farmers join the scheme. Coordination between the schemes would better rationalise their monitoring processes.The market does not determine animal welfare and marketing opportunities vary between schemes. Most of the farmers interviewed do not see the advantages of qualified schemes, nor do they see better marketing opportunities related to animal welfare. They do see the quality of production in a more encompassing sense. With the exception of KRAV farmers, farmers see the schemes more as a basic condition than as giving them access to markets.While farmers are not urged to join schemes, nonparticipation in schemes is viewed as unrealistic. There were no complaints by the farmers interviewed that they were forced to participate in schemes. Changing to another scheme rarely occurs. For those farmers that did change, they mentioned price, conflicting opinions, and less bureaucratic procedures as their main reasons to switch to another scheme or slaughterhouse. Akeson and Nilsson (2003) also discovered similar findings.A number of factors have shaped the current policy for animal welfare in Sweden. Swedish agriculture and food production is limited by the number of producers, the quantities produced, and by the number of consumers. Food production is mostly for the national market, which is relatively small. Until recently, the dominant national production of meat gave little room for imports. The meat production process was regulated in cooperation by national policy and national producers. The dominant attitude among Swedish political actors, producers, and consumers is that animal welfare criteria are followed, implemented, and controlled to a higher degree in Sweden than in many other European countries, and that there is no need to have more restrictive rules or schemes as long as the other countries in the EU do not have the same standards. Human health and animal health and welfare have been on the political agenda for quite some time in Sweden. Governmental regulation and control is carried out in cooperation with authorities, branch producers, and animal welfare organisations. There is an active information policy by the government and farmer/producer associations concerning animal welfare and health control of animals. During its twentieth-century modernisation, the agricultural and food-processing sectors developed a double organisational structure for the representation of farmers' interests (by LRF) and the interests of cooperative organisational food processing (such as Swedish Meats). Both LRF and Swedish Meats engage in animal welfare.There is a long tradition of national animal welfare regulation, a dominance of legal regulation, and an absence of major animal diseases and food scandals. Quality assurance schemes with animal welfare components complement the national requirements. The breakthrough of modern animal health and welfare legislation came in the 1940s, accompanying the modernisation of Swedish agriculture and the building of a cooperative processing industry. In the 1980s, after a public ethical debate about animal protection, a second animal welfare legislation occurred. When Sweden joined the EU in 1995, the high Swedish standards for animal welfare met the lower standards for the other EU countries.During its membership negotiations, Sweden pressed for improved animal protection.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to identify the views of Swedish pig producers concerning animal welfare, the schemes practised for animal welfare in Sweden, and the ramifications of animal welfare for Swedish retailers and consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The Swedish study for animal welfare covers a pig-production sector of 2,794 producers (2005). The pig production study was one of three such studies conducted as part of the EU's Welfare Quality project with semi-structured interviews (the other two studies were on cattle and poultry production). The stratified sample included 60 pig producers, both conventional and organic, selected from all areas of Sweden.\nFindings: - The main results show a high level of animal care exercised in the Swedish pig production sector. Although there are no specific animal welfare schemes implemented, there is a high level of animal care provided by farmer participation in quality assurance schemes that include animal welfare stipulations, among other criteria.\nPractical implications: - The results from this pig production study will serve as input for a subsequent study of the on-farm practice of animal welfare for the Welfare Quality project and as information material for policy to argue for more compatible criteria of welfare schemes at national level as well as for more homogeneous practice and standards of animal welfare within the EU.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first in-depth study on animal welfare in Swedish agriculture that takes into account a wide array of views and experiences of both conventional and organic producers. Prior to this animal welfare study only studies with a narrow focus on animal welfare, for example about organic production, and the State Audit Institution's report, which focuses on the effectiveness in animal welfare monitoring, have been produced.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
HR metrics and workforce analytics: it is a journey, not a destination	[ "HR metrics", "Decision-making", "HR analytics", "HR managers", "Metrics and analytics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Metrics are numerical data that reflect some descriptive details about the given outcomes or processes, whereas analytics is a set of strategies for converting and combining the data elements into metrics and for examining the relationships or changes in metrics. Understanding these combinations helps the managers to know about the current or changing state of human capital and their performance effectiveness in an organization. This knowledge can impact their managerial decision-making ability. In general, to perform analytics in an organization requirement, the policy makers has to depend on the troubles and opportunities that currently faced by its managers. This path leads to the calculation of metrics that the organization needs in order to compute the analytics.\nWhy HR metrics and workforce analytics?: To take an effective decision, managers need to have quantified data with numerical results which can be obtained with the help of process-specific metrics and analytics. And now managers needs to know what information they need and what human indicators that can be reported using metrics. This is the fundamental problem to a manager to start with calculation of metrics and analytics.\nWill it support problem-solving and decision-making processes?: Metrics and analytics is a better problem-solving measure in organizations, because in any situations decisions are made after analyzing the tactical choices. In response to specific problems, the choices may be among alternative choice to achieve specific outcomes. The choices could also involve trying something new, or to take no action at all. Making effective decisions requires a better understanding of the outcomes that one is attempting to achieve. Also one requires knowledge on how the factors influence those outcomes and about the available choices based on the cost-benefit approach.\nWhat is the first step to generate metrics and analytics?: The first and foremost step to generate metrics and analytics strategies in an organization is identification of existing problems faced by them. Due to the changing environment and global requirement, the labor measurement also changes. The main focus is on the problems faced by the organization and human resources in the working environment. These problems should be solved by the management of the organization as early as possible. Because the world is moving with a competitive attitude and also if there are any delay in making appropriate decisions, these may lead the organization to a difficult situation. To bounce back from those difficulties might take time and the organization would feel it difficult to keep pace with the changing global requirements in the business world. Thus the only solution to face these difficulties is to identify new performance measurements. In this way, metrics and analytics plays a smart role in measuring the performance of the organization and aiding decisions-making at appropriate times. The organization should organize to strengthen R&D where the HR professionals will experiment with new measurements and test existing assumptions about the requirements of the current systems of the organization. This test can encourage new approaches and allow the creation of new metrics and analytics.\nSummary: The development of effective human resource metrics and workforce analytics is likely to be seen in the future as a very important source of competitive advantage. Through the use of human resources measures and workforce analytics, decision-makers will gain the ability to more effectively manage and improve human resources programs and processes. This in turn improves the effectiveness of the workforce. Using metrics and analytics in all functions of human resources department, management decision-makers can modify comprehensive employment systems by effectively managing the company's human capital.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The main objective in adopting the use of metrics and analytics is to use the expertise of HR professionals in human resource management regarding their understanding of the best way to recruit, select, train, design, motivate, develop, evaluate, and retain employees at an organization to help achieve its goals more effectively.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The first and foremost step to generate metrics and analytics strategies in an organization is identification of existing problems faced by them. Owing to the changing environment and global requirement, the labor measurement also changes. The main focus is on the problems faced by the organization and human resources in the working environment.\nFindings: Through the use of human resources measures and workforce analytics, decision-makers will gain the ability to more effectively manage and improve human resources programs and processes. This in turn improves the effectiveness of the workforce and organizational performance.\nPractical implications: Metrics and analytics is a better problem-solving measure in organizations, because in any situations, decisions are made after analyzing the tactical choices.\nSocial implications: The development of effective human resource metrics and workforce analytics is likely to be seen in the future as a very important source of competitive advantage.\nOriginality/value: The use of human resource metrics and workforce analytics improves organizational effectiveness and strategic decision-making of managers that positively impact the organization's performance as a whole.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Digital curation: the development of a discipline within information science	[ "Development", "History", "Models", "Education", "Professional associations", "Digital curation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the embedding of personal computers and hand-held devices into modern society digital information has become ubiquitous, reaching into every aspect of our personal and professional lives and creating new ways of learning, working and undertaking research. Digital information is increasing exponentially (Domo, 2017) and this digital information needs to be effectively managed if it is to be used and reused by society. Digital curation has emerged over the last 20 years as a new discipline from within the information sciences umbrella that addresses the technical, administrative and financial ecology required to maintain access to digital material through organisational and technical changes over the long term (Abbott, 2008; Digital Curation Centre, 2005a; Higgins, 2011; Kim et al., 2013, p. 67; Pennock, 2007; Tibbo, 2012, pp. 2-3; Tibbo and Lee, 2010, p. 126). The discipline's origins lie in two parallel early information science research foci. The first from the archives and records discipline concentrated on the preservation of electronic materials - maintaining the bit-stream of those records and archives we would now call born-digital (Day, 1997; Hirtle, 2008, p. 125; Marc Fresko Consultancy, 1996). The second from a library science focus on what was then called digital preservation - producing digital surrogates of analogue material through digitisation to increase their lifespan (Hirtle, 2008, pp. 124-125). As information becomes increasingly digital, digital curation would now seem to be a discipline that reaches into all sub-disciplines of information science while maintaining obvious synergies with the discipline of computer science. This paper will investigate how digital curation has developed into a mature discipline in its own right and identify where this new discipline sits within the overarching aegis of information science. As debate continues regarding the discipline's focus and status, and appropriate education and training for digital curators (Bettivia, 2017; Higgins, 2017; Kilbride, 2017; Schisler, 2017), understanding its disciplinary developmental status, and its place within the information sciences domain, can inform practitioners and educators of the boundaries and reach of their discipline so that effort and resource can be expended appropriately.\nThe nature of a discipline: In his critique of capitalist society, Foucault identified that disciplinary methods are adopted \"in response to particular needs\" (Foucault, 1975, p. 138) as societies and economies change and develop. He identified that a disciplinary society adopts techniques for assuring order and embedding power structures by enclosing and organising analytical spaces. Although critical of the use of discipline to maintain power positions and feed the state, his work illuminates how these organised analytical spaces become academic disciplines through rigorous pedagogical organisation, the development of hierarchies of specialisation, and stages of increasing difficulty through which individuals need to progress to master a subject (Foucault, 1975). Detailed characterisation, classification and specialisation develop firm foundations to embed disciplines as distinct knowledge bases, with contextualised research theories and methods, and acknowledged scholars (Foucault, 1975; Dirks, 1996; Schommer-Aikins et al., 2003; Cohen and Lloyd, 2014):The disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate.(Foucault, 1975, p. 223)\nInformation science as a discipline: Capurro and Hjorland (2003, p. 364) identify information science as a discipline which is academically inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary. It conforms to the academic to professional feedback loop of a professional applied discipline described above, being a fusion of its two dimensions: the professional practice from which its knowledge base derives (the objective or disciplinary dimension) and the academic study of information as a research object (the subjective or academic dimension) (Harmon, 1971; Robinson and Karamuftuoglu, 2010; Bawden and Robinson, 2012; Smiraglia, 2014). Generally agreed to have its origins in the traditions of bibliography, the documentation movement and library science, the original focus was on the three main institutions created to store physical material - libraries, archives and the related museums and the discipline revolved around the traditional problems of storage and retrieval (Bawden and Robinson, 2012; Bates, 2015); with sub-disciplines emerging from different sectors and subject areas as specialised responses to the storage problem when the quantity of materials being stored became too great for the retrieval methods used (Harmon, 1971). This means that the boundaries of information science can be seen to be fluid, drawing upon disciplines across the arts and humanities, social and behavioural sciences and natural sciences (Bates, 2015). The spectrum of information science disciplines was mapped by Bates (2015) according to their synergy with these academic areas and their level of focus on the cultural record or the sciences to enable the organisation of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Library and Information Sciences (Bates and Maack, 2010). In all, 11 core disciplines and their main academic foci were identified giving rise to over 50 sub-disciplines (Figure 4).\nDigital information - the new paradigm: As highlighted by the models above, the shift from the systems driven paradigm of information science, inherited from its origins in bibliography and documentation, began in the late 1960s with the early introduction of computer technology to the automation of these tasks; and their subsequent side-lining into sub-disciplines such as library automation and (electronic) information retrieval (Mccallum, 2003; Hjorland, 2014; Bates, 2015). Meanwhile the focus of research moved to the wider \"sociological and epistemological\" paradigm of the cognitive approach (Capurro and Hjorland, 2003, p. 389), greatly increasing the scope of information science as a discipline (Harmon, 1971; Ellis, 1992; Capurro and Hjorland, 2003; Hjorland, 2014).\nCuration in information science: Curation has not been a term generally used in information science, outside of the museum studies discipline, and is not specifically identified as a professional activity by the commentators discussed, although it could be argued that Borko (1968) and Robinson and Karamuftuoglu's (2010) lifecycle components together constitute information curation. Certainly a similar set of duties for the curation of library resources have been identified (Parsons, 2010; Daigle, 2012; Johnston, 2014; Valenza et al., 2014; LibSource, 2017). However these authors also argue that curation goes beyond the mechanical activities of collecting materials and making them accessible, to the conscious design and development of a collection to support learning in a defined community while engendering trust and authority. This trust arises from human judgement regarding value (Johnston, 2014) guided by policies (Daigle, 2012). LibSource, a US information consultancy, identifies this judgement of value as a professional role:Curation is the act of individuals chartered with the responsibility to find, contextualize, and organize information, providing a reliable context and architecture for the content they discover and organize.(LibSource, 2017)\nDigital curation as a discipline: Digital curation is a discipline that is concerned with a primary research object - data (here defined as information that is manifested digitally) and a single paradigm - ensuring data's continued access and use over the long term. As an applied discipline it could be characterised according to Becher and Trowler's (2001) model (Figure 2) as hard-applied being purposive, pragmatic and concerned primarily with technology and its application. As such it has synergies with the computer science discipline, although this traditionally focusses more narrowly on the digital technology used to create, access and use information, than the information itself.\nPositioning digital curation in information science: Taking the early focus of digital curation as a research problem in the technical dimension, it could be perceived that digital curation has a systems based paradigm as described by Slamecka (1968) (Figure 5); while mapping its data-centric concerns to Zins', (2007) model, could identify the discipline to be a sub-discipline of information science restricted to mediating data and information in a hi-tech domain (Figure 9).\nConclusion: Digital curation has progressed through the developmental stages of a discipline. It has matured from its early emphasis on the technical dimension of digital information as a research object to embrace the academic and professional dimensions of the discipline. As such it is a hard-applied discipline where an academic to professional feedback loop is now engendered through formal higher education in the discipline.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Digital curation addresses the technical, administrative and financial ecology required to ensure that digital information remains accessible and usable over the long term. The purpose of this paper is to trace digital curation's disciplinary emergence and examine its position within the information sciences domain in terms of theoretical principles, using a case study of developments in the UK and the USA.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Theoretical principles regarding disciplinary development and the identity of information science as a discipline are applied to a case study of the development of digital curation in the UK and the USA to identify the maturity of digital curation and its position in the information science gamut.\nFindings: Digital curation is identified as a mature discipline which is a sub-meta-discipline of information science. As such digital curation has reach across all disciplines and sub-disciplines of information science and has the potential to become the overarching paradigm.\nPractical implications: These findings could influence digital curation's development from applied discipline to profession within both its educational and professional domains.\nOriginality/value: The disciplinary development of digital curation within dominant theoretical models has not hitherto been articulated.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Watch that tone: An investigation of the use and stylistic consequences of tone in corporate accountability disclosures	[ "Annual reports", "Corporate communications", "CSR reports", "Readability", "Tone", "Diction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Narrative communication is playing an increasingly significant part in the accountability process. This is true both of well-established components of the annual report and of newer areas, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting and integrated reporting (IR)[1]. Reflecting its utility to stakeholders, narrative information has been associated with future financial performance (Li, 2010), bankruptcy (Smith and Taffler, 1995, 2000), individual investor decisions (Lawrence, 2013) and market returns (Henry, 2008; Lang and Lundholm, 2000; Li, 2010). A key stylistic element of narratives is tone. Tone is a means by which an author may imbue a narrative with a desired connotation or affect through word choice. Like many elements of style, tone may be used to disseminate incrementally useful information or deployed strategically to influence the perceptions of the reader (i.e. impression management)[2].\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1 Tone\n3. Method: 3.1 Sample\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Discussion and conclusion: This study explores the role of tone in corporate reporting. While many prior studies equate tone with (positive/negative) sentiment, we argue that tone is more nuanced in nature. We expect that the different narrative types typically contained in the traditional annual report and CSR report, serve distinct purposes and we therefore expect to see a different tonal profile for each. This is consistent with the notion that each component narrative of the annual and CSR reports may represent a distinct communication genre, and that tone conforms to specific stylistic conventions of each genre. Our analysis reveals that the dimensions of tone vary significantly across different types of narrative. No previous study has explored the relative tonal profiles of common corporate narratives.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate: how dimensions of tone vary across different forms of corporate accountability narrative; the impact of tone on readability; and the determinants of tone, including consideration of its use in impression management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a multi-year sample of listed companies, the authors measure dimensions of tone across multiple narrative types within the annual report and standalone corporate social responsibility report. Statistical analysis is used to investigate variations of tone across narrative type, each dimension's influence on readability and the role of antecedent factors.\nFindings: Analysis reveals that dimensions of tone vary significantly across narrative types (genres) suggesting that tonal patterns form part of the specific stylistic conventions of each genre. Tone is found to be a significant determinant of readability. Little evidence of obfuscation using tone was found, while disclosure type is the most salient determinant of tone.\nPractical implications: The study illuminates latent or underlying disclosure norms that can facilitate the identification of \"exceptional\" cases that do not conform with expected tonal patterns of a particular narrative type and may warrant closer inspection by preparers, auditors or regulators. The issues raised regarding the clarity and balance of textual disclosures highlight the challenges in regulating corporate narratives.\nOriginality/value: This study highlights that tone is a more nuanced and layered concept than suggested by much of the prior literature. Further, tone ought to be considered in studies examining textual complexity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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